Brinkmanship Read online

  5

  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: 29 skyturns

  Estimated time to destination: 34 skyturns

  No message.

  To anyone serving on the Aventine, the composition of the away team to Outpost V-4 must have looked distinctly odd. Leaving Sam Bowers in command, Ezri Dax took, along with Peter Alden, her chief of security, Lonnoc Kedair, and the ship’s counselor, Susan Hyatt. Dax could only hope that her intention in including Hyatt was not too obvious. While she, Alden, and Kedair were observing the Venetans and the Tzenkethi, Dax wanted someone on the spot to observe Alden.

  The Venetans operating the base had chosen from among their number someone named Heldon to speak on their behalf. Heldon, small as a Ferengi, rounded, and with lustrous silver fur, received the away team with exactly the coolness that Dax (up-to-date on Picard’s reports from Venette) had been expecting. She made it abundantly clear that the presence of these Federation visitors might be tolerated but was hardly welcome.

  “I suggest we begin with the docking circles,” she said with a sigh, waving to them to follow her. Alden, walking beside Dax, gave her a look: What else did we expect?

  As they went along, Dax studied her surroundings with interest. The lighting on the base was clear as daylight, with a faint green-gold tint, and the air seemed as fresh as a spring morning. With the slight concave bow in the walls, Dax felt faintly as if she was walking through a forest. She knew that Venetan design emphasized concord between natural and artificial elements: in fact, it did not admit the existence of such a distinction. But that gave the base a rather unsettling impression of having been woven from natural fibers.

  “Is it just me,” muttered Hyatt from behind Dax’s shoulder, “or has this place been knitted?”

  When they came to the docking circles, all seemed ordinary and orderly, but Dax hadn’t exactly been expecting to be taken directly to the weapons sites. Coming to a halt by a large viewing window, she looked out across the base’s primary ring to where zero-g building crews were busy at work. Most were wearing EV suits of Venetan design, with an almost barklike exterior, but here and there Dax saw the distinctive phosphorescent glow of a Tzenkethi suit. She couldn’t decipher the markings on the shells, but she hazarded a guess that they signified that their occupants were engineers, overseeing and directing the work. The whole display was a model, Dax thought, for peaceful cooperation between species and friendship between a larger power and its independent allies.

  If only the Tzenkethi engineers were standing over the Venetan construction workers with whips, Dax thought. If only they were Federation engineers. If only I knew why these docking facilities were being expanded in the first place . . .

  “Why all this work?” she asked Heldon. “What’s wrong with the docking facilities already here? They look fine to me.” If crocheted.

  “Tzenkethi freighters are larger than anything we have previously had to accommodate,” Heldon said. “Our facilities were insufficiently able to cope with the demands that will be put upon them by Tzenkethi supply ships.”

  From the look of them, these new facilities would certainly be able to cope; they were large enough for Tzenkethi freighters. The question was, would they also be large enough for their warships? Dax sighed, leaned back against the transparent aluminum, and folded her arms. Heldon gave a dry smile. She had ice-blue eyes and dark streaks of fur that ran back from her brow up her forehead, giving her a permanently quizzical and amused look.

  “I know what’s at the forefront in your mind, Dax. Why don’t you ask?”

  “Because I don’t want to give offense,” Dax said. To her surprise, Heldon’s smile actually broadened.

  “At last,” Heldon said, “an honest response! Frankness goes a long way with us. I’ll pay you the compliment of being frank with you. We’re not warmongers, whatever you’re telling yourselves. We’re an old people, looking to share everything we’ve learned with the wider quadrant. We offered the hand of friendship to your Federation first. You refused that offer, but the Tzenkethi have welcomed it.” Seeing that Dax was about to object, Heldon went on, “Be honest, Dax. Would you be bothering with us if we weren’t drawing closer to your enemies? Would you be here now, to meet me, to learn more about me and my culture, if the Tzenkethi weren’t here?”

  “No,” admitted Dax. “I probably wouldn’t.”

  Again Heldon smiled. “Less than an hour in our company, and already you have a much better idea of how to deal with us. Perhaps more time is all that you need. Come,” she said. “According to our schedule, I now have to show you our medical facilities. I think you’ll be impressed.”

  Dax was impressed, and for more reasons than she’d anticipated. The medical station was larger than she would have expected for a base of this size; moreover, it was staffed entirely by Tzenkethi. Five of them, moving around the space like highly trained dancers, taking measured, careful steps. Dax heard a noise overhead and looked up to see three more Tzenkethi, upside down, apparently hanging from the ceiling.

  Dax’s stomach lurched giddily before she realized that some sort of local gravity devices must have been installed to enable the Tzenkethi to use all available surfaces. Certainly it was efficient, but the effect of several of them at once, and from all angles, was almost overpowering. Their luminosity drowned out the naturalistic lighting of the room and, furthermore, their skin tones seemed constantly in flux, altering slightly as members of the team passed each other. Dax assumed that these variations constituted some form of communication, like body language and gesture in other species, and found herself quite dazzled by the shimmering display all around her. She had only a moment to admire it, however. Alden, standing beside her, muttered something under his breath and then retreated from the room. Quickly, Dax made her apologies to Heldon and followed him out.

