Wounds - Book 2 (4 page)

Chapter
4

“Y
ou think you’re the only one with his ass on the line? Julian, I need you to understand just how dangerous things are for you now, and me. Blate’s serious. This isn’t just an idle threat.”

“Oh, believe me, I understand,” said Bashir. He stood at a solitary table in a room that was, essentially, a big off-white box: no window, bright overhead fluorescents; a small bathroom off-center along the far wall that contained a toilet, a sink, a shower. A bed he kept neat, the blanket tucked because Bashir knew that morale depended on the little things. A muted vidscreen hung on one wall; Bashir had tuned it to a news station—the only one, government-run—and some newsperson chattered in antic silence through a story that Bashir gathered was about those rebel fighters these people were so obsessed with. There was a straight-back chair and the table strewn with medical texts—anatomy, emergency medicine, physiology, and other books, history principally, that Kahayn had provided at his request, and that he’d devoured and thank the Lord, he could read the language. So he knew about the Cataclysm and what he was up against.

“Let this security man and his people come.” He gave his tunic a little tug for emphasis the way he’d seen Captain Picard do once. The long-sleeved tunic fit well but felt odd because it was so loose: some kind of beige cotton with a Nehru neck and a pair of olive trousers. A pair of brown leather shoes with laces. “But I don’t know how many times we need to go through this. I’m from another country—”

“But really far away and so, of course, all your people have escaped the Cataclysm and only wish to remain anonymous and, oh and by the way, technologically advanced enough to equip a pressure suit that withstands vacuum and can
fly.”
Kahayn snorted. “You think I swallow that? I’m trying to help you. Anything you want, I got. Books, news…”

“And guards,” said Bashir. “Don’t forget my locked door, and just in case I find a way out, my lovely guards at the end of that long corridor and on the other side of a door that’s very thick and very locked. Yes, how can one not feel positively pampered?”

“Would you do any differently? In that amazing…
country
of yours?”

Of course, the answer to that was
yes,
after a fashion. “Doctor, you’ve been good to me—more, perhaps, than I could expect, given how I was dropped on your proverbial doorstep.”

“Considering your suit…yes, that’s probably accurate.”

And touché, Doctor.
Bashir put on his most winning smile. “But I don’t know what will convince you that I’ve told the truth.”

“Oh, don’t be insulting. Fine, you’re a doctor. I believe that. But this fantastic, wonderful country no one’s heard of? Please.”

“Right. Well, I see your point.” Bashir debated, then snapped his fingers. “I know. Let’s just say I’ve told you what I can.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I have a better idea. What say we play a game called
Trust.
Here are the rules. You tell me the truth; I tell you the truth. See, in my land, that’s what we call trust…and don’t you say it, Julian, don’t you dare. Because I know you don’t trust me.”

Bashir closed his mouth. He’d been about to say just that. Only it would have been another lie.

“Yah,” she said after a pause. “Now let me tell
you
another, very important truth. You remember Blate?”

“Ah. Yes. Very unpleasant fellow. Those goggle-eyes. He really should have them attended to.”

“My sentiments, exactly.” The ghost of a smile brushed her lips. “But that’s the way he likes them, and
you
will have an
excellent
opportunity to study them right up close. He’ll be here in about four days.”

“Ah.” Bashir’s stomach churned. “More interrogation? You weren’t thorough enough?”

“Not for him. And this time, it won’t be just talk. You’ll be hooked up to an fMRI. You know the theory?”

Bashir was silent. Oh, he understood it. The machine was something out of the twenty-second…no, no, twenty-
first
century. fMRI: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, a primitive system dependent upon alternations in magnetic susceptibility and designed to measure, in the brain at least and very crudely, areas of neural activation.

In humans, oxygenated arterial blood contained oxygenated hemoglobin, which because of its iron matrix was diamagnetic and had, therefore, a small magnetic susceptibility effect. Deoxygenated blood was more highly paramagnetic and, therefore, the machine detected a larger observed magnetic susceptibility effect. In essence, fMRI allowed a window into the brain: a sort of watch-while-you-work.

He wondered how well that technology served this particular species. His gaze skipped over Kahayn’s features. That bluish cast to her skin…he knew what it was. Her blood, as well as that of everyone native to this world, already possessed huge quantities of methemoglobin: hemoglobin whose iron was ferric, not ferrous, and quite poor at binding oxygen. Still, if they were going to use the fMRI on
him,
the technology must work pretty well on their species, and that was bad because it meant the machine was very sensitive indeed.

“I understand the principle,” he said finally. “A lie detector test, right?”

“Yup. Virtually foolproof.” She gave him a tight, humorless smile. “Lying causes a very characteristic pattern of brain activation in seven different regions.”

“In other words, lying is hard work.”

“That’s right. By contrast, telling the truth is much easier. Truth only requires
four
neural pathways. Pretty characteristic pattern.”

