by David Mack
“Hardly my finest hour.”
Ro scowled. “Let him finish, Doctor.”
Chastised, Bashir gestured at Erdona to continue. The commander nodded once and then resumed speaking. “Based on what I’ve read in your file, you have precisely the sort of skills and capabilities we need for this mission.”
After cracking a polite smile in response to Erdona’s flattery, Bashir replied, “I find it hard to believe that Starfleet Intelligence really needs me so badly when it has its own specially trained field operatives.”
“We suffered losses during the Borg invasion, just like the rest of Starfleet,” Erdona said. “We’re shorthanded and spread thin, gathering intel on the Typhon Pact. But even if we weren’t, I’d still be here talking to you.”
“Why?”
Erdona sighed. “Did you read in the news a few months ago about the explosion at the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards?”
“Yes.” Bashir thought for a moment and then continued. “It wasn’t just an industrial accident, was it?”
“What I’m about to tell you can’t be discussed with anyone not involved in the mission. Understood?” Ro and Bashir nodded. “The explosion was part of an exit strategy by a spy who stole the designs for slipstream drive. There’s evidence that a phase-cloaked Romulan ship was involved in the extraction of the spy, which suggests this was an act of espionage by the Typhon Pact.”
It was sobering news, but it had not answered Bashir’s question. “I still don’t see what this has to do with me.”
“SI began monitoring shipping activity throughout the Typhon Pact’s territories. We were looking for patterns that suggested they were gathering matériel and components for the construction of a slipstream system. Three weeks ago, we correlated our latest updates and found what we think is a secret shipyard, hidden on a world inside Breen space.” He leaned forward, picked up a padd from Ro’s desk, activated it, and handed it to Bashir. “We’re looking at a planet called Salavat, in the Alrakis system. It’s not much more than a half-frozen chunk of rock, but it’s been getting quite a bit of cargo traffic from the Breen and the Romulans lately. We haven’t found much beyond a few small installations on the surface, but we think that’s because the real action is underground.”
“As in, a concealed shipbuilding facility,” Ro said.
“Exactly,” Erdona said. “We have eyes on every shipyard in the Typhon Pact, so we know they aren’t building a slipstream prototype at any of them. But this world is where they’ve been shipping critical parts for a chroniton integrator—which is the secret to making slipstream work without slamming into stars, planets, or other ships at a hundred thousand times the speed of light.”
Folding a hand over a fist, Ro asked, “If you know that’s where they’re making the prototype, why not just send in a fleet and frag the planet?”
“Tempting,” Erdona said, “but ultimately self-defeating. We’re in no condition to start a shooting war with the Typhon Pact, Captain. Besides, just because they’re building the prototype there doesn’t mean that’s the only place they have the plans. But it does mean that’s where they’re doing their research—”
“And updating the schematics with new data,” Bashir said, catching on, “as they figure out how to make the drive work with their ship designs.”
Erdona nodded. “Very good, Doctor. That’s this target’s real value. Consequently, we’ve been ordered to initiate a full-sanction op to—”
“Excuse me,” Bashir said, “a what?”
“A full-sanction operation. It means whoever we send in has a license to kill, authorized by the president herself.” Erdona gave that a moment to sink in before he continued. “As I was saying, we don’t just want to take out the shipyard—we also want to sabotage the stolen data and all its backups.”
Ro sounded skeptical as she asked, “And how much time do you think that’ll buy you? They’ll figure out slipstream sooner or later, with or without our plans.”
“True, but it’ll take them a lot longer without,” Erdona said. “Our best estimate is that sabotaging this program will buy us another decade of monopoly on slipstream, by which point we hope to have rebuilt the fleet and expanded our reach to new regions of the galaxy. But if we don’t shut down the Typhon Pact’s slipstream project before it launches a prototype, the Federation will become a second-rate power in less than a year. What happens after that, I don’t think any of us want to find out.”
“On that much we can agree,” Bashir said. “But I still don’t see why you think I’m the right man for this job.”
