Star Trek: Typhon Pact 06: Plagues of Night

by David R. George III

  As the cab accelerated through the habitat ring on its way to the lower core, Ro worried about the newest addition to her senior staff, and about what he might be doing in the reactor compartment. Ever since he’d first arrived at Deep Space 9, she’d felt uncertain about him. She understood that, at least initially, her misgivings probably resulted from the sudden and not entirely explicable death of Evik Nath. But even as the crew dealt with the upsetting loss of their colleague and friend, Ro continued to feel unsettled about Blackmer. She couldn’t isolate the source of her concern, and so she allowed for the possibility that Evik’s abrupt death persisted in coloring her estimation of his replacement.

  Ro had said nothing about her unease to anyone—least of all to Blackmer himself. Instead, she waited to get to know him better, and for her qualms about him to pass. When that didn’t happen, she set about researching his service record. He’d had a middle-of-the-pack ranking at Starfleet Academy, choosing early on in his training to pursue the path of command, but before too long getting shunted over to security. Upon his graduation, Starfleet assigned him to Starbase 189, where he served for five years before being sent to Helaspont Station along the Tzenkethi border for another five-year stretch. During those periods, Blackmer received generally positive performance reviews, and he made steady, if unspectacular, progress up through the security ranks. He also received an occasional demerit along the way, mostly attributed by his senior officers to his being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that—if Ro understood the subtext of some of the reports—seemed to point to something else going on, though she could not tell what.

  Well, it seems like he’s in the wrong place at the wrong time right now, she thought. The lift eased to a stop, then began to descend.

  After Blackmer’s postings on Starbase 189 and Helaspont Station, Starfleet detailed him to a series of starships—Trieste, Nova, Sarek, Bellerophon, Perseverance—on each of which he generally stayed for a year or two. Aboard Perseverance, he achieved the rank of lieutenant commander and the position of security chief, but soon after, when the same responsibility opened up on Deep Space 9, he immediately requested a transfer to the station.

  Why? Ro wanted to know. Why would Blackmer finally reach one of the highest levels of his profession in one place, then almost at once leave there for another assignment? Maybe there’s an understandable reason, a perfectly innocent explanation, she told herself. But that still wouldn’t explain why his presence on DS9 vexed her.

  “Helaspont Station,” Ro said aloud in the empty cab. She kept going back to Blackmer’s lengthy duty along the edge of Tzenkethi space. Two ideas occurred to her. Both seemed absurd, but particularly the first: the notion of a Starfleet officer allying—or even sympathizing—with a difficult, belligerent adversary of the Federation enough for him to take direct action against the UFP. She found it only marginally more believable that somebody in Starfleet could develop such a hatred of a Federation enemy that he would take independent action against that enemy. With the first wave of civilian vessels due to arrive at the station in just a few days, though, Ro could not afford to ignore her intuition.

  The lift glided to a halt, and a pair of doors parted to reveal security officers Cardok and Hava, both of whom had served directly under Ro when she’d been the station’s chief of security. They stood in a small antechamber outside the lower core, a large blast door closed behind them. Both carried phasers in their raised hands, and Cardok consulted a tricorder.

  Ro exited the lift. “He’s still in there?” she asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Cardok said. “We’ve verified that he overrode the security seal at twenty-five-forty-six hours.” His tone sounded tentative.

  “Do you have an issue, Lieutenant?” Ro asked sharply. She peered over at Hava, who also seemed to carry an air of reluctance about him, and then back at Cardok.

  “No, Captain,” said the Benzite officer. “But this—” He waved his tricorder toward the blast door. “—is Chief Blackmer. What’s he done?”

  Ro’s grip on the certainty with which she had rushed from her cabin down to the lower core loosened. “Maybe nothing more than forgetting to properly schedule a security check down here,” she said. Then, softening her stance even more, she added, “Probably nothing more than that. But we’re going to have Romulans and Gorn and Breen on this station in just a few days, and possibly even Tzenkethi and Tholians, so we can’t take any chances when even the slightest deviation from procedure occurs. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” Cardok said, with no hesitancy.

