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  Everyone on the planet, she realized.

  He’s not one of us, Dax thought. Suddenly the current clash between joined and unjoined conspired with the sometimes conflicting feelings of Ezri Tigan and Ezri Dax. Starfleet training warred with Trill loyalty, threatening momentarily to overwhelm her.

  And then the turbolift doors opened.

  * * *

  His heart in his throat, Bashir flattened himself against the wall as phaser fire rained in on them, burning a hole through the lift’s back wall. Cyl and Gard crouched near the floor, while Ezri and one of the security people Gard had brought along leaned forward to fire their weapons from the open, smoke-filled turbolift.

  Another volley of shots passed back and forth before Bashir heard the sound of a pair of bodies crumpling to the floor in the corridor outside. One of the guards edged her way out the door, her weapon drawn and her stance defensive.

  “Two down!” she said, her voice a low growl. Turning briskly with her weapon extended in a two-handed grip, the guard looked to either side, covering for the others. Suddenly, a phaser bolt shot her through the throat, half vaporizing her neck in a spray of wet matter. She immediately collapsed to the floor. Bashir instinctively started moving toward her, but restrained himself an instant later; the guard’s wound appeared mortal, and he knew there was no way to examine her without being killed himself.

  Cyl and the remaining security guard fired in the direction from which the fatal shot had come, down a side corridor. Though the adversaries returned fire, Cyl and the guard continued shooting. Bashir heard a distant cry of pain, followed by the sound of another body hitting the tile floor.

  Bashir crawled over to the fallen guard, even as Ezri moved with him, crouching with her phaser drawn and her scanning device raised. Bashir turned the stricken guard over to inspect her wound and saw immediately that she was beyond all help. Though the heat of the phaser beam had nearly cauterized her wound, it had also blown out her trachea as well as a great deal of her spine.

  “I read three more humanoid life signs in that direction,” Ezri said, angling the small scanning device Cyl had given her toward the tower’s east corridors, then toward the building’s western side. Bashir recognized the palm-sized device as a powerful, Trill-specific bioscanner known as a plisagraph. “Three this way as well, including one that looks pretty weak.”

  Gard tapped the remaining guard on the shoulder, then pointed down a side corridor. “We’ll take the east wing. Let’s hope one of those life signs belongs to Talris.”

  Ezri shook her head. “I don’t think he’s here. I’m not reading any symbiont life signs on this floor. Other than our own, I mean.”

  “That weak humanoid life sign you picked up might belong to the one we just hit,” Cyl said, frowning and nodding.

  “He may not have taken a direct hit,” Bashir said. He still wasn’t happy about Cyl’s insistence that they shoot to kill. And despite the horrible death the infiltrators had just inflicted on the security guard, he still hoped their adversaries wouldn’t have to die unnecessarily.

  Cyl gestured westward with his phaser. “Dax, Doctor, come with me. And stay sharp.”

  The team split up. Cyl, Dax, and Bashir moved cautiously down the wide corridor, hugging the walls and pausing to take cover behind alternating rows of support columns and large potted plants. Eventually, they reached a three-way junction, where the body of one of the impostor guards lay.

  Crouching beside him, Bashir noted that he was dead—and that the phaser clutched in his hand was still warm from recent use. “No life signs here, weak or otherwise.” He looked up at Ezri.

  She consulted her scanner again. “My plisagraph is still picking up three Trill humanoid life signs, but that’s all. One of the others must be hurt. They’re down that way.”

  Even as Ezri pointed toward a windowless, unlit segment of corridor, the plisagraph in her hand exploded in a shower of sparks as a phaser blast hit it. She let out a cry and spun into the wall, then crumpled to the tile floor.

  Cyl hit the ground instantly, returning fire. Using the dead attacker as a shield, he sent a volley of blasts down the darkened corridor, briefly illuminating it as brightly as the noontime sky.

  Dropping to the floor, Bashir crawled quickly across the three meters that separated him from Ezri. The look of shock and pain on her face alarmed him, and he saw that her right hand was red and blistered.

