Star Trek: Terok Nor 02: Night of the Wolves (15 page)

Opaka was nearly overcome to see her son so affected. It seemed she wasn’t destined to have dry eyes today. She embraced him again.

“I have missed you, too, Fasil. So very much.”

The days had turned into weeks since the Derna incident. Lenaris had not entirely given up hope that Lac would return to them—his disappearance had been so abrupt, Lenaris still couldn’t quite believe it—but he knew better than to mistake hope for possibility. Lac was not coming back.

Seefa, who had always leaned toward the anxious, had become convinced that the Cardassians would be coming for them any day now.

“The Cardassians have Lac’s raider,” he’d said, on more than one occasion since Derna. “They know he was using balon to power it, and they know there is a massive balon deposit right here. Mark my words, they will come. After that, it’s only a matter of time before they find the rest of our ships and take us all to work camps—or worse. Most likely, they’ll execute a few of us to make examples, and then—”

“Let’s not get hysterical, Seefa. There are plenty of other balon deposits on Bajor.” It was always Taryl who pulled him back. She refused to be rattled by what anyone had to say regarding Lac, choosing instead to approach the situation with her customary calm rationality. It worried Lenaris not a little that Taryl seemed so placid in the face of her brother’s disappearance; he feared that one day the reality of it was going to hit her, and then—he didn’t know what would happen then, for he had never seen Taryl succumb to the kind of upsets that he himself was prone to. Taryl had a fiery temper, but sadness and worry were not usually in her repertoire. Lenaris envied her for it. If he could have drawn on that kind of strength when Darin had died…Lac’s disappearance held certain parallels to that particular tragedy, but Lenaris was determined to keep himself together this time.

Still, he was overwhelmed with guilt that it had been Lac who had been caught, and not himself. It was just dumb luck, of course. But then—Lenaris had forgotten to put in a transmission to Lac after exiting the atmosphere himself. What if he could have helped his friend somehow? He didn’t know how, but still…He could not help but agonize over every detail of that ill-fated mission.

Meanwhile, Taryl had taken it upon herself to plan a rescue effort with some of the Ornathia cousins, much to Seefa’s vehement disapproval. Taryl was certain that Lac must have been taken to Terok Nor, and to her way of thinking, they would have to stage an effort to smuggle him off the station. While the three were calibrating the sensor arrays on some of their ships, Lenaris had been present for one of many arguments that Taryl and Seefa had been having in regard to the matter.

“You have no idea what something like that would entail,” Seefa admonished her.

“That’s why we will have to gather information first,” Taryl told him calmly. “The comm equipment on Derna will be helpful with that.”

“It’s ridiculous, Taryl. We don’t even know if Lac is there! I absolutely forbid anyone from going to Terok Nor.”

“You don’t have the authority to forbid anyone from doing anything.”

Lenaris cleared his throat loudly, and the two lowered their voices.

But, as she had been with her efforts to repair the freighter, Taryl was undaunted. In secret, she met with Lenaris and a handful of others from the cell who thought they could put together a rescue party.

It had been more than a month since Lac’s disappearance when Taryl approached Lenaris, who was washing out some old metal cans with Ornathia Sten, someone Lenaris liked almost as much as he liked Lac. The salvaged cans would be reused for food, or else beaten flat to repair damaged hull plating.

“You’ve got a call on the long-range comm…it’s from Halpas Palin.”

Palin
. Feeling a surge of real hope, Lenaris chucked the can to Sten, who caught it neatly, and followed Taryl back to Lac’s empty shack, where the Ornathias’ best communication equipment was set up. Work on the warp ship had been all but forgotten in the wake of the Derna incident, but Halpas had been a pilot since long before the occupation—he could certainly fly the thing, if he hadn’t any ideas regarding how to fix it—and even if he didn’t, he might be able to help locate Tiven Cohr. Lenaris had sent out word months before, trying to get in touch with his old contacts.

“Halpas Palin! It’s Lenaris Holem!” he shouted into the comm.

“No need to scream, Lenaris, I hear you loud and clear. Whoever posted the long-range comm towers did fine work. I got word from someone in Jalanda that you were looking for me.”

“For you—and Tiven, as well,” Lenaris said. “It seems we might have access to a warp vessel that could use a little…adjusting.”

“So, you’re finally ready to apologize, are you?”

