Star Trek: The Fall: The Poisoned Chalice

by James Swallow

  “Bashir was brought here . . . but he’s no telepath.”

  “True. But I think there are those who believe he is just as dangerous.” The turbolift halted, and they emerged into an anteroom before a heavy duranium hatch. Chessman went through the unlocking procedure one final time, and the hatch retreated into the deck.

  A cube-shaped cell, no more than four meters along each axis, revealed itself. At the far wall there was a nondescript sleeping pallet with a figure rising from it. He was still holding a padd in his hand, as if they had caught him in the middle of some reading.

  For all his circumstances, Vale was mildly surprised to see that Julian Bashir seemed almost comfortable. “Hello, Doctor,” she began. “Can I come in?”

  Bashir smoothed the front of the utilitarian jumpsuit he was wearing and put down the padd. “I’d rather come out.”

  “Not just yet,” said Chessman, folding his arms across his chest. Now that they were actually here, actually face-to-face with the asteroid’s star prisoner, the commander looked like he was having second thoughts.

  She decided to make the most of the opportunity. “Doctor Bashir, I’m Commander Christine Vale, and this is Commander Chessman. I was sent here by Admiral William Riker to talk to you about what happened at Andoria.”

  “Really?” He was playing it cool and careful, and she couldn’t blame him. “Why now?”

  “The admiral wanted me to assure you that you have not been forgotten. I’m sure it seems like you’ve been in here a long time—”

  “Seventeen days, ten hours, forty-three minutes,” Bashir replied with a slight smile. “Give or take.”

  Of course, she thought, he’s genetically enhanced. He would know. “Doctor, you have people who are concerned for your well-being. Ezri Dax. Sarina Douglas.”

  At the mention of the Douglas woman’s name, his wary façade slipped for a fraction of a second, and Vale knew she had been right about their relationship. “Are they all right?”

  “Dax is being held in custody at the Jaros II stockade, and the rest of your, uh, colleagues are under house arrest while awaiting their trials. As for Lieutenant Commander Douglas, she was very helpful in locating you.”

  He smiled again, and this time it was genuine. “I have good friends.”

  “I heard Captain Dax’s side of the story,” she went on, “and she’ll have her chance in front of the JAG to voice it. But you, Doctor . . . It seems that someone is less interested in allowing your voice to be heard.”

  Bashir gave Chessman a measuring look, and then turned away, pacing his cell. “That’s hardly surprising, is it? I have a fair weight of accusations upon me, not the least of which is treason.”

  “High treason,” corrected Chessman. “Also conspiracy, criminal destruction, sabotage, theft of a Starfleet vessel, assault, insubordination, spying. Did I leave anything out?”

  The doctor spread his hands. “Quite impressive, don’t you think? I imagine they’re going to throw several books at me.” He was unrepentant about the laws he had broken—it was plain in his manner—but that was because he believed he had done those things for the right reasons, and Bashir said as much. “I’m ready to stand before the judge. I was ready when they took me aboard the Warspite. But instead I found myself brought here, under the care of this gentleman.” He nodded at Chessman.

  “And why do you think that is?”

  Bashir sat on the sleeping pallet. “I’m a problem,” he said simply. “One that can’t just go away. As you might have guessed, I’ve got quite a good standing with the Andorian people right now, what with having helped them come back from the brink of extinction. But I also openly defied Starfleet policy toward them and, as the commander noted, broke several laws in the bargain. The president pro tem is pretty clear about that sort of thing. He’ll punish it with the utmost severity.”

  “But he can’t do that without upsetting Andor. The Federation Council can’t put you on trial without dragging a lot of things out under the eyes of the galactic media.”

