by David Mack
It was time to bait the trap. “I think the prize will be what you’ve had me chasing all along: Doctor Bashir himself.”
L’Haan was not easily ensnared. “I doubt he would pledge himself to our cause in the name of reciprocity, no matter how profound his gratitude might be.”
“True—especially since he thinks I’ll be acquiring this through back channels in Starfleet Intelligence. If he thought we were providing him the Meta-Genome data, he’d refuse it. No, what’ll bring him to us is that after years of spurning our invitations, when this little crusade of his is over, no matter the outcome, he’ll be ruined in Starfleet. He’ll have nowhere else to go.”
The Vulcan considered that. “Logical. If his effort fails, he will leave Starfleet in disgrace and become a persona non grata in his profession. If he succeeds, he will become a folk hero to billions, not to mention every living Andorian, but his superiors in Starfleet and the Federation will all but crucify him in the court of public opinion. He will be branded a traitor.”
“Bashir hasn’t taken our hand because until now, he’s never really been drowning.” Douglas knew she was telling L’Haan exactly what Section 31 had long hoped to hear. “Get me the Meta-Genome data, any way you can. I guarantee you—once I give it to Julian, it won’t be long before he’s in over his head. After that . . . the rest’ll be up to you.”
Seven
Success! After countless failed experiments, a seemingly endless parade of dead-end forays into recombinant retroviral vectors for protein resequencing in active biological matrices, Shar was so enthralled by the tantalizing promise of a real breakthrough that it took him nearly half a minute to realize the Science Institute’s general alarm was trumpeting through his laboratory.
What in the name of Uzaveh . . . ? He looked up from the hooded display of his electron microscope and glanced over his shoulder at the flashing red alert panel on the wall. If this turns out to be another bomb hoax—
His open-ended vow of vengeance was cut off by the sound of the lab’s door sliding open and the arrival of an oddly frazzled Professor zh’Thiin. “Shar! We have to go!” She beckoned him with frantic waves. “Now! Let’s go!”
“But I’ve almost isolated a—”
“Leave it!” He understood now: she wasn’t irate, she was terrified. He hit a key on the scanner, saving the latest readings. On his way to the door, he called out toward the ceiling, “Computer! Dump all data to the backup sites, Emergency Protocol Settesh. Execute!”
“Burst transmission commencing,” the computer replied as Shar followed zh’Thiin out of the lab and into the long, pale-gray corridor outside.
The professor was jogging, and Shar made an effort not to outrun her but rather to pace her, so that he could remain by her side to protect her, if the situation came to that. “What’s happening? Why are we heading to the shuttle platforms?”
Labored breaths slowed zh’Thiin’s reply. “The protesters promoted themselves to a mob.”
“That didn’t take long.” It had been only hours since a planet-wide news service sympathetic to the Treishya’s political agenda had begun a non-stop series of on-air tirades against the Science Institute and its work on the fertility crisis, with special efforts made to vilify Shar and zh’Thiin. He had written it off as a cheap smear campaign when he came to work that morning; only now did he see it for what it truly was: a call to arms. “I presume we’re evacuating the Institute as a precaution?”
The professor’s answer was trumped by a thunderous rumble of something exploding a few floors beneath them. Overhead the lights flickered and went dark as power failed throughout the building. Then came the savage roar of bloodthirsty voices. Zh’Thiin pushed herself to an all-out sprint and answered between gasps for air, “Not anymore!”
Without power the turbolifts were useless, so Shar and zh’Thiin detoured down a transverse passage. Rounding the corner, they collided with almost a dozen other researchers at the door to the emergency stairwell, which led to the rooftop. Shar marshaled the panicked scientists into order through force of will and sheer volume. “Single file! Upstairs! Move!” The group surged into the smoke-filled stairwell and ascended by leaps and bounds, driven onward by the clamor of pursuers making their way up from a few flights below.
No one spoke during the retreat to the roof; they were all too busy coughing as they gulped great mouthfuls of choking smoke and winced against the effects of tear gas. The noxious fumes burned the back of Shar’s throat as he shepherded his colleagues upstairs toward fresh air, and less than a flight from the top he fell to his knees, blind and suffocating.
