Lesser Evil

by Robert Simpson

  Suddenly Sam heard the sound of sand skidding over metal. The heat signature grew brighter, and began moving inside the ship more alertly. Sam looked out, saw that Nog had frozen in his tracks above the hatch. His foot must have pushed against some loose soil on the hull. It was sliding off in a steady, noisy stream.

  Dammit!

  Sam looked questioningly at Vaughn, who nodded. Checking the setting on his phaser, Sam flattened himself against the tree and called out, “Attention occupant of the Dominion spacecraft. We’re from the United Federation of Planets. We mean you no harm, but we wish to speak with you.”

  Ten seconds went by. Then twenty. Then thirty. No one came out. Sam looked at his tricorder again, resetting it to detect EM signatures. There was no indication of any power sources inside, which meant no energy weapons. The chances were good that if he approached, he wouldn’t be fired upon. On the other hand, he told himself, a bow and arrow or a slingshot wouldn’t show up either, and they could kill just as effectively as a phaser. There has to be a way to—

  Movement. Something big and green shot out of the opening and flew straight toward the forest canopy, lost almost instantly among the forest green. It looked a little like a crane. No one fired.

  Sam checked for life-signs inside the ship. Nothing.

  Vaughn stepped out from behind his tree, scowling as he walked toward the opening, where Nog was already climbing down from off his perch.

  “Sir, I’m sorry, I really thought it was humanoid,” Sam said, joining his shipmates.

  “I was this close to shooting that thing,” Nog said. “What was it anyway? A bird?”

  Vaughn shrugged. “Look on the bright side, Sam. You weren’t that far off. It was a biped.”

  Sam smiled ruefully. “Coulda sworn there was something humanoid in there. But readings are clear now.”

  “Then let’s check it out.” The commander tapped his combadge. “Vaughn to Defiant.”

  “Dax here. Go ahead.”

  “We’ve located Objective One, Lieutenant, and are proceeding inside.”

  Nog was spooked.

  It wasn’t even the wreckage of the Dominion ship that troubled him, although that had certainly had its share of creepiness. Moving through the smashed interior had been like navigating one of Uncle Quark’s pleasure mazes in the holosuites, except that the surprise in the center was something out of a nightmare instead of a dream come true.

  Nothing on the ship worked, so they had only their wrist beacons to cut the gloom. In numerous places much of the vessel’s inner workings had broken through bulkheads, making a number of corridors impassable. Complicating matters was the tilt of the ship, which caused the decks to slope almost twenty degrees to starboard. Worse still, the hull plating topside must have ruptured, because steady trickles of water could be found in a number of places, streaming through much of the ship and completely flooding the lowermost decks below ground. The stench of decomposition wafted up through the deck plates into the upper levels, where small animals and fungi seemed to be thriving in the dark.

  They had to cut their way into the bridge, which had been one deck above the level into which the away team first entered the vessel. Though the bridge seemed to have suffered less structural damage than the rest of the ship, it was by far the most grisly: Eight Jem’Hadar and one Vorta had fallen in a heap against the starboard side, presumably killed in the crash. Nog had spent several minutes just staring at a Jem’Hadar skull, feeling strangely numb.

  As with the rest of the ship, nothing on the bridge functioned. Whatever secrets its databanks once contained were beyond recovery. But based on observations of the damage throughout the craft and tricorder readings they’d taken along the way, Nog and Bowers had agreed that the ship had most likely been shot down. Unfortunately, any residual energy left by the weapons used against the ship had long since dissipated, so it was impossible to say who their attacker had been. If it had indeed been a Federation starship, there was nothing here to prove it.

  Vaughn seemed impatient, even restless. Having found nothing useful during their inspection of the wreckage, the commander told Nog and Bowers to complete their scans of the ship and to search the surrounding terrain for additional clues that might explain its fate. Vaughn would move on toward the source of the transponder signal alone. Bowers hadn’t liked that idea, and said so, but the commander made it clear it wasn’t open to discussion. That was when Nog’s anxiety began to escalate dramatically.

