Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Raise the Dawn (Star Trek, the Next Generation)

by George III, David R.

  “What I want,” Kamemor said, “is to place my hands around his neck and squeeze until he’s breathed his last breath. But for the benefit of the Romulan Empire and the Federation, yes, I would speak with him.”

  “I still don’t know that I can trust you,” Bacco said, but Kamemor could see that the president wanted to trust her.

  “Understand this,” Kamemor said. “I am not trying to avoid a war between the Typhon Pact and the Khitomer Accords, or between the Romulan Empire and the Federation. I am trying to establish a relationship . . . a friendship. It’s a big galaxy; there’s no good reason we can’t share it.”

  “I agree, Praetor,” Bacco said, “but if you are losing control of your government, what difference do your efforts make?”

  “I didn’t have control, clearly,” Kamemor said. “What’s worse is that I didn’t know it. But I am taking control, wresting it from the usurpers. As I said, we’ve learned who the most powerful of them are, and we are stopping them. At the same time, there are fewer senators these days inclined to seek war with the Federation or anybody else. Individuals whom I know I can trust will soon be in major positions of authority within my government. And my people . . . most of them, anyway . . . only want what your people want . . . what all people want: to live their lives free of pain and sorrow and want. And while there will always be those things for all of us, the least we can do as leaders is to minimize them as best we can. Keeping us out of another war would be a good start.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” Bacco said. “But if you think that these rogue elements are going to go after the slipstream drive again, we may not have to worry. Our Starfleet installations have been re-fortified, and a strong force guards the wormhole.”

  “That is all good to know,” Kamemor said, “but I would still feel better if we could learn the details of what is to come.”

  “Do you really believe that you can get that information from Tomalak?” Bacco asked.

  “Yes,” Kamemor said. “I know Tomalak. I worked with him. He’s a small, self-important dullard who puffs out his chest and calls himself a patriot even as he undermines the collective good of the Empire. I know how to talk to him.”

  Turning to her aide, Bacco said, “Esperanza, what do you think?”

  Esperanza, Kamemor thought. Esperanza Piñiero.

  “I think it’s something worth trying,” Piñiero said.

  Bacco stood up again, and then so did her aide. Kamemor rose as well. “Praetor, I will need to speak with my advisors,” she said. “I can have Esperanza escort you to visitor’s quarters.”

  “I would remind you that we may not have much time,” Kamemor said.

  “I understand.”

  Piñiero walked toward the door, and Kamemor followed, as did one of the security officers. As they left the president’s office, the praetor didn’t know whether or not she would be permitted to speak with her former proconsul. She could only hope that she had done a good enough job of making her case to the Federation president.

  23

  Bashir leaned in over the primary examination table and brought his hand up in front of his patient’s face. “Breathe into this, Ensign.” He indicated the tube he held, to which he’d attached a bulb containing a gelatinous red substrate. “Let’s check out your lung function.”

  Vakell th’Shant took hold of the tube, but he peered up at the doctor with what seemed like a quizzical expression. The Andorian’s facial features didn’t change, but his antennae bent at an angle that betrayed his confusion. “I don’t remember this test,” th’Shant said.

  “That’s because it’s probably one you’ve never been given before,” Bashir said. “But the captain wanted it added to everybody’s physical.” As part of establishing the new Bajoran Space Central, and in light of some of the injuries suffered during the destruction of Deep Space 9, Captain Ro had ordered a fresh round of medical exams for every member of the crew. She’d handed down the edict more than two weeks earlier, after consulting with Bashir, but he and his staff hadn’t been able to begin until after the center had become operational. In three full days, they’d managed about two dozen physicals, although they would have finished a few more if not for the captain’s late and questionable addition to the regular set of tests.

  “The captain’s dictating medical policy?” th’Shant asked. “That seems a little odd.”