  Alden was propped up against the wall, bent double, hands pressed against his thighs, head down, and taking deep, shaky breaths. Dax recognized a panic attack when she saw one and put her hand on his shoulder.

  “That’s right, Peter,” she said gently. “Deep breaths.” After a moment or two, his breathing steadied, and he straightened up.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Don’t know what came over me.”

  “Vertigo, I imagine,” Dax replied cheerfully, although she didn’t think that was even the half of it.

  Hyatt came out to join them. She looked worriedly at Alden. “Everything okay?”

  “Vertigo,” said Dax. “You know those gravitational envelopes, Susan. They can play merry hell with the inner ear.”

  Hyatt’s eyes narrowed, but she nodded, and Dax patted Alden’s shoulder. “Coming back in, or staying out here?”

  “I’ll come back in.”

  They all turned to go back into the sickbay, but before they could enter, Dax’s communicator chimed. She tapped her fingers against it.

  “Dax, here.”

  “Leishman. Any chance of a quick word in private, Captain? There’s something you should know.”

  • • •

  “That,” said Ambassador Jeyn, “was a disaster.”

  Crusher, Picard, and Jeyn had retreated to the private suite assigned to the senior Federation delegates in the Hall of Assembly. The main room was a pleasant circular chamber with comfortable couches arranged around a small pond. There was even a fountain, although it was not currently operating. Flower beds were set between each of the couches—not potted plants, Crusher noted, but patches of earth set into the stone floor, merging the line between interior and exterior. It made the room feel fresh, and under other circumstances would have been relaxing. Crusher, sitting on one of the couches, kicked off her boots, tucked her feet beneath her, and took a swig of wine. Picard, sighing, lowered himself into the seat beside he
r.

  “Cardassians,” he muttered darkly. “It’s not as if I wanted them along in the first place.” He tapped his fingers against the arm of the couch and burst out, “What the hell is Detrek playing at?”

  “Who knows?” Jeyn said. “I’ve tried to speak to Admiral Akaar, but he seems to be permanently unavailable. His office has promised he’ll get back to me within the hour.”

  Picard grunted and sipped his wine. “Did you get a chance to speak to Dygan, Beverly?”

  “Only in passing at the end of the afternoon session.” If you could call what had happened a session. “Debacle” is more accurate. “But I don’t like to press him too hard, Jean-Luc. He’s in a difficult position.”

  “Hmm.” Picard frowned, but she could see that he agreed. Dygan was loyal, and it was unfair to exploit that loyalty. But he was their best chance of making sense of the approach the Cardassians were adopting.

  “To be honest,” Crusher went on, “my impression is that he’s as confused as the rest of us as to why Detrek has gone in all guns blazing. Ilka’s the same. Cardassian ways are proving enigmatic once again.” She rubbed the sole of her left foot, trying to ease some of her tension. “Of course, the problem is that the crowd is against Detrek now, and she seems not to know how to handle it.”

  “I can’t say that I was delighted to learn that the proceedings were open to anyone who was interested and could fit into the room,” said Picard, and Crusher suppressed a twinge of guilt. She hadn’t been able to warn him before it became manifestly clear what was going on.

  “What about your own mission, Doctor?” Jeyn said. “Have you observed anything out of the ordinary?”

  Crusher shook her head. “The Venetans seem much as they were before. Lively, interested, engaged. Admittedly, the crowd isn’t exactly on our side. That’s new. But I have no evidence to suggest that it’s anything other than disappointment at how we treated them.” And, if I’m being honest, I’m not exactly sure how to go about acquiring any evidence to the contrary.

  “Of course,” Jeyn said morosely, “it’ll only get worse tomorrow. More people coming to watch, more chance for Detrek to lose her temper. Perhaps I should try to see Detrek tonight. Remind her that this is supposed to be a diplomatic mission—”

  Jeyn’s words were cut off by the chime of a communicator. Picard pulled himself out of his seat and went over to receive the transmission.

  “With luck,” Jeyn said, “this will be Akaar instructing us to whip Detrek into line . . .”

  Crusher, settling back further into the deep comfort of the couch, felt something small and hard in her pocket. She drew out the candy she’d been given earlier by the Venetan sitting next to her. She held it in her palm. I could test it, she thought. See if there’s something wrong with it. Perhaps the Tzenkethi have sabotaged food production in some way. Or the water supply. It would show up in this, surely . . .

  She shook her head. Madness. She popped the candy into her mouth and savored the delicate, floral flavor.

  Across the room, Picard sighed.

  “What does it say, Captain? Is it from the admiral?”

  “Well, yes, it is from the admiral,” he said. “But he says: At all costs, keep the Cardassians sweet.”

  • • •

  The day after her second meeting with Hertome, Efheny arrived at the Department of the Outside to discover that sections of the building were sealed to anyone without a Ret Ata-BB rating or higher, the entrances no longer even visible to the lower grades. In the parts of the building to which she still had access, the people on the superior floors were dashing to and fro, whispering to each other in low, urgent tones. Efheny, mindful of her purpose on Ab-Tzenketh, quickly subvocalized instructions to her data collection devices to pick up and record as much of these discussions as their range allowed.

