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  As the members of the Council began their official vote on the matter, Akaar found that he agreed wholeheartedly with Rach and T’Latrek. Whatever domestic political problems lay ahead for the Trill people, he hoped their leaders were prepared to deal with the havoc that was sure to be unleashed, once the secret of their relationship to the parasites stood revealed.

  3

  Stardate 53768.2

  Looks like we’ve reached the bottom of the world, thought Lieutenant Ezri Dax as she stepped carefully over the vast field of scattered ice and stone. She didn’t think this place was quite as cold as the Tenaran ice cliffs could get during the dead of Trill’s northern winter, but it was certainly chilly enough to make her grateful for her insulated field jacket and gloves.

  A persistent, frigid wind numbed Dax’s ears and the tip of her nose as she trudged forward, trying not to slow the away team’s progress. A dull, coppery sun hung low in a duranium gray sky, barely peeking over the huge slabs of ice-slicked rock that extended to the horizon in every direction. The flattened stones, some of which appeared to be more than three meters in length, were arranged at crazy, random angles, as though the spin of some great cosmic tongo wheel had determined their final resting places. The slender rocky shapes cast long and sinister shadows that sometimes caused her momentarily to lose sight of the other members of the away team.

  A streak of light near the horizon briefly caught her eye. At first she thought it was a meteor burning up in the atmosphere—until she saw it abruptly change its trajectory, obviously preparing to make a soft landing at one of the supply depots that dotted the lower latitudes.

  Another cargo ship, she thought. The irony was inescapable; once an object of Cardassia’s insatiable lust for interstellar conquest, the planet Minos Korva—situated on the edge of Federation space just four light-years from the prewar Cardassian border—now served as one of the busiest transit points for aid shipments bound for Deep Space 9, the hub for all Federation relief cargoes bound for Cardassia Prime, the Cardassian Union’s war-ravaged heart.

  As the evanescent streak of light vanished below the horizon, Dax turned her attention back to the frozen tableau that lay all around her. Minos Korva’s south polar region reminded her of a hurricane-battered cemetery. Despite her ambivalence about the notion of death and burial—an attitude characteristic of joined Trills—she found some comfort in the permanence of the image; though grim, it helped buoy her hopes that the object of today’s search not only was dead and buried, but also would forever remain that way. Like the legions of multilived Trill whose conjoined thoughts and memories eventually ended up, according to myth, enfolded safely but inertly within Mak’relle Dur, the Trill afterlife, deep in the bowels of the homeworld.

  Dax was startled out of her reverie when she saw Dr. Vlu’s arms start to pinwheel wildly, the diminutive Cardassian doctor’s feet evidently having slipped on a mirror-smooth section of the frozen, rock-strewn field. Even as she moved toward the physician, Dax knew she wouldn’t be able to stop her from tumbling onto one of the many steeply inclined slabs that dotted the area. Vlu shouted a pungent Cardassian curse as she started to go down, her flailing limbs casting long, spiderlike shadows across the ice as she fell toward the opening of a shadowy crevasse.

  From Vlu’s other side, a thickly muscled arm reached out, clutched the back collar of her field jacket, and lifted her as though she weighed nothing.

  “You must be more careful, Doctor,” said Taran’atar as he set Vlu on her feet beside him with a gentleness that belied his fierce countenance. The Jem’Hadar’s rough, cobble-textured skin and brutish features looked as cold and hard as the frozen stones that stretched to the horizon. “These surfaces are not to be trusted.”

  Scowling, Vlu rubbed her throat with a gloved hand, messaging the spot where her jacket collar had constricted her neck when Taran’atar had pulled her back. “Neither is your strength. I think you dislocated a few of my neck bones.”

  “Are you all right?” Dax asked, reaching Vlu’s side at the same time as Julian Bashir and Lieutenant Ro Laren. Dax offered an arm to steady the wobbly-looking Cardassian. She could feel Vlu’s convulsive shudders right through the thickly insulated jackets they both wore.

  Vlu’s dark, penetrating eyes were still fixed on Taran’atar. “Please do me a favor,” she said, rubbing her neck again. “Next time, just let the safety line catch me.”