  Ro looked to the other guard. “Lieutenant Hava?”

  “Understood, sir.” Hava held out his other hand and offered the captain a phaser of her own.

  Ro took the weapon, confirmed its stun setting, and switched off its safety. Then she turned and moved over to where a smaller hatch stood closed within the larger blast door. “Is it locked?”

  Cardok studied his tricorder. “Yes, sir, but the security panel doesn’t appear to have been reprogrammed. Any one of us should be able to override the seal.”

  Ro nodded. “Is he armed?” she asked.

  “Chief Blackmer has a standard-issue phaser,” the lieutenant said, without having to consult his tricorder. Then he did peer at the device’s display, motioned to the hatch, and made a circling motion with his arm until he indicated a point back behind the turbolift.

  Ro knew that the shaft for the lift led down through the center of the station’s core, and that the reactor compartment spread out around it. “Let’s go, then,” she said. She reached up to the keypad set into the smaller hatch and tapped in her individual security code. A tone signaled acceptance. She inserted her fingers into the sunken latch and slowly pulled open the hatch.

  A current of nondescript noise immediately pushed its way out of the lower core. Ro hoped it covered the noise of their entrance, as well as their footsteps on the deck. As Cardok moved to take the lead, she stopped him with a touch to his upper arm. He stepped back as ordered, allowing the captain to enter first.

  Inside, a pair of reactors stood directly ahead, to either side of the blast door. Bright, shimmering light emanated from them at several points, and the displays ranged around their midsections seemed almost alive as constant streams of glyphs marched across them. Looking back at the two security officers, Ro pointed to Hava, then directly down at the deck, indicating that he should stand guard at the door. Hava nodded once. Ro then gestured to Cardok that he should circle around the lower core to the left, while she would go right. He nodded as well.

  As Cardok started in one direction, the captain started in the other. As she moved past the first reactor she came to, she saw Blackmer at once. He stood before a companel in the outer bulkhead, his back to her. She padded over to him, but before she could say anything, she saw him stiffen, as though he had heard her approaching. As he began to turn, she lifted her phaser and aimed, prepared for him to spring at her.

  He didn’t.

  “Captain Ro,” he said.

  “Chief,” she said, forcing herself to use his title. “What are you doing here?”

  “I think probably the same thing as you,” he said.

  “I don’t think you are,” Ro said, “since I’m looking for you.”

  The captain saw Blackmer’s eyes glance past her. She did not follow his gaze, but after a few seconds, Lieutenant Cardok arrived at her side. Like her, he kept his phaser at the ready.

  “Why are you looking for me?” Blackmer asked.

  “I’ll ask you once more,” Ro said, her attitude stern, “what are you doing at this time of night in the lower core?”

  Blackmer peered over at Cardok again, and then back at Ro. “Captain,” he said, “I think you and I need to speak privately.”

  Ro studied Blackmer’s face, tried to measure the serious expression he wore. She could not judge his motives, and she did not trust her own. “You’re right,” she said to him. “We do need to talk.” She reached up and tapp
ed her combadge. “Ro to security.”

  “Security,” came the immediate response. “This is Si Naran.”

  “Lieutenant,” Ro said, “are any holding cells occupied at this time?”

  “No, sir,” Si Naran said.

  “Good,” Ro said. “Prepare cell number one to receive a prisoner. Notify ops when you’re ready.”

  “Yes, sir. Right away.”

  Ro activated her combadge a second time to contact the operations center.

  “Ops. Aleco here.”

