by David Mack
“All true,” ch’Foruta said. “But you’re not seeing the big picture, Valas. The coalition can stand until the next plebiscite, but we’ll still need to win that election—and if our numbers tank because of this mess at the Institute, we’ll have to find a way to turn them around and win back the moderates, or else we might as well gift wrap my gavel for the Progressives right now.” He reclined his chair and studied his advisers’ grave faces. “Any suggestions?”
Th’Larro’s antennae twitched with restrained excitement. “What if we start releasing more of the Meta-Genome data to zh’Thiin and her team? Jump-start their research program?”
His idea was met with doubt by zh’Rilah. “We’ve talked about this, Valas. Any good news out of zh’Thiin’s camp plays to the Progressives’ advantage. They’ve been painting themselves as the party of science for decades now.”
“Exactly. So we take it from them—hit them where they’re strongest, steal their best issue and make it our own.” The thaan turned toward ch’Foruta. “They’ll never see it coming. We give them everything they’ve been asking for and more. Pump money and data into their operation. Let them do whatever they can to fast-track a solution to the crisis.”
The presider knew he was rarely the smartest person in any room, though he was far from stupid—but he had no idea what th’Larro was driving at. “How does that help us, Valas? Our base will go insane if we publicize our support for zh’Thiin’s research.”
“That’s the best part, sir—we don’t publicize it. We tell zh’Thiin it’s not about politics, it’s about finding the cure. You know how Progressives think—they won’t even question it. Then, as soon as she finds the cure, we let it leak to the press that the Progressives accelerated her research program by promising the Typhon Pact its support for Andor’s membership, in exchange for giving zh’Thiin direct access to the Meta-Genome data.”
It was diabolical and just what ch’Foruta had wanted. “That’s brilliant, Valas. We make zh’Tarash look like a traitor and tarnish the Progressives for at least a generation, maybe two; we secure a majority in the popular vote, so we can stop looking over our shoulder every three years; and, best of all, we get the cure.” A satisfied nod. “How long to make it happen?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“For starters, the Tholians, but I suspect they’ll cooperate. The only other obstacle I can foresee would be reestablishing contact with Professor zh’Thiin. She and her people have been off the grid since the riot at the Science Institute’s headquarters.”
“All right. Get started, and make sure we retain at least some plausible deniability.”
Zh’Rilah dismissed the other counselors. “Thank you.” She watched her two peers leave, then fixed the presider with a shrewd glare.
Despite being unnerved by the zhen’s attention, ch’Foruta met it head-on. “What, Ferra?”
“This is a dangerous game you’re playing, sir. If anyone finds out about it—”
“I’ll know they got it from one of you three, and I’ll have you all shot.”
His dark humor only made zh’Rilah more insistent. “Sir, I’m serious. The potential blowback on a disinformation campaign this big could be devastating—not just for us personally, but for the party. It depends on a lot of elements going right, at precisely the right times. If something disrupts the timetable—”
“Relax. Valas knows what he’s doing. Besides, it’s not as if we’re going to live or die by the grace of a million tiny details. The only thing that really matters is that we beat zh’Tarash to the punch in the media. Once our version of the truth gets out, the Progressives will be stuck playing defense—or as it’s known in politics, losing.”
Eight
It was a fact of life for Starfleet personnel that orders of any kind could come with no warning or explanation, only an expectation that they would be obeyed. As much as Douglas had tried to acclimate herself to this arbitrary state of affairs, she still found herself perplexed to receive an early morning summons to the station’s hospital complex for a medical exam.
It’s been less than seven months since my last physical. Everything checked out fine. Why do they need to see me again so soon?
Sector General, Deep Space 9’s expansive and state-of-the-art medical facility, was located in the main body of the station, directly beneath The Plaza, a sprawling level of dining, recreational, and commercial spaces. The hospital occupied more than a quarter of the vast, circular deck. Unlike its bare-bones forebear, the infirmary on the old DS9, Sector General comprised several operating suites; dozens of laboratories; wards for post-operative recovery, intensive care, and quarantine; and dedicated offices for a wide range of medical specialties, including obstetric, pediatric, ophthalmic, and orthopedic medicine, as well as dentistry.
