Star Trek: Brinkmanship (16 page)

She favored Dygan with a full smile. Dygan ducked his head. Crusher, sitting quietly next to him, bit her lip and hoped . . .

“Yet his government makes many such strange choices,” Alizome said suddenly, from her corner. Crusher saw the fur on Vitig’s arms rise ever so slightly.

“What do you mean by that?” she said.

Alizome stepped forward. She moved like liquid,
Crusher thought, every step flowing as if her whole body was in motion, and her skin shimmered silvery-blue like moonlight on the water of a lagoon. “I can think of many unfortunate appointments made by the Cardassian government, even in recent years, when, according to Glinn Dygan, his people have been trying to make amends for their former crimes.”

“Such as?” Vitig frowned. “You must be specific, Alizome. Implication and insinuation serve none of us, and do us no credit either.”

“Such as the Cardassian ambassador to Earth.”

A pause.
Hell,
thought Crusher.

“Go on,” Vitig said quietly.

“The Cardassian ambassador to Earth was once a member of the Obsidian Order,” said Alizome. “I know that your convention has kept itself distanced from the affairs of the wider quadrant, Vitig, but I believe
that
name is familiar to you.”

Vitig rose from her chair. She took a few paces around the atrium, which was quiet and empty this late at night. “Yes,” she said after a while. “Yes, it is. And the Federation has seen fit to welcome such a person as a suitable ambassador to their world. Crusher, do you deny this?”

“No,” Crusher said simply. “I don’t. I can’t. But I would say that everyone deserves a second chance.”
That was weak,
she thought as she said it, and she saw Alizome’s skin glitter ever so slightly.
Amusement, Alizome? Or triumph?

“How do you know that Ambassador Garak was
once a member of the Obsidian Order?” asked Crusher, more out of curiosity than in challenge. “That was a very secretive organization, after all.”

Alizome gave her a pitying look. “We know the ambassador of old, Doctor Crusher.”

Vitig turned back but did not return to her chair. “I think that you should leave now,” she said. “I have nothing else to say to you tonight, Beverly Crusher.” She glanced at Dygan. “Ravel Dygan, I hope that you will take no sense of personal failure from how this meeting has ended. But I would advise you to reflect upon whether the people you choose to serve deserve your service. Please,” she said again, “leave now.”

Silently, Crusher and Dygan left the atrium. Dygan looked stunned. “I’m . . . not sure I quite understand what just happened then, Doctor,” he said, when the door to the room closed behind them.

They walked slowly along the corridor.
What happened was that we were stitched up,
Crusher thought angrily.
We skipped in there like a couple of amateurs and Alizome sent us packing. This wouldn’t have happened to Jean-Luc, or Jeyn—or Chen. Why am I here?

“We were outclassed,” she said shortly and, seeing Dygan’s glum expression, she patted his arm. “Not your fault. I wasn’t expecting Alizome to be there.” But, Crusher thought, she
should
have expected Alizome to be there. It was clear to her that Alizome was the one controlling events, and she, Jeyn, and Picard combined seemed unable to find a way to counter her moves. Tzenkethi plans for Venette had been
laid long ago, Crusher suspected. The Federation and its allies had been invited along only to participate in the endgame.

They came to the door of Dygan’s quarters. He hesitated before going inside. “I hope you’ll pass on my sincere apologies to Captain Picard,” he said quietly.

“What? Dygan, you have
nothing
to apologize for. If anything, I should apologize to you. I wasn’t prepared, and I took you in there with me—”

“Nevertheless,” said Dygan.

“What I’ll tell Captain Picard,” Crusher said, “is that you behaved impeccably, and that you’re a credit to your uniform and your people.”

That seemed to cheer him up a little. “Thank you, Doctor Crusher. Good night.”

He went into his quarters. Crusher hurried back to their suite. Both Jeyn and Picard looked up at her hopefully.

“No good,” she said flatly.

Jeyn’s shoulders slumped. “Then what now? They won’t talk to the Cardassians, they’ll barely talk to us. Who else is there?”

“There’s still someone,” said Picard, “someone with whom you’ve made a particular connection these past few days, Beverly.”

“Of course.” Crusher snapped her fingers. “Ilka!”

