1

Chief Medical Examiner Drokka looked over to the shirtless patient. Like the others with advanced cases of the illness brought on by the virus that was ravaging his world, the patient had developed light purple splotches covering his entire body. Drokka estimated that without treatment, the patient would be dead in another one to three days. The advanced stage of his disease made him the perfect candidate on whom to test the cure brought to them by the Federation starship Horizon.

According to Starfleet Medical, the retrovirals should be completely safe, and cure the disease completely within moments. The retrovirals work by entering the host’s cells and converting the RNA contained within the treatment to DNA that was incompatible with the attacking virus. The result was that the attacking virus would be broken up and neutralized. Aside from that, the altered DNA should have no other effects upon the body, and the mutations would be passed on to any future offspring.

Drokka approached the patient and glanced at the chart displayed above the biobed to get his name. “Harch, do you have any questions before I administer the treatment?”

The patient looked at him through pain-dulled eyes. “I’m ready,” he said as he cracked a wan smile. “It’s either this or I die soon.”

“You are unfortunately correct. Your condition has deteriorated to the point where death would be imminent within the next seventy-two hours without the cure,” Drokka said, carefully keeping all traces of emotion from his voice. He brought the hypospray to the patient, held it to his neck, and pressed the button to inject the cure.

Initially, he noticed little difference in the patient and the biobed still detected the virus in the patient’s body. Starfleet Medical had told him to expect the cure to work almost instantly, but it didn’t seem to be having any effect yet. Drokka couldn’t help but scowl.

“Is it working?” asked Harch, clearly becoming alarmed by the doctor’s silence.

“They said it would work almost instantly,” Drokka said. “I expected we would at least see a drop in viral levels by now, if not a reduction in splotching.”

The patient lowered his head, clearly discouraged. He knew his end would come soon if this cure didn’t work. “I shouldn’t have hoped…”

“We should give it a little more time before we…” Drokka stopped as the number on the viral display began dropping. “Wait a moment. The viral load numbers are dropping.”

Harch raised his eyes to look at the doctor. “Really?” was all he managed to ask. Drokka could see the tears forming in his eyes, and he could read the elation in his expression. He’d seen this with many patients over the years when they were given a new lease on life.

Drokka watched the numbers continue to drop until they registered as undetectable. Likewise, the splotches on the patient’s skin began receding rapidly. Within moments, the symptoms were almost completely gone, and all that would be left was for his body to heal from the damage caused by the virus—but he had other drugs at his disposal to speed that up. “It appears that you’re cured.”

Harch stood up from the biobed. “I feel better already,” he said. He looked over his arms, chest, and legs, at the places where the purple splotches were already almost faded to nothing. “This is amazing.”

“Please stay seated,” Drokka said. “I’d like to keep monitoring you for a while. I’d like to make sure that the virus is truly gone from your system before I release you.”

Harch sat back down. “Sorry doc,” he said. “I just didn’t think this was going to work.”

“I also had my doubts,” Drokka admitted. “I’m going to keep you under observation for a few hours, and so long as I don’t see any complications, we’ll begin administering the treatment throughout the population.”

Drokka turned away from the patient and began updating the case notes in his PADD.

That’s when the beeping began.

Drokka turned back to the biobed. Harch pitched forward, his fingers pressed to his head. The biobed was registering that a new virus was detected, and he saw the numbers climbing rapidly. Every cell in his body was suddenly producing a virus that hadn’t been present before.

“Computer, level one containment field around the biobed,” Drokka said quickly.

He watched as the area around the bed shimmered as the energy field sprang into place. A new alert sounded throughout the exam room. “Warning. Airborne virus detected outside the containment field.”

“Emergency protocol one!” Drokka shouted. This would shut down all the ventilation throughout the facility and place a force-field outside the main door. Even as he heard the force field activate outside the lab, another alert began to sound throughout the facility.

On the biobed, the patient was beginning to scream. All the veins near his skin bulged outward. He remained that way for several seconds, and Drokka watched as numerous veins burst, causing fresh bruises.

And then his vital signs went flat. The patient was dead. “Damn,” he muttered. It wasn’t a cure, it was death.

“Computer, how far has this new virus spread?”

“The virus has spread beyond the medical center.”

“Am I infected?”

“Affirmative.”

Just as he received the response, he felt a sharp pain in his head. He would be dead in seconds.

* * *

Kevia Turner gasped. “Kill us? Why?” Moments before Tarim, the High Chancellor of Gour II, had captured the away team in a crowded public square, and announced that he planned to put them to death. But first it sounded as though he intended to torture them.

“I think I made that clear,” Tarim said. “While we were suffering here, the Federation turned a blind eye. It deemed us unimportant, and allowed us to die by the thousands. This is not the act of an ally, but an enemy.”

