Star Trek: Brinkmanship (7 page)

Dygan, seated behind her, flinched. Crusher saw him throw an anxious look across the table at Picard.

Who swiftly intervened. “You are correct, Rusht,” he said, “that you have made no formal welcome. Yet in the hospitality that has been shown since our arrival—the rooms, the refreshments—and in your simple willingness to meet us after the disappointments of the past, I fear we must be forgiven if we misconstrued these signs as a welcome. Our gratitude for this my colleague has, I think, accurately conveyed on behalf of all of us.”

That voice,
Crusher thought fondly.
Who could possibly be immune to its charm? I know I’m not.

And Rusht, if not charmed, seemed at least prepared to be persuaded by the sentiment expressed.

“Skillful words,” she said with a slight smile. “We knew that already about the Federation, of course. Words came easily, although action did not. But I’m ready, for the moment, to hear more.” She glanced briefly across at Detrek (was that contempt in her eyes?) and then looked back at Picard. “From you, Picard, at least.”

Crusher breathed out slightly and relaxed. She saw Dygan do the same.
Nice save, Jean-Luc. That’s why they send you on these missions.

4

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: 32 skyturns
Estimated time to destination: 47 skyturns

Waypoint 42. Fleet course adjustment executed successfully.

T
he next time Efheny went to the eatery at the covered market, there was no sign of Hertome. She was able to enjoy her
leti
and biscuit in peace. She watched the bustle of the crowd and observed the servers, moving silently between tables, signaling orders back to the kitchen with a kind of finger poetry that made her xenoanthropologist’s heart sing. She needed
this moment of solitude. She was still uncertain what to do about Hertome.

She had thought of killing him, of course, but murder was unusual on Ab-Tzenketh, and the enforcers investigated any instances fiercely and effectively. Far too risky for an undercover spy. She had debated working with him, as he’d suggested, but she could not bring herself to trust a human, even one as highly trained as Hertome must be. She’d already seen him slip too easily out of his role. She couldn’t request a transfer from her work unit. The whole point of her presence on Ab-Tzenketh was to be in the rooms used by the civil servants in the Department of the Outside. They could keep up the pretense indefinitely, but Hertome was a problem that wasn’t going away. So what should she do? She went into work the next day still undecided, keeping her head down and rushing to obey Hertome’s every order.

That evening she went back to the eatery. To her dismay, Hertome was there. Worse, the only available space was at the same table. With a sigh, Efheny began the complex series of supplications that would allow someone of her grade to request permission to sit opposite someone of his comparatively elevated status.

“We
can
speak freely, you know,” he said rather impatiently, when at last she lowered herself down to the ground. “My bioengineering enables audio disruption, as I’m sure yours does too. I activated it when you sat down. Anyone listening will hear us exchanging
prerecorded pleasantries. But keep your eyes down, Mayazan. You still have to look the part.”

She did keep her eyes down and she did not reply, simply signaled her request to the server. Hertome’s fingers, darkly stained with the cleaning agents that they both used, fiddled with his cup as she ordered.

“I saw on the C-bulletin the other day,” he said chattily, as if they were old friends soaking up the heat in some city stone room, “that the Ret Ata-EE genome is under revision. Some of the Yai scientists have suggested that the next generation of servers should be bred not to speak. They’re arguing that such a feature is redundant in them because they can perform all of their functions perfectly adequately without. They don’t need to speak to serve. What do you think of that, Mayazan? Or whatever your name is?”

“This one would not question the decisions of superiors. Whatever is decided will be best for her.”

Hertome sighed deeply. From beneath her eyelids, Efheny could see him watching her.

“Cardassian,” he said at last. “You have to be. You didn’t even blink. Genetically manipulating an entire class so that they no longer have speech? If you were Federation, if you were Ferengi, certainly if you were Klingon, there’d have been a muscle twitch at the very least. Revulsion is almost impossible to suppress.” He leaned back in again, close, and spoke very quietly. “But Cardassians? You’re made of colder stuff, aren’t you? Bet you’d have done it yourselves if you were able, at several points in your history.”

Stung, Efheny looked up—yes, looked directly at him. “This one suggests,” she said softly back, “that her training might simply be better than yours.”

