by David Mack
Douglas refused to give up. “What about Cardassia Prime?”
“A moderate presence,” Data said. “It might be possible to reach the surface without being noticed by Uraei, but evading its attention for any duration of time on the surface would be exceedingly difficult.”
“Yes, it would,” Bashir said. “Unless one had help from friends in high places.” He turned a weary look of resignation at Douglas. “Or one old friend, in one very high place.” He shook his head, as if in denial of what he was about to say. “Data, set course for Cardassia Prime. I’ll explain why once we’re under way.”
Fifteen
A spoofed transponder and an artfully worded message paved the way for Archeus to make an unscheduled private landing in the heart of the capital on Cardassia Prime. Before permission to set down had been granted, Bashir hadn’t been sure this gambit would work. He could easily have imagined a dozen scenarios in which his presumption and hubris would have earned him and his friends a curt dismissal or far worse.
Instead, a cityscape the color of cinnamon spread out below Archeus, radiant beneath a sky painted a thousand hues of pink. No escort vessels met Data’s ship; no special instructions were issued to its pilot. To accommodate its arrival other vessels were ordered out of the capital’s protected airspace—a precaution frequently exercised for incoming diplomatic transports. From the perspective of an average observer, there was nothing unusual about the approach heading granted to Archeus, or anything notable about the limited interaction between its pilot and Cardassia’s aerospace traffic control network.
Looking around at the rest of the passengers, Bashir found only portraits of calm. Data and Lal, Ozla Graniv and Sarina—none of them exhibited the least sign of anxiety. But when he caught his reflection in the transparent aluminum of the canopy, Bashir saw his own fear staring back at him as plain as day.
This is the best option, he reminded himself. Like it or not, there’s no one else you can turn to, not without putting them in danger. It’s this or surrender.
Archeus’s landing struts touched the ground with a soft bump. All at once the purr of the impulse engines and the roars of the navigational thrusters went quiet, leaving only the hiss of priming hydraulics and the susurrus of the ship’s ventilation system.
Outside the canopy, all Bashir saw were walls. Lal had set the vessel down inside a secluded courtyard, one surrounded by the residence of the planet’s elected leader, the castellan. It was as safe a space as Bashir could ask for, under the circumstances: free from surveillance devices, beyond the scope of tracking systems, its activities shielded from scrutiny under the colors of diplomatic privilege. Archeus couldn’t have had a safer haven. Nonetheless, Bashir expected at any moment to see a phalanx of armed Cardassian troops spill into the courtyard and surround the ship. He tensed for a betrayal he considered inevitable.
Sarina gave his shoulder a tender squeeze. “It’ll be okay, Julian.”
“I wish I could believe you. And I wish I could trust him.”
“Could you ever?”
He picked up his shoulder bag. “I guess we’ll find out.”
Data keyed in a command to open the ship’s starboard hatch and extend its ramp. “I suspect our hosts are waiting for us to disembark before they show themselves.” He gestured aft, toward the corridor that led away from the command deck. “Shall we?”
“By all means,” Bashir said.
Data led the way with Bashir and Sarina at his back. Lal and Graniv brought up the rear. The group exited Archeus and descended the ramp.
As predicted, a door to the castellan’s residence opened as they left the ship. First to step through the open doorway were two male Cardassians attired in distinctive white suits—the uniform of the newly formed civilian guard corps of the Cardassian head of state. They wore no armor and carried only the most limited of personal armaments. In a clear break from Cardassia’s recent militaristic norms, the castellan’s guard embodied an explicitly defensive ethos.
Behind the two guardians walked the elected leader of the Cardassian Union: none other than the former “plain and simple” tailor of the late Deep Space 9’s Promenade, an expatriate spy who became an ambassador before turning his steps homeward—Elim Garak.
The years since Bashir had last set eyes upon him had done nothing to dim the wily Cardassian’s predatory grin or dull the dramatic inflections of his cadence. “Doctor Bashir! My old friend. Can it really be you, here, after all these years?”