  I couldn’t agree more, thought Bashir. To the ensign, though, he said, “It’s not as though she randomly found the test in a reference book and just decided to insist we do it. When the medical staff spoke with her about all the injuries that the crew suffered, we brought it to her attention that a number of personnel had been trapped in small, pressurized sections of wreckage for some time. Some of those sections didn’t stay completely pressurized, so there could have been some lung damage along the way.” Bashir hoped that his explanation sounded more plausible to the ensign than it did to him.

  “I was in a runabout,” th’Shant said, “not a piece of the wreckage.” He tried to hand the tube back to the doctor, but Bashir held up the palm of his hand in a halting motion.

  “Physical exams for a crew have to be standardized,” he said. “You know that.” The doctor understood that th’Shant couldn’t have known that, since it didn’t happen to be true—and couldn’t be, considering how many different species served in Starfleet—but he made the assertion authoritatively.

  Even though the ensign’s antennae adjusted from a confused attitude to one of mild suspicion, he brought the tube up to his thin, blue lips. He inhaled deeply, and Bashir stopped him with a hand to his shoulder. “Normal breaths, Ensign,” he said. “About half a dozen.” Th’Shant did as instructed, then handed the tube back over to the doctor.

  Bashir took the tube and carried it over to the side of the room, to where Nurse Etana Kol worked at the main medical console. “Andorian thaan, lung function at rest,” he said. Etana accepted the tube, removed the bulb at the end, then attached the bulb to a fitted, interchangeable receptacle on the console. She repeated the doctor’s words, then tapped at a control panel, apparently to initiate an analysis.

  Bashir paced back over to the foot of the exam table, reached down, and pulled the stair simulator up from below. The arced piece of metal glided up along its curved tracks until it locked into its vertical orientation with an audible click. Bashir reached above th’Shant’s feet and released the two padded steps of the simulator, which worked in opposition to each other; when a patient depressed one, the other came up, and vice versa.

  “Move down the table, Ensign,” Bashir said, “so that you can put your feet up here.” He patted the simulator. Th’Shant slid down the table, his knees rising as he bent his legs. Then he raised his feet and pushed them against the steps. The doctor pointed out the handholds for him to use on the sides of the bed, then asked, “Are you comfortable?”

  “I’ll be comfortable when I can go back to my station,” th’Shant said.

  “We both will be, Ensign,” Bashir said, a little more sharply than he’d intended. The doctor didn’t like what Captain Ro had asked him to do, for a variety of reasons—including that he thought it had no chance of success—but he needed to ensure that he didn’t take it out on his patients. Being careful to moderate his tone, he said, “Give me an easy but consistent pace for one full minute.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  The Andorian began pumping his legs in a steady rhythm. Bashir worked a small control panel on the side of the exam table and set a timer for sixty seconds. Then he stepped back and observed th’Shant, but his mind immediately began to wander—as it often had over the previous ten days. Sarina had been taken into custody at the beginning of that time, and then placed under arrest and charged almost a week after that. Captain Ro’s assurances to the contrary, the entire situation troubled Bashir greatly. While he didn’t necessarily believe that the captain would lie to him—though she had shown no misgivings about having him lie to the crew—he fo
und it difficult to countenance her claims that she believed fully in Sarina’s innocence.

  Maybe that’s because I’m not sure that I believe in Sarina’s innocence, Bashir thought.

  On the night that Sarina had first been taken into custody at Quark’s, the doctor had subsequently found Ro still in her office at the center. He closed the door behind him when he went in, then proceeded to offer her some heated words. She allowed him to continue for a while, until she reminded him that Sarina hadn’t been arrested, but had voluntarily gone in for questioning—although the restraints Sarina had been led away in made her seizure seem far from voluntary. Then the captain suggested that the doctor not visit Sarina while she remained with security.

  “Why not?” Bashir had asked. “Why shouldn’t I see her?”

  “For two reasons, Doctor,” Ro said. “First, because she asked me to keep you away. She thought that it would be easier for both of you that way.”

  “There’s nothing easy about this,” Bashir said.

  “Second,” Ro said, “we need the crew to see you not only upset, but having your own suspicions about Sarina.”

