Myriad Universes - Infinity's Prism Part 39

He shoved Laker forward, closing the distance between them. Christopher had a weapon in his hand, but Julian paid little attention to it. He had other, more important matters in mind. He had to understand, he had to know. How had she done it? What kind of trick had she used on him?

"Did the telepath screeners miss something?" he demanded. "Is that it? Do you have some Vulcan or Betazoid in you? Did we not corral enough of those blighted psionics? Is that how you did it?"

She shook her head. "No. No, Julian. Khan killed more than enough of them. And the Ullians, the Cairn, and the Talosians, and any of a dozen other species that dared to exhibit the telepathic ability you augments find so abhorrent."

He glowered at her. "I have never heard of any of those races."

"And what does that tell you?"

"The Khan would not commit genocide!" Julian snarled, affronted by the mere suggestion of such a thing. "He was above such deeds!"

Dax gave Christopher and Robinson a long, slow look. "Is that so?"

"More lies..." Bas.h.i.+r struggled to keep a leash on his fury. Part of him wanted to let it loose, to beat his answers out of her. With a sudden, savage motion, he threw Laker across the room and the man stumbled into Rain's arms.

Julian tore his dominae key from a pocket in the cuff of his jacket and brandished it toward Ezri's neck.

"Go on," she told him, holding up her hand to wave off Christopher. "Do it. Use the collar to choke me to death. And then you will never have to hear my lies again."

His thumb hovered over the activation stud. Around her neck, the copper collar glittered dully.

"But you will not do it," she continued. "Because my death is not enough, is it? You have to understand first." Dax glanced at the others. "That is why he wants to take me alive. Because Julian Bas.h.i.+r cannot be lied to, and the thought that someone could mislead him so completely consumes him."

"Yes." He could not help but admit it. "Yes, d.a.m.n you."

Ezri spread her hands in a gesture of surrender. "I am a spy, Julian. A liar and a charlatan by duty and life, thanks to the reign of your Khanate. Your Khan made me what I am. A silent weapon, hidden in the rotten heart of your slave empire." She sighed, and in that moment, she seemed to age decades.

"No one lies to me," he said. "You are gla.s.s! I see every falsehood...How could you keep this from me? What did you do to my mind?"

"You're not the first guy to be lied to by a woman," Laker sneered, emboldened by his new freedom. "Get over yourself. It happens."

"But not to Julian Bas.h.i.+r." Dax shook her head. "You cannot judge the Children of Khan by the same rules you apply to your kind. The princeps here, he is of a different breed. He has singular talents."

"A human lie detector," offered Rain. "I've heard of folks who do that. People who can read the 'tells' on a face."

"Ethnopsychologists call them microexpressions," said the Trill. "The very smallest of fractional gestures counter to whatever a person is actually saying. The ability to recognize them is a skill many of the Khanate's senior interrogators possess, is that not right, Julian?"

"No one lies to me," he repeated quietly.

"I'm guessing poker games are a bust on your s.h.i.+p, then." Christopher adjusted his grip on the gun, and Bas.h.i.+r read him, read the conflict in the tightening of flesh around his eyes, the slight flush of color in his cheeks. The man was willing to kill him, if pushed to it.

Dax sighed. "I lied to you and you never knew it, because my face is my tool. It is all a matter of control. I have the ability to match your skill, point for point." As if to mock him, Ezri's aspect s.h.i.+fted; brief expressions of sadness, pleasure, hate, and love pa.s.sed over her pale skin, one after another, as if they were nothing more than a series of still images projected upon a screen. She returned to the cold neutrality she had shown him before, as she escaped from the Defiance. "Did it never occur to you to think that someone like me might exist? Someone at the opposite of the emotional spectrum to you? The perfect fake?" Dax nodded. "That is why the rebellion chose me to infiltrate your crew, Princeps. What better place for me than to hide in plain sight?"

"She played you," said Christopher. "You and all of Khan's stooges."

His head shook of its own accord. "I showed you compa.s.sion, and this is what you offer me? Betrayal! I...I gave you..."

The ghost of a sneer touched her lips. "Please do not say love, Julian. Your kind do not understand the meaning of the word. All you did was beat me less than the other men did."