  “Let me do something about those burns,” he said, reaching for the medical kit on his hip.

  Using her uninjured hand, she grabbed his wrist, stopping him. “It’s not that bad, Julian,” she whispered, hissing through tightly clenched teeth. Her brave words didn’t fool him for a moment; she was obviously in agony. “Besides, this isn’t the best place for giving first aid.”

  As if to underscore her words, more phaser bursts pulsed over their heads, and Cyl responded with another volley. Bashir turned and saw that Cyl was taking aim at the edges of the wall, rather than shooting down the middle of the open corridor. Moments later, a large chunk of rubble fell away from the wall in a cloud of smoke and dust. Cyl strafed the area just beyond it.

  Bashir held his breath for a protracted moment, but no further salvos came from down the corridor. Cyl turned to face Bashir and Ezri. “Stay here and cover me,” he said, then pulled himself to a squatting position. A moment later he was sprinting down the corridor, zigzagging as he ran.

  Despite the near darkness that surrounded Cyl, Bashir could see that the general had arrived unmolested at the corridor’s end. Cyl beckoned them to follow.

  Bashir helped Ezri to her feet, then gently took hold of her hand so he could look at it closely. She was right; there hadn’t been much real damage. Just some redness, puffiness, and a few small blisters.

  Dax withdrew her hand and gestured toward Cyl. “Hard to believe he used to be my darling daughter, huh?” She gave Bashir a wobbly grin.

  Good to see she hasn’t lost her sense of humor, Bashir thought. He was a great believer in using humor to overcome stress, and so far this day was one of the most stressful either of them had seen lately. And it’s not over yet.

  Moments later, Bashir and Ezri joined Cyl at the haphazard pile of rubble his phaser had created. Beneath it lay one of the “guards” who had greeted them when they had brought Talris to the third level. Cyl gestured toward a nearby door, and Bashir realized immediately that it must have been forced open from outside the building.

  “That leads to most of the equipment that powers the speaker’s platform,” Cyl said, mopping the perspiration from his spotted forehead with the back of his hand. “The other two radicals must be trying to either commandeer or sabotage it.”

  “Is there another way in?” Ezri asked.

  Cyl shook his head. “Not an easy one. And not if we want to get there in a hurry.”

  “Then we go in through the front,” Ezri said, raising her phaser with her uninjured left hand.

  Opening the door cautiously, they entered and found themselves inside a short, dimly lit hallway. Bashir could hear the hum of machinery, and heavy footsteps that sounded uncomfortably close.

  At the end of the hallway, Cyl cautiously peered around the corner. He turned back toward Bashir and Ezri, a crestfallen look on his face. “Damn! It looks as if one of the radicals has got Talris. And he doesn’t look good.”

  A question flitted through Bashir’s mind. Why didn’t Ezri’s plisagraph pick up Talris’s symbiont?

  Then a booming voice rang out, echoing off the walls and machinery in the large chamber beyond the short hallway. “Whoever you are, show yourself. Come out and drop your weapons. Otherwise your precious Senator Talris will never get to deliver another one of his famous placating speeches.”

  Cyl scowled for a moment, then responded. “You’ll just kill us all if we come out there.”

  “I admit it’s a chance you’ll have to take,” the mystery voice said, taunting. “But really, I’ve already accomplished my mission. I
just want to get out of here now. Safely, and without any more unpleasantness.”

  “The security people must have sealed off the doors leading to the outside,” Cyl whispered to Ezri.

  She nodded. “He must have just figured out that he’s trapped.”

  He’s desperate to find a way out, Bashir thought. And desperate people are dangerous people.

  Bashir watched tensely as Cyl peered around the corner, then withdrew to safety. He had never seen the normally steel-nerved general look so agitated.

  “He’s got Talris in front of him,” the general said. “Using him as a shield. Talris looks unconscious.”

  Fear twisted Bashir’s belly into a knot. “I need to get to him.”

  “You can’t do him any good if you get yourself killed,” Cyl said.

