Myriad Universes - Infinity's Prism Part 34

Dax clutched the hand computer to her chest, thinking of the precious data hidden inside it. The innocuous device had the capacity to be more lethal than a bomb; it was a weapon of incredible destructive potential, if only she could use it correctly.

She halted, glancing around the transporter chamber's anteroom. She had expected to find Rain Robinson here, waiting to be returned to her vessel. The fact that the woman was nowhere in sight instantly sent a warning chill across Ezri's skin. The helot went to the translucent data panel in the wall and tapped it. "Interrogative," she said, "location query."

"Recognize Ezri Dax, helot ordinal." The synthetic female voice was stern and abrupt. "Your access is restricted. This activation of s.h.i.+p's systems will be noted."

She nodded absently. Defiance's main computer, like many systems aboard the s.h.i.+p, was off-limits to nonhumans except by prior approval. But as with much of the web of rules and permissions in operation within the Khanate, Dax had long ago found ways to get around them. "Override, Dax Kappa Twelve."

The panel emitted a peculiar squawk as an illegal pa.s.s code program Ezri had secreted inside the mainframe activated. "Ready," said the voice, in a more polite tone.

"Where is the woman called Rain Robinson? Is she still aboard the s.h.i.+p?"

"Confirmed," came the answer. "Uncategorized humanoid female designation 'Rain Robinson' is aboard the Defiance. Current location, security tier, section six. Subject is undergoing processing."

Dax's brow furrowed. Section six; the cells. She had been there only hours earlier, to speak privately with Kira Nerys. The term processing meant just one thing. Rain was now a prisoner of the Khanate, and there was little doubt in Ezri's mind that the rest of her crewmates aboard the Botany Bay would soon share the same fate.

"Attention," said the computer. "There is an alert awaiting your notice."

She leaned closer to the panel. "Tell me," Ezri demanded. Along with a backdoor subroutine into the wars.h.i.+p's security protocols, Dax had also set certain criteria to run in an invisible scan program. If any one of a number of key events, orders, or conditions was highlighted, it could be quietly and covertly brought to her attention. Similar techniques had allowed her to stay one step ahead of her masters for decades.

"Communications reports that a priority omega subs.p.a.ce message is being received by Princeps Bas.h.i.+r."

"Who is sending the message?"

"The Khan."

There, alone in the anteroom, she allowed herself a rare moment of openness and swore a gutter oath. Things were proceeding far faster than she had wanted; it would be necessary to accelerate her plans.

Dax deactivated the panel and walked into the corridor, returning to her pa.s.sive, submissive mien. Inwardly, however, she wore a very different aspect. The choice had been made for her by the arrival of the Botany Bay; she had known it from the moment she read the files on the sleeper s.h.i.+p. A deep-cover mission that had spanned lifetimes was about to end, all because of one lost vessel and its cargo of deadly, blinding truth.

"Security tier," she said to the controls as she entered the turbolift. "Section six."

The elevator began to move, and her hand drifted toward the torc around her neck; then Dax's expression soured and she pulled a fat plastic disk from a pocket in her tunic. With a twist of her fingers, it opened to reveal a compact holdout phaser. Ezri thumbed the selector to a lethal setting and hid the tiny gun in the palm of her hand.

Julian took the summons in the counsel chamber, as he was ordered to. The mere fact that he had been commanded to hear the communication there, rather than on the bridge or relayed to the holodeck, spoke volumes. The counsel chamber was one of the most secure areas aboard any stars.h.i.+p, s.h.i.+elded from emissions and armored with defenses both physical and ephemeral. It was the most isolated, most private place on Defiance.

The chamber's systems synchronized with the s.h.i.+p's subs.p.a.ce communications array, locking data-protecting firewalls in place, and a figure s.h.i.+mmered into existence. There was none of the extraneous environmental detail of Bas.h.i.+r's holographic counsel, no rendition of the palace in Africa, no simulated skies. This was a live transmission inside the chamber's bare walls, being bounced from Earth through one secure relay station to another. To do such a thing, to send a real-time signal, required a tremendous energy cost. But the Khanate's ruler doubtless cared little for that, so long as his will was done.

Julian went down on one knee and bowed his head as Tiberius Seja.n.u.s Singh, grandson of Noonien Singh and the Third Khan of Earth, hazed and became reality before him.