  “Lieutenant,” Ro said. “Site-to-site transport. I want you to beam Mister Blackmer from the lower core into holding cell number one once Lieutenant Si Naran notifies you that he’s ready.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Ro out.” For the first time, she looked away from Blackmer, who appeared to accept his impending incarceration with composure. She peered up and around the reactor compartment, at the vast space so important to the continuing operation of Deep Space 9—so important, and so vulnerable. Looking back at Blackmer, she said, “What have you done here?”

  “Done?” he said. “Nothing but conduct a security sweep.”

  Ro nodded. “We’ll see.”

  Blackmer opened his mouth to respond, but then the whine of the transporter rose in the compartment, the distinctive sound audible even through the blur of reactor noise. The security chief disappeared in eddies of shimmering light. Ro waited for the beaming process to complete, then turned to Cardok.

  “I want all available security officers and engineers down here right now,” she ordered. “I want a complete sweep of the entire lower core, up through the power-transfer conduits.”

  “What are we looking for, Captain?”

  “I don’t know,” Ro said, a sinking feeling in her gut. She gazed around again at the huge space in which energized-plasma reactors generated all of Deep Space 9’s power, and at the complex equipment needed to accomplish that. Locating, or even identifying, an act of sophisticated sabotage could take a long time—perhaps too long. “I don’t know what we’re looking for,” she told Cardok, “but I intend to find out.”

  Ro turned on her heel, headed for the security office on the Promenade—and holding cell number one.

  After dismissing Jang Si Naran, Ro stood alone in the central holding area, peering into the first of the three cells that surrounded the large room. Jefferson Blackmer faced her from his three-walled space, on the other side of the force field that kept him confined. “All right, Chief,” she said, working to keep her voice level. She knew that antagonizing the lieutenant commander would not net her any answers. “Now we can have the private conversation you wanted.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Blackmer said.

  The polite reply momentarily disarmed Ro, considering that she had just trained a phaser on a member of her own crew and then taken him into custody, based only on vague suspicions. “I’d like to ask you again,” she said, “what were you doing in the lower core in the middle of the night?”

  “I was conducting a security sweep.”

  “By yourself?” Ro asked, unable to completely mask the doubt she felt, which crept into her voice.

  “Yes, by myself,” Blackmer said. “I didn’t have much choice, since I’m not sure who on this station I can trust.”

  “What?” Ro said. Is he trying to place blame on us? she thought, thinking of her crew. She knew that she hadn’t been the only one aboard who’d had a difficult time accepting the death of Evik Nath and then the arrival of his replacement. But her emotions had given way to a genuine, though not fully formed, suspicion of Blackmer—and he probably knew that. So is he blaming me? she asked herself. And for what?

  But Ro expressed none of those questions. Based on her training and experience as DS9’s chief of security for two years, she cautioned herself not to permit her own preconceptions and expectations to color what Blackmer revealed to her. She needed to allow him to explain his thoughts and actions, after which she could reach her own conclusions.

  “Why can’t you trust people on Deep Space Nine?” she asked.

  “Because I had a member of the crew come to me a few days ago,” Blackmer said. “They told me that they harbored suspicions about another member of the crew based on a conversation they overheard.”

  Ro wanted to ask the identities of the mysterious crew members, simply so that she could corroborate Blackmer’s claim. She refrained from doing so, though, since she felt committed to letting the security chief tell his story. “Go on,” she said.

  “I looked into what I was told,” said the security chief. “But I uncovered conflicting information. I couldn’t be sure if the initial report from the first crew member was truthful, or if they’d come forward as a means of covering their own transgression. Regardless, it seemed to me that one or more of the crew might be lying to me, so I thought it wisest not to confide in anybody. That’s why I continued investigating on my own.”

  “But investigating what?” Ro asked.

  Blackmer raised his arms and then brought his hands together, a gesture that exposed his own frustrations. “Honestly, Captain, I’m not sure,” he said. “But my greatest fear is that somebody intends to sabotage Deep Space Nine.”