Then a rush of cold, clean wind flooded the stairwell, and he could breathe again. Thank Uzaveh, someone got the door open. In greedy gulps he filled his lungs and found the strength to get up and keep climbing. Stumbling and weaving like a drunkard he navigated the final switchback. The sight of blue sky pulled him forward, its attraction almost magnetic.
He tripped over the threshold as he passed through the doorway, but Professor zh’Thiin caught him before he face-planted on the roof. She pulled him to his feet. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” He coughed hard, then pointed at the nearest shuttlecraft. “Let’s go.”
In too much pain to worry about pride, Shar let the middle-aged zhen guide him across the rooftop to the shuttle. As soon as they were inside, a gravel-voiced thaan in a lab tech’s uniform shut the hatch behind them and shouted to the pilot, “That’s everyone! Go!”
Engines whined, and Shar suffered a moment of disequilibrium during liftoff until the inertial dampers kicked in. Their shuttle was airborne in seconds, along with the two others that were kept atop the Science Institute for both official travel and emergencies.
Shar tried to move toward one of the nearby viewports, and zh’Thiin tightened her grip on his arm until he assured her in a steady voice, “I’m fine.” She let him go, and he eased over to a viewport to steal a look at the Science Institute, which was shrinking into the distance. Smoke rose from dozens of broken windows on its lower floors, and a ring of bodies surrounded the modern building, blocking all its ground-floor exits. A small mob had arrived on the now-empty rooftop and appeared to have busied itself setting fires.
One of the research fellows, a sweet-tempered young shen named Carrinor sh’Feiran, sidled up to Shar to have a gander at the spectacle below. “I never thought I’d see Andorians treat science like this.” Her cherubic features turned dark with rage. “It’s a disgrace.”
“That’s putting it mildly.” Shar watched the flames on the rooftop climb higher. “From where I’m standing, it looks like someone’s trying to start a civil war.”
Sh’Feiran looked pained. “I just don’t understand those idiots. Don’t they know we’re trying to help them? To save them? To save our entire species?”
“I guess some people would rather die as they are than risk changing to survive.”
“Fine, I’m happy to let them die,” sh’Feiran grumbled as she turned away. “But why can’t they let the rest of us choose to live?”
Shar added her lament to the long and growing list of questions for which he had no good answers. He forced himself to tear his attention from the mindless destruction on the surface and turn back toward Professor zh’Thiin. “Where are we headed?”
“Our backup site.”
“The one in Kathela?”
She shook her head. “No, that one’s already under siege. Our ‘dark’ site.”
He searched his memory but drew a blank. “I didn’t know we had a dark site.”
“No one outside the Institute does. We built it through an intermediary, off the books.”
In less violent times, Shar would have found such secrecy regarding public resources suspect, but given their circumstances it seemed prudent. “Can I ask where it is?”
“The Tlanek Ice Cap. Hope you packed a sweater.”
• • •
Kellessar zh’Tarash had always wondered what the Parliament Andoria looked l
ike from the lofty vantage point of Presider ch’Foruta, who sat alone on the highest tier of the dais at the front of the chamber. From zh’Tarash’s assigned place in the fourth hemispherical tier of seats facing the dais, it resembled nothing so much as a frenzied mob teetering on the edge of a riot. Now, reeling from news of the protesters who had overrun the Science Institute, the ever-fragile peace of the planet’s ruling political body seemed in greater peril than ever.
The roar of hoarse shouts was tamed for a moment by ch’Szaan’s amplified bellowing: “This is an outrage!” the New Restoration Party leader addressed the chamber. “At a time when the people of Andor need to unite, the Treishya and their puppets turn us against one another!”
“Lies!” raged the Speaker of the Parliament, a loyal Treishya partisan named Marratesh ch’Lhorra. “We had nothing to do with what happened at the Science Institute! That was just the price that Professor zh’Thiin and her kind paid for ignoring the will of the people!”
