“Anticholinergics, arylcyclohexylamines, and ionotropic receptor agonists, mixed with amphetamines, angiotensin inhibitors and beta blockers,” Commander Drake read from the toxicology report. “That’s quite a cocktail, wouldn’t you say, doctor?”

“I’m not qualified to offer an opinion on cocktails,” Dr. Hall answered flatly. “As I am not a bartender.” Of course she knew what he meant, but two could play this game. She might be the one on the stand, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t poke and prod at him. Over time, he would tire, and that would weaken his effectiveness in prosecuting this case.

“Don’t be coy with me Lieutenant,” Commander Drake snapped back as he stared at her. “You know exactly what I meant.”

“I may have hunches about a good many things, but in my line of work, it is important not to assume,” Dr. Hall replied in the tone of a school teacher lecturing a misbehaving student. “Just like in yours. You and I, we operate purely on fact, not conjecture, isn’t that right, mister Drake?” She chose each word with precision, from the way she mirrored his question with her response to the way she used a civilian honorific to belittle the proud JAG Officer.

“Alright, let’s try this again,” Commander Drake countered. If she wanted him to be direct, then he would be direct. “The Vorta commander, who was in your captivity from approximately 1815 hours until the time of his death…”

“Objection!” This time, it was Admiral Reyes’ turn to interject, and took pleasure in tag-teaming him with Dr. Hall. It was almost strange to think that once, long ago, she and Commander Drake had stood on the same side of the courtroom, fighting to protect the soul of the Federation from those who sought to corrupt it. “The prosecution has not demonstrated that Captain Lewis or Dr. Hall were in the presence of the Vorta at the time of its death.”

“Sustained,” agreed Captain Adler. The Commander was either being sloppy or trying for a cheap rhetorical trick. “Stick to the facts, Commander.”

“Very well,” grumbled Commander Drake. “A third time then, shall we?” He looked across at the psychologist, trying to read her unreadable face. Lisa Hall was, as ever, cold as ice. “The toxicology panel conducted on the deceased Vorta commander, who was alive and in your custody at 1815 hours as established by Captain Lewis’ testimony, identified a number of pharmacological substances in its bloodstream.” He handed the PADD to Dr. Hall. “In your professional opinion, what would the purpose of these substances be?”

“As I was neither the attending physician for the individual in question, nor do I possess any medical training or licensure related to the Vorta species itself,” Dr. Hall asserted. “I am not qualified to offer a professional opinion on the subject. Might I suggest reaching out to the Exobiology Division at Starfleet Medical if you’re truly concerned?”

Commander Drake just ignored her and pressed ahead: “How, Dr. Hall, did those drugs get into that Vorta’s system?”

“I have no factual basis to provide you with an answer, but if I must suppose, there were dozens of angry colonists that stormed the mansion. In my many years seeing and treating humans, I have found they are prone to strike back at those who try to do them harm,” Dr. Hall replied, and with the way she said it, and the way she stared him down, Commander Drake almost wondered if she was still talking about the colonists, or whether it was really a threat towards him. “If you’re really concerned, you might want to go back to Nasera II and ask each of them.” That was, of course, an absolutely preposterous suggestion.

“So then, do you deny having any knowledge as to how those drugs got in the Vorta’s system?” Commander Drake asked flatly. If she said yes, and later he could prove otherwise, he’d minimally have her on perjury, so it was a no-brainer question to ask.

“That is correct,” Dr. Hall replied assuredly. She had no qualms lying on the stand. She knew that Captain Lewis would do the same, and with Lieutenant Morgan in a body bag, the JAG had no witnesses to tie them to the crime. “I do not have any knowledge of how the drugs got into that creature’s system. And why bother anyways? A well known fact from the War was that the Vorta had a form of genetic toxin resistance.” She was far too well guarded to give any hint of the truth. But the truth was that it was a lie. All of it. 

Dr. Hall administered the bolus, watching a tendril of deep gray liquid slither down the intravenous line, the last ingredient in a concoction of pharmacological agents meant to excite and sedate specific biological and neurological functions. This particular medication was actually fairly merciful too. It wasn’t meant to distort reality like the anticholinergics she’d administered earlier, nor to ignite his γ-hydroxybutyrate and gamma-aminobutyric acid receptors like the ionotropic agonists now coursing through its veins. Those psychoactives were already doing their work, turning the Vorta’s bloodstream into a wicked maelstrom of psychosis-inducing toxins. This one, on the other hand, would simply reduce the risk of cardiotoxicity, to keep it from dying until it had served its purpose.

