Star Trek: The Fall: The Poisoned Chalice (19 page)

“Monitors.” Atia stood at her side, noting her interest. “Tracing movements and life function of those who wear them.” She turned away and looked out into the desert beyond the compound. “No cordon or chains to the eye, but confinement nonetheless.” The Magna Romanii woman frowned. “Your action in coming down here, Captain . . . it is unusual.”

“I know.” Vale caught sight of three figures approaching them from the main building. “I'm prone to being a little headstrong. You should learn that about me sooner rather than later.” She flashed a smile at the man leading the group, a captain in the mustard-tan of operations. “Good morning!”

“Afternoon,” he corrected. The man—a human with what Vale pegged as a Terra Novan accent—briskly introduced himself as Warden Sisterson, senior duty officer and site commander. “Captain Vale, this is highly irregular. We're not in the business of being open to impromptu visitors. Now, we fully appreciate your crew expediting the . . .” He paused, and one of his men handed him a padd containing a cargo manifest. “The delivery of these medical supplies. But we have protocols for this sort of thing, and I'm sure Admiral Riker is well aware of that, especially given our current situation and the elevated security levels fleet-wide.”

“It wouldn't be much of a surprise inspection if you knew we were coming, would it?” Vale's reply blew the wind from Sisterson's sails, and she saw Atia's eyebrows lift in mild surprise.

“Inspection?” Sisterson repeated. “Why?”

“You said it yourself,” said Vale. “Starfleet Command wants to make certain everything on Jaros II is secure.” She aimed two fingers at her own face, in the shape of a V. “Nothing better than an eyes-on look-see to confirm that, don't you agree?”

The warden exchanged looks with his subordinates. “I'll have to clear this with Security Operations Command on Earth. . . .”

“And set time to waste?” Atia broke in. “Is there something you wish us not to see?”

Vale gave her first officer the slightest of looks. Without prompting, Atia had stepped up to bolster the thin justification she was using to pressure Sisterson, when, in fact, Vale was making this all up on the fly.
I'm starting to like her,
she thought.

The warden frowned and folded his arms. “All right. What do you want?”

“You can give Commander Atia here the tour. As for me, I'm specifically interested in one of your high-profile detainees.”

*  *  *

Four sides of the complex's main exercise yard were surrounded by three-story detention blocks, but the north-facing elevation looked out onto the great sandy plains of Jaros II and to the dun-colored stone that lay in low waves of rock. The view reached off into the distance, vanishing in the heat haze. Again, there were no walls here, nothing to stop anyone from picking up and running.

But where could you go?
Vale wondered. The second planet wasn't like its close neighbor in the third orbit out, capable of supporting a wide variety of flora and fauna. Jaros II was an arid world, not lifeless, but certainly not welcoming. Someone out there in the wilds would run out of water in days, and that was if the guards didn't stun them with a phaser burst the moment they went over the perimeter of the compound. As she crossed the empty space, she wondered if anyone had ever made the attempt.

Vale found her quarry practicing free throws at the edge of a parrises squares court. The woman was small, nimble, and she wore a jumpsuit that was a size too large and patched with sweat. She made an easy goal and dropped with a gasp, panting as Vale approached her.

“Ezri Dax.”

“That's my name,” she said, gulping in breaths. “Don't wear it out.” The Trill woman stooped to gather up a chill-flask of water and took a long swig. Dax's short dark hair was spiked with sweat and dust, and the lines of pigment mottling common to her species stood out against her skin. She had striking blue eyes that took the measure of her, and Vale remembered hearing somewhere that Ezri had been a counselor before she became a captain.

But then, as a joined being, the host to a near-immortal symbiont intelligence that had shared many human lifetimes, Dax had doubtless been many things. Vale recalled that thought from the first time they had met, of how she had made a mental note not to let the Trill's outward appearance fool her into underestimating the woman.

She looked around at the vacant quad. Other than the two of them, not a soul was in sight. “Must get lonely out here.”

“Not really. It's hardly solitary confinement when I've got eight more of me to talk to.” Dax patted her belly.