  The Jem’Hadar’s eyes narrowed as if Vlu had just spoken in an unfamiliar language. “That would have been an unwise risk to take. You might have pulled me into the crevasse along with you.”

  Vlu’s scowl melted into a shuddering nod. “And put the rest of the team in jeopardy.”

  “Not to mention the mission,” Ro said, her breath joining the great cloud of vapor that was accumulating over the heads of everyone on the team. Her tether, too, was hooked onto Taran’atar’s belt.

  “Ah. The mission,” Vlu said, failing to suppress another spasmodic shiver.

  The mission, Dax thought darkly, suppressing a shiver of her own—one that had little to do with the temperature. To march right into the very place where those . . . things lured Shakaar Edon and hijacked his body.

  Though Dax had been in the Gamma Quadrant when her fellow Trill Hiziki Gard had assassinated Bajor’s first minister in order to kill the sentient parasite that had seized control of him, she knew the story well—as did all the other members of the away team. That knowledge had apparently made the entire team extraordinarily alert.

  Ro had given everyone present a thorough briefing on Shakaar’s death and on her investigation into the circumstances that had led up to the parasites’ initial attack on the first minister. After compiling a list of planets where Shakaar’s infection might have taken place, Ro had quickly eliminated most of them. During the months prior to his becoming infected, Shakaar had toured a number of Starfleet facilities and Federation worlds, including a pair of highly secure starbases, the planets New France, Deneva, and Betazed, and then the final place that Ro hadn’t been able to eliminate from her “possibles” roster: the sparsely populated Federation colony at Minos Korva.

  “You don’t look so good, Doctor,” Bashir said as he unlimbered his medical tricorder. He seemed as oblivious to the cold as was Taran’atar. Though she recognized the feeling immediately as irrational, Dax knew a momentary surge of shivery envy.

  To her left, her peripheral vision registered that Taran’atar had moved into a crouch, his attention apparently drawn to something in the ice.

  “I’m fine, Doctor Bashir,” Vlu said, gently pushing Julian’s tricorder away. “I just wish the trail had led to that nice, warm mountain region the local officials were supposed to have been showing Shakaar during his visit. We Cardassians simply aren’t suited to cold climes like this.”

  I guess doctors really do make the worst patients, no matter what planet they’re from, Dax thought. She suppressed a grin as she recalled what she knew of the western mountain ranges of Minos Korva; though they were situated well within the planet’s temperate zone, they wouldn’t be significantly warmer than the south pole, at least not at the higher elevations.

  A sharp crack interrupted her train of thought. Taran’atar started to rise and turn toward the rest of the team.

  “Run!” he shouted, and took a step toward Dax.

  The ice she stood on tossed her into the air. Landing on her side near a section of the icy floor that had suddenly reoriented itself vertically, she scrambled with both hands and feet to keep from sliding into the crevasse that suddenly yawned beneath Taran’atar’s feet. Luckily, her boots immediately came into contact with a solid horizontal surface.

  Dax felt her tether line go slack as the Jem’Hadar’s massive body plunged into the shadows. He’s disengaged his safety line, she realized with dawning horror.

  The away team froze, stunned by what had just transpired and worried that another misstep might trigger additional breakages in the ice. Into the widening silence, Ro
said, “I think I’m picking him up on my tricorder. He’s alive.”

  Dax heaved a sigh of relief. “Dax to Taran’atar,” she said, tapping her combadge. A burst of crackling static came in response.

  “Something in the ice and rocks must be interfering with your signal,” Ro said. She scowled at her tricorder, leading Dax to conclude that it was working only marginally better than her combadge.

  Then she pointed toward the east, and the rest of the group fell into step behind her. Though trapped underground, Taran’atar was evidently on the move, perhaps searching for an alternate exit to the surface.

  After fifteen minutes, the party crested a low, ice-covered rise. “Here!” Ro said, gesturing with her tricorder at a tumble of rocks and ice that lay at the bottom of the other side. Dax, Ro, and Julian quickly fell to the task of clearing away icy debris from what appeared to be a narrow cavern entrance.

