by David Mack
K’Ehleyr looked up at Picard with world-weary eyes. “You were saying something about ‘a diplomatic solution,’ Captain?”
He frowned at the high-powered standoff taking shape high above Bajor. I came to help broker a new peace, and instead I find myself with a front-row seat to a new war. He sat down and distilled his fears and regrets into one eloquent word, spoken under his breath.
“Merde.”
* * *
Kort poked at the lukewarm lump of rolled dough and brined vegetables that lay on his plate, and then he shot a disgusted look at the other patrons enjoying late-night dinners at the open-air café in the heart of Bajor’s capital. “How can anyone stand to eat like this?”
Regon, his dining companion and fellow traveler in Bajoran guise, looked up from her own lunch. “Are you referring to the cuisine or the setting?”
“Either. Both. Pick one.”
She took a bite of her own hasperat and mumbled as she chewed, “Tastes good to me.”
The surgically altered Klingon sulked behind his weak Bajoran nasal ridges. “Of course you’d say that. You’re Cardassian. Your kind always has been partial to Bajoran cattle feed.”
She glowered at him. “Say it a little louder. I don’t think the state security agents in the next restaurant heard you.”
Before he could retort, the waiter arrived with Kort’s second course. “Arnisios steak,” the young Bajoran man said as he set down the platter. “The cook prepared it just the way you asked, but he wants me to warn you that eating undercooked food can be dangerous, and—”
“Thank you.” Kort waved off the youth. “I’m fine. Go.”
The waiter backed away, warily at first, and then he turned and hurried to the far end of the café, as if he couldn’t wait to get as far from his peculiar raw-meat-eating patron as possible.
Kort’s wet chomps and smacks of mastication were almost too much for Regon to bear without wincing. She felt her façade of politesse crumble while she watched him stuff his maw with huge forkfuls of purple-blue meat that had barely been kissed by the grill’s flames.
“The concept of being undercover and in disguise means nothing to you, does it?”
He gulped down a massive bite of half-gnawed raw flesh. “I need to eat. Not my fault these heathens can’t serve a meal without burning it to a crisp.”
“Luckily for us, you’re not the most interesting thing in the café today.” Regon draped one arm over the back of her chair as she turned to watch the news report on a nearby public holoscreen. A fair-haired female Trill’s talking head prattled between cutaways to fuzzy images of the two fleets of starships that were, at that moment, faced off in orbit above Bajor.
“The standoff began today at just after fifteen twenty hours, Capital Time,” the Trill newscaster said, her manner earnest and authoritative. “Communications between the two fleets have been encrypted, so we’re unable to report precisely what has been said by their respective commanders. Furthermore, a spokesperson for the Assembly has so far declined to comment on what appears to be a significant turn for the worse in the Commonwealth’s negotiations with the Gamma Quadrant power known so far only as the Dominion.”
Kort forced down an oversized mouthful, then blocked a belch with the side of his fist. “This is a bomb waiting for a spark. A shame neither of our governments has the will to act.”
“I wish we had some idea what instigated this,” Regon said. “Then we could target the sore spot. Aggravate it. Exacerbate it. Make it bleed, and then stand back and enjoy the show.”
“Dream on.” Kort washed down his quickly devoured raw steak with a mouthful of wotyr, a clear and extremely potent hard spirit distilled from rare tubers grown only in the Jokala Mountains of Bajor. He sleeved a sheen of blood and liquor from his lips. “You know these Commonwealth types. All talk. They’ll yammer on until the Dominion loses the will to fight.”
Regon stole another look at the Dominion fleet in the news vid. “I’m not so sure. The Terrans and their ilk might have underestimated their enemy this time.”
A dubious shrug. “Maybe. But I’ll bet my finest bat’leth the Commonwealth won’t fire the first shot. And unless this Dominion is stronger than it looks, I doubt it wants to go toe-to-toe with those jaunt ships. Which means this little standoff probably won’t amount to much.”
“Not without a push.”
“From who? Regent Duras? Legate Damar? Don’t make me laugh.”