Douglas stepped out of the turbolift into the wide outer passageway that ringed the medical complex. Directly in front of her yawned the broad, brightly lit entrance to the hospital. In the center of the reception area stood a large circular information desk, its façade boldly emblazoned with the words SECTOR GENERAL in Federation Standard, its polished duranium countertop uncluttered and unblemished. Douglas passed by the desk and smiled at the civilian receptionist stationed there. Along the curving wall behind the gatekeeper’s post, armed security officers stood at the entrance to a number of corridors that radiated away from the entrance. Navigating by memory, she followed the center corridor to the main suite of exam rooms.
The wide hallway was bright and pristine, and its air was laced with the astringent odor of medical-grade disinfectants. To the ordinary noses of the doctors, nurses, and technicians she passed, the hospital’s atmosphere might have come to seem routine, but to Douglas’s genetically enhanced perceptions, the place smelled so aggressively clean that it was almost offensive.
Arriving at the intersection that separated the recovery rooms from the exam stations, she stopped at the corner station and caught the attention of the duty nurse, a young male Trill attired in green surgical scrubs. “Pardon me.”
“Yes, Commander?”
“I was ordered to report for a physical?”
He pointed down the corridor in front of her. “Exam Eight, fourth door on your right. The doctor’s waiting for you.”
“Thanks.” Still confused but at least relieved to know she wasn’t imagining the peculiar orders, she continued walking to the assigned examination room. As she stepped toward it, the door slid open, an implied invitation. Time to see what this is about.
She stepped inside; the door closed behind her. The only other person in the room stood off to one side. Her back was to Douglas, but the styling of her raven hair was unmistakable, despite her costume of a long blue physician’s jacket over a Starfleet doctor’s uniform. L’Haan turned to face Douglas, her hands tucked inside her jacket’s pockets. “Late. As always.”
There was nothing to be gained from arguing with the Vulcan woman, so Douglas cut to what mattered. “Do you have it?”
“Yes. But I am not sure I should give it to you.”
“I don’t have time for games, L’Haan.”
Steeply arched eyebrows hinted at diminishing patience. “I assure you, Miss Douglas, we do not regard anything about this situation as a game. The events you seek to set in motion pose tremendous dangers to everyone involved.”
Douglas resisted the urge to throttle L’Haan. “We’ve already covered this.”
“My superiors are not convinced that you appreciate the gravity of the situation. I’ve been directed to make sure that you do.” She paced in a slow orbit around Douglas, who pivoted to keep the other woman in her sights. “First, as tempting as we find the prospect of using Doctor Bashir’s impending disfavor as a means to his recruitment, that’s not why we’ve agreed to help you. The chief purpose of Section Thirty-one is to ensure the safety and continued existence of the Federation. We believe that winning back the friendship of the Andorian people is vital to those
objectives, and that the current pro tem administration’s embargo against Andor is not just petty, it’s self-defeating. It will drive Andor into an alliance with the Typhon Pact, an outcome we cannot permit. For those reasons, we’ve chosen to support Bashir’s efforts.”
“I’m sure he’d be deeply touched if he ever found out.”
The sarcasm only darkened L’Haan’s demeanor. “However, we cannot risk letting the Meta-Genome data be stolen. Consequently, we will monitor Bashir’s research. If we see any sign of a threat to his project’s secrecy, any hint that a foreign agent has gained access to the data, we will terminate the entire operation with extreme prejudice.”
Those final two words were a euphemism Douglas knew well; they had an old pedigree in intelligence work. Extreme prejudice was a polite way of saying that Section 31 was prepared to kill Bashir and everyone around him, and to destroy anything and everything necessary, to keep the full Meta-Genome data under exclusive Federation control.