  Several minutes later, Taran’atar’s arm emerged from a rocky crevice nearby, and soon he was standing with the rest of the group. As the Jem’Hadar soldier silently reattached his safety line, Dax studied his stony, impassive features. Perhaps it was only the dim lighting, but he looked almost . . . fatigued.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Julian asked, concern striating his forehead. Dax wondered if he had noticed the same thing about Taran’atar that she had.

  “My injuries are trivial, and I heal very quickly,” said the Jem’Hadar, sounding annoyed, either at the situation or at himself for having fallen in the first place. “Let us resume our search for the parasite nest. You needn’t waste any more time or attention on me.”

  “A way into the underground chamber we identified from orbit is less than fifty meters from here,” Ro said, once again intent on her tricorder’s display. If not for Taran’atar’s accident—and the abundance of scan-reflective refractory minerals present in most of the surface rocks—the team would doubtless have reached its goal a good half hour earlier.

  “Good news, Lieutenant,” Julian said. Turning his attention back to Vlu, he added, “Maybe we can get you warmed up once we get belowground.”

  “That sounds positively lovely,” Vlu said, as more uncontrollable shudders seized her. “In the meantime, would you remind me again why I agreed to come along on this little junket?”

  Dax felt her own teeth beginning to chatter, perhaps in sympathy with Vlu’s predicament. Smiling, she said, “Because you said you didn’t want me to have to do all the griping myself.”

  Vlu smiled in response, apparently warmed by Dax’s gentle humor. “What is that expression some of you Starfleet people are so fond of using? ‘It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it’?”

  “Precisely,” Dax said, returning Vlu’s smile. As the group resumed moving forward, her thoughts darkened. After all, the real reason for bringing Vlu along was starkly apparent to the entire group: the away team had to include members who wouldn’t be vulnerable to being biologically co-opted by the parasites; an earlier failed attempt by one of the creatures to infect Gul Akellen Macet had demonstrated that Cardassians, like Jem’Hadar, were incompatible with the parasites’ physiology and thus completely resistant to their influence.

  The fact that the Cardassians and the Jem’Hadar weren’t first cousins to such monsters made Dax experience another stab of envy. To put that thought out of her mind, she once again considered their mission’s twin goals: to find out precisely how and where Bajor’s late first minister, Shakaar Edon, had been attacked by the hellish aliens who had very nearly brought destruction to the Trill homeworld; and to make certain that no more of the creatures still lurked in the deep places of Minos Korva, despite the enigmatic assurances of her oldest friend, Benjamin Sisko, who had returned after an eight-month absence from the linear continuum.

  After a few more minutes of walking, Ro—who had remained at the head of the tethered procession—came to a stop. The rest of the team followed suit as Ro gestured with her tricorder toward the heavily shadowed cavern entrance that lay ahead.

  “Here it is,” Ro said. “Everybody ready?”

  Dax’s eyes darted from face to face, starting with Julian, who apparently wasn’t trying to hide his trepidation over coming to this place. She glanced next at Vlu, who looked similarly discomfited, evidently as much by the cold as by whatever might await them below the icy surface of Minos Korva. Only Ro and Taran’atar appeared impassive, the former’s pale Bajoran features evidently schooled to give nothing away, the latter’s stony visage all but incapable of expressing anything recognizable, other than the most primal of emotions.

  Ro activated an intense wrist-mounted light. Then she raised her phaser, as did Taran’atar. “Then let’s go,” she said.

  The lights revealed a pile of icy rocks and scree that formed a crude stairway leading down into the shadows. The team moved forward, their lights pushing the darkness into full retreat. Soon the frozen crust of Minos Korva completely enclosed them, and still they walked downward, following a winding, narrow passageway. The icy rock walls were encrusted with mineral formations that revealed a panoply of subdued colors under the team’s moving wrist lights; Dax noted shades ranging from dull milky opals to ugly grayish pinks. The place seemed to be a hideous parody of the Caves of Mak’ala, where the Order of the Guardians carefully tended the breeding pools of the Trill symbionts.

