Star Trek: Brinkmanship (10 page)

Hertome gave a short laugh. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t have to ask you. But since you ask, there’s been a flurry of communications with your lot today—yes, between this place and the Cardassian Embassy. I picked it all up when I was washing the walls on the seventh level. Come on, Mayazan, spill. What’s happening?”

She swung her bag up onto her shoulder. “I don’t know,” she said.

“You must know something!”

“They don’t tell me much. I’m just here to collect information.”

“When do you see your contact again?”

“My contact?”

“Your superior,” he said. “Whoever it is at the embassy that you report to.”

Efheny shook her head. She didn’t go anywhere near the embassy. At the end of each skyturn, the data she had collected was automatically transferred there via a secure channel. She had never met or spoken to
anyone at the Cardassian Embassy on Ab-Tzenketh. She’d seen colleagues passing through on official business every so often. Only last week she’d been cleaning floors on the eleventh level and spied a tense meeting between four Cardassian attachés and their Fel opposite numbers. None of them had paid the Ata on the nearby deck any attention, of course. She doubted the attachés knew anything about her. The only communication she would receive from her superiors would be an automated warning twenty-five skyturns before her extraction from this world. But was this not the procedure followed by the humans? Did Hertome actually meet with them from his embassy? Efheny could hardly believe it. No wonder he ran so many risks with her.

“Come on, Mayazan. You must know when you’re likely to see your contacts again. Will they know what’s happening? Will they be able to tell you whether we’re in danger here? We’ve got to know whether we’re in danger!”

Efheny stood up. This had gone far enough. She’d been out of her mind ever to break cover. Only the fear that he might expose her had convinced her of the necessity of talking to him. She made to move past him.

“You’re not to speak to me again,” she said. “Not outside the context of our cover stories. I’ll obey you—as Ret must obey Ter—as long as I have to while I’m still on this world, but you’re to forget that we ever spoke to each other in any other way. This one is here
to serve her Ap-Rej and through him serve her most exalted and beloved Rej, the beneficent Autarch himself. That’s all. So let her past.”

Deliberately, Hertome put himself in the doorway, blocking her exit.

“Let her
past,
Hertome. Or shall this one finish what she started with her Ap-Rej’s wrist?”

He took a step forward, as if ready to take her up on her challenge, and then they both froze.

There were footsteps in the corridor, coming toward them. They looked around, but there was no way out except for the single door through which they’d entered. They were trapped. Was this the moment that every one of their kind dreaded: exposure, arrest, everything that came after?

“This one regrets to inform her Ap-Rej,” Efheny hissed, “that she intends to tell her interrogators everything she knows about him.”

The figure coming through the door did not have the steely silver luminescence of an enforcer but the dulled glow of another Ret Ata-E. It was Corazame, Efheny’s fellow deck worker in Hertome’s unit. Seeing her workmate and her immediate superior together in the washroom, Corazame’s eyes widened in fright. Frantically, she signaled her deference to Hertome by further dimming the soft light emitting from her skin.

“This one . . . ,” she stammered, “this one . . . Ai!” she cried, backed away, and fled down the corridor.

Hertome said something that Efheny’s translator
couldn’t quite catch—a curse, presumably—and then he turned to her.

“What now, Mayazan? What the hell now?”

•   •   •

In the end, Dax decided it was easier to return to the
Aventine
than to try to make sure that their communications would happen without scrutiny. She thought about making an elaborate excuse to Heldon as to why she had to go back to the ship but then decided to go for honesty.

“I trust you not to listen,” she told Heldon. “But I cannot wear this uniform and trust that the same is true for the Tzenkethi that are here on this base.”

Heldon soberly reflected on this. “I don’t believe you’re right about the Tzenkethi,” she said, “but I believe that you’re acting in good faith. That’s all I can ask from you.”

Excuses made, Dax went back across to the ship, taking Alden with her. They hurried to the conference room, where Leishman, Helkara, and the ship’s doctor, Simon Tarses, were waiting for them.

“Talk quickly,” Dax said. “I can’t stay away without it looking like there’s something serious going on.” She glanced at her three senior officers. “I assume there
is
something serious going on?”

“There is,” said Helkara, “but not what we thought.”

