“Or he might have taken your DNA as well, and then exposed you to your own personally tailored retrovirus just as he did with the others,” Dr. Klass said from the biobed where she lay propped halfway up into a sitting position on a pile of pillows. “Perhaps we’ve simply failed to detect any signs of your infection so far.”
“Sounds pretty unbelievable,” Sulu said.
“I might have thought so, too,” Klass said. “Until I remembered that your blood still carries traces of the Omega IV virus — a pathogen that strongly resembles the retrovirus that Dax, Kang, Koloth, and Kor are carrying.”
“You mean Qagh’s latest bioweapon is based on the Omega IV virus?” Sulu asked.
“Just like the one you found on Galdonterre,” Klass said, nodding.
Chapel nodded as well. “The Omega IV virus in your blood may have spared you from infection. Your time on Omega IV could have given you an accidental but effective advance inoculation against Qagh’s Omega IV–based bioweapons.”
Sulu looked astonished. “You’re saying that the same virus that turned the entire crew of the Exeter into lumps of crystal — and then later prevented the same thing from happening to me — might also have immunized me against Qagh’s current bag of tricks?”
“The jury is still out on all the biomolecular particulars,” Chapel said, spreading her hands. “But I concur with Doctor Klass and Doctor Hurghom’s opinion that it’s a distinct possibility.”
Kang suppressed a shudder. Omega IV sounded to him like an insufferable menace to the galaxy, the sort of world to which the High Council might do well to consider dispatching Admiral Hembec’s planet-obliterating fleet — once it completed its current mission of locating and sterilizing the homeworld of the fuzzy, fecund eco-menaces known as the yIH, of course.
A shrill whistle issued from the comm unit mounted on one of the sickbay’s walls, jolting Kang out of his unpleasant reverie.
“Bridge to Captain Sulu,” said the disembodied female voice that followed.
Sulu strode toward the nearest companel and activated it. “Sulu here. Go ahead, Rand.”
“Incoming subspace message, Captain. It’s from someone claiming to be Qagh.”
Sulu wasted no time dithering. “Can you trace it to its source?” he said, a split second before Kang would have said much the same thing.
“Negative, Captain. The source is obscured, apparently by the magnetic field of the Qul Tuq magnetar.”
Which means, Kang thought, either that he is still hiding his ship in the inner Qul Tuq system, or that he is bouncing his subspace signal off the star from elsewhere. The former scenario would make him hard enough to locate. The latter would give him an all but infinite number of places to secrete himself and whatever remained of his organization and resources.
“Record it,” Sulu said, “and pipe it down here.”
Chapel hastened toward one of the overhead displays attached to a nearby empty biobed and quickly tapped several manual commands directly into the screen interface. The display’s orderly ranks of multicolored columns, designed to provide quick graphical reference to a patient’s various systems and vital signs, suddenly went blank.
The face of a chalk-white man with vaguely Klingon features, and of an even more vague apparent age, appeared in the previously empty space.
Sulu stepped toward the screen’s visual pickup. “Qagh,” he said, his voice deep and authoritative. “You won’t be able to stay on the run forever.”
The albino favored the human captain with a haughty but humorless smile. “Really, Commander Sulu? All the years that have passed since Ganjitsu would seem to argue rather persuasively otherwise.”
“You have attacked and destroyed Klingon military vessels and attempted to interfere with the diplomatic affairs of the Empire,” Koloth said with a cold fury that seemed to lower the room’s temperature perceptibly. Kang understood that anger well, for he had experienced it himself on the occasion of the destruction of one of his early commands, the battle cruiser I.K.S. Klolode.
“The High Council treats such affronts with far more gravity than it does mere border raids,” Kang said. “Make no mistake, Qagh: You will be brought to book for your crimes.”
To Kang’s annoyance, the albino continued as though Kang had not even spoken.
“Captain Kor,” the freebooter said, his demeanor calm even though his eyes fairly blazed with hatred. “I have set a potent weapon against you, my esteemed kinsman — an un-stoppable force that also targets Captains Koloth and Kang, in addition to Ambassador Dax.”
