Chapter 11 – What The Soil Will Bear

"Commander Tom Paris, First Officer, USS Enterprise. And you are …?"

"The Enterprise, huh." The man gave a laugh as dry as the twigs that were rolling down the dirt roads leading to the square. "My dear … brother's ship. I guess he must have moved on, if you have his job? What'd he do, die a heroic death in the name of some noble Starfleet cause or other?" He cocked an eyebrow, then belatedly thought to introduce himself.

"Thomas Riker. No rank - not anymore. I gave up Starfleet a while ago, when it became just another bad habit I thought it best to break."

Mike Ayala, who upon their initial arrival had remained as stoic, silent and totally focused as ever, had inhaled sharply when he noticed the man's disturbing resemblance to their Captain. He now cleared his throat. Tom turned his head slightly towards the big Lieutenant, awaiting his whispered comment.

"Maquis, sir. Sentenced to life and sent to a Cardassian labour camp on Lazon II. Uncovered a secret fleet the Obsidian Order was setting up, without knowledge of the Union, just before we went into the Delta Quadrant. Very messy for the Cardassians, politically."

Tom nodded his acknowledgment of this information, filing for future reference the interesting fact that when it came to passing on tactically relevant information, Ayala could actually be positively eloquent.

The fact that William Riker had a brother who was in the Maquis had been the source of rumours among the crew – corroborated by a junior engineer who had served on Deep Space Nine when the man was apprehended - but it was quite another matter running into the man in person. And in the Neutral Zone, yet. Maybe the universe was shrinking, rather than expanding, after all?

But any ruminations on the laws of coincidence aside, another piece of the puzzle had just slid into place. Tom could feel it, smell it, but still no complete picture emerged.

He looked at the blue mark on the man's neck, so like his own: His conviction had come at the hands of the Federation. Before he was handed to the Cardassians to serve his sentence. Just what might move a Federation official – any Federation official - to agree to a prisoner transfer to that particular detention system beggared the imagination. Weren't there rules about that sort of thing?

As for the Captain himself having consistently neglected to mention his brother – well, Tom supposed wryly, every family had its black sheep. There were times when his father would have refused to acknowledge that he had a son named Thomas if asked directly, let alone volunteered information about his existence in idle conversation. Baah, baah.

But family was family, and this man deserved to know.

"Will is the Captain of the Enterprise now. Our ship is in orbit, under Romulan cloak. We may not have much time. War birds may arrive at any minute, and for all I know there'll be a local security detail coming here as well to check up on you, thanks to an escape from the main prison a few hours ago. I hope they assume we've gotten what we came for and have left orbit, but they may yet come, just to confirm that this place is … secure. We want to learn as much about your situation as we can, so we can help, if not right away, then through Starfleet. Where can we talk?"

Thomas Riker stared at Tom long and hard, looking for deception, insincerity, things he had learned over the years to find and see easily, however cleverly hidden. Finding none, the expression in his face, like the voice of the woman who had first spoken to him, ran a sudden gamut of emotions - from fatigued resignation to anger and … something else? A glimmer of hope?

"Let's talk in there," he finally said, pointing with his chin towards the hut from which he had emerged a couple of minutes ago. He turned back to Tom. "It took you so long to find this place, we figured Starfleet and the Federation knew about it all along and were just happy to ignore it. I hope you're telling the truth, because if you aren't …"

Tom understood that the trailing thought was not a threat, but rather the voice of someone who had spent far too much time contemplating the implications of his daily existence. Thomas Riker, in turn, looked at the woman whose son was fidgeting behind her back, clearly itching to get a better look at the new arrivals now that danger appeared to have passed.

"Grace, can you send Mbako home and come with us, to speak for the Fleeters?" She nodded, and whispered a few words of instruction to the child, who reluctantly headed into one of the huts, casting many backward glances at the strangers and their strange weapons.

Tom's ears had pricked up at the child's name, and Thomas Riker's casual reference. Fleeters? "Your son," he said softly, afraid to disturb the fabric of a sudden hope he almost dared not voice, "is called Mbako? Are you Lieutenant Nyere's wife? From the Hiroshima?" The woman stilled at the sound of the name, not quite holding her breath but clearly bracing herself for … something.

