Star Trek: Terok Nor 02: Night of the Wolves (13 page)

“The border territories? Oh. Yes, sir.”

Prang did something unprecedented then, continuing to glance over Varc’s shoulder, probably at the timepiece on the wall. He smiled slightly, an expression that Varc was sure he had never seen before. Varc wanted to turn to look at what the old man could possibly be so amused by, but he felt it would be impudent.

“You sound disappointed,” Prang remarked.

“Oh, no, sir—certainly not! It is only that I felt my expertise with the Bajoran people might be of further use there.”

Suddenly, to Varc’s great astonishment, he heard a voice somewhere behind him. He whirled around.

“I find it somewhat distasteful to interview Bajorans,” the man behind him said. He was standing very near the wall, and he had been so eerily silent and motionless that Varc would never have imagined there was anyone there at all. Limor Prang had obviously known of the stranger’s presence all along.

“And why might that be?” Prang inquired, as if it were completely ordinary for a confidential debriefing to be attended by a third party who had not even bothered to make his presence known. Varc was embarrassed and flustered that he had not seen the man.

The man’s eyes were held open very wide as he spoke, conveying a sense of extraordinary eagerness. Varc found his expression disquieting, particularly the slight curl at the corners of his mouth that did not straighten when he spoke. “They appear to wither so easily, but in truth, I have found them to be very skilled at lying. Surprisingly so, really. They will often allow themselves to die before the truth is ever revealed. Torturing them is useless, and in the end, I’m actually left feeling a bit sad about the whole business.”

Varc was dismayed at this admission, for it seemed to be an acknowledgment of weakness, but Prang’s reaction was dispassionate.

“Now, a Cardassian interrogation—” the man went on, “there’s a challenge I can appreciate.”

It was Varc’s turn to dispute. “I find the interrogation and torture of my own countrymen to be far more distasteful than that of aliens who conspire to destroy the Union.”

The stranger continued to half smile. “Indeed. Except that if a Cardassian is a dissident—a traitor—then I can hardly regard him as a countryman. He is far worse, in my eyes, than any hostile alien, who likely retains loyalty to his own society’s values.”

Varc considered his reply, but to his great relief, Prang finally spoke up. “That’s quite enough, Mr. Regnar. We can finish this report without you.”

The slight smile still on his face, the man left the room as silently as he had been standing in it. Prang turned to Varc, clearly amused.

“I apologize for Agent Regnar’s presence here. We were just finishing up his debriefing when you entered, you see. You began speaking before I could properly introduce the two of you.”

“Did you hear the way he talked to me?” Varc said, outraged.

“I would advise you to avoid tangling with that one,” Prang said. “They are already calling him one of the Sons of Tain.”

Varc was more irritated than ever at this news, but knew he would do best to follow the old man’s advice. Those agents who had fallen under the direct tutelage of Enabran Tain, the head of the Obsidian Order, were often referred to as his “sons.” If this agent was indeed one of them, then it wouldn’t matter what Varc, or any other agent, thought of him. It only mattered what Tain thought.

L
enaris was never so happy as he was when he was piloting a craft, whether it was within the atmosphere or out in open space. But right now, surrounded as he was by the seemingly endless vacuum of darkness, Bajor’s night-side a vast black well beneath him, he felt his exhilaration heightened to almost dizzying effect. He felt…free. All the months of careful planning and preparation had been more than worth it.

A bubble of static surrounded an incoming transmission, and he remembered himself. He was not free. It was imperative that he stick to the boundaries of the flight plan until the crucial moment when Lac would take the plunge into Derna’s atmosphere.

Lac’s voice sounded light-years away, even though Lenaris actually had a visual on the fuel burn from his friend’s tiny craft.
“I’m not detecting any interference in our communication channel,”
he said.

“Good,” Lenaris said, at a loss for words. His exhilaration turned sharp, excitement changing to unease as the looming, skeletal figure of Terok Nor drifted closer into range. He’d had no idea what the station would look like, but of course this was it. The menacing curvature of the arms, arching possessively over the top of the structure like the bleached-out rib cage of a corpse—it could only be Cardassian in design. Lenaris suppressed a shudder, and continued carefully on his course.

It was a simple enough exercise to fly their small ships around within the atmosphere—the Cardassians didn’t seem to pay much attention to Bajoran comings and goings, and when they did, it had been established that their overpowered ships lacked the agility to chase a sub-impulse raider in atmosphere. But the raiders’ capabilities in space were far less certain. The cell had only made a very few offworld excursions, and it had not yet been determined exactly how safe it was to be flying around in these tiny, vulnerable craft—they could withstand space travel, but they hadn’t been built for prolonged voyages. The danger was made even greater by the fact that, without more sophisticated scanners than they currently possessed, the raiders had no means to detect each other except by comm.

And of course, there were the Cardassian patrols…
Mustn’t forget those.