He quickly handed around a number of padds. Dax scanned through hers while Helkara began briefing her.

“Leishman and I carried out a number of long-range
scans designed to detect the movement or presence of Tzenkethi weaponry in the area. It’s helpful to know that most Tzenkethi weapons leave a faint but distinctive trail of”—Helkara looked almost embarrassed—“sodium chloride.”

“Sodium chloride?” said Dax. “
Salt?
” She slumped into her seat. “You’re kidding me.”

“I’m not kidding you, Captain,” Helkara said earnestly.

“Makes sense,” said Alden, “if you’ve ever seen Tzenketh.”

“Makes sense?” said Dax.

“Lots of water,” Alden explained.

“All right,” said Dax. “Salt. Good. Fine. So we’re looking for . . . what? Too much salt in the area?”

“That’s pretty much exactly what we were looking for, Captain,” Leishman confirmed. “But we didn’t find it.”

“So let me get this straight,” said Dax, pressing the heel of her hand hard against her forehead. “Outpost V-4, being insufficiently salty, is not likely to have played host or currently be playing host to any Tzenkethi weaponry that we know of?”

“That’s right,” said Helkara. “However—”

“You say anything about pepper, Commander, and you’re in the brig.”

Helkara didn’t even blink. “I have no data on pepper,” he said. “What I
am
going to draw your attention to, however”—he leaned over to place his finger on a line of text on Dax’s padd—“is this.”

Dax saw blue figures, red figures, and green figures. Some of them were numbers and some were letters. Some of them looked suspiciously like they were upside down.

“Tell me what this means,” Dax said. “I’m a busy woman with a ship to run and a crisis to handle and I’ve surrounded myself with smart, dedicated people for the sole purpose of interpreting unintelligible squiggles for me.”

“It’s the chemical formula for a set of compounds generally known as P96 solvents,” Leishman explained helpfully. “Those figures mean that we’ve detected unusually high levels of these around Outpost V-4.”

“Again,” said Dax, “a little more interpretation will go a long way with me. Much like salt, in fact.”

“P96 solvents,” said Helkara, “are used to stabilize certain other compounds. One of them is navithium resin.”

Alden started. Dax, alert at once, said, “What is it?”

Helkara glanced at the doctor, sitting next to her, and sighed. “Simon, perhaps you could explain about the navithium resin?”

Tarses nodded. “Navithium resin, Captain, is a substance deadly to humans. Its most common use is in bioweapons.”

“Oh,” Dax said, and then she thought of the medical facility on Outpost V-4, staffed entirely by Tzenkethi. “Oh!”

“I knew it,” said Alden. He almost sounded excited. “I
knew
it!”

“All right, Peter, hold on a moment,” Dax said quickly and held up a hand before he could say any more. “Let me work through what’s going on here and what other explanations there might be.”

“Ezri, it’s obvious what’s going on—”

“Not to me,” Dax said sharply. Alden, frowning, looked ready to say something equally snappish back but then pressed his lips together, folded his arms, and walked slowly across the room, his back to the rest of them. Dax didn’t miss the surprised glances her three senior officers exchanged at the severity of her response. But it was critical that they got this right. Dax put the padd down on the table and pushed her hand through her short hair, trying to think clearly.

“All right,” she said. “So we’ve found nothing to suggest that there are any Tzenkethi weapons on or around Outpost V-4.”

“None that we know of,” Leishman confirmed. “I guess there could be a new generation of weapons that we know nothing about and can’t detect.” She glanced uncertainly at Alden. “But surely we have people on the ground finding out about this kind of thing, and that information would have cascaded through to us by now?”

There was a pause. “Commander Alden,” Dax said. “Can you confirm or deny this?”

Alden didn’t reply.

“Commander,” Dax said, calmly and firmly, “you’re here to offer the captain of this ship your specialist advice. Advise.”

Alden turned around slowly. His hands were clasped behind his back and he didn’t make eye contact with anyone. “Yes, we do,” he said crisply. “And yes, it would.”