Tom took a couple of steps towards her, raising his hand to touch her hand. Thomas Riker moved to intervene, then stopped himself when he saw by Tom's expression that there was no threat. Grace's dark eyes lifted to sapphire ones with a mixture of fear and hope, involuntary tears starting to rise. "Yes?" she said, more a question of her own, than a response to Tom's.

"Your husband is alive and safe, on the Enterprise. I saw him just a few hours ago. He …" Tom's voice faltered momentarily. "He was in the prison camp on the other side of the bay. The one that you are providing with food supplies, I believe. They kept all the male officers there. Why they were singled out, I have yet to find out."

He looked at Thomas Riker as he spoke, who had stopped to listen to the exchange; Thomas nodded his affirmation at Tom's implicit query.

"But ... the escape I mentioned earlier? We got your husband and the three remaining officers out of the camp earlier today. It's why … we're in a bit of a hurry to talk to you. We do expect a reaction from Romulan headquarters; they'll know now that the Enterprise may still be in the Neutral Zone."

Grace Nyere gave a little sob, and briefly looked towards the hut into which her son had disappeared - the son who had never seen his father, had been raised believing him lost. But the strength that to Tom had been evident in her bearing from the first asserted itself quickly, and she took a deep breath. She squared her shoulders and wiped her eyes with the back of a dusty hand, leaving a streak of pale dirt across her dark face. Telling her son about his father could wait; it had waited for ten years already.

"Let's go have that talk," she said.

…..

The story of the inhabitants of Ulak Six was simple, and simply told. The first to arrive were the two female officers and the non-commissioned crew of the Hiroshima – including Ensign Grace Nyere. The Romulans had given them seeds and a few basic tools, indicating in their imperious manner that if they could create a functioning settlement they would be left largely alone, and in peace. Romulus had no interest in them beyond ensuring that they would not leave Mokan.

But if they ventured past the fence that cut the Southern 'claw' off from the main part of the island, or across the waters to the Northern shore, they would die.

Half a dozen of the crew had died during the first three months, before those with the ability to apply their scientific knowledge to the most primitive conditions had found a way to distill water from the bay in sufficient quantity to sustain life.

And then, suddenly, newcomers arrived. Federation colonists, ripped from their farms in the newly demilitarized zone at the point of a phaser rifle, their tools and terraforming equipment destroyed or left behind. Parents, forced to follow their frightened children onboard starships or be separated from them forever - children who had watched their homes being put to the torch. The smell of the burning flesh of those who refused to leave.

The colonies the transport ships were used to empty were not large – compared to the inconvenience their presence apparently caused to someone – and so the ships used to take them to Mokan were small as well, and apparently under private ownership. Grim-faced mercenaries, mostly human but some Cardassian, silenced questions or complaints with threats or a lifted gun, or worse. Over the next two or three years ship after ship landed on Mokan, filling the camp with a population as terrified and reluctant as they were trapped.

The best that could be said for the influx of desperate men, women and children was that at least the majority of them were experienced farmers. They knew what to do with soil, water and seeds even under the most challenging climatic conditions.

The seasonal rains that would turn the soil to mud and stand in the settlement's dirt roads for weeks, breeding diseases of the lungs and the skin, also brought with them possibilities. An absence of technology meant, though, that irrigation ditches and reservoirs had to be dug by hand, in the blazing heat; that effort killed more. But eventually, with the means to reliably water the strange Romulan seeds they had been provided, survival had become more than a remote prospect.

By the grace of whatever deity had not turned its face away, the human captain of one of the transport ships, on his second or third run, had quietly converted one of the cargo holds on his small vessel to take in some of the livestock of his human payload, in response to their pleas. He made two more trips like that, but after he completed the third, no one of his description was ever seen to run a transport again. Moving life stock did, after all, increase the weight of the payload and as such was expensive; there was no telling how much that captain's compassion might have cost his employers. Or him.

