When Jadzia refused to reply, Julian got up from his chair and crouched down close to her. Whispering in her ear, he said, “When war becomes painless, when our consciences are slowly, gently lulled to sleep, we stop having reasons to end the fighting. War becomes a game. People become expendable pieces to be moved around at whim, or gambled casually on a wheel of chance. Think about this carefully, Jadzia.”
Picking up one of the darts Miles had left on the table, she rolled the shaft between her fingers. “I’m willing to see how lucky I am,” she said, and carelessly tossed it in the general direction of the dartboard. She pushed her way past Julian and toward the exit, never once looking back to see if she’d hit her mark.
“He never said it wouldn’t work, correct?” T’Rul said, as they stepped off the turbolift at the bottom of lower pylon two.
“No. But he did raise several valid points about the general safety of testing the enzyme. Such as, what if we let it loose on a large population and we turn them into crazed out-of-control maniacs instead of calm, cold in-control maniacs.”
“I believe we can address your concerns.”
“You know as well as I do how unreliable simulations can be when it comes to modeling genetic interactions. I’m simply—”
“Here we are,” T’Rul said finally. “Go through this airlock and we will be in sovereign territory of the Romulan Star Empire.”
Jadzia took a deep breath, threaded her hands behind her back and set her jaw determinedly. “And there’s not a squad of disruptor-bearing soldiers behind that door waiting to take me hostage?” she said, trying to make light.
“I cannot guarantee that, but I have been assured by my superiors that you will be safe aboard our ship.”
“I’m supposed to take the word of a Romulan?”
T’Rul nodded. ; “Fine then. I’ll take your word. Lead the way.”
As earthy and greasy as the interior of a Klingon ship felt, the shadowy interior of a Romulan warbird felt neat to the point of claustrophobia, as if every rivet and air duct had been crafted for a very specific, very controlled purpose. Cautiously, she followed behind T’Rul, alert to ambient noise, wondering how many pairs of hidden eyes analyzed her every millimeter. Squaring her shoulders, she lengthened her strides.
T’Rul approached a cargo hold door armed with, Jadzia recognized, a sophisticated security device mounted on a side panel. T’Rul laid her hand, palm up, on a small platform in front of the device. A needle-thin projectile emerged from the box and pricked the tip of the Romulan’s finger. A brief pause was followed by a second needle-device emerging from the box and puncturing another finger. Barbaric.
“It checks DNA from a physical sample,” T’Rul said. “Retinal scanners and handprint sensors are easily duped. A complete fabrication of cellular tissue is nearly impossible.”
“It’s rather—”
“Crude? Possibly. But it reminds all who approach the price for deception. You see, the first needle not only samples DNA, but it injects a small dose of poison. Upon confirmation of the applicant’s identity, the antidote is administered.”
She offered T’Rul a weak smile. The host of reasons why Jadzia mistrusted Romulans suddenly came flooding back to her, but she didn’t have time to indulge her paranoia: The cargo bay door had opened.
Her eyes widened; her heart hammered in her throat. Please don’t let this be what I think it is. She forced her leaden feet to move over the threshold until her limbs stiffened.
On all sides of the room, six stasis chambers hummed along. Dropping to the floor beside a chamber, Jadzia let her hand hover over the chamber’s face, hesitating—as if touching the smooth metal skin would connect her with the thing inside. Her thinking ability kicked in long enough to prompt her to pull out her tricorder. Jem’Hadar. “You’ve had these—these chambers the whole time.”
“How is it the humans put it? An eye for an eye?”
Tightness in her chest bespoke the horrible realizations now cascading over her. “This is what your people had in mind all along. You were using us—using me—to help you design a weapon you knew the Federation would be squeamish about using themselves.” A grim laugh escaped her throat as she remembered how much she loved being right about Romulan motives. And lo and behold, they hadn’t disappointed her, proving that they were every bit the lying, slippery sneaks she’d always known them to be.