“We know all about your retrovirus, petaQ,” Kor said with unconcealed loathing.
The albino grinned, a mannerism that gave him an uncanny resemblance to a HemQuch Klingon skull shorn of all its soft parts. “I seriously doubt that, my kinsman. But you will know all about it, in time. More than you ever wished to discover. As will Captain Sulu, once I find an opportunity to make him a target as well.”
“But why?” Chapel asked, appearing both angry and perplexed.
“Perhaps you should ask Captain Kor. He knows as well as I do that he is guilty of propping up the once-disgraced Klingon House that abandoned me and denied me my rightful future. I owe him an honor debt of vengeance for that, as well as retribution to your captain, to Koloth and Kang, and to Dax for abetting that crime after the fact — and for greatly inconveniencing my various enterprises through their clumsy intervention at Qul Tuq.”
He lures us into traps that fail to kill us and loses a freighter and a safe house, Kang thought, disgusted. And we’re clumsy?
Aloud, he said, “Why not simply kill us and be done with it?”
“Kill you? No. That would be too simple, and would finish too quickly, to slake the fires of vengeance.”
“It is also beyond your capacity, weakling,” Kor spat. “Unless it is your intention to talk us to death.”
“Believe whatever comforts you, kinsman,” the albino said, grinning. “Regardless, I can think of no better retribution than to rob all five of you of your futures, just as I have been denied mine. And I have contrived to do so in the most painful manner imaginable.”
“Come and face us again,” Koloth said. “And you will be on far more intimate terms with pain than you had ever dreamed possible.”
The albino ignored Koloth’s threat. “The children shall pay for the sins of their fathers,” he said, and then vanished from the screen before Kang or anyone else could respond.
Though the pirate’s effrontery made Kang’s heart blaze with the deep internal fires of the Kri’stak Volcano, his backbone experienced a sudden chill reminiscent of that sacred mountain’s ice-crusted slopes.
• • •
Sulu stood in silence as the image on the biobed screen disappeared, to be replaced by the unit’s customary array of colorful columnar readouts.
“He’s bluffing,” Kor said, still staring contemplatively at the screen.
Sulu wished he shared Kor’s confidence. “That virus is no bluff, Kor,” he said, though he was addressing Kang, Koloth, and Dax as well. “The four of you are infected.”
Kor nodded. “Agreed. But it isn’t much of a weapon, is it? Not by Klingon standards, at any rate. If it really were as potent as he claims, then why are we not dead already?”
Though Sulu was well acquainted with Klingon bluster, he hoped these men wouldn’t make the fatal mistake of underestimating their adversary.
Dr. Hurghom was evidently thinking along similar lines. “Judging from the complexity of the albino’s creations,” he said, “I would not assume that very much lies outside the scope of his abilities.”
Sulu nodded vigorously. “I saw someone die from one of Qagh’s tailored viruses a couple of weeks ago on Galdonterre,” he said, the image of the woman’s flash-crystallized corpse still disturbingly green in his memory. “If that’s what he really has planned for our children . . .” He let his words remain hanging in the air, for everyone to examine in the silent privacy of thei
r own thoughts.
“Neither Koloth nor Kang nor I have made time as yet to start families,” Kor said at length.
“Nor have I,” Dax said. After a thoughtful pause, he added, “At least, not exactly.” Sulu was tempted to ask the Trill what he meant by that, but decided it was a matter best followed up on later.
“So if the albino was speaking truthfully, then his threat has no target other than the five of us,” Koloth said.
A surge of fear roiled deep within Sulu’s guts.
“He does have a target,” he said very quietly. “My daughter.”
Sulu tried to take comfort in the fact that Demora was now dozens of light-years away from the border regions where the albino plied his odious trade. She was attending Starfleet Academy, one of the most secure places on Earth itself, the very heart of the Federation, the seat of Starfleet’s galactic military power. All he could do was contact her via subspace compic, warn her of the danger that she might face in the indeterminate future, and take whatever comfort he could from the knowledge that she was safely out of the albino’s reach, at least at the moment.