"Look up at me." The command came hard and blunt from the man's lips, and Bas.h.i.+r did as he was told.

The Khan was by no means the mirror of his imperial grandfather, but he was still an impressive sight. In his fifty-fifth year, Tiberius Seja.n.u.s had a wide mane of gunmetal hair that hung out from his head, reaching to his shoulders. Hard green eyes bored out from a prematurely lined face like firm leather, and a thick blade of facial hair accentuated the stark lines of his expression. Earth's master wore a fleet prefect's dress uniform and carried a curved scimitar at his belt. The man appeared attired for some kind of formal state event, and the severe aspect of his expression was that of a parent called from other duties to find a child in need of discipline.

"Bas.h.i.+r," he said, taking the name and stretching it. "You are known to me, Princeps. Of the Joaquin, aren't you?"

Julian nodded. "I am, lord. It honors my s.h.i.+p that you would seek to speak with me-"

The Khan silenced him with a gesture. Julian had never stood in the presence of Tiberius Seja.n.u.s Singh, only seen him in images and heard his voice in official diktats. His presence, even attenuated through the medium of the holographic communication, was far different from the simulated Khan that Bas.h.i.+r spoke with in his times of doubt. This man had a bellicose swagger about him, lacking the lean and hungry aspect of his grandfather, the whipcord strength and searching gaze. He lacked, for want of a better word, the charisma of the First Khan. Tiberius Seja.n.u.s exhibited none of the raw, magnetic aura of his great ancestor.

"Stand up," he was told. "Get off your knees, Princeps. It's unbecoming for a warrior-captain of my fleet to behave like a common helot."

Bas.h.i.+r rose, and realized that the hologram was at a slightly greater scale than it needed to be. Magnified, to intimidate me, he realized. Like a cat, arching its back. "What is your bidding, lord?"

Tiberius Seja.n.u.s's face creased in a grimace. "You've created a small crisis, Bas.h.i.+r. You and your discovery."

"The sleeper s.h.i.+p."

He got a languid nod in return. "It beggars belief," said the Khan, "that a craft from my grandfather's time could venture out to the Bajor Sector and still be found intact after such a journey."

"The void of s.p.a.ce preserves everything, sir. The miracle is that there are still any people alive on board the Botany Bay."

"Just so." The man's hand strayed to the hilt of his sword and rested there. "But for the moment, I want this 'miracle' to be kept from the galaxy at large. For reasons of security, you understand? This matter must remain contained."

Bas.h.i.+r nodded warily, uncertain as to where the conversation was heading.

"It's been made clear to me that you have yet to inform your sector commander of this find." Clearly, the counsel holo-program had transmitted more back to Earth than just an alert. Julian began to speak, but the Khan cut him off once more. "I'm not interested in your explanation, or in any maneuvering you may be doing against Benjamin Sisko. Just continue on as you have been. Maintain radio silence."

Julian was affronted by the accusation that he would use this incident to score points over Lord-Commander Sisko-he was a line officer and such things were beneath him-but he swallowed it down. "As you command. But my mission, the Bajoran and Carda.s.sian dissidents. I am required to return to Station D9 as soon as possible."

"And so you will. I have this hour sent orders to the Stars.h.i.+p Ill.u.s.trious to make maximum warp speed to rendezvous with you, before you arrive at D9. They will relieve you of your burden."

Ill.u.s.trious was Picard's command, a dreadnought-cla.s.s battles.h.i.+p and one of the most powerful vessels in Earthfleet. In less guarded moments, the s.h.i.+p-and its cold-blooded commander-went by another name. The Khan's Dagger. Princeps Jean-Luc Picard was widely known to be the personal agent of Khan Tiberius Seja.n.u.s Singh, with a reputation for rigidity and combat prowess that few in the fleet could match. If the Ill.u.s.trious was coming to meet them, then the Khan was certainly intent on ensuring that the Botany Bay remained a secret...perhaps even indefinitely. He had no doubt that he and his crew would be given some cover story. Sisko would never be told what happened in the Ajir system, and Bas.h.i.+r was not so foolish as to dare cross a man like Picard. He knew the stories: The Khan had given Picard the dangerous Sector 221-G to patrol when several other Earth s.h.i.+ps had been destroyed there by a local coalition of warrior cultures. In a matter of months, through sheer applied brutality, Picard had forced the rebellious peoples of Thallon, Xenex, and Danter to surrender unconditionally.