“If it hadn’t been you,” T’Rul continued, “it would have been someone else. Dr. Bashir, perhaps.”
Julian. Would Julian have been as stupid as I ... I can’t deal with this right now. I ... “I need to think this over,” Jadzia said, scrambling to her feet. Pressing the heels of her hands against the side of her head, she closed her eyes, trying to squeeze the thoughts from her mind.
T’Rul grabbed her by the arms. “We could do it, Jadzia. We could design the prototype here, aboard the ship, run the test and no one would have to know.”
“I have to go.” She reached for the door panel, hesitated—”This isn’t going to kill me if I try to get out?”
T’Rul shook her head.
Jadzia rushed through the warbird’s empty, twisting hallways, certain that her every step was being observed and recorded by some unseen camera. The air in the ship felt thin and each inhalation parched her throat. She hugged her arms close to her body as she exited the airlock, and fought to keep her hands from shaking as she rode the turbolift back up the docking pylon and on to ops.
When she reached Benjamin’s doorway, she was still shaking. The moment he saw her face, he dismissed the young officer he was conversing with.
She collapsed in his visitor’s chair. And perhaps because she was tired, or because she had wearied of keeping it all bottled up inside her, the story began spilling out, from her first encounter with T’Rul in the wardroom to her last chilling moments in the Romulan warbird.
Benjamin contemplated her last revelation for a long moment. “Do you have reason to believe the Romulans have more than six Jem’Hadar prisoners aboard their ship?”
“I can’t even guess,” she said. As her adrenaline energy seeped away, she slumped deeper into the chair. “What are you going to do about it?”
A pause, and then, “Nothing.”
Jadzia’s eyebrows shot up; she shook her head, wondering if she’d misheard him. “Excuse me? The Romulans are conspiring to develop biogenic weapons—and they’ve nearly succeeded thanks to me, the unwitting dupe sitting here. You’re not going to shut down Blue Sky?”
Rising from his chair, Benjamin stood before his window, his back to her. Jadzia found her own gaze following his as she was drawn into the space-night, the white-blue starlight holding the blackness at bay.
“You’ve done your duty as a Starfleet officer in reporting this to me,” he said. “That you did tells me that you have an ingrained sense of right and wrong that takes over when, eventually, you come to your senses.” He turned to look at her. “The decision is yours, Jadzia.”
“But, Benjamin—”
“I trust you. If anyone can sort through the light and the shadows and the dark, it’s you, Old Man.”
Time slipped away as she wandered the Promenade, past restaurants and repair shops. She walked by the classrooms, continued through the atrium, and followed obscure service corridors wherever they led. The rhythm of her footsteps gave a steady cadence to her thoughts.
She played and replayed Julian’s arguments against testing the biogenic enzyme and couldn’t honestly say she disagreed with him—in theory. But theories dealt in ideals, predicting outcomes based on known, measurable variables. The random elements—the unknowns she couldn’t foresee—troubled Jadzia. Say she agreed with Julian’s arguments and decided to not go ahead with the testing, scuttling any potential use of a biogenic weapon. Most likely, the war would continue as it was currently. For every Jem’Hadar lost, the Founders would breed ten more. If the allies attacked every known hatching facility, the Founders would build more. The Jem’Hadar are
expendable to the Founders, so why are we reluctant to see them as the Founders see them—as just another bioweapon?
Not doctors. Not engineers. Not parents. Not friends.
She wandered up to the balcony level and stepped over to the railing, watching the flow of people on the main level. Sometimes, as she walked through the habitat ring, she looked at the closed doors and wondered what was happening behind them. Arguments, lovemaking, lazy mid-shift naps, mind-numbing entertainment, the writing of an award-winning play, or working through a formula that would transform the fortunes of worlds. And the enzyme we’ve developed. The enzyme could determine who among all those people lives and who dies. We’ll never know if I don’t test it.
Can I live with myself if I walk away from the chance to effect change?
She touched her combadge. “Dax to Worf.”
“Worf, here.”