  It was difficult to pinpoint, but the longer they walked, the more Nog became convinced that something wasn’t right with the forest. He felt like they weren’t alone, that something was nearby, watching them. Bowers had continued scanning for life-signs, but found nothing unexpected within range of his tricorder. The nearest of the larger creatures they’d detected from orbit was to the north, kilometers distant. Locally, there were only small lizardlike animals, dense plant life, and a few green-quilled avians like the one they’d seen earlier hopping among the treetops.

  But something else was out there. Nog could feel it in his lobes. A presence…

  “Sir,” Nog said to Bowers, “I think something is watching us.”

  Bowers surveyed the terrain and frowned. He tapped his combadge. “Bowers to Defiant.”

  “Dax here. Go ahead, Sam.”

  “Lieutenant, anything new on sensors?”

  “Negative. Atmospheric interference is still playing havoc with our scans.”

  “How’s our transporter lock?”

  There was pause on the other end. “Chao reports the locks are solid. Is anything wrong?”

  “Not yet. But stand by. Bowers out.” He frowned and turned back to Nog. “How sure are you?”

  Nog shrugged uncertainly. “It’s just a feeling,” he admitted.

  Bowers seemed to consider that for a moment, then checked his tricorder one more time. “Still nothing. But let’s assume you’re right. What do you think you’re picking up on?”

  Nog squinted his eyes and listened to the sounds of the planet. After a moment he shook his head and resumed scanning. “I’m not sure. I’m probably wrong. But I can’t shake the feeling that—” He stopped, staring at his tricorder.

  “What is it?” Bowers asked.

  “I’m picking up a large creature about two-hundred meters north,” Nog said. “One of the sauropods we detected from orbit.”

  Bowers nodded and checked his phaser. “We’ll search elsewhere till it moves on. Keep track of it.”

  “Sir,” Nog said, “that’s not the problem. When we scanned this area the nearest of its species was kilometers away. That animal didn’t wander in. It just appeared out of nowhere.”

  Sam examined the tricorder log with a growing sense of disbelief. One second the forest area had appeared as normal. The next, as Nog had reported, the animal had simply appeared out of nowhere.

  “A hundred and ninety meters,” Nog said, his voiced hushed. He was tracking the current position of the animal while Sam tried to ascertain its origins.

  “Incredible,” Sam said.

  “A hundred and ninety-five meters,” Nog said. “Staying within a range of two hundred ten and one hundred and seventy meters so far, sir.”

  “This doesn’t make any sense.”

  Nog took his eyes off the readout to look at him for a second.

  “You know what makes no sense? That humanoid on the ship disappearing. The crane that flew out—now that came from nowhere. One hundred eighty meters.”

  Sam replayed the animal’s appearance again.

  “One-sixty.”

  Bowers considered the situation.

  “The humanoid disappeared, and then the crane appeared. When this animal appeared, there was a crane in the area…and it disappeared.”

  The animal had advanced to one hundred fifty meters, but Nog said nothing.

  “I think it’s a changeling,” Bowers said quietly.

  Nog nodded. “I think you’re right.”

  “It
must have been on the Jem’Hadar ship and survived the crash.”

  Nog nodded again. “There was a Vorta among the dead on the ship,” he said. “They don’t always travel with the Jem’Hadar, but there’s usually one around a Founder. Should we notify the commander?”

  Bowers hesitated. “We don’t have a lot to go on. And the commander…I don’t think he’d appreciate speculation right now.” He exchanged a look with Nog that said a lot more than either of them could voice aloud. The commander’s behavior on the mission had been unusual, and Bowers liked a certain amount of predictability in a senior officer. “We need more proof.”

  “It must want something,” Nog said, tracking it again. “It’s risking detection every time it changes shape.” He looked up. “It’s definitely following us, sir. It’s at a hundred meters now.”

  Bowers peered through the trees, but saw nothing through the dense forest. “It’s interested in us. That’s good.” Nog’s expression said clearly that he disagreed. “At least we don’t have to chase it across half the planet.”