  “General, Talris isn’t a young man. He may be in urgent need of medical attention.”

  “Our friend might not know how many of us are here,” said Ezri.

  Cyl appeared to apprehend her meaning instantly. “If the doctor and I go out there, you might be able to squeeze off a shot.”

  Ezri gave a short nod. “I suppose I’ve heard worse plans.” She looked up at Bashir.

  He thought things were going swiftly from bad to worse. And he knew that hostage rescues rarely went well for the hostages. But there seemed to be little choice. If he was going to help Talris, he had to get close to him. He slowly nodded his assent to Ezri’s risky plan.

  Cyl stepped out first, dropping his phaser noisily to the floor. “I’m unarmed now,” he said. “My companion is joining me.”

  After taking a deep breath, Bashir stepped out of the shadows as well, dropping his weapon and then raising his hands. “I’m a medical doctor. If Senator Talris needs attention—”

  “Don’t worry about the senator,” the provocateur yelled, interrupting. Bashir saw in the dim light that he was facing the “lieutenant” whom Cyl had assigned to guard Talris. It was no wonder that the general appeared so upset; he had to be blaming himself for delivering Talris straight into the hands of the insurgents.

  “Where’s the woman?” the “lieutenant” asked. “I saw her on the security recorders before you blew out that wall.”

  “Then you must have also seen your colleague shoot her dead,” Cyl said coolly as he walked slowly forward. “She didn’t make it.”

  Then Bashir saw to his horror that Cyl’s lie was actually true for at least one other person in the room. Talris’s head lolled limply forward, giving Bashir a glimpse of a telltale phaser burn that the senator’s hair no longer covered up.

  Obviously panicked by Bashir’s startled reaction, the “lieutenant” raised his weapon.

  “Ezri, shoot through Talris!” Bashir yelled as he pushed Cyl down, diving for the floor himself.

  A bright burst of light sizzled through the air and struck Talris in the chest, coring a hole through him. The “lieutenant” behind him fell backward, and both crumpled limply to the floor.

  Cyl sprinted across the room and dived on top of the fallen infiltrator, but the man’s body was limp and lifeless.

  Ezri ran forward as well, joining Bashir as he squatted to examine Talris. “Did I . . .?” She couldn’t finish her question.

  Bashir shook his head. “No. He was already dead. I suspect that he died at about the time we reached the outer hall. Once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I knew for certain.” He pointed to the mortal phaser wound on the senator’s right temple.

  “You took one hell of a chance,” Cyl said, his voice flinty. He paused to recover the phasers that he and Bashir had been forced to drop. “What if he wasn’t dead?”

  As Cyl brusquely tossed him his weapon, Bashir fixed the general with a testy gaze. Ever since his arrival on Trill, he had been either brushed off or ignored. He’d finally had enough of it.

  “I don’t take chances like that, General. I knew he was already dead. And I knew that his symbiont was gone as well, or its life signs would have shown up earlier on Lieutenant Dax’s plisagraph.”

  Ezri stood, her attention diverted to something off to the side. “I believe we have another problem,” she said, pointing. “I think that’s a bomb.”

  Bashir and Cyl scrambled to their feet and looked over to where Ezri was pointing. There, atop the very same hovercart they had seen earlier, sat a two-meter-long metal cylinder. The tarp that had once covered it lay on the floor, demonstrating that stealth no longer mattered to the radicals. The device was connected via ODN cables to a bank of machinery set into a nearby wall.

  Bashir followed Cyl and Ezri as they made their deliberate approach to the device. Unfortunately, a visual examination of the object revealed very little.

  “So we don’t know whether it’s a bomb or not,” Cyl said. Bashir could hear an edge in the general’s voice; he clearly feared the worst.

  “What else would it be?” Ezri said. “Think about it. If they bomb the Senate Tower, they could cripple the planetary government for months. Radicals and terrorists often see these sorts of actions as catalysts for whatever changes they want to bring about. And that dead man back there was awfully eager to get out of here.”