He looked away, resentment and hurt burning in his chest, and found Rain staring at him. The woman had pity and regret in her eyes.

"Everything I have done," Dax went on, "every lie I told you, every virus I seeded, every bit of data I stole for my people, all of it was toward a single goal. To break you, Julian Bas.h.i.+r, you and the rule of Earth. To undo everything your Khan brought about."

"We give the galaxy order!" He shouted the words. "You would have that swept away by chaos and anarchy?"

"She's not talking about chaos," said Rain. "She's talking about freedom."

"You do not know the meaning of the word!" he retorted.

"Oh, but I do," Dax insisted. "I remember...Dax remembers the time before Khan bled the stars white, the time that these people come from. When your 'master' was busy setting Earth afire, before he forced his empire on the rest of the Alpha Quadrant." Her voice became distant, and Ezri seemed to look inward. "Dax witnessed it all. The punitive killings and the bombings. The threats that drove the Trill to surrender rather than perish, as dozens of other worlds had, and the dozens more that followed."

Bas.h.i.+r shook his head. "No. Khan Noonien Singh brought Earth to unity, and then he took that dream to the stars. Every world under his aegis prospers! You are protected, cared for-"

"Imprisoned. Enslaved," Dax broke in. "Khan's legacy is a sham! A tyranny of genetics, imposed by a despot who practiced genocide on his own race, and perfected it against mine and a hundred others!"

"That is not true!" he thundered, his voice drawing a start of fear from Laker.

"It is," Robinson insisted, stepping closer to him. "I was there. I told you. I saw it."

"Rain, stay back!" said Christopher, but the woman shook her head.

"No, Shaun, this is the only way. I'm not like Ezri. I can't hide what I really believe. What I know to be true." She stood in front of Bas.h.i.+r, matching his level gaze. "You take a look at me, Julian. And you tell me if I am lying about the horrors committed in the name of Khan Noonien Singh."

"I..." He found that he could not look away from her. The things he had glimpsed in her eyes, back in the holodeck...He saw it again, but this time so raw and so close to the surface. Her emotions burned into him. Such hurt and agony was there, written deep across her expression. It was repugnant to see, the face of a woman as pretty as Rain marred by such dark memories. Whatever had happened to her, she had been marked by it. He saw it as clearly as if it were a scar across her cheek. Bas.h.i.+r glanced at Christopher and Laker and saw shadows of the same thing on each of them.

He tasted metal in his mouth, heard the rumbling of his blood in his ears. Suddenly, Julian was teetering on the edge of an abyss of understanding. If they did not lie...If they did not lie to me, then the truth...

In his mind's eye he saw his holographic counsel, smiling benignly and reaching out a hand to pat him on the shoulder. Kinsman. He called me kinsman. But that was not Khan; it was just a machine simulacrum, an approximation built to be the most perfect avatar. Only an ideal of the man, not the real thing. His gaze dropped back to Rain. Not the crude, flawed matter of a human being.

Julian thought of the Third Khan, the vain and posturing man dressed up in brocade and medals, the belligerent reality of the Khanate. "Is that what we are?" he asked himself. "Is that how the galaxy sees us?"

Rain took the tricorder off the strap over her shoulder and offered it to him. "I want to show you something," she said. "In that simulator room, the holodeck, you showed me your history. The past as it had been taught to you."

He nodded, taking the device from her. There was an isolinear data chip already loaded in the playback matrix, and by reflex his thumb found the display controls.

"I'm going to return the favor. I'm going to show you my history. The real history."

Bas.h.i.+r reached out to touch the hologram control and found his hand was trembling.

"I want results," said Jacob, scowling at the Tellarite, "not excuses." He backhanded the alien helot to the deck of the Defiance's bridge with casual annoyance, almost as an afterthought. "All your efforts are to focus on restoring the sensor systems, do you understand?"

Glov nodded, eyes wet. "Y-yes, Adjutant. Forgive me, it is just that Squad Leader Tiber ordered me to concentrate on the weapons array-"

"Those orders are rescinded." Sisko moved to the command bench and hesitated, unwilling to take the position usually occupied by the princeps. "Get to work."