The movement of colonists into Ulak Six had stopped a few years ago though, at a time Tom quickly correlated to the outbreak of the Dominion War. By then the population of the camp had grown to some 5,000 souls, originating from at least two dozen different settlements spread across seven worlds. Most had come from the smaller planetoids of the Terikof Belt, where the Maquis used to hide during their brief attempts to stave off the Cardassian tide. The colonists assumed that Cardassian mining interests had erased from existence everything they had built, once the Belt had been cleansed of their presence.

Ayala gritted his teeth at the telling, dark eyes flashing in barely suppressed fury; these were his people, the colonies he, Chakotay and the rest of the Maquis had once sworn to protect. But he held his peace, even looked at Tom a little gratefully when the latter laid a calming hand on his arm. It had been a long time coming, this quiet understanding between the big former Maquis and the disgraced ex-Starfleet mercenary he had once considered a traitor, but it was solid now - forged in seven years of fighting side by side, even as few private words were ever exchanged between them.

The most recent arrivals had been some of the last surviving Maquis, apart from those who had been stranded with Voyager - the prison camp at Lazon II had been emptied of its Maquis prisoners a few years after the massacres that had killed most of the members of the remaining active cells. Thomas Riker, despite the fact that he seemed to be the quietly acknowledged leader of the camp, had in fact been on Mokan only for something like a year-and-a-half.

By Tom's calculation, Riker and a small number of human and Bajoran prisoners from Lazon II had arrived at almost precisely the time when the Federation had declared that the Maquis were not terrorists – a few weeks after Voyager's return from the Delta Quadrant. They had been sent to Mokan just as the prisons of the Federation had opened their doors, after the landmark ruling in San Francisco that had declared the treaty between the Federation and Cardassia null and void, and the actions of the Maquis a matter of lawful self-defence. He supposed the fact that they had been sent to Ulak Six rather than to join the Hiroshima officers in the detention camp may have been a generous concession to their official exoneration.

Tom felt another piece of the puzzle slide into place, this time with an audible clunk.

With an apologetic smile he picked up Ayala's phaser rifle, which the Lieutenant had kept casually resting across his knees since their arrival, and drew something into the dirt floor of the hut.

The letter 'B', nestled into the curve of a larger 'C'.

"When we arrived, you thought we were something you called 'C&B'. So tell me," he asked softly, "have you ever seen this before?"

…..

"So what do they do, when they come here? This company, C&B?"

Grace shrugged. "Mostly they used to come to drop off new prisoners. 'Colonists', as they call them – the euphemism of the decade. Some of us, apart from the Hiroshima crew, were colonists once, but now? But anyway, the logo was on the jump suits of the private security types who kept people in line on the transports. But there haven't been many new 'colonists' lately; Thomas' batch was the last, more than six seasons ago. They may still be dropping off to the prison, though; we wouldn't know. Now when they come into the camp, it's mostly to do maintenance on the perimeter fence that keeps us from straying too far of this beautiful, fertile farmland."

The grandiose sweep of her hand that was meant to take in the land outside the hut, and the sarcastic tone of her voice, left no doubt as to her feelings about the place where she had spent the last decade, raising a son who carried the name of a man she had believed to be dead.

Thomas chimed in. "Once, some years before I got here, they apparently dropped off some basic tools – hoes, rakes, shovels. Couple ploughs. Peasants-R-Us kind of stuff, one delivery, never repeated. The early arrivals used those shovels to dig the irrigation channels and water storage basins; we still use them in the fields. Never brought anything with working electronic parts in it though, presumably because it could be converted into transmitters, weapons, or used to switch off the security fence and find a way to get off this rock."

"The logo was also on the hull of some of the ships that dropped off people, including at least one run by Cardassians, the one I came in on," John Malivoire, another of the colonists who had joined them, added. "So they clearly ran the transports, not just the crews that operated them. Must be some sort of private fleet, belonging to that company. I keep telling Thomas and Grace that they may still be bringing people to the other side of the bay; we see ships go down there periodically. Only small ones now, the occasional shuttle. Every couple of months or so, almost like a regular run. We mostly ignore them now. Nothing to do with us."