  Bashir nodded. “And so I languish here, catching up on my reading.” He held up the padd to show a chapter from The Count of Monte Cristo displayed there. “Commander Vale, let’s assume I take you at your word about being here for my benefit. I’m in this place because of the choices I made, and I accept that. But out there?” He pointed past her, to the anteroom and the space beyond. “That’s where the real crime is taking place. A climate of fear is being built on the back of a tragedy. The hawks inside the Federation Council are doing everything they can to strengthen their position, and manipulating the Andorian people is part of that agenda. Ishan Anjar wants Andor to return to the fold, but only under terms he dictates and conditions that best suit the furtherance of his career. The man is a blatant opportunist, and having me at large would be a clear impediment to him.” The doctor sighed. “The United Federation of Planets could have given Andor the cure for their reproductive crisis months ago, years ago. Our leaders chose not to. I didn’t agree with that, so I did something about it.” He looked toward Chessman again. “Is that treason high enough for you?”

  Vale took a step closer. “What would you say if I told you I could get you out of here?” It was another impulsive choice to ask the question, but then those were what she was best at.

  “What?” Commander Chessman’s head snapped up.

  “I have a way,” Vale went on, speaking quickly, “but it won’t be easy.”

  “What are you talking about?” Chessman’s hand dropped to where Vale knew he had a palm phaser in a hidden holster. “All right, that’s it. This is over. Step away from the detainee!” He tapped his combadge. “Security? Dispatch drones to my location, now!”

  “Do tell,” said Bashir, ignoring the other man.

  “If it works, you may never be able to go home again,” warned Vale.

  He nodded at the blank walls. “Anything is better than the view I have now.”

  Chessman grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back. Behind them, the elevator door snapped open and two of the floating white sentinels came crowding into the anteroom, stun emitters deployed to fire.

  “I’ll be in touch,” she said.

  Twelve

  Nog’s hand kept returning to the place where the Klingon’s bat’leth had almost sliced open his jugular vein, and even though the blade had never touched him, he couldn’t stop worrying at it. What stayed with the Ferengi was the look in the guard’s eyes—the cold, dead malice of someone who wanted to inflict harm for the sake of it.

  As he walked through the Snipe’s narrow corridors, Nog’s mind was a wash of conflicting thoughts and feelings. He had to admit that on some level, he wanted to inflict some harm himself. Just picturing Onar Throk’s face made his teeth clench. Since Iota Nadir, he had been sifting through his fractional memories of the man, trying to recall if he had seen or heard anything from the Cardassian that could have presaged the act of terror he went on to commit. But there was nothing.

  Throk had seemed unimportant, a small figure glimpsed on the edges of things, and in the wake of the Bacco assassination, the very person who ended her life had simply slipped away while everyone else was looking the wrong way. It angered him to think that he had passed Throk in the corridors of DS9 and never once suspected him, as irrational as that frustration was.

  What if he hadn’t stopped with Bacco? What if he had kept shooting, at Captain Ro or Uncle Quark? At Leeta and my father? He shook the gruesome thought away. A part of him wanted to take out that frustration on Throk and his True Way comrades, but he silenced it. Revenge was never the answer. A high crime had been committed and the right thing to do was to bring those behind it to justice.

  But it wasn’t that simple. Active Four had been told setting out on this mission that their targets were Tzenkethi agents of the Typhon Pact intent on destabilizing the Federation through the murder of its leader. Only that wasn’t true. The leads Nog himself had uncovered set the first doubts in him, and when he
had laid eyes on Throk . . . he knew that the reality of this mission was something very different.

  And now this; sitting on the surface of a Klingon ghost world, forbidden to leave, marking time until . . . what?

  Nog emerged into one of the engineering spaces and found who he was looking for. Commander Tuvok gave him a brief glance, looking up from a padd in his hand. The Vulcan was in the process of entering strings of data, his fingers moving in a blur of rapid motion.

  “Commander, we have to do something.” The words spilled out of him before he could stop himself. He moved close to the other officer, and now that he was talking he didn’t seem to be able to finish. “I knew right from the start that our orders were unusual, but at first I didn’t think it was an issue. They told me to go out of uniform, to board a civilian transport ship leaving Bajor for Farius, to tell no one. I didn’t think to question, but now I wish I had. It just . . . I mean, after everything that happened on Deep Space Nine, I thought it might be connected, and I needed to do all I could. Then Kincade brought me aboard and explained who we were looking for and I wanted to be a part of that. Maybe that’s what they intended; they knew they could count on that. . . .” He shook his head. “But what we found on the station, the evidence left behind by the assassin . . . The genetic traces were Tzenkethi. Doctor Bashir confirmed it.” Nog stared at Tuvok. “Was that all a falsehood? If it was Cardassians behind this, why did they do it, what did they hope to accomplish?”