“Target is in sight,”
Lac reported.

Moments later, they began to approach Derna, an unassuming gray satellite partially bathed in glowing reflection from faraway B’hava’el.

“I detect no patrols in the immediate vicinity,” Lenaris informed his friend.

“I’m not finding any either,”
Lac relayed back.
“I’m taking the dive in ten…nine…”

Lenaris, in closer formation now, watched as Lac’s shuttle suddenly broke away from the safety of the flight path. If there were any patrol vessels that they had missed…if Terok Nor just happened to be doing a sensor sweep at the wrong moment…But there was no evidence of Cardassian presence, no nearby warp signatures, no Cardassian transmissions coming through on the comm, adjusted for enemy frequencies. Lenaris drew in a breath and followed Lac into Derna’s atmosphere.

He broke through without issue, weathering the resultant turbulence, holding to the flight yoke as he experienced the temporary sensation of freefall. The raider caught itself, and there was Derna stretched out in front of him, a dreamscape, mostly barren but for a thin, dry algae that covered the plains of endless rock. He concentrated on setting down, trying not to think about patrols, about Terok Nor.

Lac had set his raider down a few
linnipate
s from Lenaris, nearer to the wreckage of the Cardassians’ ruined base, abandoned more than a decade earlier. He got out of his raider and began to unload the transmission equipment, while Lac assembled the components of a scrambler that would allow the high-bandwidth transmissions to escape the Cardassians’ notice.

The two worked silently, leaving behind their equipment and a narrow-band homing signal so that others could find it, should it ever need repair. Then, with a breath of poorly masked excitement, Lac brought the transmitter online.

Finished with their work, they stood for a moment, both searching the cold sky, Lac scanning for Cardassian signals with an old tricorder. Satisfied that they were still alone, Lac gave Lenaris a definitive nod.

“Ready when you are,” he said, and Lenaris walked back to his raider without another word.

He gave the engine a burst of fuel and prepared to lift off. He felt a vast relief—the hard part was over. Of course, breaking through Derna’s atmosphere still posed some risk, but if they stuck to the same flight pattern they’d followed when they came through, the Cardassians would never know they’d taken to the skies.

Lenaris was the first to exit the atmosphere, and he wasted no time retracing their path back to Bajor. His ship safely back on course, he was practically home free. His confidence mounted as Terok Nor’s imposing figure fell behind him, but then he realized that Lac had not reported back to him after breaking free from Derna’s atmosphere. He put in a call—and simultaneously saw an unfamiliar power reading on his instrument panel. A patrol from Terok Nor? His mouth went dry.

“
Lupus 2,
do you read me? This is
Lupus
7.
Lupus 2
—please respond.”

Nothing but dead air.

Holem cranked his transmitter through seven different channels, repeating his request, until his panic finally convinced him to try an unsecure channel—one that the Cardassians could easily pick up. He was desperate. “
Lupus 2,
please respond.” Bajor was coming closer, but he didn’t dare try to turn back, or even slow down.

His comm crackled and he almost relaxed before he recognized the fragmentary transmission as Cardassian.
“Terok N…reporting…prisoner…ip…out.”

Holem could scarcely breathe. He spun the ship’s dials frantically, trying to pick up any other transmission, but there was nothing else. Bajor loomed ever larger in front of him, and he had to prepare for the heat and violence of re-entry.

Swallowing his terror, he clutched the flight yoke and shot his raider through the turbulence. He struggled to orient the ship once it broke through, struggled with feelings of shock and disbelief as he pointed the little raider in the direction of Tilar. There was nothing he could do. Lac was gone.

It had been a full day of study and prayer. Final services had ended, the late meal had been taken; Kai Arin was exhausted when he finally retired to his chambers, hoping to read a bit and go to bed, and the last thing he wanted to do was discuss Opaka Sulan with one of the vedeks. Especially Gar Osen. Vedek Gar had been very vocal in his opposition to Opaka’s activities these past two years, ever since she had taken her son and left her stone cottage. Arin had publicly renounced Opaka’s status as a vedek of the church, but he had not issued an Attainder, despite having threatened to do so. Vedek Gar had been trying to persuade Arin to make good on that threat ever since.

Of course, it was possible that Gar wished to speak of something else, he told himself when he answered the late-night rapping at his door, but the kai doubted it. And truly, it was just as well. He’d known for some time that he and Osen needed to speak; it could be put off no longer. Much as he did not wish it, the kai invited his old friend into the small library that served as his study chamber, trying to prepare himself for the conversation ahead.

Arin owed much to the vedek, owed his very life to him. When the old Kendra Shrine had been destroyed, Arin had tried in vain to save the Orb that had been housed there. He could still clearly remember stumbling through the smoke, the walls falling all around him, retaining the divine object his only thought. He would have died, but that Gar Osen had pulled him to safety.

