This Gray Spirit

by Heather Jarman

  “Runir,” M’Yeoh sniffed, “believes that depressed interstellar commerce has reduced the demand for the starcharts and navigational data, even though the information you offered is unparalleled in this sector. Our explorations simply haven’t taken us as far as yours have.”

  “What I can trade, I’ve offered. I’ve nothing else,” Vaughn said firmly.

  “There’s always something,” M’Yeoh said, “If the need is desperate enough.”

  The slidewalk ended. They walked with the anonymous masses into the sweltering Core quad. Stalls sandwiched between kiosks and store fronts hawked spangled jewelry and object d’art interspersed with much less innocent contraband. Vaughn suspected the services of prostitutes and slaves were as easy to purchase as gaudy earrings. M’Yeoh led them to a booth out of the traffic flow, presumably to regroup.

  Once seated, M’Yeoh twisted the sleeves of his government robe, his expression puckered; the Yrythny appeared to be legitimately miserable. Runir’s failure cast aspersions on M’Yeoh’s competency. Explaining to his superiors back home why the mission to the Consortium failed would be unpleasant. But Vaughn didn’t give a damn whose fault it was—he just wanted it fixed.

  The group scooted into the half-circle booth, the rubbery seat coverings sticking to their uniforms. A dingy globe rested in the table’s center, providing minimal muddy light to see by. Nog hastily lifted his tricorder after discovering gummy residue on the table’s surface. Prynn’s hands stayed safely in her lap.

  Vaughn shooed away a drink server; the time to unwind would come later. Time to reassert his authority—he’d followed M’Yeoh’s lead long enough. “Prynn, Nog. Head back to the Avaril. Rerun those femtobot simulations and see if there’s something we’ve overlooked—maybe an alternative deployment method that won’t require the degree of structural integrity we’re looking for. We may have to take our chances with whatever we have on hand.”

  Nog failed to veil a dubious expression, but accepted Vaughn’s order with a nod.

  His beady eyes darting from side to side, M’Yeoh hunched closer to Vaughn. “There are still some who might help you. No legal protection. Very dangerous, but you could see—”

  “Belay that,” Vaughn called to Nog and Prynn, then turned back to M’Yeoh. “Back up a step, Minister. Say that again.” Vaughn interrupted, knowing if he didn’t the minister might yammer on endlessly without reaching his intended point.

  He gulped and whispered, “A shadow trader.”

  “You mean a freelancer. An unauthorized broker,” Vaughn guessed.

  Minister M’Yeoh nodded.

  Now that’s interesting, Vaughn thought. “Tell me more.”

  “It’s a dangerous undertaking,” the minister stressed. “We could be duped if we link up with the wrong one.” M’Yeoh nervously scanned the crowds, presumably for hostile elements. “But they don’t trade what they don’t have. Find the right one, you’ll have your load.” Sweat drizzled off his forehead; he dabbed at it with his sleeve, his gray-brown skin took on a decidedly paler hue.

  Vaughn exchanged looks with his chief engineer. He was counting on Nog’s acute listening skills to pick up nuances in the business discussions that Vaughn might miss. Nog looked intrigued, but suspicious.

  Turning back to M’Yeoh, Vaughn said, “If such an option ensures results, why didn’t we start with a shadow trader?” Why was it that at every turn in his dealings with the Yrythny, he found that they’d conveniently omitted information? Not enough to technically be considered a lie, but certainly less than all the facts.

  “A shadow trader’s demands may be costly or risky,” M’Yeoh squeaked. “Outlawed technology. Slaves. Illegal goods. Weapons. You made it clear what you were willing to negotiate with. Your terms would be better accepted on the Exchange.”

  Or you were too afraid to deal with anything but the known entities, Vaughn thought. He needed to remove M’Yeoh from the equation if he wanted to make a quick deal.

  Loud, laughing revelers stumbling toward a casino careened toward their booth, drinks held high. They jumped out of their seats, missing a frothy soaking by seconds. Prynn and M’Yeoh stumbled into a cloth barrier that delineated the workspace of an odd-looking creature, sitting staring at the wall. Tools crashed; bins toppled, drizzling milky syrup on the floor gratings.