  For a moment, Bashir had thought that the captain somehow perceived the doubts he’d begun having about the woman he loved. But then she explained that Sarina had volunteered to be brought in for questioning, not because Ro considered her a real suspect, but so that the true saboteur would begin to feel comfortable, to believe that they had escaped detection and capture.

  Bashir found the plan—if it could even be called that—absurd. Just because an innocent individual had been taken in for questioning, or even arrested, that would not cause the guilty party to suddenly start leaving clues or have a change of heart. But Ro insisted that Sarina wanted to try, so Bashir let it go. It bothered him not to see her, and to have to rely on the captain’s confidence about what she and Sarina were attempting to accomplish.

  At the examination table, a chirp indicated that a minute had passed. “That’s enough, Ensign, thank you,” the doctor said. Th’Shant dropped his feet back onto the table’s surface, his knees up, then pushed himself back up so that he could lie completely flat. Bashir produced the tube again, but this time added a different bulb to it. “One more time, Ensign,” he said.

  Th’Shant took the tube and blew into it once more. An Andorian, he possessed considerable strength and stamina, and even after a minute’s continuous exercise, he did not breathe much more heavily than he had at the start. Bashir relayed the tube and its bulb over to Nurse Etana.

  As she set about processing the second bulb from Ensign th’Shant, Bashir thought about how, years earlier, Etana had served as a sergeant in the Bajoran Militia. She decided to try her hand at nursing, though, so that she could spend more time with Nurse Krissten Richter, the woman who would eventually become her wife. Etana, a field medic for her Resistance cell during the Occupation, made a relatively smooth transition from one career path to the other.

  When some of DS9’s surviving personnel had to be assigned elsewhere, before the BSC had become operational, the captain had sent Etana and Richter to Brisbane, so that they could be together. But then that changed. And it changed because L’Haan appeared in Bashir’s room.

  The doctor hadn’t wanted to inform Ro about his visit from the Section 31 operative, primarily because he hadn’t wanted to divulge Sarina’s prior association with the organization. To his surprise, though, Ro already knew about Sarina’s involvement with Section 31, and even her desire to put an end to the group. Bashir assumed that the captain’s knowledge had come from her investigation of Sarina months earlier, but it turned out that, after Sarina had transferred to DS9, she’d gone to Ro and told her all about it herself.

  As a result, the captain hadn’t been surprised that L’Haan had shown up to speak with Bashir. Because Section 31 still believed Sarina to be one of their operatives, Ro had actually counted on one of their members appearing, hoping that they might provide valuable information about what had happened on DS9, something that had gone overlooked or misunderstood. But L’Haan revealed no such information to Bashir. When he recounted their conversation for the captain, though, Ro had still taken something away from it—something which she immediately acted upon by recalling Nurse Etana from Brisbane, wanting her to help conduct the upcoming physical examinations of the crew.

  At the medical console, Etana finished working at her panel. “Transferring the test results to your padd, Doctor,” she said.

  “Thank you,” he said. He picked up the padd from where it sat on the desk beside the console.

  Bashir had almost refused the captain’s orders regarding the physical exams. At a very basic level, he thought what she wanted him to do might violate medical ethics, although he also understood that, as members of Starfleet, the crew willingly relinquished some of their rights. But the doctor also didn’t know if he could do what Ro wanted him to do convincingly and effectively. And even if he could, the entire plan would hinge on enlisting the crew, one member at a time, to keep the details of their physical to themselves.

  The doctor carried the padd back over to where th’Shant still lay on the examination table. “Now, then, Ensign, let’s take a look,” he said. “You can sit up if you like.” As th’Shant swung his legs over the side of the table, Bashir read through the display of all the measurements he’d taken and tests he’d performed on the Andorian. “Height and weight are consistent and healthy for your age and species,” he said. “Although I’ve got your master file from Starfleet Medical here, and it looks as though you’ve lost some kilos since your last workup.” He looked up across the padd at th’Shant. “Have your eating habits changed?”