“Our knowledge of the Breen is still limited,” Erdona said. “We can barely translate that machine-speak of theirs, and their culture’s a total blind spot. Remote observation has yielded almost no usable intel about their society or their biology. Whoever we send to Salavat needs to be more adaptable than anyone we currently have available. Our agent will have to be able to think and react at superhuman speeds. And because of the cold temperatures, higher gravity, and thicker atmosphere on Salavat, we’ll need someone with great strength and endurance. Last but not least, we need someone who can fit inside a suit of Breen armor.”
Now Bashir understood why Erdona had come to Deep Space 9. He was recruiting Bashir for the same reason the doctor had been tapped to go to Sindorin: because he was genetically enhanced. “I see,” he said in a measured tone. “Forgive me if I seem less than thrilled at the prospect of being dropped alone onto a Breen planet, especially when you have no idea what you’re sending me into.”
“Well,” Erdona said, raising his eyebrows, “you wouldn’t be going in alone. As for what you’d be getting into, we’ve brought in some experts who might be able to shed some light on that—assuming you’re willing to commit to the mission.” Apparently sensing Bashir’s reluctance, Erdona added in a more supplicative tone, “The fact is, Doctor, we need you. Your enhanced abilities give you a better chance than any other agent to survive this mission. If you turn us down, we will go forward without you, but…frankly, I don’t like our odds.”
Bashir threw a look at Ro, who shrugged and said, “Your call, Doctor.”
Resigning himself to answering duty’s summons, Bashir said, “All right, Commander. Let’s go meet your experts.”
4
“Oh, no,” Bashir said as Erdona led him into the guest quarters where the “experts” stood waiting for them.
Jack—seven years older, a few hairs grayer, but no less manic—flashed a crazy-eyed smile as he waved at Bashir. He’d also retained his trademark rapid-fire speech pattern. “Bet you weren’t expecting us, were you? Hm? Hm? Hm?”
Standing beside trim, goateed Jack was his portly, graying companion in captivity, Patrick. Looking like an abashed cherub, the childlike man in baggy gray pajamas waggled the plump fingers of one hand at Bashir and mumbled, “Hello.”
Before Bashir could reply, he felt a hand firmly grip his left buttock. He leaped forward in surprise and pivoted to see Lauren, the third and final member of the genetically enhanced—and profoundly damaged—trio that some of his former colleagues had taken to calling the Jack Pack. Leaning against the wall, the buxom brunette gave Bashir a salacious smirk and purred, “Love the beard. Very sexy.”
Bashir glared at Erdona. “I’m out.” He turned to leave.
Erdona grabbed Bashir by one shoulder and stopped him. “I know about your history with these three, but—”
“Then you know they shouldn’t be here.”
The look on Erdona’s face told Bashir he’d struck a nerve. Clearly, Erdona knew that Jack, Patrick, and Lauren had—like Bashir—been subjected in early childhood to genetic resequencing. Unlike Bashir, however, the members of the Jack Pack had suffered severe negative side effects. Jack had become a violent, malignant narcissist; Patrick’s emotional development arrested at a four-year-old level; and Lauren filtered all her interactions through her delusional libido.
Adopting a soothing mien, Erdona said, “Let’s be reas
onable, Doctor. You know as well as I do that Jack and his friends possess remarkable insight when it comes to analyzing raw intelligence, especially as it pertains to alien cultures.” With a firm nudge, he made Bashir turn to look at Jack and Patrick. “They say they have new information about the Breen—information we need, Doctor.”
Something in Erdona’s manner—an odd inflection in his voice, perhaps some minuscule hesitation, or maybe a fleeting microexpression—captured Bashir’s attention. Bashir sensed that Erdona had omitted something important, and as he noted the awkward body language between Erdona and Jack, Bashir had a flash of intuition. “Oh, I see,” he said with unfiltered cynicism. “The real reason you need me isn’t that I’m enhanced—it’s that Jack and his friends won’t reveal their information to anyone but me.” Looking Jack in the eye, he added, “Isn’t that right?”
Jack responded with frantic applause and a psychotic gleam. “Bravo, Doctor! Well done! Way to use those synapses!”