But how long she would remain so was anybody’s guess.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Stardate 9028.6 (Early 2290)
U.S.S. Excelsior
After seeing the still-convalescing Ambassador Kamarag, Dr. Hurghom, and Captains Kang, Koloth, and Kor safely back aboard the Klothos, Sulu instructed Cutler to take Excelsior back into Federation space without any further delay. Then he accompanied Dr. Chapel to sickbay, where he hoped that either she or Dr. Klass might provide some additional insight into the dangers posed by the albino’s retroviruses.
Instead, he found himself standing ringside, along with Chapel, at a most unexpected battle.
“The scanner picked up some highly improbable readings, Ambassador Dax,” Dr. Klass said. “They could be related to your retroviral infection.”
“I’ll let Doctor Dareel back on Trill make that determination,” said Curzon Dax. “But thank you.”
Dr. Klass held up a medical tricorder, carefully displaying its darkened front panel, which showed that it wasn’t in operation at the moment. “Mister Ambassador,” she said, gently cajoling.” Please be reasonable.”
Dax folded his arms across his chest and assayed a scowl that looked incongruously curmudgeonly on someone so young. “I think I’ve been more than reasonable, Doctor. You know as well as I do that my government has given me strict instructions to submit to no invasive medical scans, other than those administered by my own physician.”
“Except in the case of an emergency,” Klass said with a scowl every bit as formidable as the one Dax displayed.
“The emergency clause doesn’t apply in this case,” Dax said. “You said yourself that the virus I’m carrying isn’t casually transmissible. And it isn’t as though I’ve just refused some vital, life-saving surgical procedure.”
Chapel took a step toward Klass. “He’s right, Judy. I’ve worked with Trill patients before. I know their medical protocols.”
Klass glowered at her old friend, making Sulu glad that he wasn’t the current target of his CMO’s ire. “Check the shingle out in the hallway, Chris. It says that I’m this ship’s CMO. Therefore I’m the one who interprets the rulebooks regarding the practice of medicine on this ship. Not you.”
“You’re not taking into account diplomatic privilege,” Chapel said.
Klass hiked a thumb in Sulu’s direction. “That’s up to the discretion of this ship’s current commanding officer, kiddo.” Turning toward Dax, she continued. “Assuming he sees things the way I do, you’re free to lodge a formal protest through Ambassador Sarek’s office the minute we’re done.” She turned and looked inquiringly at Sulu. “Just say the word, Skipper, and I’ll pull rank and kick ass.”
Before Sulu could begin to think the matter through, the comm unit on the wall whistled, heralding a familiar businesslike voice. “Ambassador Sarek to Ambassador Dax.”
Looking relieved at the interruption, the young Trill excused himself and hastened toward the companel. “Dax here, Mister Ambassador. Go ahead.”
“I wish to discuss your preliminary report regarding your recent . . . foray into Klingon space, Mister Dax. Five minutes from now in my quarters, if you please.”
Although the Vulcan diplomat never actually raised his voice, his words carried a definite subtext of reprimand. The Trill must have picked up on it as well, because he no longer seemed all that pleased by Sarek’s interruption.
In fact, he looked pale all of a sudden. “I’m on my way,” he said before closing the channel. Without so much as another word, or even a backward glance, he strode quickly toward the exit.
Klass appeared to be ready to stop him, but Sulu waved her off. After all, there was no reason the present confrontation couldn’t be postponed for a while — at least until after Dax knew whether or not he still had a job that allowed him the possibility of invoking diplomatic privilege.
Still, Sulu couldn’t help but wonder why Dax had been so adamant in his refusal of Klass’s request that he undergo a full medical exam. What’s gotten into him anyway?
• • •
It was the first time since he had come aboard Excelsior that Curzon Dax had been asked to meet Ambassador Sarek in the Vulcan’s quarters rather than in one of the starship’s seemingly endless inventory of conference rooms and observation lounges.