  Startled by the invasion of his workspace, the creature glared glassy-eyed at Prynn, while one of his five hands scraped brownish wax off strands of hair with his fingernails. Once he’d collected a thumbnail full, he dropped it on his black tongue, smacked his lips and repeated the process. Prynn slowly backed away, but the creature hissed at her. She stopped.

  Vaughn, no stranger to unusual life-forms, had never seen anything like it. A cross between a squid and a mantis might explain whatever it was. He looked to his Yrythny host for information, but M’Yeoh tiptoed around the basins and back toward the main walkway.

  “Excuse me,” Prynn apologized, extracting her foot from a pan of goo. “I hope I didn’t ruin—”

  The creature scrambled off his chair, thrusting his face as close to Prynn’s as he could without pressing their lips together. Vaughn’s hand inched toward his phaser…

  “You,” the creature burbled rapturously.

  “Huh?” Anxiously, Prynn’s eyes darted first to Vaughn, who shrugged, and then to flustered M’Yeoh whose lips flapped soundlessly.

  “The one I search for. To finish my commission,” the creature clapped two of its hands together. “I sit day after day, hoping to find the one I need to finish my commission and I see nothing. I sense nothing. Until you.” Spittle flecked the matted hair around its mouth.

  Taking a step away from him, Prynn smiled weakly. “You’ve mistaken me for someone else. We’re not from around here.”

  Vaughn assumed a position at Prynn’s side. “We apologize for intruding on your space. If there’s something—”

  “No, no!” the creature protested. “I don’t want apologies. I want—that one,” it said, jabbing a finger at Prynn.

  With surprising courage, Minister M’Yeoh lifted up the goo-pan and sniffed the contents before dabbing a finger inside and wiping the goo on an adjoining wall. Gradually, the goo turned blood red.

  Recognition registered on his face; M’Yeoh’s breathing steadied. “Commander, I don’t think you have reason to worry. I believe this is a sense artist.”

  “Yes! Yes! I have a commission,” he said, throwing a canvas drape aside to reveal a three meter by two meter collage of multihued textures. “For the Cheka Master General. He is unhappy that I haven’t finished, but you will make it complete.”

  “Sense artist?” Vaughn asked.

  “This substance,” M’Yeoh indicated the goo-bucket. “When it comes in contact with living tissue, it takes a sensory impression based on body temperature, metabolic rate, body chemistry…” He dipped in his hand until it was covered with goo and then removed it to dry in the air, fanning it carefully. The clear sticky substance slowly assumed a creamy lemon tone. “Once the polymer dries,” M’Yeoh peeled from the wrist, carefully easing up the now rubbery impression of his hand until it slid off readily, “this is what results. Sense artists collect a multitude of impressions and then arrange them in sculpture, hanging mobiles, wall mountings—”

  “My commission for the grand foyer of the Master General’s suite,” the creature said proudly. “I need the last element. I have waited for weeks. And now you are here!” His grin revealed a mouth of crooked, graying nubs Vaughn assumed were teeth.

  Prynn combed her fingers through her spiked hair. “We’re only visitors and won’t be staying long.”

  “Oh please oh please oh please change your mind. Oh please oh please oh please!” He threw himself prostrate before Prynn. “Only you!”

  Taking Prynn by the elbow, Vaughn extracted her from the creature’s ardent attention to her feet. “Tell you what. If our business concludes and time allows it, we’ll come back and you can take your impressions.”


  “Commander!” Prynn exclaimed, drawing back. Vaughn expected she might throw him a punch under different circumstances.

  The creature knelt penitently and while its ratty hair failed to camouflage his despondent posture, Vaughn’s words mitigated his sadness somewhat. “Fazzle. Ask anywhere in the Core for Fazzle and you will find me.”

  As they walked off, pushing their way through the thronging crowds clogging the Core’s central district, Vaughn couldn’t resist teasing his daughter, “Think of it as a new cultural odyssey: immortalizing yourself for posterity.”

  She smirked at him. “I’ll stick to living fast, thanks.”

  Waiting for the lifts back to Avaril’ s platform, Vaughn approached the minister. In a low voice, he asked about making contact with a shadow trader.

  “Word of the needy spreads quickly. The Exchange is watched. When the shadow traders figure out what you have, they will find you.”

  “So we wait,” Vaughn said.

