Текст книги "Lesser Evil"

Автор книги: Robert Simpson

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

“Molly!” Miles O’Brien and his wife Keiko shouted in unison as they ran to where their child had fallen. “Are you all right?” said Miles, bending down to lift her up.

“Wow!” laughed Molly with a broad smile. “That was great!”

“I’ll get a dermal regenerator,” said Keiko, brushing off the back of Molly’s pants as Molly stood her bicycle back up and started to climb onboard again. Before she could check Molly’s arm, the little girl was off running down the sidewalk.

“Scrape already forgotten,” said Miles, smiling as he watched his daughter wobble erratically off, fall, get up, laugh, and start over again. “She’s a natural.”

“She could never do this on DS9—or the Enterprise,for that matter,” said Keiko. “Can you imagine Captain Picard’s reaction to a child on a bicycle in the corridors?”

“Picard? What about Odo? I can hear him now: ‘No pedaling on—’”

“‘—my Promenade!’” thay finished in unison, Keiko dropping her voice down a couple of octaves. They laughed. “He always tried so hard to come across so stern, when you know deep down he probably wanted to turn into a bicycle just to find out what the fascination was.”

“How’s the bike working out?”

The O’Briens turned to see Joseph Sisko walking toward them.

“It’s been wonderful, sir,” Keiko said. “Molly’s having the time of her life. We want to thank you again for your generosity, and your hospitality.”

Joseph waved away Keiko’s gratitude. “You don’t have to thank me, Keiko. This visit has helped me to realize there’s a lot more I need to be thinking about right now than my own feelings. In fact, that was actually what I came out here to discuss with you. I have a request to make.”

Miles looked at Keiko, then back to Joseph, smiling. “Well, of course, sir. Anything.”

Joseph grinned wryly. “I think you may regret saying that when you hear me out,” he said. “I want you to take me to Bajor.”

21

Dax sat with Prynn in the ensign’s quarters, letting her vent the grief, the outrage, the anger, and the hatred she felt for Vaughn. He had tried to talk with her, Dax knew, but the shock of what happened was still too recent and too raw.

“He couldn’t have been sure,” Prynn was saying. “He says she was going to assimilate me, but how could he really know? Dr. Bashir said the autopsy was inconclusive.”

Dax nodded. “I know. But he insists on what he saw, Prynn. And this was right after the Borg corpse down the hall tried to assimilate the Founder. Do you really think he was imagining it?”

Prynn covered her eyes with one hand, trying to rein in her emotions. “I don’t know what to think. I just know we were so close…and he deliberately killed her. My father killed my mother. Again.”

“You’ll get no argument from him on that,” Dax said. “He really believes that’s true, that he’s killed Ruriko twice. He may be more devastated by this than you are. But there’s something you both need to understand and accept before this goes any farther: Ruriko Tenmei died a long time ago, as a hero, saving lives. The thing that was in sickbay wasn’t her.”

“What are you saying?”

“What I’m telling you is that Dr. Bashir’s latest tests have confirmed what he feared all along: the damage to your mother’s brain was too extensive. There was nothing left of her to bring back. She was all Borg.”

“That isn’t true. I saw her, I heard her. She responded to me. She said my name.”

“Did it?” Dax asked, deliberately dropping the female pronoun. “It’s hard to know exactly what it actually said, isn’t it? I mean reallyknow beyond any doubt. And the drone never said anything else, did it?”

“Why did she respond to me, then?”

“Julian believes it was a form of imprinting,” Dax explained. “You were the first life-form the drone encountered when it regained consciousness. It targeted you for assimilation. But as weak as it was, with so many of its implants removed or neutralized, it need time to re-create its assimilation system. Do you understand what I’m saying? You weren’t that thing’s daughter. You were its target.”

“I don’t believe this.”

“Dr. Bashir will confirm it if you ask him. It’s up to you. But if you believe nothing else I tell you, Prynn, I hope you’ll believe this, as someone who once, in an earlier lifetime, allowed her spouse to die and remained estranged from her daughter for eight years because of it: neither you nor your father will recover from this unless you do it together. You need to decide if the grief and anger and hate you feel right now, and the self-loathing Vaughn feels, are stronger than the love I know you share.”