Lauren stepped toward her peers, stroking Bashir’s arm as she passed by, and shot him a smoldering look. “You never fail to impress, Julian.” She fell into place beside Patrick, who bounced from foot to foot like an overexcited toddler.
Bashir shook his head at Erdona. “This is ridiculous.”
Jack screamed, “This is life and death, Doctor!” Noting that everyone in the room had recoiled from him, he mumbled a meek “Sorry.”
Interposing himself between Bashir and the Jack Pack, Erdona said, “I know this looks bad, especially after that business with them trying to sell us out to the Dominion, but I promise, Doctor, we’ve been keeping very close tabs on them this time. They made breakthroughs in hours where our people hadn’t made any progress in years. Now they tell me they’ve made a major discovery, but they won’t tell me what it is unless you’re one of the agents being sent to Salavat.” Leaning closer, Erdona lowered his voice to a whisper, “I can have Starfleet Command make it an order, Doctor, but I’d rather you consent to help us.”
Conflicted and more than a bit irritated, Bashir looked over Erdona’s shoulder at the trio. Jack shrugged. Patrick giggled. Lauren blew him a kiss.
Bashir sighed. “Okay, fine. Let’s get this over with.”
Jack poked Lauren’s arm several times in quick succession. “See? See? Told you he’d do it. Told you. Knew he would. Said so.” Lauren rolled her eyes and strutted away from her pestering cohort, leaving Jack with no one to torment but Patrick. After a momentary pause, a chastened Jack jabbed his index finger into the balding man-child’s fleshy shoulder and said in a softer voice, “See? Told you.”
The prospect of being cooped up with three lunaticsavants filled Bashir with dismay. Casting a fearful look at Erdona, he asked, “How long is this briefing supposed to take?”
“At least a few hours,” Erdona said. “There’s a lot to cover.”
Across the room, Lauren sat on a short couch and patted the cushion beside her as she called out to Bashir, “You should make yourself comfortable, Doctor.”
Erdona glanced at Lauren, then asked Bashir, “Does she ever run out of innuendos?”
Bashir chuckled. “Are you kidding? Innuendo is her primary language.” Gesturing toward the sitting area, he added, “We should get to work.”
“Not yet,” Erdona said. “I don’t want to go through all this twice, so I want them to brief your partner at the same time.” He stepped to a door that linked the Jack Pack’s quarters to the next one in the section and pressed the visitor signal. As soon as the channel opened, he said, “Ready to start when you are.”
A familiar, feminine voice replied over the comm, “Coming.”
The moment Bashir heard it, he felt his pulse quicken. No, he told himself, trying not to get his hopes up. It can’t be…
Then the door opened, and it was.
She was more beautiful than Bashir had remembered. Her blond hair was still long and straight, and she carried herself with poise and grace. Gone was the shy young woman who, because of a botched genetic resequencing, had languished in a decades-long semicataleptic state as a member of the Jack Pack, until an experimental surgery by Bashir had set her free. In her place was a mature, confident, genetically enhanced adult—a professional who was in every way at least Bashir’s equal and in some respects his better.
Her gaze met Bashir’s, and she flashed a jubilant grin. “Hello, Julian.”
For a few seconds he stood dumbstruck with equal parts surprise and joy. Recovering his wits, he smiled warmly at his long-absent lost love, “the one who had gotten away,” and replied in a voice that quaked as if he’d just hit puberty. “Hello.”
Everyone in the room fell silent, and Bashir realized that his reunion with Sarina Douglas had become the focus of attention.
“All right, then,” Erdona said, glossing over the moment by slapping Bashir’s shoulder and steering him toward the sitting area. “Let’s get to it.”
As Bashir and Erdona walked over to join Jack, Patrick, and Lauren, Sarina sidled up to Bashir. “Suave as ever, Julian. And to think”—she nodded at Erdona—“Aldo was afraid this would be awkward.”
“For a species you know nothing about, you had quite a deep file on the Breen,” Jack said. He paced in front of a vid screen with his left hand tucked into his right armpit and his right hand hovering in front of his face. Nibbling on a ragged fingernail, he continued his spiel. “Did you know you captured one of their starships three years ago? Says so in one of those classified memos from Starfleet. Found it adrift in the Ravanar system.” He let out a derisive chortle. “Adrift.”