  Safely, and without any more unpleasantness, Bashir thought, recalling some of the dead man’s final words.

  Still, he searched for another explanation. “Maybe it’s some kind of device designed to hijack the communications grid from the speaker’s platform. If this facility is used for making planetwide addresses, that might be a good way for the radicals to focus attention on their cause.”

  “Believe me, Doctor,” Cyl said. “They already have almost everyone’s undivided attention. Besides, I don’t think they’d go to this much trouble just to do that. They can already broadcast their own messages on the comnet, and they wouldn’t have to kill a beloved senator to do it. Lieutenant Dax is right—our safest assumption is that this is a bomb.”

  “Okay, so how do you suppose it’s triggered?” Ezri asked, pacing from one end of the device to the other. “If it’s on a timer, how do we know how much time is left? And how do we disarm it?”

  “I’m going to call for an evacuation,” Cyl said, moving over to a wall-mounted comm unit. “We’ll try to save as many lives as we can.”

  Knowing the loss of life could still be enormous should the object detonate, Bashir’s mind worked to find a better solution even as the general barked orders through the comm unit. Sifting through his memories, the doctor could find very few that related to bomb threats. Such things were almost unheard of on Federation planets, especially bombings conducted for political purposes. It didn’t escape him that conflicts were sometimes decided instead through large-scale engagements involving starships and phasers and cloned soldiers and shape-shifters and mind-devouring parasites; the idea of planting a lone bomb seemed almost quaint by comparison.

  How would I get rid of a bomb back on the station? he asked himself. I’d beam it into deep space. But we can’t do that here.

  Or can we?

  He turned toward Cyl. “Is this thing attached to any of the building’s critical systems?”

  Gard shrugged. Cyl snorted. “I wouldn’t know for sure,” the general said. “This isn’t exactly my arena.”

  “Then I suppose there’s no point in waiting any longer.” Tapping his Starfleet combadge, he said, “Bashir to Rio Grande.”

  “Rio Grande acknowledging,” the runabout’s computer responded in an affectless female voice.

  Ezri stepped closer. “Julian, are you sure this is a good idea?”

  “I don’t think we have a lot of alternatives, Ezri.” Or time to argue about it.

  She nodded, apparently having come to a command decision. “You’re probably right. Go ahead.”

  He picked the combadge off the front of his uniform and spoke quickly into it. “Computer, lock the transporter onto my combadge. Program a five-second delay, then transport the large metal object to which it’s attached.”

  “Please specify transpor
ter coordinates.”

  Setting the combadge atop the mystery device, Bashir said. “Deep space. Directly overhead. Maximum range.”

  As Bashir backed quickly away from the object, Ezri approached Cyl. “General, I think you’ll want to warn your defense crew. They’ll probably detect a good-sized explosion in orbit.”

  Cyl moved back to the comm unit and activated it. “This is General Cyl. Warn every orbiting ship to raise shields or break orbit. Immediately.”

  “Energizing,” said the runabout’s computer, speaking from the unknown object’s hull. A moment later, a shimmering curtain of light enveloped the device, and it disappeared from view.

  Bashir let out his breath in a whoosh. He hadn’t even been aware he had been holding it. He opened his tricorder, swiftly entered some figures into the keypad, then raised the device to make its display clearly visible to Cyl.

  “General, tell your ships to scan these coordinates for an explosion. If they don’t find one, have them search for that device. And make sure they destroy it.”

  A grim smile came to Cyl’s lips. “Well done, Doctor. We’ll find out soon enough if—” He stopped and whirled into a crouch, his phaser raised and trained on the hall entrance from which they had originally emerged into the room.

  Bashir saw a head peep around the wall just before a familiar voice called out. “Stand down, General. It’s Gard and Trebor. We’ve eliminated or captured all the other infiltrators who’d gotten into the building.”

  At least the ones who were wearing uniforms or got caught committing assassinations or planting bombs, Bashir thought, wondering just how many unjoined radical sympathizers had quiet office jobs in the Senate Tower or countless other government sector buildings.