  The Vulcan said nothing, letting Nog speak as he continued to type on the padd’s touch-sensitive surface.

  “We’ve been lied to,” said the Ferengi, and the admission caught in his throat. “Either the prisoners we captured have nothing to do with the assassination, or the evidence found on DS9 was deliberately planted, or . . .” Suddenly Nog’s mouth became arid, and he ran out of momentum.

  Still Tuvok did not respond, his attention remaining on the device in his hand.

  When Nog spoke again, the thought he voiced made his blood run cold. “Or Velk knew what we would find. And that’s why we’re still out here instead of heading back to Earth.” He took a long, deep breath. “We have to do something,” he repeated. “We have to take Throk and the others back to Starfleet Command and get to the bottom of all this.” The Vulcan’s continued silence made Nog’s irritation flare, and he glared at his superior officer. “Commander, say something! Have you been listening to a single word coming out of my mouth?”

  “I pay attention to everything you say, Mister Nog, even if it may not appear so to you. I did not feel it necessary to interrupt your train of thought.”

  “Then you agree with me? About the prisoners? The Klingons won’t just step aside, and Colonel Kincade . . .” He drifted off into silence as Tuvok finished what he was doing and handed the Ferengi the padd.

  Nog read what was written there; they were notes for a tactical operation against the mine complex. Tuvok had written down everything he had observed, estimating probable numbers of guards and weapons types, suspected alarm systems, possible layouts of the interior. The padd seemed to take on weight. “You understand what that represents?” said the Vulcan.

  “Mutiny,” said Nog. “For starters.”

  “Can it be considered a mutinous act to disobey unlawful orders?”

  At once, the atmosphere in the engineering compartment seemed close and stifling. Nog pulled at his collar, swallowing hard. “I don’t think that’ll be open to debate.” He paged through the padd. “What are we going to do?”

  “I will offer Lieutenant Colonel Kincade the opportunity to accept an alternate course of action. If she does not concede, I will take command of the Snipe and relieve her of duty. We will recover the prisoners taken at IN-748 and head at maximum warp to the nearest Starfleet facility at Starbase 24.”

  “It sounds straightforward when you put it like that.”

  “It is unlikely to be so in execution,” Tuvok replied with typically Vulcan understatement. “Recovery will present a problem.”

  Nog gave a nod. “The Klingons won’t just let us walk Throk and his friends out the front door.” He paused, thinking it through. “They’ll probably be holding them in shielded cells . . . but we still have those phase-shift devices we used on the ice world. If we can get them to the prisoners, we could beam them straight back to the Snipe.”

  “Agreed. But we will require assistance if we are to succeed. I believe that Lieutenant Ixxen will follow my orders. However, the loyalties of the civilian operatives are more fluid.”

  “Three of us won’t be enough,” Nog stated. “We need a fourth man. Five would be better!”

  Tuvok cocked his head. “I will speak with Thomas Riker.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” he asked. “I don’t trust him. He went renegade. I was there when he came to DS9 and hijacked the Defiant. And there are some unpleasant rumors about him. They say he worked for the Tal Shiar.”

  “That’s just going to keep on coming back to haunt me, isn’t it?” Nog whirled as someone spoke from out in the corridor. Tom emerged around the corner of the hatchway and gave him a level look.

  “How long have you been standing out there?” Nog demanded.

  “A while. I followed you down from the command deck.” Tom entered the compartment and slid the hatch shut behind him. “I’m sure you’re wondering how I managed to sneak up on the two people aboard this ship with the best, ah . . .” He tapped his ear with a finger. “Well, let’s just say a few years in a labor camp teaches you some tricks. And for the record? I was never in bed with the Tal Shiar. I was just in bed with one of them.”