L’Haan stopped in front of Douglas. “Do you understand?”
“Perfectly.”
“Good.” L’Haan reached into a pocket of her jacket, took out a small translucent envelope containing ten isolinear chips, and handed them to Douglas. “Make certain that Bashir understands before he decrypts this data. Once he does, there will be no going back.” Then the Vulcan stepped past Douglas and left the exam room, signaling the end of the conversation.
Douglas stood for a moment, staring at the envelope in her hand, then snapped herself back into action. She turned and hurried out the door after L’Haan. “Hey, what about—”
There was no sign of the Section 31 handler in the corridor outside the exam room. The passageway was empty for two sections in either direction, and even when Douglas strained to listen for footfalls that matched L’Haan’s stride, she heard nothing but the hum of the life-support systems and the gentle feedback tones of Federation medical equipment.
It was hard not to succumb to envy. Someday I need to learn how she does that.
• • •
Bashir didn’t hear his office’s door chime until it warbled for the second time. He sat back from his three-dimensional holo-display and grumbled, “Come in.”
The door unlocked at his invitation and slid open with a soft hush to reveal Douglas. She hurried inside and used the manual controls beside the door to close and lock it beside her.
Bashir observed his inamorata with bewilderment. “Is something wrong?” Douglas faced him and began unzipping her uniform jacket. “Sarina, we’re on duty. I don’t think this is—”
“Be quiet.” Affixed to the inside of her jacket with strips of medical adhesive were ten isolinear chips. She extricated them and passed them in two fistfuls to Bashir.
The slender computer chips were cool in his hands despite having been concealed against Douglas’s torso. He watched the light play off their variously colored surfaces, then he looked up at his beloved. “Are these . . . ?” She confirmed that what he held in his hands was the Meta-Genome data they had sought through her connections in Section 31. “Who knows?”
“You, me, and the organization.” She pressed her palms on his desk and leaned across it to confide in a whisper, “And we have to make sure it stays that way.”
It wasn’t hard to imagine the caveats with which Section 31 had provided the data. “Let me guess—if anyone finds out, we’ll all vanish into the ether.”
“Something like that.” She placed one hand over the pile of data chips. “Before you start decrypting these, I have to ask: Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?”
“You know I am. I’ve made that abundantly clear.”
“Yes, but at the time the situation was strictly hypothetical. Now we have the data in our hands. This isn’t just what-if anymore. This is the moment of truth, Julian.” She picked up one chip, stood, and circled around his desk, holding up the small rectangular data-storage device like a holy relic. “For once, think before you act. Once you access the information on these chips, you’ll be guilty of espionage against the Federation, and I’ll be an accessory.”
“If you want to get technical about it, we’re already guilty of espionage.”
“True. But we could just vaporize these chips right now, and no one would ever be the wiser. Once you retrieve the data and start working on it, we’ll have crossed a line. One that could mean the end of our careers and spending the rest of our lives in solitary confinement on rocks with no names, in star systems no one’s bothered to put on a map.”
“We can’t concern ourselves with worst-case scenarios.”
“Actually, that’s the best-case scenario. Even if everything goes perfectly, and you find a cure, and you get it to the Andorians, once you do you’ll be arrested, court-martialed, and in all likelihood disappeared before anyone has a chance to thank you.”
He didn’t like where this was going. “Dare I ask what constitutes a worst-case outcome?”
“If Section 31 thinks your security has been compromised, or that anything you do poses a risk to the safety of the Federation, they’ll kill you, me, and anyone else who might be even tangentially involved. Then they’ll erase your research, bury the Meta-Genome data, and probably exterminate the Andorians while framing the Tholians for the genocide.”
Bashir reclined and let her sobering assessment sink in. “I see. . . . Well, one has to give them credit for being thorough, I suppose.”
“This isn’t a joke, Julian. I know we’re acting with the best of intentions, but I’m afraid we might be opening Pandora’s box here.”