Lauren interjected, “Starfleet slang for ‘disabled by Special Ops.’ They probably sabotaged its life-support systems while it was docked at Arawat.”
Bashir said, “Can we stay focused on the Breen, please?”
Patrick replied with mild confusion, “Their biology makes no sense.”
“What he means,” Jack said, “is that it’s inconsistent. You have four totally different physiological profiles for Breen, did you know that? Hm? Hm? You’ve got one report that says they’re humanoids with canine snouts—”
“Purely speculative,” Bashir said.
“Because of the armor,” Lauren said. “We know.”
Jack continued. “Another says their bodies are sacks of ammonia with skeletons and they just go poof at temperatures above fifteen degrees.”
“Poof,” echoed Patrick.
Jack added, “That’s from your own Major Kira—”
“Captain Kira,” Patrick said, correcting him.
“Actually,” Lauren said, “it’s—”
“Enough,” Bashir snapped, in no mood to be reminded of another friend and colleague who had moved on and left him standing still. “Stay on topic. Is that all you have on Breen physiology?”
“Hardly,” said Lauren. She held up a padd. “A Klingon file says they’re silicon based, but Starfleet thinks they’re carbon based. One file says the Breen have four-lobed brains and no blood, and another says they have no organs at all.”
Jack tossed three padds across the table in quick succession to punctuate his sentence fragments: “Two genders. Asexual. Hermaphroditic.”
“Schizophrenic is more like it,” Patrick said.
“If this was really their physiology, they’d have no use for Class-M worlds,” Jack said. “They’d be all over Class-P worlds. But they colonize Class-M planets almost exclusively. Why would they do that? Hm? Hm?”
Bashir traded a weary look with Erdona and shrugged. “To be difficult?”
Perhaps noting the Starfleet officers’ waning patience, Sarina asked Jack, “What’s your hypothesis about the Breen’s physiology?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Yes,” Sarina said, favoring Jack with a disarming smile, “I would.”
“Oh,” Jack said, his defensive façade crumbling. “Um, okay. I—we—think the Breen are humanoids. Well, most of them, anyway.”
Erdona and Bashir sat for
ward almost in unison. “Hang on,” Bashir said. “Are you suggesting there’s more than one kind of Breen?”
“You’re not seeing the big picture,” Jack said. “It’s bigger than that!”
“Lots bigger,” Patrick said.
“It’s massive,” Lauren said, in what Bashir could only imagine had been intended as an open-ended double entendre for anyone willing to infer it.
“This goes beyond biology,” Jack said, growing more excited. “Beyond blood or no blood, bones or gelatinous cartilage. It’s all in those speech vocoders.” He turned his gaze toward the ceiling. “Computer, play Breen speech extract one four alpha.” A harsh metallic screech filled the room. It made Bashir think of dueling drills and grinding gears. “Pause playback!” Pointing at the ceiling, Jack exclaimed to Bashir, “There! Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
Lauren replied, “That’s not organic syntax, it’s artificial. It’s the kind of signal a universal translator creates when it parses one language into another.”
Erdona seemed even more befuddled than Bashir. “So…the Breen language is computer generated? What, are they androids?”
Jack waved his hands furiously on either side of his head, and a snarl of mad frustration twisted his face. “No, no, no! You’re totally missing it! We’re saying there is no Breen language! Those vocoders aren’t for translating or amplifying—they’re for scrambling. They hide the speaker’s true language!”
Sarina asked, “To what end?”
“It’s how they hide,” Patrick said. “From each other.”
“I don’t understand,” Bashir said.
“He means,” Lauren said, “that Breen society is based on misinformation and obfuscation, inside and out. They hide their true natures from each other as well as from outsiders.”
“Wait,” Sarina said. “You just did the same thing Jack did—you referred to the Breen in a plural manner, implying they have more than one nature.”
Lauren cocked one eyebrow and rolled her head in a dismissive gesture. “Well, of course they do. That’s what we’re saying. It’s the whole point.”