ONLINE THE NEEDS OF THE MANY

by Michael A. Martin

  I’m confident that I’ll figure its plan out. Someday.

  In search of a midday meal, we enter a venerable-looking example of Cardassian architecture that in actual fact can’t be more than three decades old, give or take. As we wait, the three of us seated at one of the tables in the all-but-empty dining area, Garak’s interests gravitate toward a discussion of food and the decline in the art of waiting tables during recent years. But whenever Garak isn’t holding forth on such weighty cultural matters, he tends to trail off onto increasingly speculative ground while somehow never wandering far from his desert confrontation with a suspected Undine operative.

  As we peruse the menu, Liaison Drake sips at a tall flute of kanar that the waiter brings out, along with the glasses of plain, cold water that Garak and I are having. Drake listens to Garak with an attitude that I can only interpret as silent pity. The Federation Council liaison looks as uncomfortable as I feel at the prospect of someone as disciplined as Garak succumbing to the siren call of obsession. I know I’ve heard that call, or at least its tantalizing echoes, myself. I’ve felt it tugging on my soul like the pitiless attraction of a neutron star. Therefore I tell myself, There but for the grace of God, the Prophets, or blind luck go I.

  Whether the Undine still are, as Garak warns, a menace capable of penetrating the spy shops of the most influential empires of two galactic quadrants is almost beside the point. What’s important is that the earlier, incontrovertibly tangible Undine War appears to have cost Elim Garak much of his sense of self-possession and competence. There was a time when Garak seemed relatively at ease with himself—at least as at ease as an exile in a hostile foreign land can be. Back aboard DS9, a veneer of equanimity had usually countered his natural baseline state of semijustifiable paranoia. That veneer had enabled him to endure previous conflicts and move on afterward. His accomplishments rebuilding his homeworld after the Dominion War—which had nearly broken him psychologically after his realization that his assistance to the Federation had cost innumerable Cardassian lives—still stand as a testament to that psychological resiliency.

  But Garak strikes me as subtly different now. For the first time since the death of Enabran Tain, former leader of the Obsidian Order, Garak has had to come to grips with the very real possibility that somebody else—and an inscrutably alien and hostile somebody else, at that—might be better at cloak-and-dagger operations than even he is. It must be intensely humbling for a man like Garak, to say nothing of frustrating. It’s almost as though he has allowed his fight-or-flight response to be triggered continuously, heedless of the fact that neither fight nor flight will avail him in any way in the struggle against the Undine. It’s a chilling thought.

  After I give the waiter my order (some kind of Cardassian fish that I hope I won’t regret), an even more chilling thought occurs to me: What if Garak’s view of the universe is the only accurate one—the only one that hasn’t been distorted beyond all recognition by wishful thinking?

  JAKE SISKO, DATA ROD #R-29

  Dahar Master Kor Monument, Donatu V

  To describe Worf, son of Mogh (commander in Starfleet, retired; Federation diplomat, retired; general in the Klingon Defense Force, presently inactive) as intimidating is to make a gross understatement. Even when he is kneeling respectfully before a gleaming, bat’leth-wielding statue erected in honor of a fallen comrade-in-arms, Worf seems larger than life, not to mention ageless. Addressing him as anything other than “General” seems out of the question, since neither “Commander” nor “Ambassador” seems quite adequate to entirely encompass this remarkable individual.

  I had always hoped that the passage of time would cause Worf to mellow a bit, but it seems to have had the opposite effect—due largely, I’m sure, to the unique trials he experienced as a consequence of the many incursions and sneak attacks carried out by the Undine during the war years and before. But those traumas, along with the duties incumbent upon the patriarch of a noble Klingon House, appear to have honed Worf’s hypervigilance to its keenest possible edge.

  Of course, Worf’s long transition from warrior-diplomat to family man probably accounts for some of that. Worf first expressed an interest in his current wife, the Lady Grilka of Mekro’vak (a province of the Klingon homeworld Qo’noS), way back in 2373, but she rejected him then for reasons of Klingon politics. The following year saw Worf marry his Starfleet colleague Jadzia Dax, who subsequently died at the hands of Gul Dukat about halfway through the Dominion War. But time and circumstance brought Worf and the Lady Grilka together again in 2385; two years later they were wed and their union produced their first child in 2388. Having so much to protect has no doubt made Worf particularly sensitive to the stealthy threat of Undine infiltration.

  Although one might think that longstanding animosities for and conflicts with the Romulan Star Empire (to say nothing of the Dominion) would have inoculated the Klingon Empire against Undine-style treachery long ago, the Klingon people’s strong preference for straightforward combat between warriors left them peculiarly vulnerable to infiltration during the Long War. That vulnerability might have left the Empire permanently splintered along the numerous political fault lines that ran through the High Council—but for the willingness of Worf and a relative handful of others to act decisively when it mattered the most.

  My challenge today, beneath the gentle yellow glow that Donatu casts across the loose crowd of heroically posed Klingon statues known as the Field of Heroes (and the smattering of other admirers with whom the general and I share the grounds today), is to persuade a man who is modest to a fault—and taciturn even by Klingon standards—to discuss his unique contribution to, and perspective on, the Undine War. When he speaks of those times, I occasionally see something cross Worf’s face that I have never seen before—and can only describe as either fear or fear’s pale ghost.