“Thank you, Commander,” Dax said. Again her senior officers gave each other worried looks. “So,” Dax said, pushing forward decisively in her chair, “based on everything we know about Tzenkethi weaponry, we don’t think there’s anything hidden on Outpost V-4 right now. But while we were making sure of this, we discovered the presence of a compound used as a stabilizer for navithium resin.” She considered this. “But you didn’t find any
actual
navithium resin?”

“No,” said Helkara. “Although that would be hard to pick up on a scan.”

There was a pause. Dax propped her chin against her hand. Alden turned around and walked back to where she was sitting. He leaned down by her shoulder.

“Ezri,” he said quietly but urgently, “this is what we were sent here for. This is exactly what we were sent here to find. You said you wanted my advice. You need to
listen
—”

She swung her head up to look at him. “And what exactly
have
we found, Commander? Evidence of some solvents? What else can they be used for? Leishman, Helkara, what are P96 solvents used for other than stabilizing navithium resins?”

“Oh, all kinds of things, Captain,” Leishman replied.

“Hear that? All kinds of things. Their use might
be obvious to you—and to Starfleet Intelligence—but I’ve not yet heard the evidence.”

She watched his hand clench into a fist. White knuckles. One slow, shuddering breath.
What is this? Why are you so keen to push me to take such a hard line? Are you concealing something? Do you—and your superiors—know something you’re not telling me? Well, mister, you’re going to have to tell me if you want me to risk war.

“Ezri,” he said too softly, “have we just been over to the same base? Did we see the same things? I saw Tzenkethi engineers extending the capacity of the docking circles to cope with their warships. I saw Tzenkethi medics refitting a facility stocked with stabilizers for compounds used in bioweapons. Do I have to remind you of the proximity of this base to our borders?”

“You don’t have to remind me of anything, Commander!” Dax shot back. “You just have to show me
proof.
”

Alden pulled back as if bitten and went back across to the bulkhead. An uneasy silence settled on the room.

Dax took a deep breath and collected herself. “I’ve talked to Heldon,” she said. “I don’t believe she’d be complicit in something like this. In fact, I don’t believe the Venetans en masse would be complicit in something like this. Making Federation visitors feel uncomfortable? Fine. Leasing bases to Federation enemies to embarrass us? Yes, I believe they’d do that. But
bioweapons
?” She shook her head. “No. So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re not going to fling around accusations. We’re going to keep calm.
Mikaela, Gruhn”—she glanced over at Leishman and Helkara—“go back to those scans and see if there’s anything else you can learn from them.”

Both officers nodded.

“Simon, any information you can supply about navithium resin, I’m sure I’ll find that useful.”

“Naturally, Captain.”

“Commander Alden,” Dax said.

A long moment passed before he turned around to face her.

“Yes, Captain?”

“Contact Starfleet Intelligence. Let them know what we’ve found. Tell them that we’re not certain yet whether it means anything. I want to know if there is anything they are not telling you . . . telling us. Have you got that?”

Suddenly he relaxed. “Yes, sir. Of course. I’ll get right onto it.”

“Good,” she said softly. “Thank you.”

She glanced around at the rest of her senior officers. “Thank you all. And while you’re all busy with that, I’m going to speak to Heldon. I want to give her every opportunity to explain what’s happening here before any of us does anything that we might regret.”

They left, somewhat subdued. Dax, exhausted, fell back into her chair.
It’s bad enough fighting enemies,
she thought.
I don’t want to have to fight my friends.

6

FROM:
Civilian Freighter
Inzitran,
flagship, Merchant Fleet 9

TO:
Ementar Vik Tov-A, senior designated speaker, Active Affairs, Department of the Outside

STATUS:
Estimated time to border: 26 skyturns
Estimated time to destination: 28 skyturns

Escort vessel D3 suffering engine malfunction. Maintenance crew dispatched.

T
o Dax’s astonishment, when she returned to Outpost V-4 to ask Heldon about the presence on the base of the solvents, the Venetan woman was completely frank in her response. Was there no subterfuge with these people? Did they have
any
secrets?

“Yes, we have a large stock of P96 solvents,” Heldon said. “They’re needed to stabilize certain resinous
compounds that the Tzenkethi intend to bring here.” She gestured to her colleague, Entrigar Ter Yai-A, the Tzenkethi in charge of the new medical facility, who signaled his agreement.