Star Trek: Terok Nor 02: Night of the Wolves (21 page)

It was the fear that finally drove him out of the culvert, thinking that it might be best to head back to the Ornathias, to wait for word. But as he emerged from the tunnel, he heard something that sent him toward the vineyards, instead, away from where his raider was hidden—the unmistakable sound of a ship landing close by. Not a Bajoran craft—it did not have the right kind of unhealthy growl. It was most assuredly Cardassian, a small shuttle, perhaps, or some similar flyer. They had finally come for him, and they had probably traced his balon signature, just as he’d feared. He’d led them straight to him, as easily as if he’d drawn them a map.
Foolish!

He thought the ship had landed near the Cardassian “resort” in his family’s vineyard. He crept toward it, moving slowly and silently, finally cresting a low hill covered in wild
jumja
trees to get a look. It was a transport shuttle, settled closer to the Ornathias’ lands than his own—what he thought of as his own—and there were two Cardassians walking around. Technically, they were trespassing, walking on Ornathia ground, land still owned by Taryl’s extended family; Seefa could see that they were on the wrong side of the hedgerow divider, although he supposed they didn’t care. Why would they? Who would complain?

The Cardassians were women, dressed all in white. Not soldiers, then? The dress of these two certainly suggested that they were civilians…

Two women, alone and vulnerable at the vineyards? It had to be a trick. Perhaps he was being flanked right now, the women decoys.

Hide or attack? Run or fight? He didn’t know, but seeing them just wandering around, touching the overgrown plants, acting as though they had some right to be there—it was infuriating. On top of his uncertainty and shame, his depressing memories—it was too much to tolerate. He quickly decided that he couldn’t afford to be uncertain. He would act, for better or worse.

He pulled his battered old phaser, aimed directly at the two invaders, and sprinted down the hillside as fast as he could. The two Cardassians did not immediately notice him, but as he drew closer they heard him, and looked up. One of them screamed.

“Quiet!” Seefa snapped in a loud whisper. “How many are with you?”

“J—just us,” said one of the women, the one who’d screamed. She looked terrified.

“But more are coming,” the other said quickly. “Many more. Soldiers. If you leave now, you might get away.”

Seefa squinted at the hot blue sky above him, saw nothing but a scattering of clouds. If she was telling the truth, he could run. Or it might already be too late.

“You’d better come along with me,” he said, and gestured in the general direction of the nearest drainage tunnel with his weapon. They needed to get out of sight, fast.

One of the women started to speak to the other, in an urgent hiss. Seefa made an angry noise, and they fell silent.

They reached the culvert and entered the irrigation system, Seefa taking them in confused circles through the complicated labyrinth, wanting to be sure they couldn’t be tracked. They walked for nearly a
kellipate
, quiet except for the sounds of one of them sniffling, the occasional drip of water. Seefa had to use his palmlight as the tunnels angled deeper, the chill of wet clay making him shiver. He had a vague intention of taking the women back to the Ornathia camp, but it would be a long walk.

“More will be coming,” the bolder of the two women volunteered as he pointed them down another branch. Her low voice echoed. “They know that you’re here.”

“How did they track me? Was it the balon?”

“Yes,” she said. “They’ve been tracking you for a long time.”

Seefa clenched his jaw. He
knew
it. “How long before they get here?”

The other woman spoke in an urgent whisper. “Natima, is this wise?”

Natima seemed to think so. “Let me handle this.”

“You had better tell me all you know,” Seefa said darkly. He turned his palmlight to Natima’s face. She squinted back at him, her lips tight.

“Have they tracked only me?”

The woman hesitated, her pallid face ghostly in the wobbling light. “They have tracked several of you,” she said.

Seefa frowned. “Several? How many, exactly?”

“I don’t know how many,” she shot back. “I only know that it’s more than one.”

Seefa’s heart hammered. If they were tracking shuttles, they might have followed Taryl, too; he needed to know before he risked taking them back to the cell, but it occurred to him that he had never really spoken to a Cardassian before, and he wasn’t sure how best to manipulate them. What were they afraid of? What did they respond to? He had no idea.

“We know about all of you at the vineyards,” the other woman said.

“Veja! Let me handle this,” said Natima.

“What do you mean,
all of us?
”

“She’s bluffing,” Natima said. “We are only sentries. We don’t know everything, we were only sent to confirm that you were in the area.”

Seefa was confused…and finally, suspicious. “There aren’t any more of us,” he said sharply. “I’m the only one.”

“You just indicated that there were more of you,” Natima pointed out.

Seefa shined his light over the two women. Natima looked defiant, but something deep in her expression reflected fear. The other woman—Veja—appeared frightened out of her wits.