Bashir crossed the manicured lawn and stepped forward alongside Data so he could be the first to meet Garak. As Garak seized his extended his hand and shook it, Bashir smiled. “A pleasure to see you again, Castellan Garak.”
Garak fixed his wide-eyed attention upon Data. “We’ve met before as well.”
“Yes,” Data said. “Seventeen years ago, but only in passing. I said ‘hello’ to you outside your shop while I was walking on the Promenade of the former Deep Space Nine.”
The castellan shook Data’s hand. “You made quite the impression.”
“I am told I have that effect upon people.” He shifted Garak’s focus by continuing the introductions. “May I present my daughter, Lal, and Ms. Ozla Graniv from Seeker magazine.”
Garak tenderly lifted Lal’s hand and kissed the back of it. “Delighted.” He let go of Lal’s hand when he noticed Data’s stern glare of reproof. Graniv he welcomed with a nod. “Your reputation precedes you, Ms. Graniv.”
A polite smile from Graniv. “High praise to my profession.”
“And a withering rebuke to mine.”
Sarina leaned close to Bashir. “Are we sure it’s safe to linger out here?”
Garak replied, “Quite safe, my dear. After living in the shadow of the Obsidian Order, my people have formed a profound aversion to the surveillance state—as have I. Rest assured, no one can spy on us here—and if they did, the penalty would be most severe, indeed.”
“Good to know,” Bashir said. “Thank you.”
“Don’t be so quick with your gratitude, Doctor. I’m still of a mind to put you back on your ship and send you on your way.” Apparently in reaction to the consternation his remark had provoked in Bashir and the others, Garak continued, “I’m well aware that you’re all fugitives of the highest order in the Federation. Nothing new for you, Doctor, or for your inamorata”—he let contempt drip off that last word—“though I have to imagine being the target of an interstellar dragnet must be something of a new experience for your friends.”
“Not as novel as you might expect,” Data said.
Graniv’s poker face was steady. “I knew what I was getting into.”
“Be that as it may,” Garak said, “if I harbor your motley band for any length of time, I’ll be inviting a political imbroglio with the Federation—one my administration can ill afford.”
“All the more reason to keep our visit a secret,” Bashir said. He struck a more diplomatic note. “I know we’ve put you in a terrible position, and for that I apologize. Let us have an hour to refuel—and give me a chance to explain our predicament in private.”
Garak shot a wary look at his bodyguards, then he moved closer to Bashir. “Are you asking as a Starfleet officer? As a doctor? Or as a man in need of asylum?”
“I’m asking as your friend. . . . Help us, Elim.”
It might have been nothing more than Bashir’s imagination, but he thought he saw the faintest hint of jealousy in Garak’s eyes when the castellan glanced at Sarina. But then Garak looked back at Bashir and smiled. “Very well, Julian. For an old friend . . . anything is possible.”
• • •
It was unsettling to bear witness to paranoia. No sooner were the doors to Garak’s sanctum shut by his loyal attaché than Julian Bashir started scanning the room with a tricorder. Its shrill tone cut through the silence that normally suffused the office. Garak winced at the s
onic intrusion, hoping Bashir would take the hint and turn off his device. Alas, the good doctor insisted on finishing his sweep of the premises.
The cessation of its piercing noise came as a great relief to Garak. “Far be it from me to criticize anyone for a dearth of trust, Doctor, but I assure you: my office is quite secure.”
“I wish I could take your word for it, Garak. But right now, trust will get me and my friends killed faster than anything else.” He tucked his tricorder back inside a small ruck he had carried off the transport. “I’m sure you of all people can understand.”
Garak stepped behind his desk and settled into his chair. “I’ve never seen you like this, Doctor. After all these years, what could possibly have put a crack in your rose-tinted glasses?”
The question seemed to put Bashir in a defensive frame of mind. “If I tell you, it might put a death mark on your head.”