  The revelation didn’t surprise Ro—after all, she had suspected Blackmer of attempting to perpetrate such an act—but it did distress her. “Why didn’t you come to me with this?” Ro asked, but the answer seemed immediately obvious. “Or am I one of the people you suspect?”

  Blackmer sighed heavily. He turned in the small cell and stepped over to its built-in bunk, where he sat down heavily. He wore his fatigue and frustration like a great weight. “I don’t suspect you, Captain,” he said. “But it’s challenging for me to trust you when you clearly don’t trust me.”

  Ro felt an urge to reject the charge, but circumstances made such a denial irrational. Following Blackmer’s lead, she moved to sit on the low, backless bench in the center of the room. “At this point,” she said, “I think you need to trust somebody, whether it’s me or maybe somebody farther up the chain of command at Starfleet.”

  “Believe me, Captain, I know.”

  “Then, since you don’t suspect me,” she said, “why don’t you give me the details of your investigation.”

  Blackmer shook his head. “Because I’m not interested in making unfounded accusations.”

  “How do you know they’re unfounded?”

  “I don’t,” Blackmer said. “Which is why I’ve been trying to find out.”

  “Sometimes,” Ro tried to prompt him, “there are good reasons to make accusations. Full investigations can follow, and the truth can be uncovered.”

  “And sometimes accusations are groundless,” Blackmer shot back, his voice rising. He rose to his feet and paced forward to the front of the cell, just shy of the force field, which issued a short, low hum at his approach. “I’m sorry about the death of your friend,” he said. “I’m sorry about Evik Nath. But taking over his position is not a crime.”

  “No,” Ro agreed quietly, suddenly feeling a sense of shame.

  “What have I done in my time here to warrant your distrust?” Blackmer said, almost pleading for an answer. “What actions have I taken to make you so wary of me?”

  Ro said the only thing that occurred to her. “Why did you transfer here?”

  “What?” he asked, apparently confused by the question.

  Ro stood up and crossed the room until she stood facing Blackmer from only centimeters away, the force field frizzing between them. “Why did you transfer to DS-Nine?” she repeated. “You’d only just been promoted to security chief aboard the Perseverance, but when the position opened up here, you immediately requested a transfer. Why?”

  Unexpectedly, Blackmer smiled. “That’s it?” he asked. “That’s why you don’t trust me? That’s why you haven’t accepted me into your crew?”

  “Let’s just say that it’s a question that’s been bothering me.”

  Bl
ackmer threw up his hands, one of which made contact with the force field. It flashed and crackled in response, sending him backward a step, but it appeared to faze him for only a moment. “I don’t want to tell you, Captain,” he said heatedly. “If you’d asked me over a cup of raktajino sometime, or even if you’d sat me down as a new member of your crew and demanded it of me, I’d have been happy to tell you. But instead, you allowed this unanswered question and maybe some others to create this … this … amorphous mistrust.”

  Is that what I did? Ro thought. She wanted to mention her wayward concerns involving the Tzenkethi, but how could she put into words something that she had yet to fully work out for herself? And even if she could, would that invalidate what Blackmer had just said?

  Ro looked away. What had she done? How could her instincts have been so wrong?

  Nath, she thought. Had she let the loss of yet another close friend influence her so much as to distrust his professional replacement without just cause? The idea seemed unlikely to her; she had lost so many people throughout her life—in the refugee camps, on Garon II, in the Maquis—how could one more make such a difference?

  But then she realized. They all made a difference.

  Into the silence that followed, Blackmer said, “I like space stations.”

  At first, the words struck Ro as a non sequitur. She looked back up at him, and he went on.

  “I spent the first decade of my Starfleet career on two space stations, and the next seven years on five different starships,” he said. “On a space station, you stay in one place, in one star system. You’re usually on or near a habitable world, so you don’t have to experience nature exclusively in artificial environments like holodecks. It feels more stable, with fewer dangers.” Blackmer shrugged. “I just like space stations better than I do starships.”

  Ro smiled. “That’s it?”