“You’re civilians, aren’t you?”

Neither woman spoke, confirming it.

Seefa sighed, kicking himself for panicking, not sure what to do. They were Cardies, but not fighters; he’d kill them if he had to, but he didn’t like the idea. On the other hand, by taking a couple of tourists hostage, he’d made himself a target; someone would be missing a sister or a wife, a patrol would be sent to find their shuttle, and they’d surely find his makeshift camp. He couldn’t take them to the Ornathias, not without endangering the entire cell…

I’ll have to kill them.
He didn’t see that he had a choice.

“Just let us go,” Natima said. “We won’t tell anyone we saw you.”

“You have our word,” Veja added, her voice practically a whimper.

Seefa had to laugh at that. “The word of a Cardassian?” He gestured with the phaser, and the three began to walk again.

After a few moments, Natima spoke. “Listen, I…I need to relieve myself.”

“That must be very uncomfortable for you,” he said, without sympathy.

Natima arched an eyeridge. “You’ve no idea. I don’t suppose there’s a ’fresher available in these…facilities?”

“What do you think?”

Natima nodded. “If you wouldn’t mind, then, couldn’t I just have a little privacy for a moment? You could turn off your palmlight—no, I suppose you wouldn’t do that. Or—I could go down that corridor there—” She gestured vaguely to a branch, just ahead of them, that intersected the main conduit they were walking.

Seefa regarded the woman and was struck for a moment by how…almost
Bajoran
she seemed. Something in her expression, the inflection of her voice, her simple desire to relieve herself without someone watching. The effect was unsettling, and certainly not something he would have expected from a Cardassian.

He flashed his light down the tunnel she had indicated, which was badly deteriorated. He knew that this one had no outlet, ending in a heap of sharp rubble—if she had any ideas of escaping, she’d be disappointed. “Fine,” he said. “But your friend stays here with me.”

“Thank you,” Natima said to him, and turned to go down the conduit.

Veja stared at him like a
batos
in a slaughterhouse, her fear a palpable thing, and Seefa looked away. It wasn’t his fault that they’d come to Bajor. They were victims of their own arrogance, their own erroneous sense of privilege, and he refused to feel bad serving as the hand of justice.

I have no choice,
he told himself firmly.

O
paka accepted the offer of
deka
tea from Ketauna, smiling her thanks. She sipped, looked around his small cottage as Ketauna went to fetch his copy of Dava’s Prophecies. Shev, Ketauna’s neighbor, occupied himself lighting candles. It was late in the evening, the long summer light giving way to shadows in the little house. In her travels, she had encountered a few dwellings like this one, very nearly identical to the cottage she had once shared with Bekar, and later with Fasil, just outside the Naghai Keep. Most of them had a few minor differences, but they were built so similarly, of nearly identical materials and construction, that she had the unusual sensation of being back in her own beloved home. She missed it, sometimes very much.

“The eighteenth prophecy of Kai Dava,” said Ketauna, reverently handing Opaka the open book. He was an artist, and had lived in the house his entire life. A kind man, he’d been a regular member of Opaka’s informal sermons since the day she’d arrived in the small town of Yarlin, several weeks earlier. She’d stayed on when she’d realized how many travelers came through the village each summer; it was the biggest settlement along the pass through the northernmost range of the Perikian mountains, right next to a reasonably clean river tributary. She’d pitched her tent in Yarlin’s spacious courtyard alongside a hundred others. A good many of them belonged to people who’d decided to walk with her, most from her winter camp, some who’d just shown up along the way—people who’d heard the message and were looking for someone to follow, it seemed, at least for a little while.

“Please, read it aloud,” said Shev. Shev believed himself to be an expert on the life and prophecies of Kai Dava. He was a layman, but had several times told Opaka that if his
D’jarra
had permitted it, he would have gone into the clergy. “Ketauna showed it to me three days ago, and I was stunned at what it seemed to imply.”

Sulan cleared her throat. “‘The dry ground shall be watered by a generation of sorrow,’” she said.

“That’s
this
generation,” Shev said knowingly.

Opaka nodded. “Perhaps,” she said. She went on. “‘The tears of the people shall water the land, the Tears of the Prophets cast away.’”

“Because the spoonheads have taken them all,” Ketauna broke in.

“We don’t know that,” Shev said. “They say the Orbs were all destroyed.”

“The Prophets will look after them,” Opaka said. And if They did not, that was also Their will.

“Go on,” Ketauna said.