  Moving with deliberate steps, the group pressed forward, darkness enveloping them entirely except for their wrist lights. The ice beneath their feet gave way to a moraine of gravel. The gentle slope of the progressively narrowing passageway confirmed what Dax’s inner ear had already told her: they were continuing to move steadily downward. For uncountable minutes, she forced herself to concentrate on her footing as they continued making their slow descent. She almost succeeded in not thinking about what might lay ahead.

  But not quite. “Anything on the tricorder?” Dax asked Ro. Her voice cast eerie multiple echoes against the cavern walls.

  “I’m reading minute DNA traces on some of the rock faces,” the Bajoran said, neither lowering her wrist light nor turning to look back in Dax’s direction as she spoke.

  “Confirmed,” Vlu said, consulting her own tricorder, her earlier discomfort now apparently forgotten. “Some of them are Bajoran.”

  Julian’s tricorder issued three sharp beeps. “More specifically, they’re Shakaar’s,” he said.

  Ro grunted an affirmation. “Shakaar was a resistance leader long before he became a politician. He wouldn’t have gone down without a fight. I don’t wonder that he left some of his own blood behind.”

  Not that fighting would have done much good against even one infected host, Dax thought grimly, recalling how the creature that had possessed Jayvin had made him both preternaturally strong and invulnerable to all but the most intense phaser settings.

  The team continued forward and the passageway abruptly widened around them. Dax noticed that Taran’atar had stopped walking only when she nearly ran into Vlu’s back. The Jem’Hadar was slowly craning his head from left to right, scowling as he scrutinized the broad chamber.

  “Turn off your light, Lieutenant,” Taran’atar said as he extinguished his own.

  “Are you crazy?” Ro said.

  Taran’atar betrayed no sign of having been offended. “Indulge me for a moment.”

  Through the weird shadows cast by Ro’s twin lights, Dax could see her own skepticism mirrored on the security chief’s face. Leaving her own wrist beacon dark, Dax quietly moved her hand toward her phaser. What if he did somehow fall under the influence of a stray parasite while he was alone under the ice?

  “All right,” Ro said, scowling at Taran’atar. “But this had better be good.”

  Dax heard a click, then saw nothing but blackness punctuated by bright retinal afterimages of Ro’s wrist light. The spots before Dax’s eyes lingered for a protracted moment before yielding to the stygian gloom. She drew her phaser.

  “All right,” Ro said tartly. “What am I supposed
to be seeing?”

  Then Dax saw it: a wan, greenish-yellow glow that seemed to ooze from every pore of the passage’s rough-hewn walls. Meandering horizontal grooves in the passage glowed more brightly than the surrounding stone, forming crude lines that seemed to beckon the team forward. The chill, stale air stank of death and corruption.

  Dax wanted to run, but she forced herself to remain where she was. Before her lay what might well have been the last sight that met Shakaar’s eyes before his parasite-infected Minos Korvan hosts led him down here to face an unimaginably horrible fate.

  And she knew that she had seen these phosphorescent striations—and their sickly, bilious glow—before. No, not me, Dax reminded herself as her eyes began to adjust more fully to the darkness. Those memories belonged to Audrid.

  She walked toward Ro, whose tricorder readout shone as bright as a welding torch in the surrounding gloom. “Life signs?”

  “Nothing definite,” Ro said. “But the material in these rock faces seems to be the product of some sort of biological process.”

  Julian was moving his tricorder along one of the chamber’s faintly glowing walls. “Bioluminescence. But whatever produced it no longer appears to be active.”

  “I would estimate that it died on the order of five weeks ago,” said Vlu, studying the glowing face of her own tricorder. “The bioluminescence we’re seeing now is simply a residual effect of life processes that have ceased.”

  “Can you be sure of that?” Dax asked, addressing both doctors at once. “What about the refractory mineral interference we noticed earlier? Couldn’t that be hiding a few live parasites?”

  “I seriously doubt it,” Julian said. “Those minerals appear to be most heavily concentrated in the surface layers, as geologically unlikely as that sounds.”

  “Then perhaps it has more to do with tactics than with geology,” Taran’atar said, his rich voice reverberating in the large darkened chamber.