  M’Yeoh nodded.

  Vaughn closed his eyes, wishing circumstances could be different. From the first moments after the Defiant had triggered the Cheka weapon until now, Vaughn had felt he’d been standing at the helm of a rudderless craft. At every turn, he’d been compelled to accept whatever course circumstance had selected, whether it was the not-so-subtle attempt of the Yrythny government to engage Dax as a mediator, having to turn over bartering to a broker or this latest pronouncement of M’Yeoh’s. Vaughn didn’t like it. He understood that part of the hunt was patiently waiting in the tall grass for your prey to stroll into your sights, but some part of him couldn’t shake the feeling that he was the one doing the strolling, not the waiting.

  “So how much fun are you having, Ensign ch’Thane?” Keren asked, taking a seat on the edge of Shar’s desk. They were alone in the government office Lieutenant Dax’s team had been provided.

  “Work doesn’t need to be entertaining,” Shar said practically, dropping an unused data chip into a drawer.

  “But your antennae…they’re drooping. You could borrow my headpiece to cover them up and then no one would be the wiser.”

  “Oh.” Andorian antennae often conveyed emotional states. Any hope he’d had of getting to his genetic research today had vanished when Ezri had given him his daily orders. His antennae must be betraying his down mood.

  Keren examined a statue of a naked Yrythny riding a whale-size sea animal—a gift from a well-meaning Assembly member courting favor with Ezri—now residing on Shar’s desk. Upon seeing this odd gift, Ensign Juarez had doubled over, convulsed with laughter. The Wanderer delegate appeared equally bemused. “Where’s Lieutenant Dax?”

  “I’m surprised you don’t know. She went with Jeshoh and the Houseborn contingent for a planetside tour of one of the Houses.” Juarez, Candlewood, and McCallum had gone with her. Shar had—meetings. Ezri apologized profusely for asking him to act in her stead, but she felt the mission needed to proceed on two fronts.

  “Ah. Probably House Tin-Mal. One of Jeshoh’s pet stories. I’ll be interested in her conclusions.”

  “Tin-Mal?” Shar thought he knew the names of all the Yrythny Houses, but Tin-Mal wasn’t familiar to him.

  “My Houseborn brothers and sisters are excavating the bones from the House crypt in an effort to make a point. I’ll have my office send over the Journals of Tin-Mal,” she said. “I’m certain they aren’t in the database you’ve been given.”

  “You’re saying the historical and cultural data the Houseborn have been providing us is incomplete?”

  Keren shrugged. “A politically sound tactic. Select the facts that prove your argument, suppress the rest.”

  The constant push and pull of politics had always seemed futile to Shar. It had been his observation that after the arguing and manipulation and propaganda, truth eventually won out. Dealing in postulates and suppositions and perceptions…what a muddle. He liked pursuing causes he could measure—and not in votes. “What do the Houseborn want Lieutenant Dax to see?”

  “The ancient majesty of these castles rising out of the water, with the lava and coral walls, sea glass sparkling. It’s quite seductive,” Keren reached over Shar’s shoulder, tapped in several access codes, bringing up a vid of an underwater seascape played on his viewscreen. “But Tin-Mal happened because both sides made mistakes and I believe she’ll see through the facade put up by Jeshoh’s people. She has to.”

  But how would that help? Shar thought. For almost a week, Shar had stayed on Luthia. He had watched Houseborn and Wanderers live in segregated neighborhoods and walk on opposite bridges. Houseborn Yrythny congregated, usually by House affiliation, for dinner and social events. Wanderers, orphans all, used separate eating and recreational facilities. How Ezri Dax could find a working solution when the Yrythny were determined to live separately, Shar couldn’t imagine. Behavior patterns had been ingrained for generations. And now, with the Cheka siege, when the planet would most benefit from putting internal disputes aside, the Houseborn and Wanderers seemed to be finding more reasons than ever to distrust each other. If only I had more time for my study, he thought. A realist, he knew that science couldn’t solve everything, but it was a solid way to start.

  Keren interrupted his thoughts. “You’re certainly solemn about something.”

  Shar flushed. “I-I—” he sighed. “I have an idea about how to approach your internal issues, but I don’t have enough time or resources to make it workable.”