The speaker’s tirade goaded Unity Caucus leader th’Forris into the verbal fray. “How can you say your party isn’t responsible? We hear your rants all over that puppet network of yours.”
“Andor News Service is no one’s puppet.”
A bark of derision telegraphed th’Forris’s contempt. “We’re not blind, you know. We all know ANS is nothing more than your party’s propaganda machine, spewing hate and lies around the clock. Do you deny they called for an attack on the Institute?”
“We aren’t responsible for what ANS broadcasts.”
Before th’Forris could retort, he was accosted from his right by Chayni zh’Moor, the leader of the True Heirs of Andor. “You and the rest of your ilk in the Opposition always spout the same pathetic complaints, blaming ANS for your troubles. You’re just angry the people get to hear the truth now, raw and unfiltered by your sycophants in the media.”
“Truth?” shouted ch’Szaan. “The only truth here is that your friends are telling people to stand in the way of progress, to sabotage our only hope for survival!”
Thufira sh’Risham, the leader of the Visionist Party, regarded ch’Szaan with fury and disgust. “We counsel the people of Andor to reject abomination in all its forms. We won’t let Professor zh’Thiin inflict her mad experiments on us—or mutate us like germs in a dish.”
As much as zh’Tarash wanted to remain silent and above the debate, she could not bring herself to let such an ignorant assertion pass without rebuttal. “Genetic therapy is not mutation, it’s medicine. The work that Professor zh’Thiin and her team are doing at the Science Institute is a labor for the good of all Andorians, an effort to guarantee the survival of our species.”
Speaker ch’Lhorra pounced on zh’Tarash’s statement, as if he had been waiting for it. “If genetic engineering is such a medical boon, why did the Federation ban it nearly two centuries ago, with our unanimous support? Could it be, perhaps, that it represents a perversion of nature?”
“Any technology can be abused or misused,” zh’Tarash said.
“But you admit the procedure zh’Thiin and her associates propose would mutate us?”
Ch’Szaan interjected, “It would be the correction of an acquired defect in our biology. If anything, it would be the reversal of a previous mutation.”
His explanation inflamed the passions of THA leader zh’Moor. “Who are we to question the will and wisdom of Uzaveh? How do we presume to undo the work of His divine will?”
“Uzaveh is a deity of endless possibilities,” said th’Forris. “His teachings encourage us to explore and master our own nature.”
“But not to tamper with what He made!” sh’Risham erupted.
I can’t stand these idiots’ affected stupidity, zh’Tarash fumed. “We thwarted Uzaveh’s diseases a hundred times through the ages. We purged our bodies of His unwelcome parasites. We hunted half our world’s native fauna to extinction. Where were your protests then?”
The speaker cupped the microphone of his headset to add authoritative-sounding bass and resonance to his voice. “Don’t try to twist this issue with your semantic tricks and—”
“My logic is straight as an arrow,” zh’Tarash cut in. “Only your limited intellect makes it seem twisted, because you’re too stupid to follow an argument from A to B.”
Following her lead, ch’Szaan added, “We won’t stand by and let the Treishya hold the people of Andor hostage with scare tactics and obsolete superstitions!”
“You would call faith in Uzaveh the Infinite superstition?” sh’Risham screeched. “How dare you!” As the Visionist leader prowled through the aisles toward ch’Szaan, zh’Tarash knew her ally had taken his rhetoric a step too far. Before anyone could speak a calming word, fists and feet were flying and blood was being drawn. The huddled mass of the parliament’s members devolved into a brawl, a teeming pile of profanities and corporal punishments.
Sharp, explosive reports from the presider’s gavel halted the clumsy struggle. Bruised and bloodied eyes turned upward, toward the chamber’s highest dais. Presider ch’Foruta slammed his gavel against its block until everyone froze in place. “Stop it! Control yourselves! This is a disgrace! Exhibitions like this make me wonder why Andor even needs a parliament. Perhaps you should all take some time to reflect upon that question. Until such time as I hear persuasive arguments for this body’s continued existence, I declare it to be in recess.” With a final strike of his gavel he dismissed the shamed parliament.