•   •   •

Heldon at last got back in touch. Dax took the message in her ready room. She left Bowers on the bridge. She was increasingly uneasy about having another present
and unacknowledged during these encounters with Heldon, as if she was violating some trust. Besides, the whole conversation was being recorded.

“Heldon,” she said. “Can we come and inspect your medical facility again?”

“I am prepared for you and one other—your doctor, perhaps—to come across again, Dax. But I have one condition.”

“Fire ahead,” said Dax with a slight sense of foreboding.

“The Tzenkethi medical team must be present throughout
.”

“I’m sorry, Heldon,” Dax replied, “but that’s not acceptable. This is between you and me, between the Venetans and the Federation. I’m not here to deal with the Tzenkethi, and I’m not empowered to deal with the Tzenkethi.” That last wasn’t entirely true, Dax thought guiltily, as she was fairly sure that any action she took that prevented any navithium resin from arriving on Outpost V-4 would eventually be forgiven by her superiors.
Any action within reason. I doubt they’d want me running amok shooting every Tzenkethi within range . . .
But it was a helpful fiction if she was going to be able to deal with Heldon without the Tzenkethi always nearby. “I don’t have the authority to deal with them.”

“Authority?”
said Heldon, baffled.
“Aren’t you a citizen of the Federation? Is that not sufficient to give you authority?”
She shook her head.
“Your customs and your systems are very strange to me, Dax. But if that’s how it
has to be, then I must decline. You have to understand that when you show suspicion toward the Tzenkethi, you slight us, their hosts. They are our
friends.”

“That might be the case, Heldon, but they are most emphatically not
ours.
”

And so their conversation ended at an impasse again. Dax checked on the arrival of the Tzenkethi ships. They were a little under ten days away from the border. A little under ten days, or two hundred hours, and counting down.

“Think, Dax,” she muttered to herself. “You have to prove to Heldon that what’s coming on those ships really is the serious threat that we believe it is. So how do you do that?”

First of all, she decided, by going back to her briefing documents and, in particular, the reports from Leishman and Helkara of the scans they had conducted of Outpost V-4. After two hours with her head down (
one hundred ninety-eight hours to go
), she realized she was coming back again and again to the solvents. The P96 solvents already on the base, which were used to stabilize a variety of compounds including navithium resin. If they had a sample, perhaps they could narrow down which solvent it was, and so which compounds it was going to be used for.

But Heldon wasn’t simply going to hand them over.

Dax stood up, stretched, and rubbed the back of her neck. Then she took a deep breath and opened a comm channel.

“Susan,” she said. “Will you come to my ready room, please?”

•   •   •

Susan Hyatt, hearing what Dax had in mind, nearly started bouncing off the bulkheads.

“No, Ezri, I
won’t
tell you that it will be fine. It’s a
terrible
idea. It would expose Peter Alden to exactly the kinds of triggers that could do him enormous harm. A tired man in a stressful situation, the possibility of capture by Tzenkethi—he should be resting, not running around on undercover missions on a Tzenkethi-held base!”

Guiltily, Dax thought of her conversation with Heldon in which the Venetan woman had said much the same thing.

“Send someone else with Kedair. Send Sam. He’s been desperate to get off the ship—”

“It has to be Alden,” Dax replied. “Only he is even remotely equipped to deal with the Tzenkethi technology in that medical facility. Susan, he’s my friend. I don’t want him to come to any harm—”

“Then don’t put him in harm’s way.”

“But I
have
to know whether those Tzenkethi ships are bringing navithium resin here. I’ve asked nicely, again and again, and I’m getting nowhere.”

“But there’s no guarantee that getting a sample would even answer that question. It might not tell you that the ships are definitely bringing the resin. It might only tell you
perhaps.
”

“Even then, it would be a much less qualified ‘perhaps.’
Besides, it will be a bargaining chip. And I need something, because right now I don’t have anything. The Tzenkethi might be
days
away from putting bioweapons within strike range of Federation space, and there isn’t a damn thing I’ve been able to do about it! Well, now I think I can. They’ve been outmaneuvering us at every step. It’s time we started to outmaneuver
them.
”

“You’re the captain,” Hyatt said. “But if this comes at the cost of Peter Alden’s sanity, I don’t think you’ll forgive yourself, Ezri.”

