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  Dax heard the wail again, and realized it was coming from the government sector. Dropping the naiskos fragment back into her pocket, she quickly tapped her combadge. “What’s going on, Taulin?”

  “The transcript of your testimony has been leaked to the media. And the people down on the streets are starting to riot.”

  6

  Moments later, the Rio Grande’s transporter deposited Dax and Bashir in the Senate Tower’s expansive main lobby. A cacophony of shouts and screams from outside the building greeted them.

  “Thanks for inviting me along this time,” Julian said, still sounding miffed at having been denied entrance to the Senate Chambers a few hours earlier.

  But there wasn’t time at the moment to worry about that. Amid the crowd of office workers whose daily homeward journey had evidently been interrupted by the rioting outside, Dax noticed a tall, nattily dressed, silver-haired man directing a group of frazzled-looking young interns. He appeared utterly unruffled as he dispatched the cluster of young functionaries surrounding him to various tasks as though nothing at all remarkable were going on.

  Julian had obviously noticed him as well. “Who’s that?”

  “Senator Rylen Talris,” she said striding toward the man. “He had quite a few questions for me this afternoon. He also wasn’t thrilled with Cyl’s requests that I deliver some of my testimony in a special closed-door session.”

  And I’ll bet he hasn’t been shy about complaining about that to the media, Dax thought. She wondered if the crowd outside was reacting to Talris’s contention that the Trill military was trying to cover up the entire parasite affair.

  “I think I’ve read something about him,” Julian said. “Quite a man of the people, and very sympathetic to the problems of the unjoined. Which I find surprising, considering his position in Trill society.”

  Dax frowned, hearing the tone of criticism beneath Julian’s words. “Why?”

  “Well, in addition to serving in the Senate, doesn’t he also have a seat on the Symbiosis Commission?”

  “Most joined Trill aren’t out to oppress the unjoined, Julian. Remember, some of us never even wanted to be joined in the first place.”

  As the cluster of people surrounding Talris began to disperse, Dax noticed Cyl and Gard striding purposefully toward them from the bank of turbolifts that lined the gleaming black south wall. They came to a stop before Dax and Julian, just a few meters from Talris.

  “How bad is the rioting?” Dax asked the general.

  Cyl’s expression was weary and sour. “Bad enough, and it’s not just happening here in the capital. Unjoined agitators are coming together in large numbers at Mak’ala, and at some of the other symbiont spawning pools as well.”

  “We have already increased security accordingly in all those places,” Gard said as they moved toward the senator. “No attacks on the symbiont pools have been reported as yet. But we can’t afford to wait until something like that actually happens.”

  “At least we’ve found the right man to calm things down,” Julian said, nodding toward Talris.

  Cyl nodded. “Though I have little truck with the politics of the malcontents, I can’t argue against Talris’s credibility out there among the Great Unjoined. Working with Talris is our best chance to keep the police/protester skirmishes from getting out of hand.”

  “Our main concern is keeping everyone calm,” Gard said. “In fact, President Maz has just announced that the rest of the Senate inquests will be placed on hold until some semblance of order is restored on the streets.”

  Dax wasn’t surprised to hear that; Maz was a practical, nononsense politician who had a fairly low tolerance for unruly behavior. But if the developing situation was indeed as dire as the picture Cyl and Gard were painting, Maz’s absence seemed conspicuous.

  “Where is Maz?” she asked.

  “She’s quite busy at the moment, as you might imagine,” said Cyl.

  “Of course.” She’s also probably less than eager to be seen with anyone as closely identified with Shakaar’s assassination as the two of you are.

  Suddenly, they were in Talris’s presence, and the senator was giving them his undivided attention. After Cyl facilitated a quick exchange of introductions, Talris gestured toward the building’s broad entrance, beyond which a sizable crowd was visible.

  “It’s worse than I thought,” Senator Talris said, his lined face taking on a melancholy cast.