Lenaris scowled to himself. “Did you hear what I said?” he asked. “A warp vessel, Halpas! Maybe we could forget the past for a minute and consider what that might mean for the resistance.”

“It was my understanding, Lenaris, that you were through with the resistance.”

Lenaris tried to swallow his anger, but it was not easy. The older man had always been an absolutist in every sense, never forgetting a single slight—Bajoran to his very core. Lenaris tried to forget the many times that Halpas had treated him like a child, the sneering and insistent reminding of every mistake Lenaris had ever made. And then the final, furious rift that had torn the cell—or what was left of the cell—apart for good. Lenaris had foolishly underestimated the old man’s tendency to hold a grudge.

“Listen, Halpas,” Lenaris said tightly. “Let’s just let bygones be bygones. I’ve got a warp ship. One that I think has a good chance of being salvaged. And if anyone could pilot it out of the atmosphere, it’s you. Now, if you know where Tiven Cohr is, then there’s nothing stopping us from using this ship for a full-scale attack. Are you with me?”

“I know where Tiven is,”
Halpas said.
“He lives near me, at the edge of the Berain Valley.”

“In the city?” Lenaris asked. He’d been to Berain City a few times.

“I also know,”
Halpas went on, as though Lenaris hadn’t spoken,
“that he wants nothing to do with you—unless you’re willing to apologize, of course.”

Lenaris was incensed. He didn’t have time to pander to the foolish politics of a couple of stubborn old men. “Forget it,” he said sourly. “I’ll find someone else who can fix it.”

Halpas laughed, a faraway sound on the comm.
“Still as prideful as a
batos,” he said.

“Look who’s talking,” Lenaris muttered, and he ended the call. The warp ship wasn’t a priority right now anyway; he had a rescue effort to help organize.

“H
ello, my old friend.” Kalisi greeted Miras warmly as the two met near the turbolift at the Ministry of Science. Miras was pleased to see her. Although they both worked in the same building, they rarely saw each other; they had been hired by different departments, worked in different wings of the facility. Kalisi’s position in defense technology, sanctioned and funded by the military, held a great deal more prestige than the field Miras had chosen. Miras found her agricultural studies fascinating, especially from a historical perspective—for it was generally believed that Cardassia Prime had once been green and abundant, before a dramatic shift in the climate had turned it to desert—but she seemed to be one of the few who cared. Miras believed she had seen ancient Cardassia herself, in the unfinished dream that continued to plague her; while she had no illusions that their homeworld would ever again be so fecund, she held hope that it could again be made fertile.

Not that it matters at the moment,
she thought. The dream came almost every night now. She felt as though her life had been put on hold, that she could not pursue any matter, personal or otherwise, until she could decipher its meaning.

“What was it that you wished to see me about, Miras?”

In spite of her eagerness, Miras approached the subject hesitantly. “Do you remember that object that we examined just before we completed our final project? The thing from Bajor—”

“Yes, the dirty old box with the strange writing on the sides.” Kalisi smiled. “It hasn’t been
that
long, Miras. Two, three years? Of course I remember it.”

“I’ve learned a few things about it. I learned—some time ago, actually—that it was probably one of the Orbs of the Prophets. Have you heard of them?”

Kalisi frowned. “Orbs of the Prophets? It
does
sound familiar—the Bajorans call their deities ‘prophets,’ don’t they? So the item is ceremonial, then.”

“Yes, in a way. The Bajorans believe an individual may have…experiences from exposure to these Orbs.” Miras smiled, making an effort not to seem crazy. “Anyway, I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, and I thought I might like to have another look at it.”

Kalisi nodded slowly. “And you don’t have high enough security clearance to access it.”

“That’s right.” Miras felt a tinge of shame, for she didn’t want her old friend to think that asking this favor was the only reason she’d contacted her. “I thought of you instantly, because I haven’t seen you in such a long time, and wanted to catch up anyway—”

Kalisi laughed. “It’s all right, Miras. I’ll clear you to have a look at the object. I can arrange for it to be sent to one of the laboratories here at the ministry—would that be all right?”

Miras nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, that would be perfect. Thank you so much, Kalisi. In the meantime—would you like to have lunch with me?”

It was Kalisi’s turn to look uncomfortable. “Actually, I can’t. I wish I could, but my responsibilities right now…I usually eat lunch in my laboratory, while waiting for my downloads to complete.”

Miras decided that she didn’t envy her friend’s position. There was no one pressuring her for results. “Another time then, perhaps?”