  Before we begin, I remind myself one last time to avoid asking Worf questions that can be answered with a monosyllable; he is, after all, the exact opposite of Elim Garak in terms of verbosity.

  Thank you for agreeing to speak with me today, General.

  Not at all. I could do no less for the son of Benjamin Sisko—or for the young journalist who had the courage to seek me out on Qo’noS for an interview without first obtaining official permission to travel to the homeworld.*

  I’m not sure I still qualify as a “young journalist,” General, but thank you anyway. I suppose I’ll never live that first interview down. Now that decades have passed since that time, what can you tell me about your experiences during the Undine War years?

  I am not certain how much I can add to what has already been said about the war against the qa’meH quv.* By the time the true extent of their infiltration began to come to light,† I had little direct involvement with the Empire’s response.

  But you had encountered the Undine on several occasions during the years leading up to that time.

  It was a period of my life I would have preferred to have devoted to matters of home and family, rather than to war.

  You’re referring to your involvement with the Lady Grilka.

  I am. As I said, I had wanted to devote myself to matters of family during those years. So much so that I was willing to resign my commission in Starfleet and return to the diplomatic service in order to be closer to she whom I was determined to make my wife. But whether a warrior has an active commission or not, his time is no longer his own when a new enemy decides to strike. At such times, a warrior’s duty is clear.

  It occurs to me that my wife, Rena, has often accused me of seeing the craft of writing through a similarly single-minded lens. Fortunately, I have the good sense not to mention this to General Worf, just as I resist a strong but ill-advised desire to ask him so many other questions. What was it like to find happiness at long last with Grilka and the family they raised together, so many years after his beloved Jadzia’s death? Was he torn during those times in the Undine War when tensions escalated between the Federation, where he was rai
sed, and the Klingon Empire, where his new family had taken root? Did he worry about jeopardizing his future with Starfleet in order to defend his new family’s home on Qo’noS, which the Undine threatened as gravely as they did Earth? Klingons, I remind myself, tend not to be very big on introspection, and they enjoy talking about their feelings even less, particularly for publication. Discussing their battles is nearly always a far better way to draw them out, and to keep them talking.

  The planet Vulcan owes its survival to you, General. If you hadn’t persuaded Chancellor Martok to send a fleet to protect Vulcan and help with its evacuation, the attack by the late Romulan miner Nero could have devastated that world and decimated its population.

  I learned long ago never to be surprised at such treacherous behavior coming from Romulans.

  Of course, Nero’s motivations were slightly more complex than simple treachery. He was traumatized by the Hobus supernova that destroyed Romulus and killed his wife and unborn child. His actions were certainly inexcusable, but he was a man lashing out in pain.

  I understand all of that. But his motivations were never relevant to me. He chose to make a craven attempt to commit murder on a planetary scale, and it had to be stopped at all costs. Chancellor Martok and I dealt with it as such.

  Saving billions of lives in the process. Not to mention the fact that Nero came very close to killing you when you confronted him aboard his vessel, the Narada.

  Klingons are… difficult to kill. Besides, I was highly motivated not to die. Grilka was carrying our child. I was determined not to make the final journey to Sto-Vo-Kor before the birth.*

  The last time I spoke with you, General, you indicated that your first brush with the Undine occurred while you were recovering from the injuries you received during the fight against Nero.

  Yes.

  According to the records of that battle, you were stabbed through the midsection from behind by one of Nero’s remote-controlled mechanical mining implements. What other details can you recall about the encounter?

  Very little that you haven’t already mentioned. After Nero’s cowardly attack, I was taken to a hospital facility on Vulcan. I regained consciousness within a day, and much of my mobility a day after that.

  That’s remarkable, considering the extent of your injuries.

  Perhaps it is not as remarkable as you think. Klingon physiology incorporates many systemic redundancies. Those redundancies enabled me to resist the Undine agent who subsequently attacked me, just as they enabled me to resist succumbing to the injuries that Nero first inflicted upon me.

  Do you think the Undine had planned all along to go after you, specifically? Or was the Undine attack on you just a crime of opportunity because of the happenstance of your being on Vulcan at that particular time?

  I still do not know. After the attack, I presumed that the creature targeted me in order to gain a toehold inside both Starfleet and the Klingon Defense Force, since I was known to have attachments to both. I did not understand until later that the creatures had already placed a surprisingly large number of covert operators inside Starfleet.

  Maybe the Undine were looking to replace someone who could move back and forth between the Federation and the Klingon Empire without being scrutinized too carefully.

  Perhaps. The qa’meH quv had to have known by then that Starfleet Security was watching the Federation and Klingon diplomatic corps with the eyes of Norpin falcons. Since I was a Klingon general at the time rather than an ambassador, I might have been an object of lesser scrutiny.

  As I understand it, the Undine infiltrator you encountered came after you right there in the Vulcan hospital where you were recuperating.