“Ah. So you’ve concluded that we share enough commonality that my
brain
will tell the truth even if
I
lie.”

“You lie? I guarantee that screen will light up.”

“Mmmm.” Bashir nodded, his neutral expression—the one he’d practiced in that Dominion prison—firmly screwed in place. But a bolt of panic shuddered into his chest. Their just catching him out in a lie probably wasn’t the end of it. Maybe they’d take his conscious mind out of the equation. Use truth serum, perhaps, or some other way of cracking his resistance. Or just plain torture.

And—bugger it all—for what? Yes, yes, of course, his
oath,
but was that important now? Elizabeth was dead, and Ezri lost to him before he’d ever set foot on that runabout—and his heart with her. His suit, uniform, and combadge had been confiscated. Picking apart the suit’s guts and the combadge would take time, but these people would likely manage. So, if everything he’d ever known was gone; if he were tortured to death or left as some sort of mental vegetable, what did a theoretical abstraction like the Prime Directive, the product of a universe that wasn’t perfect but liked to pretend that it was, count for now?

Maybe not very much.

He looked up and met her eyes—
compassion there, sympathy; and sadness, too; why is she helping me, why does she care?
—and said nothing.

She nodded, though, as if he had. “Our world’s dying, Julian. We compensate but we can’t change things back, not in time to save ourselves.”

“What about your children?”

Pain arrowed across her face. “Can’t have any. Most of us can’t. So we switch out parts; rebuild ourselves. Keep staving off the inevitable as long as possible.”

“And then I show up.”

“And then you show up. You’re the same, sort of. A close match but still very different in some very important ways. For example, I
know
that you come from a place where there’s more oxygen in the air. I know for a
fact
that the amount in silica and copper and arsenicals in your body is only a fraction of what it is in ours and that’s because there aren’t industrial pollutants in your air or water. Your heart is simpler and still very efficient. You have less surface area in your lungs, and your immunological status is much less reactive than ours. I know because I finally had to give you a transfusion; you’d just lost too much blood.”

“Oh,” he said, with a dry smile. “I’m sure my system loved
that.”

“Not to worry; I added a reducing enzyme to convert the iron from ferric to ferrous so you’d bind more oxygen. But the point is you didn’t have a transfusion reaction. You didn’t go into anaphylactic shock. Your system seems remarkably antigenically neutral, at least to our tissues.”

“That’s important?”

“As you’d say, quite. Because there’s one more thing about you that’s very different: your brain. It works really, really well. Is that the way it is with all your people?”

He said nothing. Her lips quirked into a half-smile. “Right. I forgot. You’re one of us. But do you know I’ve never heard an accent like yours either?”

“Oh,
that.
Well, my accent’s very common where I come from.”

“Then I’m glad I’ve never visited. I might get a headache. Oh, and there’s this other thing that just won’t go away: your remarkable suit that resists vacuum, and flies.” She paused. “You see what I’m driving at.”

“Even if your scan says that I’m lying, nothing changes the fact that I can’t tell you more than I have already.”

“Can’t? Or won’t?”

“Would you believe
both?”

“No, because one’s predicated on ignorance and the other on will. But that little distinction won’t matter, not when this is over.”

He tried to be jolly about it, a bit gay, the way he imagined a debonair agent caught in a thorny situation might. “What, torture, Doctor? Thumbscrews? Bamboo under the fingernails?”

“What’s bamboo?” Then she waved that away. “Never mind. This isn’t a joke, Julian. Because the horrible part is you won’t have a choice.”

He forced a devil-may-care grin. “I’m sorry. For the life of me, I can’t fathom that.”

“Yah, for the life of you,” she said. “I’d say that’s about right.”

No idle threat there. His eyes wandered to the room’s vidscreen again, and he watched as a soldier—clearly, Kornak—aimed a rifle at the back of a prisoner’s head. He turned away. Any fool knew what came next. “So what are my options?”

“I’ll show you. And take a good hard look, Julian. Then, you choose.”

He took her in: her blue skin and that left eye and her left hand. “What if I still choose my way?”

“Then heaven help you,” she said, keying in the code that opened his door. “Because I won’t be able to.”

Chapter
5

W
hen Lense got news that Saad was back, it was midmorning nine days later and she was in the middle of changing bandages. She wasn’t prepared for that tug of happy anticipation and the queer fluttery feeling in her stomach.

So this is what it’s like to be smitten.
She hadn’t even felt like that when she and her jackass of an ex-husband started dating back at Starfleet Medical….

She pawned the bandage-changing job off on one of her assistants, then hurried down passages and ducked through corridors. She got some queer looks and bobs of the head in greeting from the others. No secret about her and Saad.
The look on that guard’s face when he found us on morning patrol after that first night…
But, God, this felt good. Everything looked brighter somehow; she felt better, more acutely aware of textures and smells. She liked exploring his body; she loved the feel of his skin, and his smell was rich and spicy. She liked pleasing him, and receiving pleasure. She just wasn’t, well,
depressed,
and she certainly slept better. Her grin broadened. When Saad let her.