A dastardly notion put a taut smile on Regon’s face. “We need to think beyond our own borders. Our peoples don’t want to get in the middle of this. And neither the Dominion nor the Commonwealth wants to see this situation turn bloody. So we need to seek help from someone who stands to gain by turning this standoff into a shooting war.”
She sat back and enjoyed the befuddled look on Kort’s stupid-looking fake Bajoran face while he struggled to catch up to her runaway train of thought. Then a sharp gleam illuminated his eyes. He grinned as he leaned forward and lowered his voice. “The Taurus Pact.”
“Exactly. The Gorn are too far away to be of much use, but the Breen and the Tholians are right on Bajor’s doorstep. Both would love a chance to bloody the Commonwealth’s nose.”
“They won’t work for free,” Kort said, thinking out loud. “Neither will the Tzenkethi.”
“Revenge is what drives the Tholians. They’re still angry about the crimes of the Terran Empire. They’ve said many times they’ll gladly take out their grudge on the Commonwealth.”
“True, the bugs are single-minded to a fault. But the Breen are opportunists. They won’t get involved unless we can show them what they stand to gain.” Something amused him. “Of course, what they think they’ll get and what they receive don’t need to be the same thing.”
“For example?”
“If we let them infer they might acquire control over the Bajoran wormhole—and with it a monopoly over traffic between the Alpha and Gamma Quadrants—that might be enough to enlist the aid of a Breen attack squadron. Maybe even two.”
Regon understood Kort’s endgame. “Then the dust settles, and a joint armada of Klingon and Cardassian forces secures Bajor—for the good of its people.”
“And ensuring the safety of Bajor would require securing the wormhole.”
“Naturally. That only stands to reason.” She toasted her colleague with her last sip of spring wine. As she set down the glass, her enthusiasm for their new scheme was dimmed by a sudden flash of recollection. “There’s just one problem.”
“That being?”
“The Pact’s consular chief on Bajor.”
Concentration wrinkled Kort’s brow. “Why? Who is it these days?”
With great reluctance, she told him the consul’s name.
Kort downed the rest of his wotyr in one swallow. “On second thought, kill me now.”
Twenty-two
House arrest aboard the Commonwealth starship Enterprise was far from what Bashir considered a hardship. The accommodations were spare but comfortable, and they came with a view that faced aft, toward the jaunt ship’s ring-shaped secondary hull and its sleek warp nacelles. As limited as its replicator’s menu was, the food it produced was enjoyable. There was even a fair selection of freely available entertainment media, including books, vids, and music—a privilege Starfleet had denied him during his brief incarceration several months earlier, after he was arrested for stealing classified information in order to save the Andorian people from slow extinction. If not for the locked door with guards standing outside, Bashir would have felt more like a guest than a prisoner.
But the door was locked, and he was alone. It felt like solitary confinement again.
His enhanced hearing detected the cessation of a low hum from the door’s magnetically secured dead bolts, which retracted with a soft click most people would not have noticed. The door to the corridor slid open, and Sarina rushed in. Behind her, Bashir saw the female Deltan security officer who had been assigned to shadow Sari
na from one secure space to another—a precaution extended to all members of the Section 31 team. The bald woman halted shy of the door’s threshold. The door closed as Sarina hurried to Bashir, who stood by the view ports.
She threw her arms around him. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” He tightened his embrace for a moment, then relaxed. She backed away, and they let each other go. “Where have you been?”
“They’ve been debriefing us all, one by one.”
“What lies are Cole and the others spinning now that they’re in custody?”
Sarina seemed bewildered. “They’ve been telling Picard’s people the same thing they told us: that we’re tracking the Breen and trying to prevent the theft of a jaunt ship.”
“Which is a fairly good indicator they’ve been lying to us since the start.”
“How do you figure?”
“If Thirty-one tells you something in secret, then openly tells the same thing to someone else, then you’re part of a misinformation campaign. Halting the theft of a jaunt ship might be part of their op, or it might just be the cover story. Either way, I’m now sure it’s anything but the real reason we’re here.” He took a breath and looked out at the stars, then at Bajor. “Do I even want to know what’s happening out there?”