Bas.h.i.+r remembered O'Brien's comments on the sparring floor, about the abrogation of responsibility. Now the choice was being taken from him. "Lord, if I may ask you. What will be done with these...people?"

The Khan gave him a measuring stare, the slightest flicker of subs.p.a.ce interference making the image turn grainy for a moment. "With all the sons and daughters of Earth living as pinnacles of genetic augmentation, there is something to be said for the usefulness of having a handful of our flawed, somewhat inferior ancestors."

The way the man said the words, it conjured images in Julian's thoughts of experimentation and dissection. He saw Rain's face in his mind's eye and felt a curious flutter of emotion in his chest, a sudden sense of wrongness. Death camps and ma.s.s graves, she had said. He suppressed a shudder.

"It's not a matter for you to concern yourself with," continued the Khan. "You will isolate the Basics from the rest of your crew and contain them aboard their craft until Picard arrives. Contact is to be kept to an absolute minimum, Bas.h.i.+r. Is that quite clear?"

"Why?" The question slipped out before he could stop it. "If it pleases the Khan, these sleepers pose no threat to us. Is there a danger aboard the Botany Bay I am not aware of?"

Across the light-years, Tiberius Seja.n.u.s narrowed his eyes and glared at Bas.h.i.+r for daring to show such impertinence. "There are many things you are not aware of, Princeps." He put a hard emphasis on Julian's rank. "And that is as it should be."

But still he could not stop himself from asking the question. "The crew of that vessel are living links to the greatest era in our history," he said, the words coming of their own accord, "and they can help us rediscover the missing years of Earth's past. Is that not a glorious discovery, my lord? Surely every citizen in the Khanate should hear what they have to tell us?"

When the Third Khan spoke again, it was with iron in his words. "It is said that the n.o.ble Joaquin never once questioned the orders of my grandfather, no matter what they were. Tell me, Bas.h.i.+r. Would you shame your ancestor's bloodline by daring to behave differently?"

Julian's answer never came; the sound of the alert sirens cut off any reply before it had the opportunity to form.

Rain had seen jails before. Once, when she and a hundred other refugees were crossing Idaho in an old San Dimas school bus, a group of rangers pulled them off the highway a few dozen miles outside of Glenns Ferry. They took them all into an old military stockade and told them they were out-of-staters, potential terrorists, guilty of illegal border violations, that they had no rights. She remembered the terror, the fear over losing control of her life. Rain thought she would die in those dingy cells, lost and forgotten. She had been imprisoned not because of something she had done, but because of who she was. Some army general had taken control of the state during the chaos of the attacks and decided he didn't like the migrants heading east across his land, with the lethal fallout clouds churning at their backs. Rain and the others, they were guilty of running, guilty of wanting to live; but to the Idaho men they were guilty of being different, and that had been enough.

That old fear uncoiled in her chest, awakening as the trooper shoved her again, marching her into the Defiance's detention level. She saw a corridor of open-faced cells, most of them ringed with a halo of bright light. There was a buzzing in the air, like the noise of an electric motor.

O'Brien was talking to a towering oriental woman. "Status?"

"One of the Carda.s.sians killed himself."

"How?" The tactical officer didn't seem overly concerned, as if he was asking only for the sake of protocol.

"Forced himself into the screen," she said, equally bored with the report. "The shock caused heart failure."

O'Brien shrugged. "s.p.a.ce the corpse, then. We do not need it cluttering up the s.h.i.+p." He turned to leer at Rain. "You are in luck, Basic. A nice new room has just become available." He shot a glance at the trooper. "Put her in."

The coldly familiar desperation tightened around her chest. "You have to let me go back to my s.h.i.+p!" she cried. "You can't hold me here!"

"Oh, we can do whatever we want," O'Brien replied. "We are the superior." He prodded her in the temple with a finger. "Maybe all that sleep made you hard of thinking? Or is your limited mind having trouble grasping the concept?"

"No-" A protest died in her throat as the trooper grabbed Rain by the scruff of her neck and dragged her forward, off her feet.