Prynn shook her head, “I don’t know if I can do this, Ezri.”

“Prynn,” Dax said softly. “It was the Borg that killed your mother. Don’t let them destroy what’s left of your family. Don’t let them win.”

Prynn said nothing, and after a moment Dax stood up and departed, promising to look in on her later.

As Dax expected, Vaughn was waiting for her in the corridor, a confused expression on his face.

Dax pressed an index finger to her lips and gestured for him to follow her. She led him up to deck one, and suggested they go to his quarters. Inside he asked the question that she knew he needed to ask.

“Why did you lie to her? There are no new test results. Ruriko wasalive in there, somewhere, despite what the Borg implants were making her do. That much Julian was certain of before the end. He told me himself. She really was regaining her humanity, even if it wasn’t strong enough yet to fight off the assimilation imperative.”

“That’s right, I lied,” Dax said. “Someday you can tell her the truth, Elias. Maybe when she’s found someone who means to her what Ruriko meant to you. But until then, she won’t understand that you didn’t really kill Ruriko to save Prynn, or even to save the Defiant.You did it for Ruriko. So that whatever wasleft of her wouldn’t have to live one instant with the horror of turning her own child into a monster.”

Vaughn closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, Dax saw that they were rimmed red. “I think I finally understand what L.J. was trying to tell me before I left the station.”

“L.J.?” Dax asked. “You mean Admiral Akaar.”

Vaughn nodded. “He warned me not to take Prynn on this mission. He said he wasn’t worried about the crew; he was worried about the two of us.”

“There’s something to be said about taking the advice of your elders,” Ezri said lightly, knowing she didn’t need to remind him that Dax’s life spanned over three hundred years.

Vaughn laughed bitterly. “I might have guessed you’d still have some pearls of wisdom to dispense.”

Dax shook her head. “Not really. Just a little common sense. Give her time. Give yourself time. And try to forgive yourself.”

After Dax left, Vaughn sat on the edge of his bunk and stared at the deck for long minutes. His tears fell silently.

22

“Kira to bridge,” she whispered. “I’m about to enter engineering. Stand by.” Leading with her phaser rifle, Kira hit the control for the Jefferies tube seal, and the doors split, opening into light.

She heard no sound save the thrum of the warp core some distance away. Peering out, she saw that the tube opened into another junction room, with other tube entrances surrounding her, except for the single door that led out.

Taking a deep breath, she moved toward the door. It opened at her approach, and she turned into the next room quickly, searching for a target.

She had to creep through a few more sections before she finally spotted Montenegro in the warp-core chamber, bent over the master systems display table, his back to her. Knowing an easier shot would never come, Kira took aim with her rifle. Montenegro didn’t turn, but she sensed a change in his attitude that made her certain he was aware of her. He was already a blur of motion as her finger pulled back on the trigger. The beam missed him, and he was gone from sight. Kira cursed and doubled back in the hopes of cutting him off from another direction.

“Well, well,”Montenegro said, his disembodied voice cutting through the vast engine room. “So the gullible little Bajoran has made it all the way to the end of the maze. I almost wish I had some cheese to reward you with. You know, I think that’s the thing we like most about your people, Colonel. As meat goes, you’re so very easy to steer.”

Kira spun as she crept around a corner, searching for the source of the voice. Keep him talking.“Is that what we are to you? Meat?”

Laughter. “What else? You’re lower life-forms, Colonel. Get used to the idea. You think walking upright, developing language, building starships, and fighting wars is a sign of superior intelligence? You have no idea what true intelligence is capable of.”

“So tell me,” Kira said, firing off a shot at a shadow that disappeared too quickly. The phaser blast blew a hole in the wall where the shadow had been.

Laughter again. “Careful, Colonel, you might shoot something important. Not that I’m surprised. Humanoids think too much with their glands, and not enough with their brains. That’s why you’re all so easy to conquer.”