Not a good sign, he thought as the door slid open before him.
The first thing that Dax noticed after stepping across the threshold was the hot, dry air. The second was the almost complete darkness, which entirely enfolded the ambiguously-sized space, except for the diamond-flecked jumble of stars that glowed across the gulf of night like distant campfires, and the single burning candle that cast a chiaroscuro halo around Sarek’s rough-hewn features.
“Sit,” said the Vulcan, who was himself seated cross-legged on the floor. He wore a simple black robe adorned only with a few white figures that Dax recognized as peace-representational characters drawn from Vulcan’s dominant written language.
Dax did as Sarek directed, sitting on the floor on the candle’s opposite side, his anxiety steadily mounting as the silence stretched to an almost painful tautness.
“I have been in meditation for the past several hours, Mister Dax,” Sarek said after a subjective eternity, his eyes closed.
That’s also not a particularly good sign, Dax thought. Prolonged meditation meant that the Vulcan was struggling to control his anger over Dax’s insubordinate decision to accompany the Klingons on their initial attempt to bring the albino to justice.
Sarek opened his eyes, which flashed like dark pulsars in the candlelight. “Your gambit was unsuccessful.”
“If by that you mean that Qagh slipped away from us, Mister Ambassador,” he said, “then I suppose you’re right.”
“Protocols must be observed in any hierarchy, Mister Dax. Even in the diplomatic service. Perhaps especially in the diplomatic service.”
Dax swallowed hard. “I understand, sir.”
“Diplomacy requires hard, painstaking work, executed within a strong framework of rules. Success requires both wisdom and patience. I offer you the example of my ongoing negotiations with the Legarans as an illustrative case in point.”
Dax blinked in surprise at this, since he could think of few races in the galaxy that resembled the Klingons less than did the Legarans. Far from being aggressive folk who had built an empire on the blood and toil of countless conquered species, the Legarans were content to laze their time away in fetid pools of goo, where they dreamed and thought and planned on timescales that encompassed many generations in the life cycles of most other sentients. Dax thought that the Legarans bore far more resemblance to the long-lived, slug-like symbionts who dwelled within the abdominal pouches of joined Trills like himself.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Dax said.
“I have worked with the Legarans steadily for
the past sixteen years, with little to show for it so far,” Sarek said, entering what Dax recognized as the Vulcan’s long-explanation-cum-lecture mode. “Many more years, or perhaps even decades, are likely to pass before the Federation can expect any substantive agreements to emerge. Any rash, unthinking action on my part vis-à-vis the Legarans would jeopardize the entire diplomatic process.
“Just as rash, unthinking action involving a power as volatile as the Klingon Empire could jeopardize the lives of untold millions.”
Dax braced himself. He’s actually going to fire me, he thought. I’m about to be cashiered right out of the Diplomatic Corps.
Though the notion carried a terrifying taint of failure, Dax also found it somehow liberating, as though the act of squarely facing his own personal and professional worst-case scenario at long last had relieved him of the burden of fear. It gave him the courage to speak plainly and directly.
And, perhaps, undiplomatically as well.
“Respectfully, Mister Ambassador,” Dax said, “the Klingons aren’t content to dither over their every decision for years the way the Legarans are. If you want to deal with the Klingons, they have to respect you, and the best way to gain that respect is to demonstrate qualities they admire.”
Sarek raised an eyebrow, clearly unaccustomed to hearing such hard-edged candor from his protégé. “Indeed.”
Dax decided he had nothing to lose by pressing his point to the end. “I stand by my decision to accompany the Klingons, regardless of whatever might have become of the albino as a consequence. It was the right thing to do then, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. However my decision might look to you now, I think it will pay off handsomely for us in terms of détente, perhaps sooner than you think.”
“You were ordered to remain on Excelsior,” Sarek said, “in the interests of reinforcing our current peace gestures toward the Klingons.”
“If I had stayed behind while the Klingons conducted their manhunt, they would probably look on our future peace gestures as just that — gestures.”
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