“I thought about that,” he admitted cheerfully. “Thought about whether you were Federation and nobody had bothered to brief me. Even wondered whether you were from another Typhon Pact power—no reason why you wouldn’t all be spying on each other, after all—but when I woke up the morning after our little tête-à-tête here and I
wasn’t
dead, I figured you were probably an ally. So the question then was, what kind? Ferengi? Klingon?” He shook his head. “The thing is, I’ve worked alongside you for months. You
like
it here, don’t you, Mayazan? You like how calm it is, how ordered. I’ve seen you staring out across the lagoon as if it was a glimpse of paradise. You’re Cardassian, or my name’s not . . .” He smiled crookedly. “Well, my name’s not Hertome Ter Ata-C.”

Her
leti
arrived. She sipped it.

“How did you know I wasn’t Tzenkethi?” Hertome said conversationally.

Efheny thought,
How do you think? Because humans are a menace and we are trained to watch out for them in case their impulsiveness gets us killed.
She said, “That doesn’t matter. What matters is that we need to be careful. I wouldn’t be surprised if this meeting hadn’t already attracted attention. It’s not illegal for an Ata-C of breeding age to associate outside of work with an Ata-E of a similar age, but it’s not usual, and a biomedical check is considered appropriate first—”

“So take my hand.”

Startled, she looked up at him over the rim of her cup. “What did you say?”

“Take my hand. If we’re already marked, we might as well give them a reason to mark us. But it’s surely better if it’s nowhere near the truth.”

She considered his words, weighed them, moved the
kotra
pieces of their game around in her mind. Then she came to her decision about what to do.
Keep him close. That’s all you have to do for now.
She put down her cup and reached across the table to clasp his hand.

“If it becomes necessary,” she said, looking deep into his alien eyes, “this one
will
kill you.”

He smiled. “Mayazan,” he said, “I think that might be the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.”

•   •   •

With the
Aventine
under way to Outpost V-4, Ezri Dax called her senior staff together to brief them on the new mission. Peter Alden sat at the opposite end of the table. No, not sat. Slumped. He looked exhausted.

“Seeing as you’re all bright and able graduates of Starfleet Academy,” Dax said, “I imagine you’ve already gathered that we’re no longer delivering Commander Alden to the
Enterprise.
Our mission instead is to take him to the Venetan Outpost V-4, where the Tzenkethi are currently making free with the outpost’s facilities.”

“And all within spitting distance of Starbase 261,”
Security Chief Kedair noted, as Alden brought up the relevant star charts. “What exactly do you mean by ‘making free,’ Captain?”

“That, as they say, is the question,” Dax replied. “The purpose of our journey is to observe what’s going on. The story the Venetans are putting out is that it’s a trading agreement, plain and simple. Goods coming in, goods going out. Everyone happy. However, Commander Alden and his colleagues”—she nodded down the table and he nodded back—“fear darker purposes behind this arrangement.” She stared again at the star chart. “It is
damned
convenient that these bases all lie on the border . . .” She shook herself.
Remember, Ezri, we know nothing yet, nothing substantial.
“But we need proof of any plan to militarize these bases. The Venetans insist they have nothing to hide, but it’s a delicate situation, and we can’t simply blunder in waving our phasers around and kicking over consoles to search for long-range weapons.”

“Our visit will be highly stage-managed,” Alden said. “The only consoles that we’ll get anywhere near, whether we’re kicking them over or not, are likely to have been tidied up for the occasion.”

“That’s a possibility,” Dax agreed ruefully. “So I need strategies for investigating whether Tzenkethi weaponry is already on the station, or whether it’s anywhere near the station.” She glanced at Leishman and Helkara, her engineering and science officers, who both nodded back. Leishman even began thumbing away at a padd.

“Unobtrusive strategies, I assume?” asked Helkara.

“You bet,” said Dax. “The Venetans have long since decided we are belligerent. I don’t want them discovering that we’re running all kinds of scans and so giving them even
more
reasons to distrust us. Sure, they’ll suspect that we’re doing it, but I don’t want them to have proof.”