No one protested. The presider’s actions were well within his executive purview, and considering the tenor of the moment, to some his decision might even have seemed prudent. But as the other members of the Parliament Andoria slunk away, and the presider himself made a quick and unceremonious exit from the hall, zh’Tarash was troubled by a twinge of dark suspicion—that Andor was on the brink of a civil war, a social implosion from which it would never recover. The survival of the Andorian species was already in grave peril; a massive and sudden reduction in population would hasten if not guarantee its extinction.
Standing alone in the evacuated hall, zh’Tarash knew she had to steer her government and her people away from certain self-destruction. She was sure that violent revolution was not the answer—but she was just as certain that, no matter how it was done, Ledanyi ch’Foruta and his governing coalition had to be removed from power before it was too late.
Though she was not a religious person, she found herself reflecting upon an oft-quoted line from The Liturgy of the Temple of Uzaveh: “The Path of Light can be found only by those who brave the Road of Storms and weather its ceremony of losses.”
She was too wedded to reason to believe she would ever find herself upon a Path of Light, but as she watched night settle upon the capital of Andor, she had no doubt that she had begun her own journey into the storm of a lifetime.
• • •
“This is getting out of control.” Presider ch’Foruta pivoted into his chair while his three senior advisers gathered on the other side of his desk. Outside his office window, a hazy sunset ambered the evening sky along the horizon, pursued by the creeping advance of a starry night. “I wanted pressure on zh’Thiin, not an assault on the Science Institute.”
His chief adviser, zh’Rilah, struck an optimistic note. “On the plus side, the riot at the Institute is playing well with our base. As long as we keep sh’Risham and zh’Moor as the face of the religious hard-liners, we can stand back and try to look like peace brokers.”
Ch’Foruta was not encouraged. “On the downside, the Science Institute just got burned to the ground on our watch. Forget that our base loves it. How do we spin it for the moderates?”
Sh’Donnos, the senior counselor for justice, set a padd on the presider’s desk. “My office can issue a statement deploring the violence. The draft is ready to go. We can order a halt to all violence and threaten swift consequences for anyone who disobeys.”
The suggestion earned a nod of approval from zh’Rilah. “That’s good. It’ll let us ke
ep a lid on anyone thinking about reprisals or escalation and cement the public’s perception of us as the law-and-order party.” She looked at th’Larro, the senior counselor for intelligence. “Valas?”
“We can use the riot at the Institute as cover the next time we get asked why it’s taking so long to develop a cure. That’ll help us position the Progressives and their moderate allies against the THA and the Visionists.”
“Making all of them look nonviable as governing parties,” ch’Foruta said. “It would be nice if we could establish ourselves as something other than ‘the least of all evils by default.’ ”
“We’re working on it,” zh’Rilah said. “Unfortunately, the riot hurt us with the moderates. We can put out statements and do all the damage control we want, but we’re going to take a hit.”
It wasn’t unexpected news, but it still worried ch’Foruta. “How big a hit?”
“Ten to fifteen points. Maybe more in the eastern provinces.”
Th’Larro seemed even more alarmed than the presider felt. “Any way to blunt that?”
The chief adviser rubbed her thumb against her forefinger as she pondered options. “We could distance ourselves from the rants on ANS by pointing the finger at the THA.”
The presider waved off that idea. “No, that’ll backfire. If we blame the THA, they’ll withdraw from the coalition. And the moment that happens—”
“The Progressives call for a no-confidence vote,” zh’Rilah said, finishing his thought. “Same thing happens if we blame the Visionists. So what do we do—disavow the protesters?”
A low harrumph from sh’Donnos. “Our base would love that.”
“So, take the hit,” th’Larro said. “What difference does it make? It’s not as if sh’Risham or zh’Moor would ever let a no-confidence vote get off the floor. And even if they did, ch’Lhorra would bury it in points of order. Hell, we could drop thirty points in the polls and it wouldn’t matter. No one’s dissolving the government as long as we don’t turn our friends against us.”