The Tellarite bowed and excused himself. Jacob's grimace deepened. With Bas.h.i.+r off the s.h.i.+p, O'Brien lying dead in the s.h.i.+p's morgue, and chaos on every deck, Tiber was already trying to diminish Sisko's position, doubtless already planning how he might have himself raised to the post of optio-or perhaps even princeps. The underhanded politicking of it dismayed the young man. It was the sort of thing he would have expected from his father.

Jacob dismissed the thought and glared at the tripart.i.te viewscreen panel. The display was thick with interference, great washes of gray static flickering back and forth where Dax's sabotage had rendered the scanners all but sightless. He could just about pick out the vague bullet-shape of the Botany Bay growing ever smaller as the two s.h.i.+ps drifted farther and farther apart. He thought of his commander and wondered again if he had done the right thing by sending him out there. Was Bas.h.i.+r even still alive? There was no way to tell. The Trill had covered every angle of attack, even knocking out the wars.h.i.+p's subs.p.a.ce radio transmitter, stopping them from signaling for help-or in this case, attempting to learn if their princeps was dead.

It came as a surprise, then, when the Patil-clan woman at the communications panel shot him a look. "Adjutant...we are receiving a signal."

"From the sleeper s.h.i.+p?" His adrenaline surged. Perhaps this situation could still be salvaged, if Bas.h.i.+r has recaptured the DY-102...

"Negative," said the vox officer. "It is on an Earthfleet waveband. We can read it, but we cannot respond."

"Let me hear it."

She hesitated. "The signal is directed to Princeps Bas.h.i.+r."

"And he is unavailable!" Jacob faced her. "Play it!"

"As you wish, Adjutant." She tapped a string of keys and a stern voice filled the bridge. Sisko knew the speaker's ident.i.ty immediately; the man had been a rival of his father's for many years, and Jacob had seen him in the flesh during a graduation ceremony at Earthfleet Inst.i.tute in Calcutta.

"Defiance, this is Princeps Senior Picard of the dreadnought Ill.u.s.trious." The message was a recording, an order sent rather than an invitation to converse. "I am two hours from the Ajir system. Bas.h.i.+r, prepare to stand down your command to me on arrival. In the Khan's name. Ill.u.s.trious out."

"In the Khan's name," Jacob repeated the phrase by force of habit, without conscious thought.

"Adjutant?" said the Patil woman. "How shall we proceed?"

Sisko looked down at the command bench, an abrupt understanding of the cost of that position forming in his mind. This matter will not end well for any of us.

"We wait," he told her.

The tricorder's display emitter sketched a holographic screen in the air before Julian, and in rapid clips of pictures and sound, imagery of a world turned to ashes unfolded before him.

Many of the things that he saw struck the breath from him. Moscow on fire, and Khanate troopers, Ling bloodline by the looks of them, executing civilians on the gra.s.s of Gorky Park; pregnant women being loaded into transport helicopters by the hundreds; endless lines of starving, hollow-eyed refugees lining a city street; military satellite footage of nuclear blooms over the California coastline.

He witnessed events that he had read about as a child, but shown from shattering perspectives that lay at polar opposites to the history he had been taught: A young Noonien Singh raging and furious on the steps of the United Nations building, surrounded by soldiers in blue helmets-but they had welcomed him! Grainy video of a woman strapping explosives to her chest in front of a poster of the Khan's smiling face-but the fanatics had been those fighting against him! And then his ancestor, the great Joaquin, stepping forward at a nod from his master to execute an unarmed man with a single stroke of a sword-but that was not his way!

All these and hundreds more, a.s.saulting him with hard reality. Every image burned into his mind, etching itself on Julian's consciousness. He felt unsteady, as if the deck were turning to mud beneath his feet.

Was it all fiction? He dared to ask the question of himself. How much of the record of the rise of mankind is twisted like this? In the holodeck, Rain had reminded him of that ancient adage, that the history books are always written by those who win the wars; but here he saw great swaths of events that simply did not exist in the Khanate's official past. Atrocities and slaughter that had been made to unhappen, edited out of Khan Noonien Singh's life.

And that is the falsehood I have been raised to believe in.