  “Go on,” Keren said, resting her elbows on the desk and watching him intently.

  “I’ve studied your DNA and to say that it’s a marvel of genetics is an understatement.” He’d spent hours last night, watching the computer simulate Yrythny cellular mitosis, the DNA unzipping, spiraling in a dance of base pairs lacing together to create life. “I have a…a hypothesis that whoever aided your evolutionary process—call it the Other if it suits you—whoever could engineer your biochemistry to the extent I’ve observed so far, could have forecast problems with genetic drift or mutation. Like those recessive traits that make Wanderers, Wanderers.”

  “And you think the answer to our problem might be in the Turn Key?”

  Shar nodded. “Maybe. But access to your labs is restricted—even to Ezri—and I can’t organize a statistically significant sampling in the time we’ve been given.”

  “For fear of the Cheka stealing and exploiting our results, we haven’t done significant genetic research in decades. What we have done is barricade what data we have behind layers and layers of security.” She furrowed her brow thoughtfully. “You need a large body of DNA samples to make your generalizations and forecast possible conclusions, correct?”

  “Yes,” Shar answered. “And because one of my specialties is cytogenetics, I’m actually uniquely qualified to undertake genetic mapping. I could process the information quickly if I had it.”

  “Let me look into it,” Keren said. “I may be able to help.” She turned on her heel to go, but suddenly spun back around. “Oh. I almost forgot the reason I came to see you. The Cheka broke through the defense perimeter again.”

  “That’s the third time since we’ve been here.” Beetlelike strikers had penetrated Yrythny defenses, raided the mating grounds and attacked planetside villages. The assaults happened so quickly that the military could rarely be mustered in time.

  “The Cheka are getting impatient. I know at least three of the systems under their domination are revolting. To maintain the military advantage—at least as far as the numbers go—they’re going to need to augment their armies, especially if they plan to continue their expansion.”

  “Negotiating a treaty with the Cheka isn’t possible? Shar asked. “If their goal is to isolate the Turn Key in your DNA strands, why not just give them the computer models? Or cryogenically preserve cellular samples?”

  “The Cheka are only satisfied with fertilized, viable eggs that they can experiment on as they develop. They do surgery. Augmentations. They monitor when certain g
enes are activated in the course of maturing so they can develop their own chromosomal map.”

  “Successful research sometimes requires unorthodox methodology,” Shar conceded, guessing that while the Cheka approach might not be ethical by Federation standards, the moral codes governing Cheka society might view experimentation on sentients differently.

  Filmy eyelids lifting abruptly, she gaped at him. “You’re thinking reasonably. That’s your first mistake. The Cheka aren’t reasonable.”

  Shar believed the Yrythny perceived the Cheka as evil, but civil war was an evil of a different kind—a reality that loomed larger each time they violated the perimeter, for every ship that a web weapon destroyed. “Still. The Cheka blockade is exacerbating the discord among the Yrythny. Is there no compromise to be reached?”

  “I have something to show you,” Keren had crossed to the door before Shar could turn off and secure his terminal.

  “I have a meeting,” Shar protested, knowing every postponed item carved precious minutes from his research.

  “On my authority, consider it canceled,” she said.

  “But—”

  “Please, Thirishar,” Keren said. “This is more important.”

  How the message arrived on Vaughn’s workstation aboard the Avaril, the commander never learned. He had intended on sending a recorded greeting to Dax on subspace, updating her as to the latest stumbling block when he noticed a blinking yellow light. Touching the button affiliated with the light had launched an audio message. M’Yeoh had been right: a shadow trader had found them. The trader had designated a time and place for a meeting where they would discuss terms. Vaughn was to come alone.

  So he stood, as instructed, in the hall outside the Cheka suite, wondering if he was supposed to knock.

  On the other side of the door, the shadow trader, a Cheka named L’Gon, waited. If he had been truthful, he owned the load that would solve Vaughn’s (and thus the Defiant’ s) problem. Vaughn’s concern was that while he technically honored L’Gon’s request and came alone, L’Gon was under no obligation to do the same. In fact, Vaughn believed that the Cheka Master General, several platoons of soldiers and whatever entourage a Master General traveled with would also be inside, but not a single operative representing his crew’s interests. If there was any other way to get this job done….