Even if it’s just infatuation or lust, I don’t care because I’m happy. I’m on this godforsaken world and every day is blood and more blood, and still, at least for now, I’m happy….

“Saad,” she said, as she rounded the last corner, “I’m so gla—” She stopped. “Mara.” Then, awkwardly, to Saad: “I’m sorry. They said you wanted to see me.” She edged the way she’d come. “I can come back.”

“No.” Saad beckoned her forward. “No, no, I want you here.
I
asked Mara to join us. Please, come.”

For a fraction of a second, she wasn’t sure how to behave. That made her angry, like she was some giggly, gawky adolescent with a crush. “Of course,” she said, sliding down to sit cross-legged on a low flat rock. She spotted a lumpy bundle of something heaped a short distance away. Saad sat across from her, but Mara hung back, leaning against the cavern wall.

She looked from one to the other. “Why do I think this has nothing to do with planning some raid for medical supplies?”

Mara just stared. Saad smiled, though only with his lips. “Oh, we still plan a raid. But something else has come up.”

“And what’s that?”

“I’ve just gotten word that General Nerrit is on his way to the Kornak complex at the edge of the sea. I think I might pay him a visit.”

“And it would be suicide, Saad.” Exasperated, Mara pushed off from the wall and paced, the clap of her boots banging off rock. “That you’re even thinking of getting anywhere near Nerrit again.”

Again?
“Who’s Nerrit?” asked Lense.

“Supreme Commander for the Kornak Armed Forces,” said Saad. “His command center is about five, perhaps six days’ travel. But he’s on his way, apparently. About four days out at this point.”

“Oh. Well, you want to kidnap him, take him out, what?”

“Under other circumstances. But now I have new information that makes me wonder what to do next.”

The sound of Mara’s pacing was giving Lense a headache. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see how I can help here. You want a list of supplies, I’ll give you a list. I’ll give you ten. But anything tactical,
military…”

“It’s not that clear-cut, Elizabeth. Trust me on this.”

It was the first time he’d called her by name since she’d entered. Her gaze flicked to Mara, who paced and looked black as a thundercloud, and then to Saad. Something else going on, something to do with
her
…But what?

You’re being paranoid. It’s probably nothing.

She said, “Well, what does this—your source say? How many people do you have on the inside, anyway?”

“We had a few. Three, to be exact. One was discovered, and the other’s gone silent. This one…the last time we had contact was a little over a year ago.”

Mara cut in, her voice quaking with fury. “I don’t care if we’ve had ten, a hundred sources…that you’re even thinking of going
back
there—”

“Back. What does she mean, going back?” Lense looked from Mara to Saad, who was staring daggers at Mara. She switched her gaze back to Mara. “What do you mean? Going back to
what?”

Mara opened her mouth. Clamped it shut. Threw Saad a look so charged that if it had been fire, he’d have burst into flames. She said, “You need to tell her. She needs to know.
You
need to
ask.”

“Ask me what?” Lense said. “What the hell’s going on?”

“Mara…” Saad’s voice thrummed with frustration. “I will ask questions when I…” Then he let out his breath, looked at Lense and said, more calmly, “Mara isn’t very fond of a particular portion of that base.”

Mara was unable to contain herself. “Gee, you
think?”

Ignoring her, Saad squatted on his haunches beside Lense and drew a wide circle with the tip of his index finger. “Here’s the layout. Perimeter security, checkpoints—here, here, and here.” He jabbed his finger dead center. “The main hospital’s here, at the heart.”

Lense’s eyes clicked over the rough drawing. “That’s a lot to cover, and even if you get in…how are you going to do that, anyway?”

Saad’s mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Nerrit may have new parts, but he’s an old man with ingrained habits. He always travels with a rear guard. We’ll ambush the guard, steal their ident tags and then slip into the complex. The beauty is that Nerrit isn’t
going
to the main facility. Once he’s in,” he sketched a rough square, “my source tells me that he’ll peel off
here.”

“A separate building?” Lense looked over at Mara. Mara just shrugged, looked away. “What is it?”

“A specialized research wing, underground. Totally cut off from the main complex. The only way in or out is a tram tunnel, and a separate foot tunnel.”

“Why the special tunnel?”

“They’ve had to cut power there in the past. And there were…disturbances.”

“So, is it for a SWAT team?” Lense knew of them, of course; all prisons had them if inmates got loose and cut off power. Underground tunnels ensured speed, stealth, and surprise. “What is it, a stockade?”

“No, I told you. It’s a research wing.”

“Well, then that level of containment usually means a biohazard.”

“Yeah,” said Mara. She was holding up the wall again. “What the lady said. Biohazard. Right, Saad?”

“Well, no,” said Saad. “I don’t think that biohazard really does it justice.”