  Limned in the glare of the street lights, the angry mob outside was surging forward across the courtyard toward the Senate Tower proper, chanting, screaming, and waving placards. Through the floor-to-ceiling transparisteel lobby entranceway, Dax noticed that the police and security guards outside had linked their arms and raised their clear riot shields to form a skirmish line. She also noticed that many of the building’s civilian workers remained trapped inside the lobby. She saw a small group of security guards enter the lobby, gesturing for the workers to vacate the area and to head for the relative safety of the stairwells and turbolifts.

  “Senator Talris, please get to the turbolifts,” Gard said, reaching through an opening in the center of his outer tunic and retrieving a slim phaser pistol, apparently from an underarm holster. “You’ll be safest up in the office levels.”

  “All right,” Talris said as the group entered the nearest lift. Dax noticed that the senator touched the keypad’s third-floor control.

  Cyl had evidently noticed the same thing. “Senator?”

  “I need to address the crowd,” Talris said in urgent tones as the lift began to ascend. “The speaker’s platform is on the third level.”

  “Speaker’s platform?” Julian asked.

  “Just what it sounds like, Julian. It’s a semipublic platform on a balcony overlooking the crowd,” Dax said curtly, even as Cyl and Gard seemed about to question Talris’s judgment.

  “It’s shielded against small arms, but it’s visually open to the crowd,” said Talris. “It’s also equipped with dozens of holocams, for comnet-wide public addresses. And there’s a viewer right outside the Tower that ought to make me large and loud enough to get everyone’s attention.”

  The lift doors opened onto the third floor, and Talris pointed across the corridor toward a door that Dax surmised must lead to the speaker’s platform. Several guards were already in place, and a pair of them were pushing a tarp-draped hovercart before them. Dax supposed they were present in anticipation of Talris’s need to use the balcony, but they seemed genuinely surprised to have company. One of the guards even drew a weapon before anyone could take a step out of the lift; Dax was relieved to note that he wasn’t aiming it at anyone.

  Everyone’s jumpy, Dax thought. This is getting worse by the second.

  Cyl was the first to speak to the guards. “Lieutenant, what is your current assignment?”

  One of the uniformed officers in the corridor moved into a ramrod-straight stance, then answered. “Sir, we are deploying protective countermeasures in case the building should be breached by the protesters.”

  “Do it with a few less men, Lieutenant,” Cyl said, his stern voice crisply conveying the order. “I want three armed guards with Senator Talris at all times. He’s about to address the crowd from the speaker’s platform.”

  The guard nodded. “Understood, sir.”

  “I don’t think this is wise, Senator,” Cyl said as the sound of phaser fire reached them from outside the tower.

  Dax hoped they were only warning shots.

  Talris’s face crinkled as he smiled, making him look like a beneficent grandfather. He chuckled as he said, “Given some of the risks you’ve taken lately, Taulin, some might question the wisdom of taking your advice as well.” Dax supposed Talris was referring to Cyl’s recent decisions with respect to Bajor. Cyl, who had evidently known Talris for many years, did not appear to be offended.

  “I’ll be fine, really,” Talris told the general, his eyes twinkling. “Now let me go. I have a rampaging horde to calm down.”<
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  Talris stepped out of the lift to join the guards, leaving Dax and the rest of the group standing inside. Facing the lift, the senator touched the keypad on the wall, causing his confident face to disappear behind the lift’s closing doors even as a trio of guards moved toward him.

  “We need to get to the tower’s security center,” Cyl said, his sullen tone making it clear that he wasn’t keen on leaving Talris’s side, guards or no guards. He tapped a special code into the lift’s keypad, and the conveyance began to descend. “From there, we should be able to track exactly what is going on top-side.”

  “You mean outside the tower?” Julian asked.

  Cyl nodded. “The security center has secure Z-twelve connections. We’ll bypass the public comm channels and link directly to the defense grid. That way, we’ll be updated about every location where there are major protest gatherings. We need to stay on top of the situation not only here, but at Mak’ala and elsewhere.”

  The lift descended below the first floor, then stopped at an unmarked sublevel. The doors opened on a wide, bustling room whose walls were covered with monitors. Uniformed military personnel swarmed throughout the chamber, punching keypads, reading data, watching the screens, or vigorously discussing the events now unfolding on the streets of Leran Manev and other locales with others not present in the room.