“Doctor, I’m the Cardassian head of state. There must be dozens of death warrants with my name on them. I doubt one more will have the least effect upon my longevity.”
Bashir took to pacing on the other side of Garak’s desk. “It’s a long story, so I’ll skip to the end: my friends and I possess evidence that an illegal surveillance system has been in use throughout the Federation for roughly two and a half centuries. It sees everything anyone in the Federation does, hears all we say, knows what we buy and what we eat and where we go. It knows who our friends are. It knows everything about every last one of us—and I think it shares that knowledge with an illegal covert intelligence organization—”
“Section Thirty-one.” Garak relished the look of surprise on Bashir’s face. “The Obsidian Order had its share of altercations with them. More enigmatic than the Tal Shiar, more subtle than Klingon Imperial Intelligence, and more ruthless even than us. Formidable opponents.”
“And I have proof that they’re tapped into every piece of technology in Federation space. From transporters and ships’ computer cores to replicators and commuter pods.”
Garak reclined his chair and chortled. “I wish I could say I was surprised.”
His amusement made Bashir indignant. “Excuse me?”
“Come now, Doctor. I’ve long suspected your Federation could never have survived without the protection of some unseen agency. Some power behind the throne—an éminence grise, I think it’s called, in one of the tongues of your homeworld.”
Pacing faster, Bashir seemed more flustered. “But if it’s true, it goes against everything I was taught the Federation stands for. Warrantless surveillance of the civilian population? Executions without judicial oversight? It’s an obscenity masquerading as national security.”
“Yes. And it’s also how the Obsidian Order kept total control over the Cardassian Union for nearly a century.”
That put an end to Bashir’s perambulation. “Wait, no. I didn’t mean to say—”
“That any part of the Federation could ever have anything in common with the Obsidian Order? Or with the Tal Shiar? Oh, how I envy your naïveté, Doctor. To believe that any nation state could ever endure without having an appendage willing to stain itself in blood—what a luxury it must be to live in the arms of such delusion.”
He expected a tirade from Bashir. A red-faced defense of the Federation’s principles, its integrity, its virtue. Instead the doctor reined in his dudgeon and approached Garak’s desk. He set his knuckles on the polished wood and bowed his head while he drew a calming breath. “I can’t deny there’s rot in the core of Starfleet. In the heart of the Federation. I’ve seen it.” He looked up at Garak, and his eyes had the hard, unyielding focus of a man ready to go to war. “I came to you because I need to know how to stop it. How to end it. How to destroy it.”
“Well, that’s simple, Doctor. What worked for Cardassia will work for the Federation. To excise this cancer from your body politic, all you need to do is kill the body, burn it down to ash, then resurrect and rebuild it with wiser eyes and a sadder heart.”
Bashir’s brow creased with scorn. “You mock me.”
“Not at all, Doctor. You saw what happened to this world at the end of the Dominion War—to all the planets of the Cardassian Union. The Dominion burned us to the ground. Slew all but a fraction of our population. Left us with nothing but cinders and cenotaphs. That is what it took to free Cardassia from the grip of the Obsidian Order. Are you ready to pay that price so the people of the Federation can bask in the purity of their liberty? Is it worth the blood of billions? Is it worth seeing your worlds on fire?”
“You make it sound as if there’s no middle ground,” Bashir protested. “No choice besides surrender or slaughter.”
Garak saw no reason to blunt the truth’s cutting edge. “Why else would such programs exist, Doctor? What is the value of intelligence if it doesn’t lead to action?”
This time Bashir rose to Garak’s challenge. “What is the value of action if it betrays all that we stand for?” His shoulders slumped as if they bore a terrible weight. “Garak, I didn’t come here to be lectured, or to be told I’m too idealistic. I came here for advice.”
“Of what sort?”
“The kind that will help me stop Thirty-one. Permanently.”
Maybe the doctor was foolhardy. Perhaps his mission was doomed to fail. But there was no denying the man possessed the courage of his convictions. Garak tried to remember what that had felt like in his long-ago squandered youth—and then he realized, to his shame, that he had never known the sweet sting of such passions.
