Double Helix 03_ Red Sector - Diane Carey [79]
“You know, Sentinel Iavo,” she began as her seamer’s beam sketched closed the last cut on Hashley’s face, “you people didn’t have to torture this man. If you’d open up your borders and deal with humans more, you’d know after talking to this man for ten minutes that he doesn’t have it in him to organize a mass-assassination plot. And we would’ve told you about the prion-based epidemic we’ve been fighting. Imperial isolationism has hurt you this time.”
Near the empress’s bed, Iavo rubbed his forefingernail against his other hand’s thumb knuckle and protested with his expression. “The infection was imported on his vessel. We tracked it back to a low-level medication in his cargo bound for-“
“He’s a busy little gossip, not a biological terrorist” Crusher insisted as Hashley’s big sopsy eyes blinked up at her. “That medicine has been coming in here for more than forty years from a pharmaceutical company sympathetic to Romulans. All Mr. Hashley did was bring it in. Somebody else engineered the tainting of the shipment and then the delivery of the tainted stuff to all the royal family members. Hashley here is just a dupe.” “Whose dupe?”
Crusher shook her head and let herself rattle on, spilling her thoughts. “Nobody clever enough to distribute this infection would run a little trade route for ten years. If you knew more about humans it’s kind of obvious this man’s not biding his time to take over the universe. Romulans might be that tenacious, but humans don’t have the patience. Or a two-hundredyear lifespan. Why do you think we’re always in such a damn hurry? Gotta get things done before we die.”
Pacing uneasily nearby, Sentinel Iavo switched fingernails and leered doubtfully at Ansue Hashley, who sat like a bruised puppy. “Whose dupe was he?”
“We’re not sure,” Crusher admitted. “Dr. McCoy’s right, though. It’s got all the earmarks of a series of cross-racial multiprion plagues. Until recently, nobody put them together. The first clue was just three years ago at Deep Space Nine. Well-then the station was called Terok Nor.”
“I remember that!” Hashley offered. “Cardassians, Bajorans and Ferengi all got the same sickness! They were ‘all accusing-“
“Oh, I missed a scratch right next to your lip,” Crusher cut off. “Here-let me seal it up. Don’t move, now …. The Cardassians suspected a Bajoran rebel group of manufacturing the disease, and they were partly right. The rebels were happy to make sure the Cardassians caught the disease, until they found out that Bajorans could get it too. And there was no way the Bajorans at that time had the resources or the science infrastructure to develop something as advanced as cross-species vital infection. They can’t even do it now, and back then they were subjugated. Not only the Deep Space Nine infection, but we also found out that two years earlier several human-alien hybrids were infected with an unidentified virus, and that’s unheard-of in nature. This thing’s being systematically mutated, targeted, and delivered.”
Iavo stopped pacing briefly. “I take it those were not all human and the same alien hybrids.”
“No, they were all mixed up. People with that kind of genetics just can’t ‘catch’ the stone thing naturally. There you go, Mr. Hashley, all patched up. You’ll be sore, but you’ll live. Now, I want you to just stay right here with me and Data would help us do what we have to do.” She straightened, handed Data the seamer to put back in the reed-pack, then turned to Iavo. “All fight, Sentinel, I’m ready to start treating the empress. Are you ready to help?”
The tall imperial official glanced at the two femme servants, then met the gaze of one of the four guards. They seemed to be communicating, but not in the way one would expect of a senior government official and a clutch