It was clear to him that whatever had transpired in her meeting with her Section 31 handler, it had left her shaken. He abandoned his defense mechanism of glib pretense and sat forward. “Do you think we can’t keep the data a secret?”
“No operation is ever perfectly secure. No matter what precautions we take, there’s a risk our efforts might be observed and analyzed by someone who knows what to look for.”
He picked up one of the chips. “Imagine for a moment if it was the human race that was dying. Would we be as quick to throw away a chance like this if our species was on the brink?”
“Maybe not—but that isn’t what’s really at stake, Julian. If we lose control of the Meta-Genome data, we might be responsible for the deaths of tens of billions of sentient beings, all over the galaxy. Just because we’re using it to heal doesn’t mean others would be so noble.”
“I agree.” He gathered up the isolinear chips, plucked the last one from Douglas’s fingers, and put them all into the bottom drawer of his desk. “Computer: lock desk drawers.”
From an overhead speaker came the synthetic female voice that seemed ubiquitous to Starfleet computer systems: “Drawers secured.”
Douglas wore a skeptical expression. “Now what?”
“Well, I can’t just plug those chips into my regular work console and start parsing the data. The moment it starts decrypting, we’d likely trigger who knows how many alarms.” He stroked his beard pensively, a nervous habit born of his inability to sit still most of the time. “I’ll need a dedicated computer core for this project, one that can be partitioned from the station’s network. Can we take over one of the auxiliary cores?”
“That won’t work. We could isolate one core from the others, but you wouldn’t be able to access it without sending signal traffic over the station’s network. Even if you encrypt the data in transit, that’s no guarantee your work won’t send up red flags.”
“Then we’ll need something completely autonomous.” The two of them stood together, concentrating on the challenge ahead of them. Then their eyes widened in unison, and Bashir suspected they had arrived simultaneously at the same solution. He blurted, “A runabout—”
“—is a mobile computer core!” Douglas was almost giddy. “We could swap out all the modular mission systems on the Tiber with medical equipment, turn it into a traveling medlab.”
“We’ll need a cover story. A medic
al research survey in the Gamma Quadrant, maybe.”
The deputy security chief nodded. “That might work. Let me check its mission schedule. If it’s clear, I can set you up as soon as tomorrow. Any work you do on the runabout, we can pass off as prep for the survey. The only risk factors will be securing the data chips in transit and making sure no one hacks the runabout’s computer core to see what we’re working on.”
“How do we do that?”
“You worry about finding the cure.” She kissed his forehead. “Leave security to me.”
Nine
Liberated from the invisible, smothering embrace of the transporter’s annular confinement beam, Commander Sam Bowers drew a grateful breath. I know it’s for our safety, but I wonder if we set ours a bit too strong.
Shaking off the claustrophobic effect, he willed himself into motion and marched down the center aisle of the cargo bay of the civilian freighter S.S. Ibiza at a quick step, on a straight line for the person who had summoned him here: the Aventine’s chief of security, Lieutenant Lonnoc Kedair. The Takaran woman was tall and cut a trim but imposing figure, with her finely scaled green hide, jet-black mane of hair, and piercing violet eyes, whose hue matched that of the natural, intricate symmetrical markings on her forehead and chin.
She was standing beside the freighter’s commanding officer, Captain Satal, a lean, fiftyish Thallonian man whose bleached-white topknot and pencil-thin mustache contrasted sharply with his dark crimson skin and loose-fitting robes of black Tholian silk. He looked to Bowers like someone who aspired to be an Orion merchant prince.
Hoping to avoid being drawn into a pointless argument, Bowers eschewed eye contact with the freighter captain as he addressed Kedair. “Sitrep, Lieutenant.”
“We have a small problem, sir. Specifically, jurisdiction.”
He’d been expecting news of resistance, not legal minutiae. “Come again?”
Satal interjected, “Your troops have no right to be on my ship—which I told you and your captain before you beamed these jackbooted thugs into my cargo bay.”