“Tarim, listen to me! The Federation didn’t turn a blind eye to you, nor did it discount your suffering in any way. It simply wasn’t possible to synthesize a cure and get it here on a faster timetable than what we managed. We really did our best,” Turner pleaded.

“Well, it wasn’t enough,” Tarim said and began to turn his back on the Starfleet officers.

“Just let us go,” Turner shouted. “Keeping us captive doesn’t serve you in any way. We’ll board our ship and leave.”

Tarim looked to one of the Breen and nodded.

The Breen officer approached Turner and buried his fist in her gut. He then pulled brutally struck her in the face.

Turner fell to the ground and raised a hand to feel her face, which was exploding with pain. She wasn’t bloody, but it was too soon to tell if a bone had been broken in her face.

“I’m afraid you won’t be leaving aboard the Horizon. The Breen have informed me that it’s been destroyed.”

Turner’s gut reacted, as though she’s been punched again. Of course Tarim might be lying. That would be the easiest way to break their spirits and stop them from trying to escape. But, with the Breen operating openly, that could only mean that the Horizon had been neutralized.

Bashir started to kneel down to examine Turner, but was stopped by one of the Breen holding them. He spun toward his captors. “This is an act of aggression and it will not go unanswered by Starfleet!”

“I’m sure,” said Tarim. “The thing you need to understand is that we have withdrawn from the Federation and are now under the protection of the Breen Confederacy. Therefore, it was your starship intruding upon Breen space, not the other way around.”

“Until you’ve formally withdrawn from the charter…” Bashir began, but his words were cut short when the sound of a siren screeched throughout the city. “What’s that?” he asked.

“Quick!” Tarim shouted. “Get the prisoners to cells.” He then gestured to the crowd. “The rest of you, get indoors immediately!”

The Breen began marching them toward the far side of the square. “What’s happening?” Nod asked.

“Some sort of a biological attack,” Tarim replied. He then turned on his heel and marched away.

* * *

Captain’s log Stardate 55065.3. The Horizon is currently hidden behind a moon of Gour II after taking a shellacking from three Breen warships. I find it troubling that the Breen have managed to gain a foothold on what had been a Federation world up until recently, but I sense that not everything here is as it appears. I’m also troubled by the away team that beamed down to the planet and have since become trapped there where we cannot offer them support.

Sheppard tried to suppress the outward appearances of the nervousness he felt. The ship was in pieces, lights were still dimmed and running on emergency power, and to make matters worse, most of his senior staff was on the planet. Cunha should be aboard leading the engineering team while they made repairs to the warp engines, but instead she’d been sent on the away team simply to try and help her gain experience in the field. This was a mistake. Tavika was a highly capable tactical officer who could out-perform most of her peers in ship-to-ship combat. She had been sent to the planet because he wanted to try and force her and Nod to work out their differences. That was another mistake.

The two officers he agreed should be on the away team were Doctor Bashir and Commander Turner. The doctor needed to oversee the distribution of the retrovirals, and Turner was his diplomatic replacement while he remained aboard the ship.

And that brought up another point for Sheppard. If they actually managed to survive this, he wasn’t accustomed to waiting behind on the ship while someone else led the away teams. This had been Starfleet regulation since the later days of Captain Kirk, and many people believed that it was precisely because of Kirk’s exploits that this came about. But Sheppard had been first officer until recently, he was used to running away teams himself, and he fully intended to exercise captain’s privilege to leave the ship a little more often than most Starfleet captains.

He stood up from the center chair. “Ch’qahrok, are you still seeing no signs of pursuit from the Breen?”

The Andorian pulled up the tactical controls again on his LCARS display and ran a passive scan of the area. “They are still orbiting the planet inside the two moons, and they don’t appear to be aware of our presence.”

“I think we should look more into who The Oppressors were,” Sheppard said. “If we could find a connection between them and the Breen, we might be able to end this diplomatically.”

Ch’qahrok nodded his agreement. “That might be valuable information, but where would we look for it? We’ve already reviewed the information in the Federation database and it made no reference to the identity of The Oppressors.”

“We’ll just have to start digging. What’s the status of the warp drive?”

“Still down. Repair estimates from engineering continue to fluctuate between three and eight hours.”

“I have to appreciate their accuracy,” Sheppard said wryly.

“Odds are that their repair estimates would be more accurate if their chief engineer were aboard. She has a great deal more practical experience than the other personnel in the engine room,” Ch’qahrok said.

“Yeah, I’ve considered that,” Sheppard admitted. “I can’t change who we included on the away team now so we need to have our ship running efficiently without their department heads. Who’s the ranking officer in engineering?”

“Lieutenant Sharve,” the Andorian replied.

Sheppard nodded, recalling the young Tellarite engineer. He had been assigned to the Idaho prior to this. “I’m going to have a word with him. I’ll be in my ready room. Ch’qahrok, you have the bridge.”