She offered her hand. “Christine Vale.”

“I remember. What's it been, four years since we met on the
Titan
? We hung out, eradicated the Borg, then went home for tea and medals.” She toasted the air, ignoring Vale's gesture. “Good times.”

“That's one way of looking at it, I guess.” Dax's mordant tone wasn't what Vale had been expecting, and she let her hand drop. “Captain, Will Riker sent me here.”

“I'm not the captain of anything,” she replied. “Keep up.” Dax dropped to her haunches and sat on
the edge of the court, shielding her eyes from the sun. “I heard he got promoted to admiral. Nice work if you can get it.”

“It seems like a lot of things are happening at Command,” ventured Vale. “You upset a lot of people.”

“So it would seem.” Dax sighed, her spiky manner ebbing slightly. “Commander, what do you want with me? I made my choices and that's that. You understand I'm toxic now? Stay here too long and you may find your career has become tainted by my . . . I guess most people would call them
mistakes
.”

“You don't seem the kind to make mistakes, Dax.”

She gave a hollow laugh. “Oh, you should see my record with men.” She took another swig of water. “And women, for that matter.”

Vale tried another tack. “Are the others here? The doctors who worked with Bashir on the Andorian cure?”

Dax shrugged. “No. They're all under house arrest, as far as I know. They're all singing from the same page, claiming no knowledge that he had them using top-secret data stolen from Starfleet Command.” A shadow passed over her face. “Julian's doing, taking all the blame for himself. He's not here. Federation Security separated him from the rest of us the first chance they got.” She looked away. “I should have never followed him to Andor. He would have been safer there.”

“Why don't you tell me what happened?”

Dax shot her a look. “Don't you know?”

“Let's just say that the story has become murky. And that may be to the advantage of some, but you know Riker. He wants the clear-eyed view.”

“I'm not sure that will make a lot of difference at this point.”

Vale was suddenly tired of standing, and she dropped into a settle on the sun-warmed ground. “Explain it to me, Ezri,” she insisted. “Because if things change, I might not get the chance to ask you again.”

And so Dax told the story, her gaze locked out toward the rocky wilderness as she spoke. It had begun with a call that woke her from her sleep shift, her first officer Sam Bowers bringing orders from Admiral Akaar that Julian Bashir had defied a government mandate forbidding investigation into the Andorian genetic issue. Worse still, he had apparently extracted information from the highly classified Shedai Meta-Genome project, one of the Federation's most deeply buried secrets, in order to do so. His illegal work discovered, Bashir stole the
Rio Grande
and fled for Andor with all the data he wasn't supposed to have. Dax's crew aboard the
Aventine
tracked him from that ship to another, finally closing the net around a civilian transport called the
Parham
.

“We caught up to Julian just as he reached Andor, in time to have an Imperial Guard warship put their guns on us. He tried to claim asylum, then the shooting started, and damn him if he didn't almost spark off a war right then and there.” She shook her head angrily. “At first I was so furious with him . . . but then we talked and none of that seemed to matter. He told me what he was doing, about how Ishan Anjar was obstructing Andoria's chances for survival. I know Julian Bashir, maybe better than anyone. I understood why he did what he did, but I still had my orders. At the time, I thought that would be enough.”

“But it wasn't.” Vale nodded to herself. “I've been there, too.”

“I wanted to give the Andorians the cure Julian
and the others had created,” Dax insisted. “I was trying to find a solution . . . but my hand was forced.”

She explained how Bashir escaped with the help of sympathetic members of her own crew, the
Parham
blasting its way out of the
Aventine
's landing bay, running the gauntlet of the two other Starfleet ships that had come to back up Dax's crew. Ezri had been willing to let them go, but the captains of the
Warspite
and the
Falchion
had other orders. In the end, the daring gambit cost the
Parham
's master his ship and his life, and very nearly that of Bashir and an Andorian named Shar into the bargain. The doctor and Shar had barely made it, beamed out of a plummeting escape pod by allies down on the planet.