"You may be right, John. One came in last night or very early today, I believe," Tom said grimly. "But they don't ever provide you with humanitarian goods – food, seeds, medical or hygienic supplies?"

Both Thomas and Malivoire snorted contemptuously. "You kidding?" Riker replied. "No – but once we started producing enough produce and dairy to meet our own needs, we started bartering with the Romulans. Talar's predecessor was apparently a pretty reasonable man, positively decent for a Romulan. He saw the benefits of basic trade. He could have just taken whatever they wanted, and let the people here die, but he didn't. We built up a bit of trade, got some things in return. Nothing really useful, but some new tools, rope, replicated cloth, that sort of stuff. By the time Talar got here, the system was fairly well established and lucky for us, he decided not to mess with it. Besides, I hear his kids like our carrots."

Tom had been chewing on his lower lip throughout the reports, even as he made sure his PADD was recording every word Thomas, John and Grace were telling them. Mike Ayala, who had been acquitted in the trial of Voyager's Maquis crewmembers - thanks to Admiral Paris' devastating testimony of political corruption with regard to the Demilitarized Zone - remained stone-faced but keen-eyed throughout.

It was Thomas' turn to ask a question. Nudging his chin towards the mark on Tom's neck while looking him straight in the eye, he asked bluntly, "So, Commander, how'd you get yours?"

Tom exchanged a brief glance with his erstwhile Voyager crewmate before responding. "Flying for the Maquis," he said. "Got caught. The Lieutenant here was with the Maquis too, but he got away with it. Sort of." Ayala snorted a little at that. Seven years in the Delta Quadrant had rarely been summed up so … concisely.

Thomas took a moment to digest this, his eyes glinting in appreciation. "And they let you both into Starfleet anyway?" "Long story," Tom responded, a little wearily. "But what you should take away from this is that the Maquis … well, they're not outlawed anymore, what's left of them. Turns out that the Cardassian treaty was the product of political corruption at the Federation end, and was invalidated. Maquis action is now considered lawful self-defence against Cardassian atrocities. You'd probably be pardoned now, if you came back. Would have been, had you been in Federation custody. They should have asked for you back, in fact."

As soon as the words had left his mouth, Tom felt like something had struck him in the gut, less painfully than a Romulan disruptor but no less hard. Kaching. Another piece of the puzzle? If he was right, it would be a big one.

Slowly, he asked, "Say, have you ever seen two … gentlemen here, politicians and entrepreneurs, so-called – by the name of Chomyn or Burton? Or heard of them, in the context of your transport, anything?"

Chomyn and Burton. C&B.

But both their interlocutors shook their heads 'no'. Tom expelled a long breath, masking his disappointment. The involvement of the two former Federation Councilors would have explained the existence of a private model of the Flyer, given their link to the shuttlecraft division at Utopia Planitia. Maybe they had even been involved in the development of that Obsidian Order fleet Thomas Riker had uncovered; it certainly might explain their interest in keeping him locked away.

Shit. It had been such a good idea. Was his own prejudice showing through? Surely Federation politicians, even corrupt ones, could not be involved in keeping thousands of humans stranded on a desert planet, or Starfleet officers in a Romulan prison …

Tom stared at Ayala without really seeing the Lieutenant. Time to probe further. "Any idea what the Romulans get out of all this? I mean, it looks like C&B dumps people who are inconvenient in dealings with the Cardassians here on Mokan, and the Cardassians are likely in on that act. But the Romulans … well, I suppose it would go too far to say they look after you at their own expense, but they are generally in charge of this place. So, what's their end of the bargain, agreeing to your … presence here? Apart from having a dumping ground for their own political prisoners, but that seems to have been almost a bit of an afterthought."

Grace shrugged. "We're mostly self-sustaining now, so the Romulans pretty well stopped caring, provided we don't run away and cause them grief. But they must have some interest in keeping that prison of theirs going, and letting C&B drop us off here to begin with."