“This is futile,” the Vorta assured her through gritted teeth. Even though he could feel his mind warping and its veins burning, he knew the gifts the gods had bestowed upon him. This pathetic organic had no chance against that, against the very will of his gods.

“Futile, hmmm?” Dr. Hall asked as she stared at the impish creature. The Founders might have gifted the Vorta with resistance to poison, but they’d made a mistake by constructing their servants from a descendant of the galaxy’s humanoid progenitors. That meant the Vorta shared a genetic root with the species that Lisa Hall had spent her entire career interrogating. She would, in time, break this creature, just as she’d broken the Klingons, Vulcans and Tzenkethi that had come before it. “Futile, just as the Dominion’s attempt to take the Alpha Quadrant was futile? You and your colleagues have been gone a long time. Almost thirty years, in fact. If the Dominion had been victorious, would we really be sitting here right now?” The Vorta had no response, and she could see a glimmer of doubt developing within her foe. “There is only one explanation. The Founders failed.”

The Vorta’s nostrils flared. How dare this human speak so irreverently of his gods? “It is but a test of our faith!” It was the only truth he could believe. The Founders did not make mistakes. If they did not prevail in their war with the Federation, it was because they chose not to. That was the only explanation that made sense to him. “They will return and reward us for our loyalty.”

“They might reward you if you actually succeeded. But you didn’t. You failed. Just like your siblings are failing all across the sector,” Dr. Hall replied with a cruel smile, taking a bit of pleasure in her adversary’s pain. “Just this evening, we destroyed your Ketracel-White facility on Saxue, and we’ll finish mopping up Izar by morning.” It was a bluff. Neither had happened yet. However, she had picked real targets to make it more believable. She’d just need to make sure he never got out of captivity alive, or else he might alert the Lost Fleet to Starfleet’s plans. “I hear that when Saxue fell, the Jem’Hadar chose to die by their own hands.”

The Vorta sat there stunned. If Saxue had fallen, he could believe that the Jem’Hadar might have done that. They were never all that loyal beyond the White. The fact Starfleet even knew of Saxue was a shock too. That rogue planet was a complete secret, a linchpin of their plans to take the Alpha Quadrant. That this Starfleet officer knew about Saxue helped him believe the rest. The drugs probably helped too.

“Let me remind you, Lieutenant, that you are under oath,” Commander Drake cautioned. “So are you absolutely certain that you have no idea how those drugs came to be in the Vorta’s system?”

“Absolutely.” She did not hesitate, and her voice did not quiver. Lying came naturally to her.

Commander Drake, for his sake, didn’t believe her in the slightest. Unfortunately, for the moment at least, he didn’t have anything to tie her to the crime. “Alright, then let’s talk about what came next… as of 1910 hours, over three hundred of your fellow officers were dead or dying under the rubble of Nasera City. Were you aware of this at the time?”

“I did not have any discrete numbers, but I certainly had some sense of what was likely going on beyond the walls of the governor’s mansion,” Dr. Hall replied. “We had, after all, spent the better part of nine days surveilling the OPFOR.”

“Recognizing the high cost of this battle, did you feel the pressure to do something to save your own people?”

“Not particularly,” Dr. Hall shrugged flippantly.

“Come again?” Commander Drake asked, surprised by the bluntness. “What do you mean you didn’t feel the pressure to save your own people?” That would have been the natural response for anyone worthy of wearing the uniform.

“I don’t feel pressure,” Dr. Hall answered calmly. “I’ve moved beyond such basal human responses.” She had, after all, done her Ph.D. at VICA, but it wasn’t even at VICA that had stripped her of such responses. No, it was during the horrors of her youth on Turkana IV when she’d been immunized to such weakness. “But how about you, Commander? Do you feel pressure?” Of course he did. She could see it on his face and hear it in his tone. He was feeling the pressure, even over something as insignificant as a mere court case.

“I am the one asking the questions, Lieutenant,” Commander Drake reminded her aggressively, but she could tell she’d struck a nerve. “Let me cut straight to the chase. Between 1910 and 1915 hours, every single Jem’Hadar on the surface of Nasera II suddenly laid down their weapons and walked straight into oncoming fire. Were you aware of this?”

“I read as much in the after-action report,” Dr. Hall nodded, evasive even on the most basic of questions.

“But were you aware at the time?”

“No.”

The shock was evident on Commander Drake’s face. Why would the counselor lie about such a basic statement of fact, something he could so easily demonstrate? “Exhibit 24, if you would,” he requested of the clerk.

A moment later, slightly distorted comms traffic began to play over the speakers. Both of the voices were well known to everyone in the room.

“Reyes to Lewis.”

“Lewis here. Go ahead.”