Gar began before he’d even taken his seat, his tone pleading, his words coming rapidly. “Your Eminence, surely you are aware of the dwindling numbers of faithful who come to attend our services. Opaka’s message is becoming widespread, not just in this province, but on all of Bajor. Others are spreading her teachings. Other vedeks, Your Eminence! You must denounce her words by formally Attainting her. You must stop this…this
wildfire
before it spreads any further.”

Arin chose his words carefully. “The fire of which you speak has already consumed most of our world, Vedek Gar.”

Gar was taken aback, as the kai knew he would be. “Your Eminence, what am I to conclude from such a statement? Surely you are not trying to tell me that
you
now reject the
D’jarra
s? That you’ve…given up?”

Arin shook his head. “No, Vedek Gar. I have not given up. I have…reconsidered. In the two years since Opaka left, I have studied and prayed and thought upon her words. And I have come to see the power behind them. Bajorans are finally becoming free of the despondency that has plagued us for twenty years. They no longer see themselves as victims. They are fighting back.”

“But of course you do not condone the fighting, Your Eminence. You
must
not condone it.”

Arin was troubled. “I have begun to question many of my own beliefs, Vedek Gar. What you say is true…but our world has never known such a struggle, and I fear that if we cannot unite, we will be broken. A successful leader must be able to admit that he was mistaken.”

“Yes, of course, Your Eminence, but you must tread lightly around this delicate matter—”

“Vedek, I should inform you that I mean to write a series of new sermons, with a very different message from what I have taught in the past. I will call for an assembly tomorrow, to announce the change.”

“Your Eminence, I must—”

“I thank you for being such a valuable adviser to me over these many years, Osen,” Arin said. “I will forever be grateful to you, for your counsel and your friendship. But I believe that for now, my closest adviser must be my own heart.”

Gar’s eyes flashed with anger. “Kai Arin, I believe you pay too much mind to false counsel, and not enough to the prophecies.”

Arin felt a flash of annoyance. Had Osen just accused him of having a false heart? He gestured to an ancient book spread open on a kneehole desk behind him, an original printing of the Oracle of Spires, a collection of prophecies from long ago.

“Vedek Gar, I have studied the prophecies all my life. There are many verses that contradict what is said regarding the
D’jarra
s. You know as well as I do that it is possible to twist the meaning of these verses to suit one’s own agenda. I will not be accused of picking and choosing among the prophecies in order to bolster a particular argument.” Arin was aware that his hand had tightened into a fist. He consciously relaxed it, and continued. “The Prophets have fallen silent to me, but I know They watch over us still, and make Their voices known to those who would listen. When I see how Opaka Sulan’s efforts have been rewarded, I see—I
hear
—what Bajor is telling me to do. And I believe it is time to listen.”

Gar was speechless as Arin dismissed him. The kai was ambivalent as the other man left the small chamber, sorry for his old friend—Gar had been unwavering in his faith, in his reliability as an assistant and counselor. They had worked closely together for many years. But Arin had come to acknowledge that the old caste system was not serving them well, and as Opaka and others like her had spread their message, he’d felt the change in the air, a feeling of
possibility
among the people that seemed like a kind of rebirth. Contrary to what he’d believed all these years, it had been far from injurious to morale for the people to leave their
D’jarra
s behind. He realized that what he felt was mostly relief, to finally admit to Gar what had vexed him so in recent times. Gar had always been the greatest supporter of the
D’jarra
way.

He turned back to the book of prophecies he had been immersed in before Gar came to call. He found the verse he had been reading, and traced a finger along the line of text.
The time of accord shall bring an Emissary, and the Emissary shall bring a new age to Bajor.

“The Emissary,” Arin murmured, just before he felt cold fingers slip around his throat.

“I’m sorry,” said a familiar voice, and the kai, clutching at those icy fingers, turned to stare into a pair of eyes that seemed strikingly reptilian, though Arin had never noticed it before. “I’m afraid I can’t let you call that assembly, Your Eminence.”

The kai didn’t understand. He struggled, but the pressure only increased, and images of joy and sorrow and regret ran through his mind; it was as though it was all coming together, becoming a coherent story. His last thought was of the Orb he had lost, the great tragedy of his life in service to Them…. If Gar had not dragged him out of the shrine when he had, could he have saved the Orb of Truth? Could it be, as the people often murmured, that the Orb had not been destroyed at all, but…
taken
…?

Black flowers bloomed in his eyes, and the struggle was too great, blotting out his thoughts, and then there was nothing, nothing at all.

Miras Vara sat up abruptly in her bed, sweating and cold. She swept her damp hair from the nape of her neck, breathing deeply as reality began to piece itself together again. She was in her bedchamber, in the small apartment where she lived alone, across the way from the Ministry of Science, where she worked. It had been a dream, only a dream…never frightening, exactly, but it was the same dream she’d had with increasing frequency in past weeks. This time, it had been different.