by David Mack
Zh’Rilah rubbed her right thumb against her forefinger, a nervous habit she indulged when thinking on her feet. “Issue a statement saying the arrest was a case of mistaken identity. Be sure to apologize to ch’Thane, and to thank him for his cooperation. I want this story dead by tomorrow night. Let’s not give the Progressives a ready-made issue for more than one news cycle.” The shen and thaan wore blank expressions, as if waiting for the subject to change. She ushered them toward the door with a sharp tilt of her head. “We’re done. Go.”
The counselors slunk away like scolded children, and the chief counselor locked the door behind them. She trained her keen gray stare on the presider. “This is insane, sir. We can’t hold off everyone forever. So . . . who do you least fear disappointing?”
It was another question with no good answer. “We’ve held the government for almost three years, and our control’s as weak as ever. Our only saving grace is that almost no one outside this office knows how fragile the coalition really is. But if these protests continue . . . if the Progressives continue to win back the moderates and galvanize the backbenchers . . . then we’ll have a public-perception disaster on our hands. We can’t let that happen, Ferra.”
“I understand, sir. Short of assassination, how should we deal with ch’Thane?”
“Why rule out our best option?”
“It would play badly in the press, sir.”
“I suppose.” She had a point. He and many of those upon whose support he depended were desperate for zh’Thiin’s and ch’Thane’s genetic research to prove successful. They wanted healthy children as much as anyone else did. It was strictly for political reasons that ch’Foruta and the rest of the Treishya needed that breakthrough to be postponed just a little longer, until their hold on political power on Andor became unassailable.
Ch’Foruta relaxed into his chair, smoothed the crisp fabric of his trademark white suit, and felt as if the power of his office were almost a tangible commodity rather than an abstraction. “Let ch’Thane go back to his work with Professor zh’Thiin—but rescind his travel credentials, and tell th’Larro to sign a secret order to have all of ch’Thane’s communications monitored and recorded. He might have slipped one past us this time, but eventually, he’ll make a mistake, or someone will send him a message that gives the lie to his immaculate reputation.” The presider anticipated the future behind steepled fingers. “Then we’ll have him.”
Two
Green surf crashed upon a golden shore peppered with countless white shards—the remnants of millions of seashells, all of them broken like promises. B’hava’el, the star that Bajorans called their sun, held court high overhead, blanching the teal sky, and a sultry tropical breeze carried the scents of jungle flowers and salt water. Three gulls wheeled in tight, intersecting circles close to the water. Their shrill cries sounded faint behind the steady roar of breaking waves.
Walking on the beach, hand in hand with Julian Bashir, and knowing there wasn’t another sentient being on the island, it felt to Sarina Douglas like paradise. It was so beautiful as to seem almost surreal, so idyllic that it felt like the creation of a clever holosuite programmer. But this was no simulation. She and Bashir had planned this vacation for months, and now that the new Deep Space 9 starbase was up and running—with its hospital and security systems both fully operational—the senior deputy chief of security and chief medical officer were treating themselves to some well-deserved and long-overdue R & R.
But though she felt the warmth of his hand in hers, she knew he wasn’t fully there; his thoughts were distant, lending him an aspect of somber distraction that clashed with his beach attire: sandals, loose navy blue swim trunks, an off-white, tropical-weight linen shirt.
She gave his hand a firm but gentle squeeze. “Hey.”
He hardly looked at her, despite the revealing quality of her violet bikini and the gauzy turquoise wrap tied unevenly around her waist.
They continued to stroll in silence. Douglas trod with care along the damp, wave-packed beach, mindful of sharp corners on the shells beneath her bare feet. “You okay?” She squinted against the beauty of a world almost too bright for her to see. “I almost feel like I’m alone here.”
A sheepish smile brightened Bashir’s face. “Forgive me.” He looked away, toward a hazy white horizon. “It’s just a bit hard for me to let go sometimes.”
She pushed a windblown tangle of blond hair from her eyes. “Anything in particular?”
Drawing him out had grown difficult in recent weeks, forcing Douglas to become more patient. After he’d taken a long moment to find the right words, he replied, “The president.”