“I suppose I have you to thank for what happened out here?”

“Victory is life. So too must the opposite be true.”

“Well, thank you.”

“Anytime.”

As the short conversation ended, Commander Drake jumped straight in: “This conversation occurred at 1915 hours. You were with Captain Lewis at this time, were you not?”

“I was.”

“Then how then can you say you were not aware that, at that moment, all the Jem’Hadar across Nasera had just committed mass suicide?” Commander Drake pressed, his eyes like those of a shark prepared to take a bite out of its prey.

“That all Jem’Hadar across the entire planet had killed themselves in that short period?” Dr. Hall repeated his question back at him, as she knew to be good practice for the sake of the record. “That would seem a particularly difficult fact for me to verify from a secluded corner of a plush diplomatic estate on the outskirts of Nasera City, would it not?” The prey was playing with the hunter. She would make him work for every inch, even on simple statements of fact, to wear him down and tire him out so eventually he’d make a mistake and fall on his face. She was, after all, a specialist in psyops and a scholar of interrogation. This was child’s play to her. Who then was really the hunter, and who truly was the prey?

“Semantics, counselor,” Commander Drake shook his head frustratedly. “Semantics. But alright, let me ask you another question about the exchange: when Admiral Reyes referred to ‘what happened out here’, what did Captain Lewis mean by his response?”

“Objection,” Admiral Reyes interrupted. “The defendant is being asked to provide an unqualified conjecture about the mindset of a co-defendant. ”

“Your honor, Dr. Hall received a doctorate in psychology from the Vulcan Institute of Cultural Affairs and presently holds dual appointments as Unit Lead for the Cultural and Psychological Research Unit of the Advanced Science, Technology and Research Activity, and as the Chief Counselor of Polaris Squadron,” Commander Drake smiled, knowing had the admiral beat on this one. “Dr. Hall would, even absent her direct involvement in this case, still be fully qualified as an expert witness whose opinion would absolutely fall within the scope of admissibility.”

“Unconventional,” Captain Adler observed as he stroked his chin. It was a risky choice for the prosecution to call a defendant as their own expert witness. “But I’ll allow it.”

Just because Captain Adler allowed it though, it didn’t mean Dr. Hall wasn’t going to slither right out of it. “I am a psychologist, Commander, not a mind reader.” 

And now the door had been opened, and Admiral Reyes stepped right through it. “Your honor,” Admiral Reyes jumped in before Commander Drake could ask another question. “Since the prosecution has added an expert witness testimony not previously provided on the witness list, might I also cross-examine the witness while she’s on the stand?”

“Objection,” Commander Drake countered instantly.

Captain Adler didn’t even wait for his supposed justification though. “You can’t have it both ways, Commander,” the senior hearing officer admonished with a disapproving glare. Admiral Reyes’ request was, given Commander Drake’s little stunt, absolutely appropriate. “I allowed your – to put it as gently as I can – last minute entrance of Dr. Hall as an expert witness, and it’s only fair that I thus also allow the defense an opportunity at cross. Please proceed Admiral.”

Admiral Reyes met Commander Drake’s glare with a devious smile before turning to the witness: “Dr. Hall, you stated earlier that the Vorta had a form of drug resistance, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, it is well documented in literature from the Dominion War,” Dr. Hall nodded. Once this was all settled, she’d eventually need to update that literature though. She had, through the very acts for which she was now on trial, found a way past that resistance. When the Dominion attacked the free people of the galaxy once more, as she knew they eventually would, even if everyone squirmed about ethics and morals now, in those desperate moments, Starfleet would welcome what she had done, just as they had when the morphogenic virus was unleashed upon the Founders. For now though, she just needed to get through the trial.

“Did the Vorta come by this immunity naturally?” Admiral Reyes asked. “Or was it, shall we say, engineered?” She was, of course, fully aware of the answer. She’d fought them during the War, and she’d studied them after, knowing full well that eventually the time would come that they would have to do it again. And, this past spring, that time came.

“Engineered would be exactly the right word,” Dr. Hall agreed. “The Vorta were once ape-like tree dwellers from a primitive world, as evidenced by their taste for kava nuts and rippleberries, but through genetic manipulation, the Changelings reshaped nearly every aspect of their being, everything from their reverence to the Founders to yes, a fairly impressive resistance to toxins. The Vorta were designed for one purpose, and one purpose alone: to oversee the Dominion.”

“And how, Dr. Hall, do the Vorta procreate?” Admiral Reyes continued.

“Your honor,” interrupted Commander Drake. He didn’t exactly know where the Admiral was going, and that lack of predictability alone was enough for him to object. “I don’t see how this is relevant.”