Vale watched a humorless smile rise and fall on Dax's face. “I guess that was the moment I decided to defy orders. I got in the way of
Warspite
and
Falchion,
tried to slow down what they were doing. About that time, Julian contacted me from Andor, asking for my help.” She shrugged. “Old boyfriends are always so inconsiderate about when they call.”

Vale picked up the thread of the events. “You were sent to arrest him, but instead you aided and abetted.”

“There's some truth in that,” she agreed. “Let me guess. They say I did it because we used to be lovers.”

“Some of the less-circumspect reporters might have mentioned that. . . .”

Dax let out a bark of cynical laughter. “I can almost see the head lines. ‘Heroine of the Borg Invasion Falls from Grace.' ” She shook her head. “We're so past that, Julian and me. It's not that way at all between us now. Look, I had my crew protect him until he could get that cure out to all the Andorians who wanted it. And they
wanted
it, believe me.” The Trill's expression
changed, becoming stronger. “I did the right thing. I'll take whatever slings and arrows come next.”

Vale saw movement back toward the main building. She guessed she wouldn't have long before Sisterson came to call time on this conversation. “What I don't understand is why Ishan Anjar would let it go this far. Why hold back the genetic data from the Andorians?”

“Politics,” Dax retorted, almost spitting the word. “You know the Tholians had given the Andorians some of the Shedai Meta-Genome information, hoping that they would join the Typhon Pact. . . . I've had a lot of time to think about this. . . . I believe Ishan thought that the Federation had more or different data on the Meta-Genome than the Tholians. Ishan wanted something to hold over them, the promise that he would declassify the information, to keep them out of the Pact. To strong-arm the Andorians back into the Federation. With Ishan angling to succeed Bacco and take the job full-time, think what a political victory that would have been for him.”

“But the Andorians
want
to come back into the Federation.”

“They do
now
. But on their own terms, not Ishan's.” Dax nodded over Vale's shoulder. “Company is coming.” She turned and saw the warden and his aides, with Atia walking at their side.

Vale got to her feet and looked down at the Trill. “Bashir's side of things needs to be heard. For everyone's sake.”

“I don't know where they took him,” she replied. “Protective custody, they said. Whatever the hell that means.”

“You're going to get a fair hearing, Dax. You have
the right to your day before the Judge Advocate General in a formal court martial, the chance to put your side to the Federation. I promise you, Riker will make that happen.”

“I know you believe that, Christine. I know Admiral Riker does. But still . . . I'm not hopeful. Not for me and the others . . . and especially not for Julian.”

The Trill looked at her, and Vale saw an impossible, alien distance in her eyes; as if for a second she was peering into the depths of the nine lifetimes that existed inside the woman before her. She tried to imagine how Dax felt at this moment, isolated here and seemingly abandoned by her own colleagues.

“We did the right thing,” the other woman repeated, “and now we're going to pay the price.”

T
uvok lowered his head to enter the
Snipe
's secondary cargo bay, pushing open the narrow manual hatch in front of him. He saw Nog standing with Jan Kincade and Tom Riker off to one side of the storage compartment, the trio dwarfed by the wall of bulk containers filling most of the rest of the chamber.

Kincade turned as he arrived. “Good, we're all here. Maybe we can get this done with, then?” She shot a look at Nog. “I'm sure it hasn't escaped your notice that we're on a clock here, Lieutenant Commander.”

The Ferengi shook his head. “Absolutely not, Colonel.” He looked at Tuvok. “Sir, could you secure the hatch behind you?”

Tuvok did as he was asked, his interest piqued at Nog's sudden insistence on security. It had been only a few hours after they had returned to the
Snipe
that Nog's message had reached the Vulcan: a private summons to meet belowdecks. He was interested to know what had prompted this sudden shift in behavior from the engineer.

On an overturned cargo pod that Nog was using as a table were a number of items, including a portable computer console and holographic projector, a tricorder and samples of plastics and metals each sealed
in an environment-neutral packet. He gave them a quizzical look, attempting to glean their purpose.