He pushed her down the corridor, past the glowing doorways. Robinson caught a glimpse of a man slumped against the wall of one of the cells. He gave her a dejected glower. He seemed almost human, except for a strange set of bony ridges across the bridge of his nose.

"Keep moving." The trooper pushed again, and this time Rain stumbled and fell, landing flat in front of another doorway. "Get up!"

She was doing as she was told when a pallid face reared out from the depths of the cell. Rain yelped in fright at the apparition: corpse-gray skin tight across a skull formed from cords of bone, deep-set and accusing eyes glaring at her from dark pits. It looked like a mutilated body, like some horror-flick zombie reanimated and fueled by fury. "Uber sc.u.m!" shouted the gray-face. "Let us out of here!"

The trooper slammed his fist toward the open doorway, and Rain jumped as it struck an invisible wall of force, sending crackles of orange sparks flying. "Be silent, you Carda.s.sian weakling!"

"Drop this barrier and we'll see who's the weak one!" The gray-face-the Carda.s.sian?-reeled back but didn't retreat, baring its teeth in a jeering grimace. Belatedly, Rain realized it was a female.

"Ocett," said another voice, and Rain turned to see a second Carda.s.sian-this one unmistakably a male-at the barrier of the cell opposite. "Don't give them a reason."

"That's right," snarled the trooper, "do as Dukat tells you, alien."

Ocett spat into the hissing force field and stepped back, her eyes blazing. Rain looked again at the male Carda.s.sian, and he gave her a rueful nod. The small gesture of solidarity, of compa.s.sion, was the most human thing she had seen since she had come aboard the Defiance.

Robinson was moved on once again, until she stood at the mouth of an open cell. "Please," she begged, some part of her hating the pleading word as it left her lips. But suddenly the guard's attention was distracted.

At the far end of the corridor, the girl with the strange freckles had appeared. She had a gun in her hand.

O'Brien's head snapped up as Dax stepped through the sensor tunnel without waiting for the scan cycle to complete. "What are you doing here, helot? You should be on the command deck at your station." A sneer formed on his lips. "Or perhaps providing the princeps with your services?"

The Tiejun woman didn't join him in his sport. She was absorbed by something on the security console in front of her. The panel sounded a sour tone. "The scanners detected a weapon," she began, her hand already pulling her own phaser from its holster at her hip.

The microgun in Dax's hand discharged with a shriek of noise, and a white pulse of light slammed into the guard's chest, blowing her back against the bulkhead. Her body tumbled away into an untidy heap.

O'Brien came at her; like all of the ubers, he was quick. Dax let her size work to her advantage and dodged away, feeling the wind of a haymaker punch as it barely missed her face. The blow would have broken her jaw if it had connected.

But she wasn't fast enough to avoid the follow-up. The optio's other hand cut down and clipped her wrist, knocking the small gun from her fingers, sending it clattering across the deck plates. Pain lanced up her arm and Dax extended into her turn, pirouetting away as...o...b..ien made a clumsy lunge toward her.

"I never trusted you," he barked, and drew his bat'leth from the sheath on his back.

Rain's guard hesitated for a moment as the phaser went off, and she saw the opportunity. Without thinking, she did the same thing she had done whenever a guy had tried to get his own way with her; she brought her knee up hard into his crotch. The impact made the big man grunt, but Rain got a blinding spike of pain down her leg, as if she had hit a brick wall.

He slapped her to the floor like he was swatting an insect. "Armor, idiot," he told her, in a disgusted voice. The guard unhooked a wicked-looking combat knife and left Rain there, walking purposefully toward the unfolding fight at the other end of the corridor with the blade gripped tight in his fingers. He didn't look back at her. She didn't even rate consideration as a threat.

The pain and the guard's condescension got Rain back to her feet, driven by the energy of her anger. Her fear was still there, cold and hard in her chest, but it gave way to something else. A desperation, a need to fight that she had never known back in the dingy cells in Idaho. There, three and a half centuries ago, she had been just another refugee from California. Here and now, she realized she was something different.

A survivor.

Ignoring the pain in her leg, Rain threw herself forward with a grunt of effort.