“Yes. Let’s not make it quite such a long time between calls, shall we?”

Miras quickly agreed, and Kalisi ran her thumbscan on a security padd to allow Miras access to a vacant laboratory in the main building’s lower level. “Room 109-green,” Kalisi told her before they parted company. “Wait there while I arrange the artifact’s retrieval.”

Miras wasted little time, feeling a strange kind of giddy anticipation as she walked to the lab. She didn’t know what she expected to find, looking at the object again, but she’d realized only recently that her strange dreams had begun shortly after her exposure to it. They’d been intermittent at first, but as the months had passed, as she’d settled into her new career, the dream had grown in frequency and clarity, almost becoming a part of her. She’d done more extensive research on the artifact and its possible origins in what spare time she had, and when she’d learned that the objects were said to inspire visions, she had made up her mind that she needed to see it again.

And it’s not as though I have anything better to do…
She’d had a brief, unhappy romance with one of her co-workers soon after coming to the ministry, a man who had since transferred to the private sector; she was not ready to engage in another relationship anytime soon, much to the displeasure of her rather traditional family. Pursuing this minor mystery had become something of a fixation for her, one she was eager to solve. The sooner she could put this behind her, the better.

The lab was small but brightly lit. Within an hour of her arrival, the artifact was once again transported in its shipping container. She thumbed the lock and lifted the heavy object onto the work table, thinking that perhaps she had lost her mind, after all. If she’d told Kalisi that she’d started to believe she was having visions of ancient Cardassia…

Just thinking it made her feel incredibly foolish, but she’d come this far; she was determined to see her folly through. She looked at the thing, the case—the “ark,” in Bajoran vernacular. It did not appear that the object had been disturbed since she had seen it last. Traces of red Bajoran dirt still smeared the outside of the container and rested in the crevices of the characters and stones that stood in relief from the object’s flat paneled sides.

Miras ran her fingertips down the side of the object, as she had before, wondering if she would be able to open it again. Perhaps there had never been an opening, she thought to herself; perhaps she had been slowly losing her mind ever since her first encounter with this thing. Why not? Maybe the Bajorans had visions because of some mind-altering chemical in the materials of the box, or in the Orb itself, one that gave Cardassian women frustrating dreams and irrational notions. But the seam was indeed there.

Miras gently pried at the corner…and stepped back in amazement as a brilliant light spilled from the vertical opening in the case. She knew she should be closing the case, calling for help, but the sense of tranquillity that she recalled from her prior experience had returned, compelling her to further open the case. The Orb inside was illuminated so brightly that she could not even make out its size or shape, and after a moment, she could see nothing at all, nothing but a white, piercing light that flooded her vision, her reality, her thoughts.

Blind and confused, she struggled to maintain her senses. From a pinpoint of distinction within the harsh flood of brilliant light, the shimmering figure of a woman began to appear.

“Miras.” The Hebitian woman’s voice was as gently rolling as the hills of the surrounding farmland, melting into place all around Miras as the impossible whiteness began to recede. “I have been waiting.”

It was the dream…But this was no dream, this was happening. The woman led Miras inside the sparsely furnished little house of black brick, and walked to the heavy wood table. She reached into the obsidian box—

—and brought out the mask, turning to Miras. Miras half expected everything to dissolve as it always did as soon as the mask appeared, but she knew better, too. This, this whatever it was,
vision,
was real.

“The mask of Oralius,” the woman said, and handed it to her.

“Oralius,” Miras repeated, taking the delicate carving. She frowned. The Oralians had been a cult of some kind that had been extinct in the Cardassian Union since Miras was barely more than an infant. It was something that was rarely discussed, a topic that seemed distasteful to most, a superstitious holdover from an unfortunate time.

“Go ahead,” the graceful Hebitian woman coaxed, and Miras slipped the mask over her face.

She turned to find herself alone in the house—but it wasn’t the same house anymore. This new place was made of cool stones, coated thinly with delicate mats of velvety green foliage. Miras could smell the pungent odor of food cooking, foreign and overpowering. The ceiling was very tall, accommodating a rickety wooden ladder that stretched to a sleeping loft against the far wall. The loft was equipped with a door, situated very near the peak of the ceiling. Miras watched as an old man, an alien man with smooth, ruddy skin and an oddly slender neck, climbed up to the loft and exited through the door. After a beat, Miras followed him. He’d walked out onto a large wooden porch that overlooked part of a lush forest, with trees so giant and bizarre that Miras knew with certainty that she was not on Cardassia Prime.