“If you want to kill Section Thirty-one,” he said, “you’ll need to turn their greatest strength against them—transform it into their most dire weakness. They thrive on secrecy, on anonymity, just as the Obsidian Order once did. Take that away from them. Expose them and they’ll be vulnerable—and that’s when you strike the killing blow.” He set his palms on the desktop and leaned forward to emphasize his final piece of counsel. “But make sure you leave nothing of your enemy intact. When your work is done, don’t try to turn their assets to your advantage. Destroy them all, every last one—or else the monster will simply rise again.”
Bashir drank in the advice with a somber nod. “I hear what you’re saying. And that’s exactly what I want to do.” A hopeful look. “Can you show me the right way to do it?”
Garak smiled. “My dear doctor . . . I thought you would never ask.”
• • •
The guest suites provided by Castellan Garak were spacious, comfortably appointed, and to the best of Sarina’s ability to discern, secure. Even their replicators, despite being of Cardassian design, created decent facsimiles of staple Trill and Terran dishes. But in spite of all the comforts the Cardassians had made available to the refugees, Sarina remained restless.
She stood in front of a floor-to-ceiling window in Data’s suite and stared down at the capital city, which sprawled toward the horizon. Faint reflections on the window kept her aware of her companions’ presence. Data walked from one room to the next, inspecting them with his array of synthetic senses, vigilant against eavesdropping or other vulnerabilities. His daughter, Lal, had planted herself in front of a companel, which she used to monitor several dozen channels of news at once—some local, some from the Federation, and a few that she had accessed illegally. Graniv paced a path into the carpet a few meters behind Sarina.
None of them had said much during Julian’s absence. Sarina suspected she knew why. Graniv likely didn’t know to what degree she ought to trust anyone right now. Data and Lal were capable of communicating on secret, encrypted frequencies, with each other as well as with their AI friend Shakti, who now dwelled in their ship’s computer core. And Sarina . . . .
I’m part of the problem, she admitted to herself. I don’t want to tell Graniv something that might get her killed, and I’m afraid of what two Soong-type androids and an advanced AI could do with something like Uraei.
Graniv asked Data, “What’s your take on Garak?”
“I have not had time to develop much of an opinion about him.”
The journalist looked at Sarina. “What about you?”
She turned to face the others. “After Julian freed me from my cataleptic state, I needed some new clothes, and he said Garak was the best tailor on the station.”
Graniv seemed dissatisfied by their answers. “The man’s a mystery. All that the Federation will say about him is that he was a Cardassian military officer before he set up shop on the old DS-Nine. He played some part in the Dominion War, but nobody wants to be any more specific than that. Then he became Cardassia’s ambassador to the Federation, and now he’s their head of state. It’s a damned odd career arc, if you ask me.”
“True,” Sarina said, “but what’s your point?”
“Do you think we can trust him?”
The question left Sarina grappling with her conscience. She wanted to trust Garak because she and the others very much needed his help. But Julian had told her many secrets from Garak’s past with the Obsidian Order—his penchant for cruelty, his knack for rationalizing amoral actions, his ruthlessness in the name of expediency. Behind the castellan’s façade of charm and politesse there lurked a dangerous, perhaps even sociopathic personality. But that was true of most politicians; why should Garak be any different?
“I don’t know,” she said to Graniv. “He’s a wild card—but he’s also the only viable option we have at the moment.”
Data joined them in the middle of the main room. “As perilous as it is to seek asylum on foreign soil, to prevail against the enemies we have made will require the kind of resources only a major government and its military can provide.”
Graniv remained reluctant. “I’m not so sure. What if seeking Garak’s help makes Cardassia part of the problem? You’ve seen what we’re dealing with. All it would take is one moment in which his ambition trumps his common sense, and our virtual nightmare could infect the Cardassian Union in less than a day.”