  Efheny and Hertome did not speak that day. With the Ata maintenance units unable to enter sections of the building, Hertome broke his team into smaller groups, to work as best they could in those parts which remained accessible. Efheny was assigned to Hertome’s immediate junior, Karenzen Ter Ata-D. Their task was to clean a series of conference rooms that had been used throughout the night as a result of whatever panic was currently on. The rooms were full of the detritus of the hasty meals taken by the problem solvers and administrators still camping out in them.

  It made for a hard day. Karenzen had only recently received a Ter designation, granting him authority to give orders. He delighted in his new status and enjoyed lording it over people who had until recently been his workmates. At least he inadvertently did Efheny a favor: he refused to speak to her beyond the bare minimum required to order her about, and, as a result, she was able to record much more of what was happening in the building than if she had been working with the whole unit. But he kept her nose to the deck for the whole skyturn, and at the end of her shift Efheny was relieved to drag her aching limbs and sore back down to the Ret washroom in one of the subcaverns below the building.

  She showered slowly. Efheny would never tire of how much water was available to her here. She would miss this bliss when she was ordered back to Cardassia.

  She came out of the shower into the low cerulean changing room. She dried herself quickly and dressed in her everyday clothes, a long-skirted green dress that the E-bulletins currently prescribed fashionable for her grade. As she packed away her work wear, a hand grabbed her shoulder. Efheny reacted as she was trained to react, grasping her assailant’s wrist and twisting hard until the hand released its grip on her.

  “Ow! Ow! Let go. Mayazan, it’s me! Let go!”

  Hertome, of course. Who else? Efheny released her hold and turned to face him.

  “Are you mad?” he said, rubbing his wrist. “Assaulting a superior is a serious crime. If you did that to any Ter other than me, you’d find yourself sent for reconditioning.”

  “No other Ter would come here,” she hissed back. “No other Ter would be as . . . as . . . indecent as to come to the Ret washroom.”

  “Indecent, eh?” His alien eyes glimmered with humor, before turning sharp again. “But enough of our games, entertaining though they are. What do you know about what’s been going on around here today?”

  “Hertome—whatever your name is—this is going too far. You shouldn’t be in here. You’re putting us both in danger—”

  “We’re already in danger, Mayazan. So let’s share our information and try to lessen that danger however we can. What do you know about what’s been going on today?”

  Efheny paused to consider. The truth was she knew nothing. Agents of her rank, in such deep cover, were under strict instructions not to examine the data that they had been sent to collect. If they were captured and interrogated, their only defense was exactly how little they knew. Efheny had been schooled to think of herself as a data transmission tool, nothing more. The analysis was done at the embassy, or else back on Prime itself. The only reason a live asset such as Efheny was placed there was that she was mobile and responsive. She could see ad hoc conversations taking place and move to record them.

  But there was certainly a scare happening at the Tzenkethi Department of the Outside, and given that it was happening shortly after two undercover spies there had discovered each other’s existence . . . Well, if her cover was in imminent danger of being blown, Efheny wanted to know. She said, “What do you think is going on?”

  Hertome gave a short laugh. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t have to ask you. But since you ask, there’s been a flurry of communications with your lot today—yes, between this place and the Cardassian Embassy. I picked it all up when I was washing the walls on the seventh level. Come on, Mayazan, spill. What’s happening?”

  She swung her bag up onto her shoulder. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “You must know something!”

  “They don’t tell me much. I’m just here to collect information.”

  “When do you see your contact again?”

  “My contact?�
��

  “Your superior,” he said. “Whoever it is at the embassy that you report to.”

  Efheny shook her head. She didn’t go anywhere near the embassy. At the end of each skyturn, the data she had collected was automatically transferred there via a secure channel. She had never met or spoken to anyone at the Cardassian Embassy on Ab-Tzenketh. She’d seen colleagues passing through on official business every so often. Only last week she’d been cleaning floors on the eleventh level and spied a tense meeting between four Cardassian attachés and their Fel opposite numbers. None of them had paid the Ata on the nearby deck any attention, of course. She doubted the attachés knew anything about her. The only communication she would receive from her superiors would be an automated warning twenty-five skyturns before her extraction from this world. But was this not the procedure followed by the humans? Did Hertome actually meet with them from his embassy? Efheny could hardly believe it. No wonder he ran so many risks with her.

  “Come on, Mayazan. You must know when you’re likely to see your contacts again. Will they know what’s happening? Will they be able to tell you whether we’re in danger here? We’ve got to know whether we’re in danger!”

  Efheny stood up. This had gone far enough. She’d been out of her mind ever to break cover. Only the fear that he might expose her had convinced her of the necessity of talking to him. She made to move past him.

  “You’re not to speak to me again,” she said. “Not outside the context of our cover stories. I’ll obey you—as Ret must obey Ter—as long as I have to while I’m still on this world, but you’re to forget that we ever spoke to each other in any other way. This one is here to serve her Ap-Rej and through him serve her most exalted and beloved Rej, the beneficent Autarch himself. That’s all. So let her past.”