The p.r.o.ngs of the battle-worn Klingon weapon sliced through the air, and Dax moved like quicksilver, balletic and smooth, almost dancing. O'Brien wasn't aware of it, of course, but she had watched him fight on many occasions since her a.s.signment to the Defiance. She understood his techniques, perhaps even better than the optio himself did. O'Brien's fighting style was all about speed and impact, about doing the most damage to his opponent as quickly as he could. He wasn't one for the long bout.

Dax ducked and dodged, seeing his ire grow by the moment as each attack missed its mark by a tiny span. She was drawing him out, waiting for him to lose his temper and make a mistake.

She didn't have to wait long. "Hold still, you Trill b.i.t.c.h! I'll cut that b.l.o.o.d.y maggot from your gut and feed it to you!"

The microgun could have killed him if only she still had it. O'Brien had dealt with that quickly, stamping the disk into powder beneath his boot.

"You'll need to do better than this, if that's what you want, Miles." Between panting breaths, Ezri threw him a c.o.c.ky smile, calculated to irritate. "But then you're a poor crossbreed, aren't you?" She made a mocking sad face. "McPherson and Austin...Never the best of the augment bloodlines, either of them. Did your parents really think a mingling would produce something superior?"

The optio snarled and brought the bat'leth down in an arc of sharpened steel, ripping through the security console in a flash of sparking cables. Belatedly, an alert siren began to sound.

The blow had almost taken Dax's head off, but she played it as if it meant nothing. "But then purity is overrated, don't you think?"

O'Brien's teeth bared in a growl. "How long have you been a traitor to the Khan?" he demanded. "Tell me, so I can carve it on your face before I put that pretty little head of yours in a box."

"How long?" she repeated. "Seven lifetimes' worth, before this." Ezri placed her hand on her chest, backing into the mouth of the cell corridor. "Tobin, Emony, Audrid, Torias, Joran, Curzon, Jadzia...All of us defied you in our own ways, and we made sure you arrogant fools never knew it." Suddenly, Ezri felt impossibly old, her bones heavy with the weight of years, the mercy and the warmth of her young soul bled out by Dax's centuries of suffering, of oppression. "Come and kill me if you can, augment. I outlived your mongrel Khan. I will outlive you."

That was enough. O'Brien flew at her, leading with the blade, sweeping it through the air in rolling loops. Dax defied logic and threw herself at him, diving inside his guard and s.n.a.t.c.hing at the middle of the bat'leth. The cutting edge bit into her hands, but she used the pain as a spur, and struck out with all her might at the optio's right knee.

Twelve years earlier, on a punitive mission to wipe out a Carda.s.sian colony on Setlik III, Miles...o...b..ien had been stabbed in that knee by an enemy combatant. The wound had healed, but secondary infection had set in and the joint had never truly been the same. Dax knew this because Jadzia had known it, because Jadzia had been a nondescript medical helot aboard the battles.h.i.+p Phoenix, where O'Brien had been a.s.signed at the time.

The line of the old wound sent a bolt of agony into the optio's body and his leg gave out, suddenly robbing him of his balance. Executing a perfect Mok'bara pivot-something that Curzon had been taught in his youth-Ezri let the man stumble and fall.

O'Brien collided with the force field across the door of a sealed cell and screamed as the energy field tore into every nerve in his body. He writhed, the bat'leth slipping from his fingers, orange sparks crawling across him. Dax retreated, clutching her cut palms.

After a long moment, the human fell away from the glowing part.i.tion and collapsed, wisps of thin white smoke issuing out from gaps in his armored suit.

Dax glanced up and met the gaze of a Bajoran man on the other side of the barrier. "They're not so superior after all, are they?" he asked her.

Rain ran and hit the guard full in the back with all her momentum. His feet slipped and he tried to throw her off, but it was too late.

Gravity snared them both, and the guard went down with Robinson atop him, the man's armor-clad form hitting the floor with a bone-shaking shock.

Rain fell off him and struck the deck plates. The guard made a strangled choking noise and was still. A puddle of red began to spread from underneath him.

From behind the s.h.i.+mmering barrier of light, the Carda.s.sian man watched her. "Fell on his blade," he said grimly. "It has a monomolecular edge. Slices through polycarbide plate like a knife through mapa bread."

She nodded jerkily, the rage she had felt suddenly spent. The coppery smell of the blood touched her nostrils and she gagged.

Rain heard someone cry out, but the sound seemed foggy and indistinct. She found it difficult to look away from the dead man.