  “Why are you here, Mister Riker?” asked Tuvok.

  “Because I feel the same way he does,” Tom replied, gesturing at Nog. “This isn’t right. We’re being played, and I don’t like it.”

  “You misunderstand,” Tuvok went on. “I meant, why were you recruited to Active Four?”

  He frowned. “Kincade tracked me down on Theta Sigma. She offered me a full pardon for all warrants against me in the UFP, a clean slate . . . even an open door back to Starfleet if I wanted it. . . .” He looked at the deck. “Seems foolish now.” Tom reached into a pocket and produced an isolinear chip. “Look, none of that matters. The fact is, I was coming to ask you about moving against Kincade.” He offered the data device, and Nog took it from him. “You both need to take a look at what’s on there. And believe me, you’re not going to like it.”

  * * *

  Across the engineering compartment there was a monitor console in standby mode, and Tuvok watched as Lieutenant Commander Nog moved to it, bringing the system screen to life. He slotted the isolinear rod into a receptor slot, and the display went active.

  “I copied this from One-One’s console on the bridge,” said Tom. “Remember how that Klingon adjutant was very clear about no subspace signals to or from the Snipe? It turns out our Bynar friends are ignoring that completely. . . .”

  “Curious.” The Vulcan’s eyebrow arched as the screen faded in. Video footage began a playback; it appeared to have been captured from a security camera high up on a wall, looking down into the middle of a steel cell. Under a pool of harsh illumination was an empty metal chair, restraint clamps hanging open across it; above, half-lost in shadow, a complex mechanism of antennae and energy lenses was suspended in the gloom, glowing softly with power.

  “You know what that device is, right?” asked Tom.

  Tuvok gave a single nod. He had never seen one of them before, outside of images in decade-old reports, but he recognized the mechanism nonetheless. “I believe the colloquial term is ‘mind-sifter.’ A system for inducing forced-memory retrieval.”

  Nog’s skin paled. “They . . . they have one of those in there?”

  “Keep watching,” Tom said gravely.

  A hatch opened in the far wall, and shadows moved out of the radius of the light. Two Klingons, members of the troop of guards who had greeted them, dragged a third figure to the chair and c
lamped it in place. They moved away, revealing the Cardassian youth who had tried to escape, struggling against his bonds.

  The guards retreated, and a new figure, hovering just at the edge of the image pickup, gave a signal. The sifter device hummed to life, and the young Cardassian tensed in fear.

  “What is your name?” bellowed one of the Klingons.

  “Gohdon!” cried the youth, clearly terrified. “Dero Gohdon! Please, I’m innocent. I’m not supposed to be here! I’m just a student from North Torr on Cardassia Prime. I’m not part of any—” His voice ran into a ragged scream as a discharge of energy sparked from the prongs of the sifter and into his skull.

  “Now watch this,” said Tom, pointing at the corner of the screen. There, a small text window opened, and a train of words scrolled past.

  Do not waste time. Use the machine. Find out what he knows.

  The figure in shadow gestured, as if in response to the text’s command, and in turn the Klingon put more power to the mind-sifter. The Cardassian trembled in place, his limbs shaking uncontrollably.

  Who did they use to get the weapon onto Deep Space 9?

  The hidden figure spoke for the first time, its words muffled. “The gun that Throk used to kill Bacco . . . how did you get it onto Deep Space Nine? Did you involve anyone else outside the True Way?”

  “I don’t . . .” Gohdon coughed and began to weep.

  The text supplied more questions.

  Who was their contact with the Orions? What is their name?

  Each time, the unseen figure repeated them, demanding answers of the young Cardassian.

  “Those questions were coming in over subspace,” said Tom. “A real-time signal relayed by One-One to that cell. From someone off-planet, watching this live, directing the interrogation.”

  On the screen, the Klingon guard was turning up the dial on the torture device again, and Gohdon convulsed, howling in agony.

  “Did you work alone?” asked the figure in shadow. “Who else knew about the plan?”