  In all her lives, Dax couldn’t recall having visited this place before. But she had been in other command centers like it—sprawling yet cramped control rooms filled from floor to ceiling with unbeautiful, solidly utilitarian computer keypads and monitors—both on and off Trill. She assumed that this was but one of perhaps dozens of similar security command centers located around the planet.

  They quickly caught up with Cyl and Gard, who were already being briefed by an authoritative-looking female officer. Her head was nearly shaved clean, making the dappled purplish spots on her temples clearly visible. Dax immediately recognized her as someone to be reckoned with.

  After casting a suspicious eye on Gard, the woman turned to Cyl.

  “You have something to say, Colonel Rianu?” Cyl said gruffly.

  “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

  “I don’t have time for parade protocol right now, Colonel. Out with it.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to bring that man down here, General.” She nodded toward Gard with icy politeness.

  Dax understood the colonel’s apprehension. After all, Gard had killed the head of state of an allied planet. It was pretty hard to keep one’s name and face out of the newsnets after such an incident. Gard’s deed, as well as the official pardon that had apparently followed it, had arguably made him far better known than befitted a Senate security operative long accustomed to working in the shadows.

  Cyl appeared a good deal less understanding. “Colonel, Hiziki Gard is my trusted right hand, at least for the duration of the current crisis. I expect you to give him whatever resources he asks for—and to obey his orders as though they had come directly from me. Do I make myself clear?”

  “You do, sir.” Dax was impressed at how impassively the colonel took the general’s browbeating. She suddenly recognized her.

  “That’s Colonel Behza Rianu,” Dax whispered to Julian. “She’s supposed to be one of the best in the Defense Command.”

  “She certainly seems to have things well in hand here,” Julian said.

  “She has political ambitions, too. As well as a quick temper that’s kept her from achieving a Senate seat so far.”

  “Are you sure she’s not advancing because she’s not joined?” Julian asked.

  Even after everything she had witnessed so far today, Dax couldn’t have been more surprised if he had suddenly lobbed a grenade into the room. “I can’t even find the words to answer that, Julian.” She glared at him for a moment, then attempted to resume listening to Colonel Rianu’s briefing. But in the back of her mind, Julian’s question echoed, and a small part of her knew it was relevant. Especially today.

  In clipped, businesslike tones, Rianu informed them about the planetwide movements of various radicals, which she identified as anti-joining agitators associated with the neo-Purist movement, political radicals inspired by the late Verad Kalon’s anti-symbiont Purist group. Consciously putting aside her unpleasant memories of Verad, who had briefly succeeded in stealing her symbiont from Jadzia, Dax listened, turning with the others to watch a cycle of images scrolling past on a large bank of wall-mounted monitors. The holoscreens showed other government buildings in Leran Manev and elsewhere, the Symbiosis Commission, the Caves of Mak’ala, and two other smaller symbiont spawning grounds. Around each of these places, throngs of obviously discontented Trill humanoids had gathered.

  The military presence was heaviest near the Symbiosis Commission’s copper-hued towers, though that structure was better protected than most of the other buildings in Leran Manev’s government sector; after all, it was practically surrounded by a moatlike body of water, with only a few roadways and powered hover routes leading to it. Dax noted that the building’s landing pads were filled with military defense craft, and that police were pushing the throngs slowly back away from the roadways that led directly to the Commission building.

  Outside the Senate Tower, however, the situation was much worse. Protesters were throwing whatever was handy, and the guards were responding with force. Batons rose and fell, and the actinic flash of phaser fire split the air, some directed at the protesters, some aimed at the police. In the bunker, Dax noticed several people gathered near one monitor, each speaking into separate comm devices. On their viewscreen, she saw a flash of light as a soldier targeted a civilian sniper; the monitoring officers cheered momentarily, congratulating the soldier over one of the comm units. Dax assumed they had helped the shooter pinpoint his target. Though she was no stranger to combat, the sight of it occurring in the once tranquil Trill capital made her feel almost physically ill. After all, it was the living legacy of Verad, whose poisonous, invidious memories still lingered within her because of her symbiont’s brief joining with him.