Around the table, her senior staff began to murmur to each other. Dax threw up her hands. “I know, I know, it’s crazy! But it seems everyone’s out to take offense these days. So we’ve got to make damned sure that we don’t give them any opportunity to do so.”

They got down into the minutiae of the mission: their time of arrival at Outpost V-4, who exactly would be in the away team sent over to the base. Alden briefed them on how best to deal with the Venetans (frankly) and Tzenkethi (cautiously). When Leishman threw in a few preliminary suggestions as to how the weapons scans might work based on what she knew of Venetan technology, and Helkara started to shoot her ideas down, it was clear they were moving from general business to specific tasks, so Dax halted the discussion and dismissed them. They all got up to leave, Leishman and Helkara still deep in conversation. Bowers hung back just in case but, at a nod from Dax, left with the rest. Only Alden remained.

Dax came around the table and sat in the chair next to him.

“You’re convinced, aren’t you, that we’re going to
find something there?” she said. “Some proof that the Tzenkethi intend to use this base to threaten our borders?”

“Yes, I’m convinced.”

“But why would they do that? It would be absolute madness! In this climate, how much more provocative could you get? The Tzenkethi must know that none of the members of the Khitomer Accords could possibly allow them to put weapons so close to our borders. So why the hell would they even try?”

“Why?” Alden looked bewildered that she would even ask. “Why do you think? Because they don’t trust us. And because our bad luck has brought them together with the Venetans, who have their own reasons not to trust us either.” He gave her a tired, rather hollow look. “I’m telling you, Ezri, there’ll be weapons on that base, or there’ll be weapons on the way to that base. Not just this one. All three of them. We’ll hear the same from the Cardassian and Ferengi observers at the other outposts.”

“Okay, I’m going to stick my neck out and say I think you’re wrong. I’ve read up on the Venetans. It doesn’t sit right with my sense of what they’re like. I think the Tzenkethi have pursued this friendship simply because it embarrasses us. They’re there to rub our noses in what we lost. That’s enough for them. I don’t think we’ll find anything.”

“Ah,” he said, lifting a finger and smiling, “I covered myself on that already. If there aren’t weapons there now, there will be soon, I said.”

“But again I come back to the fact this is madly,
insanely
provocative. Why do that?
Why?
”

Alden eased back in his chair. “You ever met a Tzenkethi?”

“You know I haven’t. Have you?”

“You know I have. I was there once.” He looked past her, down the table, at nothing. “On Ab-Tzenketh.” He shrugged. “You know how it is . . .”

“Actually, Peter, no, I don’t.”

“I’ll tell you about it one day.”

“I hope you will.”

“But my point is, I got a fairly good sense of what the Tzenkethi don’t like about us. Because make no mistake about it, they despise us.” His face clouded and his eyes went distant. “Physically, the Tzenkethi appear humanoid, but their outside shape masks a fundamental fluidity of form. You’re the counselor, work it out.”

“Former counselor.”

“You know enough. What do you think the effects might be of that?”

Dax shook her head. “I don’t know . . . Anxiety about dissolution? Fear of collapse? I’m guessing here. You can’t extrapolate directly from biological form to psychological state. Nurture counts at least as much as nature.”

“Well, I would say that you’re bang on the mark. Tzenkethi social systems are designed to stave off exactly such collapses. You’ve read about them, Ezri. You know the rigid nature of their social stratification,
for example, and their convoluted codes for interacting with each other.”

Dax nodded. She’d read about the strict naming conventions and the complex linguistic codes that communicated and reinforced function and status.

“But you said ‘despise,’ Peter. That’s a strong word. Lots of worlds within the Federation have formal structures and ritualized interactions.
Starfleet
has formal structures and ritualized interactions. Why would that make them despise us?”

“Because to the Tzenkethi, the Federation is chaos personified—their worst nightmare, their greatest fear. What are we, after all? An unruly mishmash of people, all shouting out noisily in our own voices, all bringing our own particular culture to the mix. For the Tzenkethi, it’s the monster under the bed. And, even worse, that chaos is right next to them and has a fleet of warships at its disposal. They must live in terror of what such unstable people as we are might do with all that firepower. The Venetans were a propaganda gift to them. A civilization that looked at Federation membership and then turned away . . .”