  Early on the third day, one of the medical assistants informed me that the physician in charge of my case needed to run certain specific tests on me. She escorted me out of my recovery chamber and into a turbolift that took us into one of the hospital’s sub-basements.

  I hope that the Vulcans are logical enough to make hospital gowns that close up in the back.

  They are not. I prefer not to speak about it.

  I see… well, then marching you off to the basement sounds pretty odd, especially given the condition you were in. And Vulcan medicine is supposed to be the Federation’s absolute state of the art. So I wonder what test they needed to conduct that they couldn’t have done just as easily in your room, using portable equipment.

  I made a similar observation, and I obtained an unsatisfactorily vague answer when I asked about it. But there was as yet no reason to suspect the medic of having any sinister purpose. Despite their outward resemblance to Romulans, such behavior is nearly unheard-of among Vulcans.

  Which was obviously what made them such attractive targets for Undine infiltrators.

  Precisely. And it wasn’t until the medic escorted me into a large chamber that was nearly empty of equipment that I began to realize what was happening. Not only was no recognizable diagnostic equipment visible, but I could see only two devices of any kind: the small, tricorder-sized mechanism that seemed to appear out of thin air in the medic’s hand, and a large medical-waste disposal unit that was built into one of the walls. I was already on my guard, if not overtly suspicious, before we entered the basement. But it was only when the medic suddenly pointed her handheld device at me and began to… transform before my eyes… that I became absolutely certain that something was very wrong.

  The Vulcan medic was really an Undine in disguise.

  It was the first such impersonation I was to witness during the conflict. And it was the first time I had seen anything of the kind since the Founders of the Dominion had employed similar tactics against both the Federation and the Klingon Empire more than a decade earlier.

  Not many people have witnessed an actual Undine transformation and lived to tell about it. What did the process look like?

  I considered it… an affront to nature. I still do. And if I believed in any deity, these creatures would be an affront to that.

  Can you elaborate?

  It was simply… wrong. Joints suddenly bent at unnatural angles. The creature appeared to be in agony as its assumed Vulcan identity melted away in the space of a few seconds, leaving in its place a creature of pure malevolence. A… thing with the capacity for neither mercy nor sympathy. Its eyes were bottomless pools of loathing, and its pupils looked like targeting crosshairs designed to direct that hatred like a tactical weapon. It is not something you would ever wish to see. It is something even I hope never to see again.

  The sepulchral quality of Worf’s voice sends a chill, like the tiny feet of an Andorian polar millipede, on a slow ascent along the length of my spine. I look up, half expecting some mysterious force to have suddenly extinguished brilliant Donatu. But the local sun continues to shine on the orchard of statues and the other visitors to this place. I begin to wonder if Worf intends to write a detailed memoir of his own, or maybe take up writing horror novels as a hobby. I decide instead to be thankful not to have him as a literary competitor. Then I realize that something even more fundamental is bothering me.

  If you’ll allow me to play devil’s advocate for a moment, General, what you’re saying sounds somewhat… xenophobic. I mean no offense, but doesn’t that go counter to your Starfleet training?

  You would not say that had you seen what the creature did next.

  Please go on.

  No sooner had the creature’s initial transformation settled down than it began to change form a second time. It was the same process as the first, only this time it ran in reverse as the creature once again began to impose a humanoid likeness over its natural appearance.

  Only this time it had used me as its template.

  Which must be why she—or it—led you to a medical-waste disposal unit. The Undine must have planned to use it to disintegrate your body after taking your place.

  Yes. I knew I had only seconds left to act before the qa’meH quv murdered me and disposed of my remains.

  So the Undine
waited until after it had taken humanoid form—specifically your form—before it made its move and attacked you? I know that Undine in their natural state are much larger and stronger than most humanoids. Why didn’t it try to take you out of the picture when it still had that advantage over you?

  Perhaps it could not. It may be that a successful impersonation requires a continuous molecular-level scan of a victim’s DNA throughout the transformation process. If that is so, then I would theorize that they cannot risk killing their target until after they’ve matched their own DNA profiles precisely to those of their victims.

  If that’s true, then you may have had a critical advantage over your attacker.

  Perhaps. However, the injuries I sustained aboard the Narada had left me in an extremely depleted condition. The creature may have assumed that I was too weakened to put up an adequate fight. Perhaps it was not far wrong in that assumption.

  Worf falls silent and I see a look in his eye and a cast in his jaw I haven’t seen before, even in the heat of battle against odds that probably shouldn’t have been surmountable. That look prompts my next question—a question that would probably earn me a quick death were I to ask it of any Klingon other than Worf.

  Were you… afraid?

  Worf’s eyes narrow perilously and blaze with cold fire before he replies. Though he’s always been physically imposing, he seems to have grown both broader and taller in the space of a few heartbeats. As I await his reply, I wonder if I’ve gotten carried away and pushed him too far.

  I have stood toe to toe against some of the strongest, swiftest, and most belligerent warriors from all four quadrants of this galaxy and beyond. My fellow Klingons. Romulans. Jem’Hadar. Nausicaans. Hirogen. Even Kelvans twice my size. I recognized the eager nearness of death during each of those clashes. However, I do not believe I have ever experienced what you humans would call fear.