“My zhri’za.One of Shar’s bondmates, Shathrissía. The stress of Shar’s decision is having unforeseen—consequences. She has become emotionally unpredictable—possibly even unstable. I worry about what she might do if she loses control. If her equilibrium destabilizes any further, she will have to return to Andor.”
“Why not make the arrangements and depart now, if you’re so concerned?”
“Because it is still the best choice for the three of them to wait here until Thirishar returns,” zh’Thane explained patiently. “Should the situation change, however, we might have to move swiftly, without having time to make the proper applications.”
“Our medical staff has training in the physiologies of most Alpha Quadrant species,” Ro offered kindly. “They might be able to help.”
Zh’Thane’s voice cracked and a wail-like sigh escaped her throat. “If only it were as simple as asking Dr. Tarses for a hypospray. Or finding a project to keep Thriss busy—perhaps sending her on a cultural tour of Bajor or to Cardassia to offer medical service. She tends to be mercurial, to change her mind at a moment’s notice. If we can persuade her to listen to sense, she might agree to go home.”
Ro considered how best to handle the situation. She’d always sensed something conflicted in Shar, simmering below the surface of his steadiness. And it was uncharacteristic of someone as skilled in negotiation as Councillor zh’Thane to become so overwrought without good cause. She went with her gut. “Without betraying your trust, I’ll take this to Colonel Kira and let you know what she says. I’ll get back to you once she’s made her decision.”
Likely embarrassed by the intensity of her outburst, zh’Thane refused to look at Ro. “Thank you, Lieutenant.” She exited without a backward glance.
Ro spent the remaining few minutes of her shift considering how best to present zh’Thane’s petition to Kira when her relief reported in. Sergeant Etana Kol nodded to Ro but scarcely said a word as she took Ro’s place at the security desk. Etana hadn’t been her usual jovial self since the Defiantdeparted; like several others in the station crew, the deputy had someone aboard Defiantwhom she missed terribly. And from what Ro knew of the relationship, three months would be the longest time Kol and Krissten had been apart since they’d gotten together. That must be hard. Still, Etana’s not stupid. She must have known getting involved with a Starfleet officer might mean prolonged time apart. “You okay, Kol?”
Etana looked up with a smile. Ro was impressed by how easily it seemed to fall into place. The sergeant shrugged. “Hate sleeping alone.”
Ro smiled back. “Don’t worry; when she gets back, you’ll be annoyed you don’t have the bed to yourself anymore.”
Etana laughed. “You’re probably right. Night, Lieutenant.”
“G’night, Kol.”
As she left the security office, Ro saw to her surprise that zh’Thane was still just outside, chatting pleasantly with Hiziki Gard, the Federation’s security liaison and aide to the Trill amabassador. Ro nodded to Gard as she passed them, and gleaned from the few bits she overheard that zh’Thane’s earlier angst had passed.
Was that whole thing an act?Ro wondered, stopping in front of the turbolift. As she reconsidered what she would say to Kira, Ro found herself wondering how much of zh’Thane’s performance had been staged and how much had been genuine.
“Lieutenant.”
Ro looked over her shoulder and saw the councillor standing alone again near the security office, Gard having apparently moved on.
“Thank you,” zh’Thane mouthed soundlessly. Her eyes brimmed with pain for the briefest of moments before the composed politician’s facade descended like a mask. Then she turned away, disappearing into the humanoid tide of the Promenade.
5
“Commander, I can’t access theDefiant,” Nog hissed.
What the hell is Nog doing in my room?Vaughn thought, eyelids fluttering as he bounced back and forth between half-sleep and wakefulness. He couldn’t recall his dream save that his hair was the brown of his youth and there were swaying palm trees in the background. He thought Ruriko was there, but as always, he was unable to reach her.
“Commander, are you there?”
Blindly, Vaughn felt his way to the end table, groping for his combadge. When he clutched it in his hand, he pressed it and said,
“The door won’t open, Lieutenant?”
“Sir, there’s a contingent of Yrythny soldiers here—with weapons. And they pointed them at me when I tried to board the ship.”
Fully awake, Vaughn swore and sat up, reaching for his uniform. “I’ll be right there, Nog. Vaughn out.”
What a difference a few hours make! After the night’s last debriefing, Vaughn had felt comfortable with how things stood—at least with Nog. The Defiant’s problems seemed cut and dried: if it’s broken, fix it. Repairs would be complex—taking far longer than any of them desired—but the Yrythny had pledged to be generous with cooperation and resources. Maybe that was his mistake: assuming that the worst was past them. He’d served in Starfleet long enough to know that whenever a situation looked bleak, it was bound to be a veritable black hole before it improved. Nog and his team had even addressed his most pressing concern, the development of a theoretical model for a defense system against the Cheka weapon. That alone should have tipped me off that this whole thing would be shot to hell before breakfast.
Vaughn recalled that, after midnight, Julian had wandered up to the repair bay. Bashir, he knew, didn’t need as much sleep as most humans, so Vaughn didn’t look askance at the doctor’s middle-of-the-night proposal to inventory sickbay. Anyone willing to work was welcome. In a flash of inspiration, Julian had suggested using the humanoid immune system as a model for a defensive weapon. The ideas tumbled out from there.
If the Cheka nanobots represented invading viruses and bacteria, then femtobots—even smaller and designed by the Defiantstaff—could be used be like the CD8 T and B cells deployed by humanoid bone marrow to gnaw through the viruses. Nog’s plan called for maintaining a cloud of femtobots in stasis just beneath the ship’s shield envelope. If Defianttripped another web weapon, the femtobots would activate and attack as soon as the nanobots pierced the shields. Brilliant.
In theory.
The trick, of course, was that although it was well known that molecular cybernetics didn’t stop at the nanite level, creating femtobots able to withstand the stress of the shield matrix andhard enough to pierce the nanobots was uncharted territory. The Defiantsimply didn’t possess the structural materials Nog and his engineers would need to make the plan work. Their computer simulations, run using variations of readily available materials, had all failed. Either the femtobots disintegrated in proximity to the shields, or the ship sustained critical damage due to delayed or partial deployment. The femtobots required something more resilient than Defiant’s replicators or her engineers could fabricate.
Even though a significant challenge awaited Nog, Vaughn hadn’t been too worried. Nog’s resourcefulness and innovative abilities never ceased to amaze him. Vaughn had instead assumed his biggest problem would be his hosts’hastily conceived notion that Dax should facilitate some mediation process between warring Yrythny factions.
Prime Directive and first contact issues aside—and his concerns regarding those protocols weren’t exactly minor—Vaughn had reservations about letting Dax get mixed up in the Yrythny’s internal politics. Despite her zeal and seriousness about her transfer to command—and the fact that her past-life experiences gave her unique advantages as his XO—nothing in the lieutenant’s Starfleet background or his own interactions with her shouted that she ought to have her responsibilities broadened to include diplomacy. Granted, her counselor training lent her legitimate, professional expertise in the area of xenopsychology, but Vaughn still remembered Curzon Dax’s questionable judgment during the Betreka affair, and the choices that had nearly gotten them both killed. Ezri wasn’t Curzon, of course—not exactly—and while she was a quick study, Vaughn wasn’t about to turn over the fate of a world poised on the brink of civil war to her, no matter what gods appeared to have ordained it.