“My people have been conquered before,” Kira said, climbing up a ladder to the upper level. “It didn’t last. I seriously doubt you’ll do any better.”

“The Cardassians? Please, Colonel. That only underscores my point. A more useless species of humanoids we’ve yet to encounter. But you Bajorans—you’re the biggest joke of all. There you are at the threshold of time, space, and omniscience, and you squat on your mudball waiting for something to come through to you, rather than step inside yourselves. That’s just one of many things we plan to correct.”

The Celestial Temple? The parasites couldn’t possibly pose a threat to the Prophets. Could they?“With such big plans, seems like you’re wasting a lot of effort going after Trill.” Kira peered over the balcony for some sign of Montenegro on the lower level. Nothing.

“You still don’t get it, Colonel. You think the symbionts of Trill are benign little creatures sharing their intellectual immortality with the meat species on their planet. But believe me, they’re even more dangerous to your kind than we are.”

“How?” Kira asked, her eyes tracing the path she’d taken to the ladder.

She felt a breath in her ear….

“Boo,” Montenegro said.

Kira reacted instantly and swung the butt of her rifle with all her might against Montenegro’s ribs. She felt a crunch, but Gryphon’s first officer didn’t even flinch. Instead, he grabbed her by the neck and lifted her off the balcony with one hand, tore the phaser rifle away with the other, and threw her over the railing.

Ingoring the choking pain in her windpipe, Kira tried to control her fall, landing hard but rolling in time to avoid a bone-breaking impact. She looked up.

With inhuman strength, Montenegro swung the phaser rifle against the balcony railing and the weapon shattered. Fragments showered her. Montenegro held on to the jagged remains of the rifle and leaped down effortlessly, landing on both feet in front of her. He showed her the pointed shard of metal he held and smiled.

Kira charged at Montenegro and started flailing him with her fists, each blow a direct hit to his face as she pummeled him repeatedly, left, right, left, and left again. Montenegro staggered back, making no move to deflect the blows, his head snapping back with each punch. At one point Kira felt bone cracking, but wasn’t sure if it was her opponent’s cheek or her hand. Feeling the strength in her arms starting to ebb, Kira pivoted on one leg and landed a devastating kick into Montenegro’s chest with the other, knocking him back against a bulkhead.

Kira bent, hands on knees, panting as she waited for her enemy to fall to the deck. Instead, Montenegro stood up straight, flexed his neck, and said, “My turn.”

Faster than she would have thought possible, he jumped up and spin-kicked her against the warp core. Her back hit the guard rail hard, and for a moment she found it difficult to breathe. Montenegro strode toward her without haste and kicked her legs out from under her. She was flat on her back when he suddenly reached down and grabbed a fistful of her hair, pulling her up to one knee. He forced her to look up at him, once again waving the shard of her phaser rifle above her.

Defeated, Kira’s hands fell to her sides.

“Now, I want you to tell me something, Colonel,” Montenegro said.

Kira’s fingers found her boot.

“Now that you have some small indication here at the end of your stupid, brainless little life about what you’re facing, do you really think anyBajoran has even the slightest chance against my kind?”

Her hand found Captain Mello’s hand phaser.

“Why don’t you ask Shakaar?” Kira whispered as she brought up the weapon and fired.

Montenegro caught the beam point-blank in the face. His head pitched back, followed by his body. His tensing hand yanked out a clump of her hair as he fell back, landing in a heap on the deck in front of the warp core.

Kira climbed to her feet and walked around the body, wanting to be certain he was dead. The beam should have taken his head off, but it didn’t, though most of Montenegro’s hair had been singed away.

Then his jaw moved.

Kira staggered back, expecting him to get up and attack her again at any second. Instead, something came out of Montenegro’s mouth.

Led by a pair of oversize pincers, a clawed, six-legged creature small enough to fit in Kira’s hand slowly emerged on a trail of blood. Its pincers felt the air searchingly before it suddenly scurried toward Kira.