  “There’s got to be a way to resolve this without so much violence,” she said. “Can’t we release some neural gas in the plaza, or set up a phaser cannon for a wide-dispersal stun blast?”

  “Either of those options could cause some deaths as well,” said Cyl, shaking his head.

  “I thought Talris was supposed to speak to the crowd,” Julian said. “Shouldn’t he have started by now?”

  Dax saw a look of surprise flicker across the faces of both Cyl and Gard as each of them realized that several minutes had passed since they had left the senator on the tower’s third floor. She knew they were thinking the same thing she was: What is taking Talris so long?

  “Bring up all cameras on level three,” Cyl said to a nearby technician. “Focus the largest viewers on the speaker’s platform.” Dax could hear the urgency in his voice.

  Multiple images came up on the screens, but none of them showed anyone at all. The speaker’s balcony was completely empty. “Where is Talris?” Gard asked. “What happened to the guards?”

  “Talris might have decided to exercise the better part of valor,” said Julian.

  “That doesn’t square with his reputation,” Dax said.

  Cyl squinted at the viewers, studying them carefully. “Maybe they evacuated elsewhere because of the sniper activity.”

  Gard shook his head. “This doesn’t add up. The balcony’s shields would have stopped a sniper. And the guards around Talris would have known that.”

  Something about the images on the viewer was bothering Dax. Everything looked peaceful on and around the third-level balcony, as if nothing at all untoward were occurring a mere two floors below. It almost looks too peaceful.

  A sudden realization struck her. “Magnify screen seven-Q, upper third quadrant,” Dax said to the technician who was beside Cyl. The screen image quickly changed, showing the profuse greenery that ringed the spe
aker’s platform. Above the dais was a red-plumed bird in flight.

  Though its wings were fully extended, the bird was motionless, as though it had been flash-frozen an instant after takeoff

  “Why is this image paused?” Cyl asked as he too noticed the discrepancy.

  “It’s not, sir,” the technician said, his fingers sliding over a lit data panel. “This feed’s coming in live.”

  Cyl pointed angrily toward the magnified and motionless bird on the viewscreen. “I see. So that fenza bird suddenly transformed itself into a fixed-wing aircraft. This feed is a still image!”

  “Run the feed backward,” Rianu said, as several more of the technicians began working the panels in front of the anomalous image. Although index numbers scrolled backward rapidly, the images on the third floor and speaker’s platform viewscreens remained consistent—including the motionless bird. Finally, at minus nine minutes, the bird flew backward and returned to its perch. On another screen, a pair of guards pushing a tarp-covered hoverlift could be seen. One of them raised a hand from the hoverlift and aimed a small device directly at the cameras.

  “Freeze it!” Cyl shouted. His eyebrows arched, and a look of anger flashed in his eyes. “These people are infiltrators. They sabotaged the feed before we even arrived.”

  Gard was moving toward the turbolift before Cyl had even finished speaking. He pointed at a pair of armed guards as he sprinted. “You two are with us.”

  Dax felt her adrenaline surge as she and Julian and Cyl moved toward the lift as well. Cyl tossed her a plisagraph, which she dutifully set for maximum scan before pulling the phaser from her hip to make sure it was fully charged.

  “Set weapons to kill,” Cyl said as the lift enclosed them. “Whoever these people are, we can bet they won’t be very happy about being interrupted.”

  Dax did as Cyl bid, though she wasn’t thrilled with the idea of killing. Then she turned toward Julian and saw that he had not switched his phaser past the “stun” setting.

  Julian gave her a look that she wasn’t sure she was reading correctly. His eyes seemed argumentative and imploring at the same time. Because she was the one in charge of their mission, she knew she could order him to change the setting on his weapon. But she also knew that he had disregarded Cyl’s instruction because his primary loyalty was to Starfleet, not to Trill. That distinction set him apart not only from everyone else in the lift, but also from everyone else in the building.