"Enough," he said, pus.h.i.+ng the tricorder away. "Enough, I say. Take it away from me!"

The hologram faded, and Bas.h.i.+r found himself looking at Rain, the woman's sad face the only solid point among his reeling thoughts. "This is what really happened." She gestured with the tricorder. "All that, and more, all in here."

Dax looked at him with icy contempt. "You have been lied to your entire life, Julian. Raised on the teat of a totalitarian empire, the favored children of a dictator. Earth's rule of the galaxy is not one of strength and power, as you want to believe. It is built on a foundation of blood and deceit that stretches back for generations." She pointed at Rain. "I can hide the truth from you, but she cannot. Look at her, Julian, and tell me if you still think this is a lie."

After a long moment, he held up his hand, and in it was the dominae key. Reflexively, Ezri's fingers went to the copper torc at her neck.

Bas.h.i.+r never met her gaze. Instead, he tapped the key and the collar made a soft click. It parted from her pale neck and clattered to the deck.

Julian changed in front of her eyes. Rain felt her throat tighten; after everything, she actually felt sorry for him. Between them, she and Ezri had hollowed this man out with a few simple words. We've broken him, Rain told herself. We've torn his whole world down.

"I think you're done here," said Shaun.

Rain turned to look at the captain. "You're not going to kill him?"

Christopher swallowed hard, the phaser wavering in his hand. It was one thing to fight a man to the death, but to execute someone in cold blood-Shaun wasn't capable of such a thing. Or so she thought.

"Take him as our prisoner," Dax said gravely. "He has tactical value to the resistance."

"No," insisted Rain. "We're letting him go."

"We're doing what now?" Laker cried, ma.s.saging his throat. "Hey, he just tried to choke me! And now you want to let him walk away?"

"I am worth nothing," Bas.h.i.+r said in a dead voice. "You people...this s.h.i.+p..." He glanced around. "It is my disgrace. I will be cas.h.i.+ered for my failures."

Rain shook her head and turned to Laker. "Rudy, prep an EVA suit at the main lock."

"What for?"

Shaun nodded as he understood. "For him."

"You are making a mistake," began Dax, her tone hardening.

"My s.h.i.+p," retorted Christopher, "my choice to make."

Laker frowned and moved off to carry out his orders, and Robinson stepped closer to Bas.h.i.+r. "Take this," she said, ejecting the isolinear data chip from the tricorder.

His hand was cold as she pressed it into Bas.h.i.+r's palm and closed his fingers over it. He looked down at his fist and nodded slowly. "Yes. I will."

Rain found she did not know what else to tell him. "I'm...sorry." The words sounded weak and feeble. "But you had to know, Julian. You have to see it all and make up your own mind."

"He is a human," said Dax. "His only loyalty is to his own kind."

Rain rounded on her. "I'm a human as well," she snapped, "and all I care about is what's true." She looked back into Bas.h.i.+r's barren gaze. "Are we so different?" Robinson stepped away. "Take the files, Julian. Prove her wrong."

10.

They detected the object the instant the Defiance's short-range sensors came back online, and Jacob's first a.s.sumption was that the Botany Bay had ejected some kind of slow-moving drift munition into their flight path; but the scanners registered a life sign, and with growing concern the adjutant realized what he was looking at.

They brought the suited figure aboard, transporting it to the shuttlebay where Squad Leader Tiber and a team of armed troopers were waiting. A momentary grin split the Sisko youth's face when the figure removed the helmet to reveal the princeps beneath; but then he saw his commander's expression, and his smile faded away.

Bas.h.i.+r arrived on the bridge, still clad in the Botany Bay environmental suit, with an incredulous Tiber at his side. Jacob saluted and automatically stepped away from the commander's bench. Bas.h.i.+r looked in his direction, at his station, and seemed not to see it. The princeps looked around the Defiance's bridge as if it were something foreign to him.

"Lord?" ventured Jacob. "Are you all right? The sleeper s.h.i.+p...What happened over there?"

Bas.h.i.+r ignored the questions and wandered past the command dais toward the tripanel screen. The static was fading away at long last, and the portside display was a tactical plot. The red glyph of the Botany Bay was tracking away from them as it moved closer and closer to lightspeed.