She added, "The Romulans from across the bay now come by every week or so, usually by sea, to see if we have any produce to trade, and what we might need in return. They even give us medical supplies on occasion. Our death rate's gone down, but we have some seriously sick people here, nutritional deficiencies, unhealed broken bones, diseases we don't know anything about. And that's one thing the Romulans have never done, is send their medical personnel. What we need more than anything here is a doctor. Our CMO from the Hiroshima came here with me, but she died the first season."

Damn. Tom looked at Ayala, his earlier line of questioning having been stopped in its trajectory. "How much time we got?" "Three hours, sir, max. Including the forty-five minutes we need to get back to the ship. Are you thinking of staying? I thought we got what we came for."

"Fine. And yes, I am. We can't take these people off this bloody rock immediately, but I'm not going to just leave if there's something I can do for them right now. Besides," he shrugged, "it's something I have to do, now that I know. Blame the Doc and that oath he made me take. Really, I have no choice."

He hit his comm badge. "Harry, lock on to my coordinates and beam over with every last emergency med kit and scrap of medical supplies we have on board. And tell O'Reilly to collect every loose bit of comms equipment, laser drills, water purifiers, anything you'd want for a really long camping trip, or wish you'd had when you took Survival 101 at the Academy. Nothing that leaves a huge energy signature, though. You guys have a couple of hours to put it together and get it over here. I hope."

"You sure, Tom?" Harry Kim's skeptical voice came over the comm badge. "The time the Captain gave us for intel gathering was an outside estimate; we should really get back to the ship. War birds may be putting in appearance anytime."

Tom tightened his jaw a little. "And they may also be twelve hours out. There are people here who haven't had medical attention for almost a decade, and if we can provide it, even for a couple of hours, we owe it to them. It's a risk I'm willing to take. Please proceed. Paris out."

Harry let out an exasperated sigh that was audible over the comm, causing Thomas to raise a questioning eyebrow at Tom. "I appreciate what you want to do, Commander, but we might be better off in the long run if you left and told Starfleet about us. We'd be no worse off than we were an hour ago, and a heck of a lot better."

"One of the first people I saw when we arrived has a number of cut tendons in his wrist. I can fix that in five minutes. Are you going to tell him he'd be better off if I didn't?"

Thomas gave him a long, hard stare, then broke out into the wolfish grin Tom knew only too well – he'd seen it on his Captain often enough. "You're right. Will would tell you to be on the safe side, wouldn't he. But I'm not Will and neither, it would appear, are you."

Tom returned his stare, but not the grin. "And you don't give your brother enough credit. His idea of being on the 'safe side' is what got us down here in the first place. But let's get set up. I can't do surgery except for emergency stuff, but I can do some basic diagnostic work, bone setting, med supplements, inoculations and dermal regeneration until I run out of supplies. Help with some kind of triage would be appreciated. Children and pregnant women first." Malivoire nodded, and rose without another word. He would spread the news.

"In the meantime, I need you two to tell me, Mike and this PADD here everything else you can think of about - how this place got set up; people who have come here, how and when; people who died, and how; that sort of thing. Maybe bring someone else in who came in with the first displaced colonists. We haven't got a lot of time, so let's make every minute count and create a record that can't be denied. Celim, you work with Harry to get any supplies he sends organized at this end. Go back to the Flyer to help if necessary."

Grace Nyere looked at them thoughtfully, this Starfleet Commander and his small team, who had arrived in their midst like emissaries from a world long since forgotten. "And after you leave …?"

Tom gave her a rueful smile. "You'll have to hide your new toys where the Romulans can't find them. And you'll have to be … patient. We don't have enough time to evac you, and we might start a war with Romulus if we tried. I'm afraid we're not authorized to do that, and it would help no one. This is the Neutral Zone after all …"

Fixing Grace and Thomas with a firm look, he added, "But you have my word on one thing. I have no intention of just leaving you stranded here, and once he learns of your existence down here, neither will Captain Riker. But it may take a bit of time. Someone I know, someone who's very good at this sort of thing, is about to embark on a major diplomatic mission to Romulus. Her name is Kathryn Janeway. I will brief her on the situation here myself, and you can rest assured that she will do her absolutely damnedest to get you off this rock. She is one determined woman. But … it may take a bit of time."