The mere allusion to the assassination cast a pall over the moment. It was a tragedy whose effects the two of them felt most keenly. Douglas counted it as a personal failure that Nanietta Bacco, the President of the United Federation of Planets, the leader who had guided the Federation and its interstellar neighbors through the nightmare of the final Borg blitzkrieg, should die on her watch, the victim of a sniper attack aboard Deep Space 9. Five days earlier, despite all of Bashir’s medical expertise and efforts, the mortally wounded commander in chief had expired on a transporter platform before she could be moved to the new starbase’s state-of-the-art hospital.
Now the people of the Federation were in mourning; the entire quadrant was racked by political upheavals. No one had blamed them for the president’s death, but Douglas knew that had it not been for the fierce loyalty and protection of Captain Ro Laren, she and Bashir both could easily have been cast as scapegoats, drummed out of Starfleet, and condemned to take refuge in the fringe sectors, pariahs with a president’s blood on their hands.
Instead, she was forced to seek comfort in platitudes. “It wasn’t our fault.”
“So I’ve told myself . . . again and again. Somehow, I never quite believe it.” Dredging up the memory put an edge on his voice. “I keep going over those moments in my mind. Asking myself what else I might have done. What I might’ve done differently.”
“There was nothing you could have done, Julian.”
Bashir resisted her consolation. “So everyone says.” He closed his eyes for a moment before breathing a dejected sigh. “I know it’s true. But it’s no comfort.”
She halted him with a gentle tug on his hand. Turning, she pressed her pale palm against his brown, bearded cheek. “You and I are genetically enhanced, but that doesn’t mean we can work miracles. We might be special, but in all the ways that really matter, we’re only human.”
“Maybe that’s not good enough anymore.”
Douglas recoiled, confused. “Meaning?”
He took a deep breath and looked away. “I don’t know.”
“I’m not sure I believe you.”
He let go of her hand and waded ankle-deep into the rolling surf. The hunch of his back, the slump of his shoulders—they were the hallmarks of a man laboring under a terrible weight. “There are days when I feel like I’ve lost my way. Like I’ve forgotten who I am.”
The timbre of his voice troubled her; he sounded as if he were making a confession. She hoped she was wrong. “This isn’t just about the president, is it?”
“No.” His eyes hinted at guilt and remorse. “I’m not saying it’s anyone’s fault but my own . . . but I think it started on Salavat.”
It had been a few years since she and Bashir had returned from a covert mission to that frozen Breen planet on behalf of Starfleet Intelligence. The duo had infiltrated a top-secret Breen military shipyard to stop the Typhon Pact from developing a working slipstream drive based on designs it had stolen from Starfleet’s shipyard in Mars orbit above Utopia Planitia. By all accounts the mission had ended in success, but Bashir had never spoken of it after his official Starfleet Intelligence debriefing—not until now.
Douglas waded into the balmy water, eased her way to Bashir’s side, and rested a consoling hand on his shoulder. “Talk to me, Julian.”
“What am I supposed to say? I k
new what I was doing. For a while I even made myself believe that it was the right thing. I had a mission vital to Federation security. Presidential orders.” Regret seemed to gnaw at him from some unreachable place deep inside. “A license to kill.”
“You did what was necessary.”
“Maybe. But I wish I hadn’t been the one to do it.” His sorrow was contagious. “All the times I’d played at being a spy in the holosuite, I never lost myself in the role the way I did on Salavat. . . . Something happened to me down there. I took lives I could’ve spared. I made choices I’d give anything now to take back. . . . I’m a doctor, Sarina. A healer. And I let myself turn into a killer because—” He cut himself off, and the incomplete thought alarmed Douglas.
“Why?” She sensed the truth in his averted eyes. “Because of me?”
“It wasn’t your fault. I told myself all the lies I needed to hear. It was for the uniform. For Starfleet. For the Federation.” He shot a bitter look skyward. “For my president.”
“All good reasons.”
“Not good enough to excuse murder. Not even when it’s sanctioned by the state.”