“Probably not.”
“Tell me anyway.”
Sarina joined him in gazing out into deep space. “To put it mildly, the Dominion was irked when it found out Picard had granted you asylum.”
That boded ill. “How irked?”
“They brought another fleet of reinforcements through the wormhole and made a run at Bajor. Then the Commonwealth sent in a couple dozen jaunt ships, and now we’re smack in the middle of a standoff that’s just waiting to go wrong.”
He nodded. “So, better than we expected.”
“Much better. I figured the Jem’Hadar would’ve glassed Bajor by now.”
“Be grateful for small mercies. Any leads on the Spetzkar?”
“No, but it’s not like anyone’s all that keen to keep us in the loop. Most of them treat us like we’re in the way, even when we’re offering to help.”
He cracked a sly smile. “Almost as if we’re outsiders.”
“Well played.” She stretched her arm across his back and rested her head against his shoulder. “What are we supposed to do if you get extradited?”
“I don’t know. Get me a good lawyer?”
She looked up, a flash of anger in her eyes. “We can’t just let the Dominion take you. I won’t see you tried in some Gamma Quadrant kangaroo court.”
He took her by her shoulders. “If it comes to that, we might not have any choice. Thirty-one has its tricks and its gadgets, but one team of agents can’t take on the entire Dominion.” He pulled her close and adopted a more soothing manner. “But no one’s voted to hand me over yet. If the Assembly grants my request for asylum, I won’t be going anywhere.”
“That’s almost as bad. What are you supposed to do then? Spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder for a Dominion extraction team?” She turned away and anxiously pushed her fingers through her flaxen hair. “Hell—what if you get asylum, and the Dominion responds by leveling Bajor and the rest of the quadrant?”
The soft chime of the door signal spared Bashir the indignity of admitting he had no answers to her questions. Sarina faced the stars. He turned toward the door. “Come.”
Cole walked in, leaving behind his security shadow, a male Triexian. The three-legged, three-armed alien moved on down the corridor as the door closed between him and Cole, who folded his hands behind his back and adopted an at-ease posture. He seemed oddly calm for a man at the potential flashpoint of a war. “How are you holding up, Doctor?”
“I’ve had better days.”
“I know what you must be thinking.”
“I doubt that.”
“I just want to assure you that no matter how the rest of this op pans out, we won’t leave you behind. And we damned sure won’t let you be extradited to the Dominion.”
Despite his contempt for Cole, Bashir resisted the urge to stoop to naked sarcasm and mockery. “Does this mean we’ll be getting back in that ship of yours and heading home?”
The question drew a grimace of frustration from Cole. “Not right away, no. Even if we wanted to leave now, our ship is stuck aboard the ShiKahr. ‘Under repair,’ Picard says. Every time I ask how long until it’ll be spaceworthy, they tell me ‘a few more hours.’ ” He shook his head. “It’s like dealing with a Pakled mechanic at a Ferengi used-spaceship lot.”
Bashir parsed Cole’s statement in his head, gnawing on a detail that troubled him. “What did you mean when you said, ‘Even if we wanted to leave now’? Why do we want to stay?”
“Because we have no choice. Our mission’s not done yet.”
“But the Commonwealth has been warned. They’re on the hunt for the Breen.”
Cole scolded Bashir with a waggle of his index finger. “Never trust someone else to do your work for you. We came here to terminate the Spetzkar’s mission with prejudice, and we’ll stay here until we know they’ve been permanently neutralized.”
“And how do you propose we do that without access to our ship or our equipment?”
“One thing at a time, Doctor.” The older man smiled, turned, and walked toward the door. “One thing at a time.”
* * *
Saavik stood alone in the transporter room of the Dominion command ship, facing a trio of Jem’Hadar soldiers. Each of the hulking creatures was armed with a battle rifle. The two on either end also carried kar’takin, short pole-arms with massive cutting blades that ended in long stabbing points. None of them spoke, blinked, or so much as twitched. In that place and moment, it was as if they had been born for no other purpose than to stand watch against her, one elderly Vulcan woman, lest she take an unauthorized step off the transporter dais onto the hallowed ground of their drab, hyperutilitarian starship. Their eyes bored into her with cold malice.