The Andorian nodded as Sheppard exited the bridge and entered the small adjacent room. Ready rooms were traditionally one of the few areas of a starship other than their quarters where captains were expected to personalize the space to reflect their personalities. The captain set the tone of the ship, and was the single most influential member of the crew. Sheppard had laid out his ready room months in advance, and Starfleet personnel had been kind enough to implement his designs prior to his arrival. In the corner next to the door was a cat tree, and upon it rested his enormous yellow tiger striped male cat named Ramses. On the wall was a print of Van Gogh’s Starry Night, and in a glass case in front of his desk was a model of the HMS Victory, a sailing vessel from Earth’s history that was active during the nineteenth century. Below that on a shelf were the collected novels from a dozen different worlds, all printed on paper despite their availability in PADD format. Sheppard felt comfortable in his ready room, but he still felt that it needed a little more to make it his own. Rather than try to fill it with random interests and curios, he decided that the empty space in here would be filled with things from his journeys aboard the Horizon. It was an optimistic philosophy that assumed they would make it away from this world intact.

Sheppard sat down behind his desk and keyed on his console. “Sheppard to Lieutenant Sharve,” he said.

A moment later the image on the screen shifted to a view of a Tellarite with dark hair and a long curly beard in front of the engine room. “Yes captain?” he said gruffly.

“Lieutenant, we’ve been getting some pretty wild variations in the repair estimates on the warp drive. Is there anything you can tell me about that?”

The Tellarite frowned. “Apologies Captain, we’re still trying to get a handle on the full extent of the situation down here. We’ve had to shut down the warp core to prevent a breach, and diagnostics are also offline. Every time we think we have a handle on the extent of the damage, we find something else that complicates things.”

“I understand,” Sheppard said. He felt frustration mounting, and part of him wanted to lash out at this crewmember, but he did understand his position. “Listen, I understand the difficult situation you have down there, but we need an accurate assessment on the amount of time repairs will take. It could literally mean the difference between surviving and not surviving this. How long will it take for you to accurately assess the damage and give us a timetable for repairs?”

“Give us half an hour to get the diagnostics back online. Once we have that, I should be able to give you a better estimate.”

“And I’ll be able to hold you to that?” Sheppard asked.

“This isn’t my first time in an engine room, Captain,” Sharve snapped.

“All right. Half an hour and I want to know when my engines will be back up and running.”

“Aye sir,” Sharve said.

Sheppard cut off communications with the engine room. Now it was time for him to make a far more difficult call. Starfleet Command needed to be apprised of their situation. “Computer, initiate a communication with Admiral Jellico.”

The ship’s communication array initiated a transmission with the subspace relay beacon located in the Gour system, putting in a request to contact the admiral. If Jellico wasn’t available to speak to him at the moment, someone on his staff would either take the call or refer him to the next admiral who could speak with him now.

A moment later, Jellico appeared on the monitor. “Captain?” was all he said.

“Admiral, the mission hasn’t gone as planned,” Sheppard said bluntly. “The Breen were waiting for us in the system. Gour II cut off contact with us and we were attacked by three Breen ships.”

“Three? That’s a bold move. You’d think they don’t realize that they were just on the losing side of a war against us.” Jellico said, raising his eyebrows. “What’s your status?”

“To be blunt, they trashed the Horizon, but we took out their lead ship during the battle. Warp drive is currently offline. We vented drive plasma and ignited it as we warped behind one of the moons of Gour II. It looks like the Breen are buying that we were destroyed in the battle.”

Jellico nodded and remained silent for a moment. “Sheppard, at this point we can only assume that Gour II has left the Federation. As soon as the warp drive is repaired, I want you to get the Horizon back into Federation space. I don’t think we have a choice but to let this one go.”

“Admiral, I have an away team down on the planet. Some of my senior officers are there. I can’t leave them behind. I plan on mounting a rescue mission once the ship is put back together.”

“Listen to me Captain,” said Jellico. “It’s captain’s discretion whether you want to get your people back, but do not sacrifice the ship for the sake of the away team. Starfleet can always bring diplomatic measures to bear to have your crew returned.”

With Breen involved, there was no guarantee that his people would survive long enough for diplomacy to secure the release of his people. That wasn’t an acceptable solution to the problem, but he wasn’t going to tell the admiral that. “Aye sir,” Sheppard said. “I’ll get her back in one piece.”

“And Captain,” said Jellico, “Don’t try to be a hero. One Breen warship is a challenge for any Federation vessel. It’s amazing you survived a fight with three of them, but there’s still two of them out there. Bring your crew home alive.”

“Understood sir,” Sheppard replied. Jellico knew exactly what was going through his head. This was an official warning, which meant he could face charges if he disobeyed and the ship incurred heavy casualties or damage as a result.

“Jellico out,” the admiral said as the connection was terminated from the other side.