Douglas had no idea where to begin assuaging Bashir’s conscience, or her own. Though she had told Bashir shortly after the Salavat mission about her long-term assignment within Starfleet Intelligence—attracting the attention of Section 31 so that she could infiltrate the shadowy agency and help orchestrate its downfall—she had never admitted that her reason for manipulating him toward such a bloody outcome on Salavat was to redeem him as a prospective agent for Section 31, which had tried and failed to recruit him on several previous occasions. Though her gambit had proved successful in deceiving her Section 31 handler L’Haan, she wasn’t sure Bashir would ever be able to forgive her for coaxing him into lethal espionage.
Bashir’s combadge chirped from inside the pocket of his swim trunks. He retrieved the tiny metallic device. It chirped again in his hand. “Don’t they know I’m on vacation?”
“Could be an emergency.” Douglas hoped Bashir was as eager for a change of subject at that moment as she was. “You should answer it.”
He tapped it with his thumb, opening the channel. “This is Bashir.”
A familiar nasal voice answered over the comm, “Thank the Blessed Exchequer!”
Bashir’s brow creased with confusion and mild annoyance. “Quark?” After a moment he recovered his composure and pinched the bridge of his nose as he silently reminded himself of the Ferengi’s elevated diplomatic status. “How can I be of service, Mister Ambassador?”
“I apologize for disturbing you on your vacation, Doctor, but I need you to come by the embassy as soon as possible.”
Douglas and Bashir traded perplexed looks. “For what reason?”
“I’d rather not say over an open channel, Doctor. Let’s just say . . . it’s urgent.”
• • •
Business was brisk and the profits were respectable at the new Quark’s Public House, Café, Gaming Emporium, Holosuite Arcade, and Ferengi Embassy to Bajor—or, as most visitors to The Plaza aboard the new Deep Space 9 simply referred to it, Quark’s.
Its proprietor and namesake hurried from his office, padd in hand, checking the latest inventory and sales reports from his second establishment, the one he’d left behind on the surface of Bajor when he’d opened his new flagship location on the Federation’s impregnable new space station extraordinaire. He had left his planetside Bar, Grill, and Gaming House under the stewardship of Treir, a keen-witted young Orion woman who had climbed the ranks in Quark’s organization, from dabo girl to general manager, in just under a decade. Some—including Treir herself—might have called her progress slow, but for a woman in an establishment owned and operated by a Ferengi, the upward trajectory of her career was nothing shy of spectacular.
Looking up from Treir’s report, Quark saw diminishing profits at every turn. The portion sizes of the replicated desserts were at least three percent too large; his oaf of a bartender spilled another pitcher of Pacifican Sunrise cocktails; a faulty panel was frustrating a holosuite customer who no doubt would leave without renting a program unless his dilemma was fixed immediately; and he estimated that slow service by the waitstaff was reducing table turns by nine percent over the course of an average business day. How am I supposed to stay in business when all my workers seem committed to driving me out of it?
He grumbled under his breath and reminded himself to be thankful for the absurdly generous terms of his lease on the premium commercial space—an agreement made possible by the fact that Quark’s bar was also the Ferengi Embassy to Bajor. Then he tried to forget he had become an ambassador only through an act of charity by his younger brother, Rom, who a decade earlier had somehow blundered his way into the exalted office of Grand Nagus of the Ferengi Alliance.
Ten years under the rule of Rom, and the Alliance is still solvent, Quark mused with well-earned cynicism. Will the ironies of the Blessed Exchequer never cease?
In one quick circuit of the main floor, Quark dispatched a repair technician to fix the broken holosuite menu, sent a terse order to his systems manager to fix the portion-control codes on the replicators, slung a few choice epithets at his butterfingered Bolian bartender, and told his hostess to send checks to the customers at tables 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42, so that new patrons could be seated before the current ones put down roots and had to be phasered out.
Quark was about to ferret out another half-dozen crises in need of fast action when he noted the arrival of Doctor Bashir. Wasting no time on such niceties as apologies, he hurried through a cluster of customers who had spilled over from the gaming area, bladed through the crowd thronging the bar, and greeted the physician with a sharp-toothed grin. “Doctor!”
“You said it was urgent.” He sounded upset, but still managed to add with grudging respect, “Mister Ambassador.”