  Th’Shant shrugged. “With everything that’s happened, maybe so,” he admitted.

  “Of course,” Bashir said. “Have you been seeing one of the counselors?”

  “Lieutenant Knezo,” th’Shant said. With Counselor Matthias assigned to one of the ships in the system so that she could live with her family, the responsibility for the crew’s emotional health had fallen to DS9’s assistant counselors, Lieutenants Knezo and Collins. Starfleet had also sent another, Ensign Valinar, to Bajor to help with the workload.

  “Good,” Bashir said. He ran through th’Shant’s results, all of which fell within expected ranges and spoke to the overall health of the ensign. Finally, he reached the last test. “Okay, then there’s the lung function exam,” he said. “Everything appears to be normal.” He glanced up at th’Shant. “I guess it paid to be on a runabout instead of a piece of wreckage.”

  Th’Shant offered a thin smile. Bashir looked back down at the padd. He stared at it for a long moment, then furrowed his brow. “Is something the matter, Doctor?” th’Shant asked.

  “It’s probably nothing,” Bashir said. “Oddly enough, it’s on your ‘lungs under exertion’ test.”

  “But I told you, I was on the Rio Grande when the station . . .” He didn’t finish his sentence.

  “Yes, I’m aware of that,” Bashir said. “And these results aren’t showing any sign of damage caused by a loss of pressurization.” Again, he looked up at the ensign. “When you breathe, you’re obviously inhaling atmosphere. Within your lungs, there is a gas exchange through the pulmonary alveoli, allowing oxygen in the air to be taken into the blood, and carbon dioxide contained in the blood to be exhaled.” Bashir saw that th’Shant’s antennae curved, lowering the tips toward the top of his head. He didn’t know what such a movement signified.

  “I understand respiration,” the ensign said, his tone registering obvious distress. “What’s the problem?”

  Bashir had been through this, or something like this, with the other two dozen of the crew on whom he’d performed physicals over the previous few days. He hated it. “There are certain substances that, if airborne, can be taken into the lungs and become lodged in the alveoli. I’m reading some microscopic fragments there.”

  “Is it something serious?” th’Shant asked, concerned. “Is it somethin
g you can treat?”

  “It could be serious if we don’t do anything about it,” Bashir said. “The condition can be treated, but it depends primarily on what the substance is that’s entered your lungs.”

  “And what is it?” th’Shant asked. Bashir could see that the blue flesh of his face had paled.

  “I don’t recognize this,” Bashir said. He tapped at the controls of his padd, which emitted several tones in response. “I’m just running it through the substance database,” he said. “It shouldn’t take very—” Again, the padd chirped. “Here it is. The substance is . . .” The doctor peered back up at th’Shant, offering the ensign a suitably confused expression. “. . . revitrite?”

  Bashir had only enough time to register the tensing of th’Shant’s antennae before the Andorian sprang from the examination table. The doctor felt the heel of the ensign’s hand slam into his chest. Bashir flew from his feet and rammed into the wall behind him. His head snapped back, and then he felt himself sliding down toward the floor. His vision swam. Everything suddenly seemed far away.

  As he slipped toward unconsciousness, he heard a high, piercing sound. He dimly recognized it as a phaser blast, and recalled that Captain Ro had assigned Nurse Etana to the physical exams specifically because of her military training. He wondered if she’d been able to stun th’Shant, but then he could no longer keep his eyes open.

  24

  With Weyoun at his side, Odo materialized outside one of the production facilities on Bronis II. They stood in bright sunlight, beside a dark strip of shadow thrown by the massive building. Seeing nobody else there, Odo turned in place and regarded their surroundings. A vast plain reached in every direction, though he could see a long mountain range far off in the distance.

  “Venetheris told me that she would greet us here,” Weyoun said. Odo took note, as he often had of late, that the Vorta spoke to him without any hint of fear. In the past, Weyoun and the clones who had preceded him had revered Odo so much as one of their gods that they lived in a perpetual panic that they would disappoint him. But Weyoun had changed—had, in fact, grown.