Kira waited until the thing was half a meter away, then raised her foot and brought her heel down with enough force for the impact to echo through the engine room, sending a jolt of pain up her leg. She scarcely noticed, and proceeded to scrape off the smashed remains of the parasite against the lip of the warp-core base.

Kira then went to the master systems display and attempted to power down the engines. She tried once. Twice. Three times.

“Kira to bridge. Montenegro is dead, but whatever he’s done to the engines, I can’t stop it. Warp power is unchanged.”

“We see it, Commander,”Spillane said. “Can you return helm control to the bridge?”

“Stand by,” Kira said. She searched the maze of Montenegro’s reconfigured engineering console and found the manual override for helm and navigation. It was a search of only a few seconds to find the cancelation command. “Computer, this is Commander Kira. Transfer flight control to the bridge.”

“Transfer executed.”

“That did it, Commander! We can change course—oh, no…”

“What is it?” Kira demanded, an instant before the ship shook beneath her.

“Three Federation starships on attack vectors,”Spillane said. “They’re ordering us to lower shields and power down, or be destroyed.”

Akaar,Kira thought. Those have to be the ships that Mello mentioned. He probably ordered the attack ifGryphon got beyond a certain point without contact.Kira searched the board once more, cursed, and started out of engineering. “Take evasive action. I’m coming up.”

“Sir, communications—”

“Are not an option,” Kira said as she searched the corridor for the turbolift. “He slagged both the subspace and RF transmitters. We’re mute. We’ll have to figure something else out. Bridge,” she told the elevator.

Kira stepped onto the bridge to find the Gryphonofficers glued to their seats. Spillane noted her arrival and stood up from the command chair. Without thinking about it, Kira settled into the center seat. The Gryphonshook again.

“They’re targeting our after shields,” Spillane reported.

“Show me a tactical display,” Kira ordered.

A strategic overlay suddenly superimposed the starfield on the viewscreen. Their attackers were the Nebula-class T’Kumbra,along with the Sagittariusand the Polaris,both Norway-class starships. From the look of things, the two Norways were in pursuit, closing in from behind and below. Up ahead and above them, T’Kumbrawas swooping down to intercept. They’d make very short work of the Gryphon,unless Kira tried to fight it out. But as far as she was concerned, firing on another Federation starship was notan option.

“T’Kumbra…”Kira murmured, thinking.

“Incoming fire!” Spillane announced. “Hang on!”

Kira grabbed the armrests of the captain’s chair as the ship rocked again.

“Shields reduced to forty percent,” Bhatnagar said. “Sir, what are your orders?”

“Captain Solok still commands the T’Kumbra,doesn’t he?” Kira asked the room urgently.

It was Xiang who answered. “I believe so, yes.”

Solok,Kira thought. Abrasive, arrogant Academy classmate of Captain Sisko. Solok was so certain of the innate superiority of Vulcans over humans and most other Alpha Quadrant humanoids that he’d once challenged Benjamin to a game of baseball during a quiet moment in the middle of the Dominion war. Kira had played on Sisko’s team, and they had lost spectacularly, but nevertheless claimed a victory by simply taking joy in playing the game—something the Vulcans would never do.

“You are attempting to manufacture a triumph where none exists,”Solok had said.

Kira smiled. All right, Solok, let’s see if you remember….

“We need to communicate with the T’Kumbra,”Kira said.

“But, sir,” said Croth. “You said yourself that the transmitters were destroyed….”

“We need to send Captain Solok a message,” Kira insisted, “something he’ll know immediately is from me so he’ll order the task force to stand down. I need an alternative to conventional communications.”

Croth considered. “We could tap out a message using the running lights on the hull,” he suggested.

“No good,” Kira said. “It might take them too long to notice, assuming they noticed at all. We need to get Solok’s attention immediately.”An idea occurred to her. “What if we used the phasers?”

“Sir,” Spillane said, “if we start using the phasers now, the task force almost certainly won’t hesitate to use deadly force against us.”

The ship rocked again. Bhatnagar reported shields were down to fifteen percent.