“Yes, I did. Follow me.” He led Bashir through a dense knot of loudly chatting drinkers.
Bashir had to shout to be heard over the cheers of the crowd around the dabo table. “Where are we going?”
“My office.” When they reached Quark’s private sanctum, the doctor seemed just as relieved as the Ferengi to escape the sonic assault of the packed entertainment club, even though the human’s puny ears couldn’t possibly be as sensitive to noise as were a Ferengi’s prodigious lobes. Quark stepped behind his desk. “Please, have a seat.”
“I’ll stand.”
The doctor’s manner struck Quark as oddly curt. “Are you sure?”
“I won’t be staying long. Now tell me why I cut my vacation short to fly back here.”
So much for courtesy. Quark unlocked his top desk drawer, took out a small isolinear chip, and pushed it across the desk to Bashir. “I was told to give you this message.”
Suspicious but curious, Bashir picked up the chip. “Told by whom?”
“The Department of External Audits.” He noted from Bashir’s expression that he didn’t recognize the agency’s name. “Ferenginar’s foreign-intelligence service. I’m speaking to you right now as a diplomatic agent of the Ferengi government.”
The doctor turned the chip slowly between his thumb and forefinger. “Who’s it from?”
“No clue. All I know is that it contains holographic data, and it’s marked for your eyes only.” He entered a few commands on his desktop’s computer touch screen. “I’ve reserved Holosuite Five for you—and you have my word, its privacy controls are set to maximum.”
Bashir clenched the chip in his fist. “Thank you, Quark.”
“Thank me by paying your bar tab.” He shooed the human out of his office. “Now, hurry up. I can’t hold that holosuite all night, you know.”
The doctor left, no doubt eager to see what was on the chip. Quark decided not to slow him down by telling him the holosuite time would be charged to his tab.
• • •
Sequestered inside the soundproofed privacy of a locked holosuite, Bashir felt almost as if
he were up to something illicit. He studied the chip in his hand. For your eyes only, Quark had said. The expression echoed in Bashir’s thoughts, kindling his curiosity. What could the Ferengi government’s intelligence service want with him?
Only one way to find out.
He inserted the chip into a slot on the holosuite’s control panel. The illumination inside the holosuite dimmed as the program on the chip self-activated with a low, sonorous hum.
A pale blue light suffused the room, enveloping Bashir. Alien symbols flowed from the deck to the overhead in long, translucent strings. Eyeing them more closely, Bashir recognized them as Andorian alphanumeric characters. A pentagonal icon flashed through a repeating sequence for a few seconds, then it vanished. A melodious, feminine disembodied voice declared, “Counter-surveillance scan complete. Holosuite secure. Please identify yourself.”
“Doctor Julian Bashir.”
“Voiceprint confirmed. Scanning.” After a few seconds, the voice added, “Genetic scan confirmed. Thank you. Program loading. Stand by.”
The upward cascade of alien digits and symbols faded and was replaced by the gleaming steel surfaces of a pristine, windowless laboratory equipped with state-of-the-art medical instruments. Standing at arm’s length in front of Bashir, attired in gray scrubs and a white lab coat, was his Andorian former crewmate from the previous Deep Space 9 station, Thirishar ch’Thane. “Hello, Julian. I hope you’ll forgive the theatrics and intermediaries, but I had no other way to contact you. The first segment of this program is a prerecorded message. After it’s finished playing, the interactive segment will engage, to try to help answer the many questions I’m sure you’ll have.”
Holo-Shar half-turned and lifted his arm in a sweeping gesture. The program responded by making the laboratory vanish and summoning several overlapping screens of genetic code and helical scans, over all of which had been superimposed more data—this time in English, no doubt for Bashir’s exclusive benefit. “As you probably heard in the news,” Holo-Shar continued, “one of the key factors in Andor’s secession from the Federation was that its people—or, to be more precise, reactionaries in its parliament—blamed the Federation for withholding intelligence about the Shedai Meta-Genome that had been gathered in the twenty-third century as part of Operation Vanguard. My people think that information might hold the key to solving our fertility crisis by filling in blanks that the Yrythny ‘turnkey gene’ couldn’t.”