“I’ll be late tonight, so don’t wait up. Miss me?”
“My blood sings for you and you alone.”
“Hold that thought. Dax out.”
She started in the direction of the docking ring.
Jadzia reexamined each tool on the tray, making certain that the hypospray had been correctly calibrated and that the neural sensors were transmitting properly. She’d checked and rechecked the tools more times than she cared to count over the last hour. “So how’d you know I’d be back?”
“Because you are not a fool,” T’Rul said as she input the last series of algorithms into the vitals monitor. “I believe that takes care of it. We can proceed.”
A beep from the console signaled that the test subject had been successfully revived from stasis and would be arriving momentarily.
Linking her hands behind her back, Jadzia pulled her arms away from her body in a stretch; her shoulders and arms had started to ache. She’d been standing for several hours as she and T’Rul worked through the last few steps in the test process. Replicating the enzyme had been the easy part; devising a mechanism to deliver the enzyme to the test subject required a singular, but physically exhausting, focus.
When and if the weapon was ever deployed, T’Rul had designed a mechanism that delivered the enzyme via inhalation, making it easier to target large groups of Jem’Hadar no matter where they were based. A canister, for instance, could be transported inside a Jem’Hadar cruiser and a ship’s ventilation system would quickly distribute the enzyme throughout the ship, exposing all the Jem’Hadar on board. In theory, only micrograms of the enzyme were required to initiate the physiological changes. Still, Jadzia wanted to measure the quantities inhaled by the test subject and be able to chart how quickly the enzyme became absorbed; pouring a vial into the laboratory’s air didn’t offer her enough control. She solved the problem by figuring out how to dispense the enzyme through a rebreather.
The laboratory door hissed open.
Two Romulans—Jadzia assumed they were techs—wheeled in the gurney with the heavily sedated test subject. Placidly, she watched them prep the subject, twisting the rebreather tubing between her thumb and her forefinger while she waited. A fan’s chu-chu-chu sounded distant—muffled—in contrast to the percussive tympani of her heart. Feeling her limbs grow thick, unsteady, she swayed forward ...
“Commander Dax. We are ready to proceed.”
She braced herself against the edge of a worktable.
A long pause. “Can I connect the sensors?” T’Rul asked.
Jadzia shook herself back into the moment. “Yes. Of course. If you like.” Through rapid eye blinks, the numbers on the readouts blurred together and she felt dizzy; she placed a hand on her stomach. I should walk away. Let T’Rul finish the job. She closed her eyes, shutting it all out.
Rapidly firing sensations assaulted her. She recognized them immediately as pieces of seconds lived over hundreds of years ... prickly summer grass, wailing siren, bitter wine, a musical phrase, a spinning light, warm skin to warm skin, carving knife sinking into her belly, Dax dissolving into descending darkness. And a whirling sea. Her sea. A sea of coffins. The muted dead. The sum total of their lives, the meaning, the memories, torn away and lost in the endless vacuum of space.
Unlike Jadzia. Jadzia would live as long as Dax lived. She had a sort of immortality: the luxury of time to make mistakes, knowing that in another life, she could correct them if she chose. Even with all her present fears and doubts, she still could choose to act now.
And in the end, She made her choice. Because the dead could not.
Turning around, she glanced at T’Rul. The sensors had been attached to the test subject. A brief glance at the monitors indicated that all equipment was functioning. Consoles displayed sinus rhythms, neurological activity, respiration, heart rate.
Her last thought before she placed the mask over his face was how surprised she was that the subject had blue eyes.
... A loud crash. The scream of one of the techs. A frantically blinking yellow light. Warning beeps simultaneously erupting from a room of consoles. Jadzia spun around from her monitoring station in time to see the Jem’Hadar jerk his legs free from their bonds and leap from the table. Her hand flew to her phaser. The Jem’Hadar clutched the tech by the throat, choked the life from her, and threw her corpse against the wall, shattering her skull. Jadzia’s first shot singed his shoulder. Her second burned a hole through his chest.