By the time the familiar chime of the transporter signaled the arrival of Harry Kim and several medkits, an almost orderly line had formed outside the hut, supervised by John Malivoire. Harry Kim's slightly frosty glare thawed considerably when he saw what Tom and the others had been seeing for the last hour. Maybe his friend had a point…? But still … his instincts were screaming at him to get the Flyer up and away.

Then he saw the Captain's lookalike. If Harry's studiedly disapproving demeanour had been difficult to maintain before, this sight dismantled it altogether. Tom, seeing his friend's discomfiture, pulled him aside briefly and provided the necessary explanation.

"When you get back to the Flyer, advise the Captain over the comm. He needs to know that Thomas is here. I haven't had time, for obvious reasons." Harry nodded, still slightly stunned at this unexpected development. Would the unpleasant surprises on this planet, or moon, or whatever it was, never end?

And so, over the next two hours, Tom Paris, erstwhile reluctant 'nurse' turned trained and seasoned medic, set about healing festering sores and ill-set bones and delivering hyposprays, including to counteract respiratory diseases that had vanished from Earth centuries ago.

Thomas and Grace kept up the thread of their discussion throughout, recounting the history and experiences of individual groups of colonists who had been plucked from their homes. Tom's PADD recorded everything, including his diagnostics of individual patients. Tuberculosis. Cut tendons, unattended to. Acute anemia. Tuberculosis, again. And again.

When it came to Grace's son to receive his TB treatment, she took the time to introduce him to Tom, the man who had met his father. He paused briefly in his work, wiped the dripping sweat off his forehead.

"Your father is a very brave man, Mbako. And he's been wondering what happened to your mom … and to you, every day. I'm sorry I can't take you with me to see him, that's too dangerous right now. But you will see him soon, I promise."

When the child left, Tom looked up at Thomas Riker. "How long has it been since you last saw Will?"

The man snorted slightly. "Years. We don't have much in common. Except our DNA." Tom nodded. Probably best not to pry; there seemed to be a story there, one that was not his to hear.

Thomas hesitated, looking at his hands, callused and dry from hard physical labour. "But tell me, did your … Captain ever mention … Deanna Troi?"

"Deanna? Of course. She's our ship's Counselor. Wonderful woman, a good friend of mine and my wife's. They've been married for a couple of years now." He stopped at the man's visible, pained reaction – a palpable wince, a holding of breath. Ouch. More story, more things he did not know.

"Well, about bloody time he came to his senses," was all Thomas would say, as he handed Tom another refilled hypospray. But his eyes told another story altogether, one that would not be recorded on the PADD that continued to flash silently beside him.

Tom had lost all track of time when Ayala coughed discreetly. "Sir, it's been three hours. We better get going." Tom looked up and wiped the sweat out of his eyes. There were still at least two dozen would-be patients outside the hut. "Damn. Didn't realize how much time had passed. But I think you're right, Mike, thanks."

He looked over at Malivoire, who too had joined him in his work, once he had helped determine who was in greatest need of assistance. "John, I think based on the last couple of hours you're able to tell what TB looks and sounds like. At least that you can do something about now. There are about thirty shots left in this hypo; use them wisely. We're on our way."

He rose and stretched in an unsuccessful attempt to get the kinks out of his long limbs. Touching his comm badge, he called the still-cloaked Flyer. "Harry, we're ready to beam out now."

Tom waved off any attempt by Thomas Riker and Grace Nyere to express their thanks. "We'll be back," he said. "Someone will be back. I give you my word."

Puzzled by the Flyer's failure to respond to his hail, he was about to hit his comm badge again just as Harry Kim's voice came on – drenched in an ill-concealed 'I told you so' tone.

"Not a moment to soon, sir. We just got word from the Enterprise. There's company in the sky."