“Goes to standing,” Admiral Reyes replied. “For whether or not the laws Captain Lewis and Dr. Hall allegedly violated may even be applied to the Vorta.” And now Commander Drake realized what the Admiral was playing at, and that realization sickened him.

“Continue,” Captain Adler nodded, wary of the direction they were going, but unwilling to deprive the defense of the right to make its case as it saw fit. “You may answer the question, doctor.”

“How do the Vorta procreate?” Dr. Hall parroted back. “They don’t. The Vorta are cloned, and in most cases, even their memories are transferred as part of retiring the prior copy of a specific Vorta.”

“The way you describe them, Dr. Hall,” Admiral Reyes noted. “It is almost as though they are automatons, not living creatures with a sense of independence and free will. Would it be accurate to say that the Vorta might be described as a biological construct with a semi-sentient neural network, designed wholly to do the bidding of the Founders, no different than say an A500 synth was designed to do ours?”

At the mention of the model of synths that had sowed death and destruction across the surface of Mars, there was a notable gasp from those in the chamber. And then came the realization that the Admiral was trying to strip the Vorta of the most basic protections afforded to all life.

“Yes, that would be a fair analogy,” nodded Dr. Hall, a slight hint of a smile crossing her face, the first visible sign of emotion she’d shown over the last several hours. The Admiral had really gone there, a place no normal attorney, defender or otherwise, would dare go.

“And if the Vorta is just a construct, was was it alleged even really torture or murder? Or is it really just manipulation of a synthetic construct’s function?” There was not even the slightest hint of remorse in the Admiral’s voice. She had absolutely zero empathy for the Dominion. Not after the War, and not after Nasera. “The Founders certainly refer to the termination of a Vorta as nothing more than disabling a defective unit.”

“I think that is a fair question,” agreed Dr. Hall as she savored the panicked expression washing over Commander Drake’s face. This was most certainly not where the JAG had expected the trial to go. “Unfortunately, as an expert witness, I can testify only within the scope of my practice, and I am not qualified to assess the legal frameworks that…”

“Your honor, what is this?!” Commander Drake finally interrupted as he got his wits about him as it related to this farflung legal theory. “The Admiral and the doctor, they dishonor these proceedings by mocking them as such, and they play you as a fool!”

“Your honor,” Admiral Reyes jumped back in, giving the Commander no room to maneuver, but keeping her focus solely on Captain Adler. “I hereby submit a motion for summary dismissal on the grounds that Starfleet General Orders 2 and 4, Starfleet Security Protocol 49, the First Guarantee of the Charter of the United Federation of Planets, and the litany of other laws and treaties the Office of the Judge Advocate General has recklessly thrown into this preferral, pertain only to, as the Preamble of the Charter itself clearly articulates, ‘the lifeforms of the United Federation of Planets’ and ‘the fundamental rights of sentient beings’. And based on the testimony of the prosecution’s own witness, the Vorta is neither.”

“This is nonsense!” Commander Drake shouted. “By entering into a treaty with the synths of Coppelius, the Federation Council acknowledged that…”

“That the Maddox-Soong synths of Copellius Station were entitled to the rights of all other sentient lifeforms,” Admiral Reyes interrupted. She knew what he was reaching for. “But there are decades – centuries even – of case law that found other automatons, and even some forms of organic life, do not qualify for such rights. Just as you cannot charge Captain Lewis and Dr. Hall under the First Guarantee of the Charter for allegedly killing your cat, neither can you charge them for allegedly killing the Founder’s pet.”

For a moment, there was only stunned silence at the assertion she’d just made.

Even Captain Adler, as much as he believed in the importance of objective neutrality, struggled to contain his own feelings. “Admiral, let me make sure I am understanding you right,” the senior hearing officer clarified. “Do you really mean to argue that the Vorta, as a species, do not have a fundamental right to a protection against torture and murder?” It was a ghastly assertion, but as he thought back to the Dominion War, and to many wars and conflicts before that, he recalled many officers who had taken similar positions.

“It is not me arguing that,” Admiral Reyes replied slyly. “It is the facts that say as much.” But no, she did not believe the Vorta deserved such protections. Not after all that it, and its masters, had done to the free species of the galaxy.

Captain Adler was not ready to set precedent so abruptly, so after a moment of contemplation, he chose a measured middle ground. “The purpose of this hearing is to determine whether the basic facts of this case have merit, and we will defer consideration of the Admiral’s motion as to the applicability of the law until after a determination on those facts is made.” And if the prosecution could not make its case on the facts, then he would not have to play god and make a determination on life itself.