Her third blew his head off.
She stepped back quickly enough to avoid being pinned beneath him.
Time to regret and recover wasn’t an option. Jadzia and T’Rul immediately began an inquiry into the data they collected. What they learned was, in attempting to rewrite Jem’Hadar DNA, they’d destroyed the creature’s ability to process the white. The enzyme’s effect hastened, and intensified, the effects of white deprivation, rendering the test subject more dangerous.
After several hours of compiling the data, the Romulan scientists, who had been overseeing T’Rul’s and Jadzia’s work from a distance, decided to abandon further pursuit of their line of inquiry. All records of the experiment, including the bodies of the Jem’Hadar and the Romulan tech, would presumably vanish. Save one small memento Jadzia would need when she was ready for answers.
Dax asked the Romulan transport chief to send her directly to her quarters. Walking through the corridors during the busiest part of the station’s day would be a bad idea under the circumstances. Besides, Worf would have left for his shift—being alone in her quarters would free her from having to apologize for having been gone all night. And the blood spatters on her uniform? She couldn’t plausibly explain those.
As the familiar walls materialized, she couldn’t help wondering if she’d dreamed the events of last night. Pushing a stray lock away from her face, she felt gummy residue crusted on her hair. She combed out the residue with her fingers, examined her hand, smudged with coagulated blood and bone-white grit, then wiped it clean on her uniform. So I wasn’t dreaming.
She removed her pips and her combadge, stripped off her uniform, and threw it into the recycler. Whether or not the stains came out, she never would wear it again. She padded off toward the shower.
Considering that she couldn’t recall the last time she’d slept, a nap might be good. She could take a personal day. See if Lieutenant Commander Vanderweg could take her shift, which began—she checked the chronometer—in a little over an hour. She could crawl between the covers and sink into the blissful numbness.
If she could sleep.
Staying busy might be a better choice; blending into the ops routine, she could effectively vanish from notice into the sea of bodies and computers and desperately important duties that all good Starfleet soldiers were about these days. She almost laughed aloud. A good Starfleet soldier.
Maybe I should contact Worf and let him know I’m on my way. Her eyes teared at the thought of him—they’d hardly had enough time together lately. She looked for her combadge on the nightstand and the vanity table before the thought occurred to her that it might still be on her uniform. Bu
t she’d taken her uniform off. Where did I ... what was I going to do again? Oh yeah. Shower. Damn, but I’m tired.
She stood in the sonic waves long after she needed to. Impertinent thoughts kept encroaching on her solitude. Leaving the shower finally silenced the nagging voice in her head; she moved thoughtlessly through her routine until she was nearly ready to go. The sense of having forgotten something pulled at her; she ignored it.
Her swift fingers deftly wove the last strands of hair into a braid and she fished around in her drawer for a hairclip. Pips and combadge? Living room. She passed the replicator. Raktajino. I haven’t had my morning raktajino.
There. On the coffee table were her pips and her combadge. She wondered, irrationally, if anyone would notice anything different about her. Like, that last night I witnessed a killing. She quickly suppressed an escaping giggle, appalled by her inappropriateness. But the memory of the Jem’Hadar’s death pulled her thoughts backward into the night; she reviewed them with cold objectivity.
Of course Julian had been right about the consequences of experimenting on the Jem’Hadar. He was, after all, the Federation’s expert on the subject. And that aside, Julian tended to be right about everything.
The enzyme, at first, appeared to be working exactly as Jadzia and T’Rul had predicted it would. She vaguely recalled watching the morphing colors on the neural monitors with fascination as, hour by hour, the intensity of brain activity shifted from one hemisphere to another—neural pathways rewritten in front of her eyes.
It should have worked. We did everything right! Brusquely, she attached her pips to her collar. A dull twinge of a headache radiated from her temples. Did I get that raktajino yet? She paused. Surveyed her quarters, seeing, but not seeing.
STAR TREK: DS9 - Prophecy and Change Page 26