The door behind them opened, and their commander returned. Taran’atar’s deep voice was freighted with authority. “Let her pass.” His subordinates moved aside as Saavik stepped down to the deck. He regarded her with the same savage intensity as his men. “Follow me.”
He led her through the command ship’s narrow passageways and ladder wells. They passed only a handful of other Jem’Hadar as they traversed the ship, and each time the others tucked themselves into nooks or niches to make way for Taran’atar and Saavik.
It took a few minutes for them to descend three decks and reach one of the sections in the heart of the vessel. They stopped outside a door that bore no markings. He pressed his palm to a sensor panel. It shone with bright blue light. He removed his hand. “She is here.”
The panel turned from blue to a warm shade of amber, and the door slid open. Taran’atar entered first, and Saavik followed him. The compartment was empty. No furniture, no creature comforts, no decoration or signs of habitation. Two rows of narrow, translucent white panels on the overhead filled the room with low, diffuse light. There were no other doors inside the room. For a moment, Saavik wondered if she had been led into a trap.
One of the bulkheads started to melt. The gray metal surface deformed and slid into a puddle on the deck. In seconds, the gray goo transformed into an amorphous blob of luminous golden liquid, transmutated itself into a humanoid shape, and finally solidified into the smooth-featured, gray-robed form of the Founder. The Changeling met Saavik’s emotionless gaze with a cryptic, almost beatific smile. “You are a most persistent visitor.” She looked at Taran’atar. “Wait outside.”
The Jem’Hadar First opened the door, stepped out, and closed it after himself.
Saavik faced the Founder. “Thank you for seeing me.”
The Founder folded her hands together. “Perhaps I should thank you for coming in person. I suspect it’s you I should have been dealing with all along.”
“My presence is
a violation of protocol. Chairman Eddington is the elected head of state.”
“But he doesn’t represent the true power of the Commonwealth, does he?” She sized up Saavik with a keen, penetrating stare. “That’s your role, isn’t it? It’s why you’re here now.”
It was vital, Saavik knew, not to let the Changeling sidetrack her. “I am here to urge you to accept some measure of compromise, so that we can resume our treaty negotiations.”
“I’ve made my position clear. No half measures. No compromises. We want Bashir.”
“This is a complex matter, Madam Founder. Intractable demands and thinly veiled threats of military reprisal—”
“Our threats are not the least bit veiled.”
So much for an appeal to reason. “I would like to show you something. A recording I made several years ago, for the benefit of the Commonwealth’s more belligerent neighbors.”
“As you like.”
Moving with caution and transparency of action, Saavik took a small holographic projection disk from a pocket inside her tunic. She kneeled, set the disk on the deck, and activated it with a single touch. A three-dimensional image of a lifeless, rocky planet appeared, suspended in the empty space between her and the Founder. A female voice filled the room.
“This is the planet Rhenvara Five, a Class-G world in an unpopulated star system that lies just beyond the Terran Neutral Zone, inside sovereign Terran space. It has no natural resources worth exploiting, and its lack of indigenous life-forms is well documented.”
The Founder remained stoic as a fiery streak manifested from thin air and arced slowly past her from behind, on a direct path toward the holographic planet. “This is the Genesis Device, a technology we mastered nearly a century ago.”
The projectile made impact and detonated. A shock wave expanded from the blast point, spread at hypersonic velocity, and engulfed the entire surface of the planet in crimson fire.
“Genesis is capable of transforming lifeless worlds like Rhenvara Five into lush, Class-M worlds capable of supporting humanoid life—not over the course of years or even months, but in a matter of hours. Know this: if a Genesis Device is deployed on a world where life-forms already exist, it will destroy such life in favor of its new matrix. And remember that our mastery of wormhole propulsion means we can deploy these devices at any time against any world in the galaxy.” The image of the burning world faded away.