•   •   •

Alden, summoned in his turn to Dax’s ready room, sat and listened to her speak, then leaned back in his chair. “You want me to go back to Outpost V-4,” he said.

“Yes.”

“With Lieutenant Kedair.”

“Yes.”

“In secret.”

“Yes.”

“And acquire from its medical facility a sample of the P96 solvents stored there.”

Dax too leaned back. “You’re sharp as nails tonight, Peter.”

“And this is a request.”

“Yes, and haven’t I asked nicely?”

“Why don’t you just order me over there, Ezri? After all,” he said bitterly, “you all but ordered me to leave.”

“Peter, whatever you think of me right now, you know in your heart that I am your friend and that I’m concerned for you. You went too far earlier, and you know it. You also know that your behavior could have jeopardized this entire mission and taken us some way toward outright hostilities with these people.”

He stared at her for a while, and then he began to laugh, full and very genuine laughter.

“What?” Dax said. “What’s so funny?”

“You’ve got some nerve, that’s what. In one breath you’re asking me to go on a dangerous mission and in the next you’re insisting that you’re concerned for my welfare!”

“Yes, well, captain’s prerogative. Will you go?”

“What? Oh, of course I’ll go. A chance to get one past the Tzenkethi? I’m not going to turn that down.” He rose from his seat. “I should find Kedair. We have a mission to plan.” He stopped by the door. “I won’t let you down, Ezri.”

“I know that, Peter. I won’t let you down either.”

•   •   •

Ilka invited Crusher to her suite as soon as she received her request for a meeting. “I must apologize if I’ve woken you,” Crusher said on entering the room. The lighting had been lowered and Ilka had a faint air of dishevelment about her. Her usual meticulous dress and careful adornment were nowhere in sight.

“No, you haven’t woken me,” Ilka said, pointing toward her desk, where padds and other data files were piled up. “I wonder, are any of us sleeping tonight? I’ve
been in near-constant communication with my government, and I’m sure that’s been the same for you and your colleagues too.” She gestured to Crusher to sit down, and, with an instruction to the computer, the lamps came gently to a slightly brighter level, like woodland in the late afternoon. “But how can I help you, Beverly? I know it’s been a difficult day for your team. Is there anything that I can do to help?”

“I hope so. We’re stuck, Ilka,” Crusher said frankly. “I went with Dygan to speak to Vitig, but Alizome was there, and she prevented any meaningful dialogue from taking place. No, actually, let me be scrupulously accurate about what happened: Alizome sabotaged the meeting.”
And I was an easy target.

Ilka clicked her tongue. “A malign influence, that one.”

“You said it. Anyway, there’s no way now that any of our senior representatives will get anywhere near the Venetans, and in fact I doubt they’d willingly see any of our junior members again, myself included.” Crusher leaned forward, her hands falling open on her knees in a gesture that was half hopeless, half supplicatory. “Ilka, you’re the only remaining lead negotiator who has anything remotely like a channel open to the Venetans. You’re the only senior representative here from a Khitomer power who isn’t implicated in this whole spying farce. The Venetans are angry with the Cardassians for spying on them, and angry with us for spying on their friends. But I haven’t seen any accusations flying around about
your
government yet.”

“So you want me to speak to the Venetans on your behalf?”

“If you think you’re able to do that.”

Ilka sat back in her chair. She tugged thoughtfully at one earlobe. “If I
do
meet with Rusht and Vitig, what do you want me to say?”

“Try to persuade them that they have to reopen formal negotiations. If ‘formal’ is the right word for what’s been going on. But it’s better than all
this.
” Crusher held up her hands helplessly.

“This?”

“Talking through back channels. Sending messages through each other. You have children, don’t you, Ilka?”

“Yes, I do. Four.”

“Then you know what children’s games can be like. That’s what I feel we’re trapped in now.”

Ilka smiled, and Crusher knew she understood. Pressing her advantage, she went on, “It’s only adding to the hostility and the suspicion that we’re all feeling. If Rusht and Vitig would only listen, we and the Cardassians are ready to talk. Apologize if necessary. After all, we’re all smart, experienced people. I’m
sure
we can come up with a way of apologizing that doesn’t make us feel like we’re down on bended knee pleading for favors. What do you say, Ilka? Will you go and speak to the Venetans for us?”