Bajor?
She believed so.

The man seemed unaware of her presence, and Miras continued to follow him as he walked down a set of stairs that had been built against the side of the porch, toward the back of the small home. When he reached the ground, he lifted a wooden hatch that revealed yet another staircase, this one curving down into an underground passage that had been dug next to the foundation. Miras seemed to float after him down the darkened steps and into a small chamber. The man did not sense her presence as he knelt down before a little hollow in the wall, a hollow that accommodated a four-sided object, tiled, bejeweled, with an oval lens on each face. Miras knew what he would do before he even did it; he opened the ark, and brilliant light spilled into the room.

She shielded her eyes from the glare of the Orb, washed over again with light before the room suddenly went dim. As her eyes adjusted, she found that she had been transported to yet another place—a room lined with books, and there were two other men in the room with her, Bajoran men. The cold, heavy air smelled of incense. From what Miras had read on the subject, the Bajorans’ clothes indicated that they were religious officials of some kind. In fact, she knew who they were, she knew what their raiment denoted without quite knowing how she knew it. These men were Kai Arin and Vedek Gar Osen. The names and titles were unfamiliar, but she knew them anyway.

The men were engaged in an argument, a debate, perhaps, but Miras could not be sure what they were saying. One man, the younger, departed the room—dismissed, she thought. The older man sat down at a desk and began to read from a book, a very old one.

Miras tried to call to the older man, for she was convinced that he was in danger, and when she saw the first man reenter the room, she became sure of it. The younger man crept up behind the elder and slid his hands around his narrow throat.

Miras tried to scream, to move, but she could only watch, silent and still and horrified as the old man thrashed in futile resistance, as his attempts to break free grew weaker. She tried to pull at the mask she wore, hoping that if it were removed she would be transported away from here, this nightmarish experience concluded, but her limbs were like fog and she had no control over her hands, her fingers. She was not even sure if she was inhabiting her own body anymore.

The younger man closed the book that the dead man had been reading, and removed the ceremonial headpiece from his lifeless body. The vision became more dreamlike, blurry and indistinct, things occurring in a jerky, clicking fashion. The murderer looked up, and Miras wanted to shield herself and could not. He seemed to be looking for someone, looking for her—and she realized suddenly that he, too, was wearing a mask, one that bore a strong resemblance to her own. He hadn’t been wearing one before, she was sure of it. He seemed to be looking right at her, and he reached up and pulled his mask away—

—and Miras was finally taken away from the unfortunate scene, just as she registered that the face beneath the mask was no longer Bajoran.

It had been Cardassian.

There was almost no time to consider what it meant, for Miras was suddenly home again, at the very center of Cardassia City, the environment grainy and one-dimensional, like a very old image capture. She recognized it, but at the same time she did not—for the capital of Cardassia Prime lay in ruins, great heaps of smoking rubble and debris blocking the streets, the aftermath of a devastating attack. Bodies were everywhere, Cardassian men, women, and children. The stench of death and burning composite was terrible, cloying.

In horror and panic, Miras squeezed her eyes tightly shut and tried once again to tear the mask from her face. At last, she was successful. When she opened her eyes again, she was in the laboratory, the Orb case was closed, and someone was pounding on the door. Before Miras had time to think, Kalisi burst into the room, her face reading fearful bewilderment.

“Miras! What happened in here? The inventory staff was trying to contact you, and the ministry computer indicated that you weren’t in the room—that you weren’t even in the
building!
They tried to transport the object out but they couldn’t get a lock on it. They called me because the artifact was under my clearance, but then my thumbscan wouldn’t open the door!”

Miras tried to slow her own frightened breathing back to normal, but she was still continuing to receive images and thoughts that were not her own, like faded pictures in a dream, like connections made in deepest slumber.

“Kalisi…I have seen the devastation of Cardassia Prime. I have seen…there is a man on Bajor…his name is Gar Osen…but…but it isn’t his real name. He—he isn’t really a Bajoran, he’s there to—oh, he must not find the final Orb! Cardassia will be destroyed!”

Kalisi’s eyes widened in concern and confusion, and Miras realized how utterly insane her ramblings must sound. Whatever had happened to her, she felt she must not embarrass herself or her friend.