“I don’t think they’ve been pulling their punches up to now, Lieutenant. Reconfigure the aft phasers to one one-hundredth power and fire short bursts away from those ships. We want to tap out a message in Starfleet’s most basic code.”

Spillane nodded, working her console. “I can do that, but it better be damn short, sir.”

“Just two words: Manufactured triumph.”

The other officers looked at each other. Kira realized she must have sounded as if she were out of her mind. Fortunately, they all knew they had no time to argue with her.

“Firing phasers,” Spillane said. Her hand danced rhythmically on her control interface. On the viewscreen the phaser beams flashed in perfect synch with Spillane’s taps, firing harmlessly into the void.

Another blast shook the bridge. “Shields are gone,” Bhatnagar announced, and Kira knew she had failed.

“Sir,” Croth said suddenly. “T’Kumbrais matching course and velocities alongside us. Sagittariusand Polarisare doing likewise above and below.”

Kira rose from her chair and stared at the viewscreen, now showing an image of the Nebula-class ship. “Any new transmissions?” Kira asked.

Croth studied his console and shook his head. “Negative. However, their torpedo tubes are open and loaded.”

Kira held her breath, waiting. Come on, Solok, put it together….

Seconds went by in silence. Then the sound of transporter beams filled the bridge, and six columns of light solidified into the forms of a half-dozen armed Vulcans in Starfleet uniforms, standing in front of the view-screen. Solok was among them. His eyes found Kira, who stood in the middle of the bridge, and he raised an eyebrow. “Colonel Kira. Permission to come aboard.”

Kira almost laughed. “Granted, Captain. Thanks for dropping in. We could use some help getting the Gryphonback under control.”

Solok put his people to work with the Gryphon’s crew, then turned his attention back to Kira. “Captain Mello?” he asked.

“Dead,” Kira reported. “Killed by her first officer, who engineered this mess to begin with and who is also dead.”

Solok simply nodded. “You took quite a risk, gambling that I would grasp the meaning of your phaser barrage.”

“Not really,” Kira said evenly. “I had nothing to lose.”

“And what would you have done if you had faced a different starship captain?”

Kira arched an eyebrow at him. “I guess we’ll never know.”

“Indeed,” Solok said. “I’m beginning to believe I may have much to learn from further study of manufactured triumphs.”

“Good luck with that,” Kira replied. “You’ll be hard-pressed to find as good a teacher as the one I had.”

Twenty-six hours later, with the help of T’Kumbra’s engineers, Gryphonwas restored to full functionality. Sagittariusand Polarishad recovered all of Gryphon’s escape pods with no fatalities, and reunited them with their mothership. Kira bowed out of leading the memorial services for Captain Mello and Commander Montenegro, allowing those of Gryphon’s officers who knew them best to eulogize them, while she stood among the crew, mourning as one of many.

When the services were over, Kira returned to the bridge as the ship prepared to get under way for its return voyage to Deep Space 9. Once back at the station, she would relinquish command. This wasn’t over by a long shot, she knew. But at least they’d saved Trill.

“Message coming in, Commander,” Spillane reported from tactical. “It’s from a Trill military transport, approaching us on an intercept course.”

Kira looked toward the viewer. “On screen.”

The starfield was replaced by the face of large male Trill with white hair and deep frown lines mingling with the dark spots that ran down either side of his face. “Colonel Kira,” he began. “I’m General Taulin Cyl of the Trill Defense Ministry. I request permission to come aboard.”

Kira’s eyes narrowed. “May I assume this is about the assassination of First Minister Shakaar?”

“It’s about much more than that, Colonel,” General Cyl said. “I’m aware of what you’ve been through during the past few days. And you deserve to know the truth—you needto know the truth, so we can work together to face what’s coming.”

“Which is what, precisely?” Kira asked.

“The parasites are waging a war, Colonel. And regardless of what you may think, it isn’t a war for power. It’s a war of revenge.”

“Against what?”

“Against the symbionts,” Cyl explained. “Humanoids are not the targets of the parasites’ war, and we never were. We’re the battlefield.”