  “True.”

  “On the other hand, I don’t think it’s going to walk up and submit to a blood test.”

  Nog smiled. “Maybe not. But we know a phaser set at 3.5 should cause it to revert back into its liquid state—if it is a Founder.”

  Sam shook his head. “We can’t just open fire on another life-form, even if it is a Founder. I don’t want to make an enemy of it.”

  “The only way I can see to prove it’s a Founder is to force it to change form,” Nog argued. “We can’t do that without a phaser. Sir, if it’s been alone here for two years, it is still our enemy. I mean, it must think it is.”

  “Well, I’m not going to shoot it like a mad dog in the street,” Bowers said. “We’ll set a trap. When its curiosity gets the best of it, it’ll have no one to blame but itself.”

  * * *

  Nog scratched the back of his neck. The breeze was making him itchy, the forest smelled, and little noises were coming from all around—leaves shifting, animals moving among the branches, the cranes calling to one another in the distance. And now a Founder was out there, too.

  According to the tricorder it was maybe sixty meters away, almost on top of the impromptu “base camp” he and Bowers had hastily assembled, and then just as hastily appeared to abandon. But not without leaving a phaser behind.

  Assembling the trap hadn’t been difficult, but executing it might be. The phaser had been set to level 3.2, against Nog’s better judgment, and slaved to Bowers’s tricorder, so that it could be triggered remotely. It would force a Founder back into its gelatinous state without harming it. But the creature wouldn’t be stunned, either, and would undoubtedly take off into the woods.

  Bowers insisted that curiosity would draw it back eventually, since it had been the only sentient creature on the planet for two years. Nog was also willing to bet it would come back, if only because this was a planet singularly lacking in opportunity. The riskier the road, the greater the profit. The thing to remember about other people’s profit was, it inevitably came at the expense of someone else. And that someone could easily be Nog.

  Bowers tapped Nog’s shoulder and Nog jerked his attention back to the base camp. A large reptilian head had emerged from the thick forest growth and the rest of the animal quickly followed. From their vantage point up hill, the beast was smaller than Nog had expected—only five meters long, its midnight-blue hide covered in overlapping brown plates from nose to tail. Its four eyes surveyed its surroundings.

  Nog watched as the creature advanced on the trap…

  And…now! Bowers tapped the tricorder touchpad with more force than was really necessary and jerked forward with pent-up excitment. From below them came the faint whine of the modified phaser and the animal jerked, too. Abruptly the beast shrank and altered shape, changing into an a morphous mass of gelatinous amber before coalescing into a new form—not unlike a smaller, female version of Odo. In another flash the girl transformed into a crane and flung itself up, out of the clearing, and flew unsteadily to the east.

  Bowers launched himself forward and scrambled down the hill, pushing against tree trunks and rocks as he went to keep himself from falling face-first in his haste. With Nog right behind him, he scooped up the phaser and ran back into the forest, trying to keep the crane in view. The branches and uneven terrain were much harder to navigate at high speed and he tripped, twice. Beside him Nog was having a hard time tracking the bird on his tricorder and running at the same time. They had barely gone forty meters and were already far behind.

  “Vaughn to Bowers.”

  “Bowers here. Go ahead.”

  “Is Lieutenant Nog still with you?”

  “Yes, sir. We found a survivor. It’s a changeling. We’re in pursuit—”

  “Belay that. Lock on to my comm signal and get to my coordinates, on the double.”

  “Sir?”

  “That’s an order, Lieutenant.”

  Sam held back a sigh of frustration as he stared after the fleeing changeling. He looked at Nog, who shrugged helplessly. “Aye, sir,” Bowers said finally. “We’re on our way.”

  Sam saw Vaughn from the top of the ridge. The commander was standing in the middle of a ravine, staring up at a cliff face where the ravine ended abruptly.

  Wait a minute, Sam thought, looking at the details of the trench for the first time. The sides were far two straight and uniform to be natural. All these young trees, this recent growth…none of it can be more than two years old. This isn’t a ravine at all. It’s a meteoric furrow! Something fell here from space!

  With Nog following, Bowers ran along the ridge toward an eroded slope where they could make their way down to Vaughn.

  As they approached, Sam saw for the first time what held Vaughn’s attention so completely. Something was buried in the cliff face.

  “Oh, my God…”

  Bowers’s voice was scarcely a whisper as he and Nog stopped when they reached the floor of the furrow behind the commander.

  “At least now we know who brought down the Dominion ship,” Vaughn said without turning. “But it cost them.”

  Gray metal plating covered uniformly with black conduits, metal struts and branching filaments, the hull of the fallen spacecraft faced them from its earthen tomb, silently testifying to the Gamma Quadrant’s newest invaders.

  The Borg.

  6

  Ro stormed into her quarters and threw her padd across the cabin. She knocked over a chair and paced the room, trying to rein in her seething emotions. Akaar, Asarem—all of them were wrong. She felt it in her bones. Whatever Captain Mello had detected, it wasn’t a ship making off with Gard. He was still on the station. Every instinct she had screamed it. He would wait for an opportunity, when he was sure everyone’s attention was elsewhere, and then he’d escape for real. She would need to post guards at every transporter and airlock….

  No, don’t be an idiot, she told herself. You were wrong. Get over it. Clinging to your interpretation when all the evidence points the other way is just foolish. It’s better this way. Now you can resign without any doubt that this job was a mistake. Let theFederation come. Once this case is closed, you’re out of here—

  “Ro,” a voice said in her ear. She spun around at once, launching a punch at the intruder—

  Taran’atar caught her fist in his own hand smoothly, without even flinching. Ro shook her hand free of his grip and stepped back. “Who the hell do you think you are? These are my quarters!”

  “I know,” Taran’atar said. “I followed you from the Promenade. I needed to speak with you privately.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you think you needed,” Ro snapped. “I’m getting a little sick of your unshrouding right next to me whenever you feel like it. And I don’t appreciate you violating my private space uninvited.”

  Taran’atar tilted his head slightly as he studied her. “You’re angry, but not at me.”

  That’s it.“Get
out,” Ro said.

  “No,” Taran’atar said. “I was monitoring communications from the Gryphon—”

  “You were spying—?”

  “Call it what you will,” Taran’atar interrupted. “I do what I deem necessary to carry out my assignments. But I’m growing weary of the way in which everyone in this quadrant questions my actions. Do you want to know what I’ve learned, or are your moral sensibilities too offended by my tactics to listen?”

  Ro narrowed her eyes. “Report,” she said through her teeth.

  “During my search for the assassin, I stopped to monitor all incoming and outgoing station communications from a backup subspace tranceiver in upper pylon one.”

  “You shouldn’t even have been able to gain access to the tranceiver assemblies,” Ro noted.

  “Be that as it may, I did,” Taran’atar said. “And since a stationwide communications blackout had been implemented for all but authorized transmissions, it was a simple matter to sift through the existing comm traffic. I learned nothing new from this…until Captain Mello contacted Admiral Akaar from the Gryphon. It was then that I detected a brief anomaly in the transmission: an echo.”

  “Meaning what?” Ro said.

  “Meaning I was not the only unauthorized listener aboard the station.”

  “Quark,” Ro whispered. Please, no, don’t let it be Quark. She knew he sometimes hacked into the comm system….

  “No, not Quark,” Taran’atar said. “I checked, and the Ferengi was fully occupied in the affairs of his establishment at the time. But someone else aboard the station was listening when Captain Mello was in contact.”

  “Then it’s Gard,” Ro said. “It has to be. I was right after all. He’s still aboard the station.” If so, she’d have to act quickly, before he escaped or did something worse. And there was a personal consideration as well: she now had the chance to make things right before she resigned. Before she turned in her combadge, she was going to bring Shakaar’s assassin to justice.