Opaka had studied this prophecy many years ago, but it had been such a long time, she would never have remembered this particular verse without having been prodded by these two, part of her ever-growing congregation. Sometimes, it seemed as if there were as many prophecies on Bajor as there were people, and they were often too cryptic to be deciphered. Ketauna and Shev had asked her here specifically to discuss this prophecy. It was not the first time she’d been asked to give her impressions of a prophecy since she’d begun traveling, and she was sure it would not be the last.

“‘But the Prophets have not shed the last of their Tears,’” she finished.

“You see?” Ketauna said, looking a little triumphant. “Now, what do you think that means, Vedek Opaka?”

Opaka had stopped correcting those who still addressed her as Vedek, although she felt a twinge of regret almost every time; for what, she was not sure. “I can’t say, for certain,” she told him. “Perhaps it means there are other Tears of the Prophets which have not yet been discovered.”

“Well, this would be a good time for someone to find them, don’t you think?”

Opaka nodded slowly. “It might seem that way to us, but only the Prophets know when the proper time will be.”

“But you have read the prophecies of Trakor,” Ketauna reminded Opaka. “He speaks often of the Orb of Prophecy and Change. Nobody has written of it since the time of Kai Dava—”

“Yes, there are many mysterious tales surrounding Kai Dava, it is true…but not all are fact. Many have theorized that the Orb of Prophecy and Change was simply another name for the Orb of Souls.”

“Or the Orb of Contemplation,” Shev added. “But the evidence seems to suggest otherwise. Did you know,” he went on, “it was rumored that Kai Dava had an Orb fragment, a piece of one of the Prophet’s Tears? They say he had it mounted onto a bracelet, which he wore until the day he died…and that it disappeared after his death.”

Opaka had heard the story, along with many others about Kai Dava. The idea of someone using a broken Orb as their own personal token had always struck her as troubling, to say the least. Fortunately, there was no evidence to support the legend…. None that was known, at any rate.

Her expression must have reflected as much. Ketauna quickly changed the subject. “I suppose you have heard by now that Vedek Gar has been aggressively campaigning for the position of kai. He seeks to manipulate those of us who follow you, Vedek Opaka—he has declared your word to be the viewpoint of the church.”

Shev broke in. “He has even moved into your old house. As though he is trying to be physically closer to you, as well as spiritually. I believe he means to deceive your followers.”

Opaka nodded absently. She had heard such murmurings before today, and she was not sure what to make of them. She hoped they were at least partially true—that Vedek Gar really did believe the time of the
D’jarra
s was past, though the idea still surprised her. She had not yet had time to puzzle out what the greater impact might be. She looked out one of the windows. “It is growing late,” she declared.

“Vedek Opaka, can I offer you a bed for the night? I would be glad to have you take my pallet, and I can sleep up in the loft.” He gestured to a short ladder against the back wall of the cottage, and Sulan regarded it with some curiosity. There was a door at the top of it, in the same place as that inconvenient window of her own house—and it occurred to her that the window had probably once functioned as a door, just like in this house. It probably had been equipped with a loft as well, before the long-ago fire.

“It wouldn’t be any trouble,” Ketauna added. “I take in visitors all the time, especially in the winter. I would enjoy the company, really.”

Opaka smiled. “It’s quite all right, thank you. I’ll return to the village before dark.”

“But it will be dark quite soon,” he protested.

Opaka turned to Shev, who lived in a similar abode just north of Ketauna’s. “Does your house have a sleeping loft like this one? For I believe my old cottage was constructed in a similar manner…and it’s a bit of a coincidence that I should think of it now, for it was often told that Kai Dava himself lived there once.”

Shev answered with enthusiasm. “Ah, yes! The little house just outside the walls of the Naghai Keep—that
was
Kai Dava’s house. Indeed, my house has a sleeping loft, just as Ketauna’s does.”

“Kai Arin told me that there had been a fire…. It must have destroyed the loft,” Opaka mused. “The door was left behind, but I always thought it was a window.”

Ketauna answered. “Yes, but if you had gone into your cellar, I suspect you would have found that the foundation of the house extended beyond the back, where the raised porch would have been, for in the old times, people used to sleep on those porches in the summertime, raised high above the ground so the tyrfoxes and cadge lupus wouldn’t trouble them.”

“My little house didn’t have a cellar,” Opaka said—

—and she saw something, then, in her mind’s eye, a flash of dream like a memory, so strong and clear that for a moment, she could see nothing else. Ketauna’s small home had disappeared. She saw a man in vedek’s garb looking out over a vast and fiery pit. He wore a mask, and his body shook with some unknown emotion, one that made him tremble in its violence. She recognized the man, recognized Bajor’s fire caves.

“Vedek Opaka, are you all right?”

It’s Gar Osen.
She didn’t know how she knew, but she did. He stood behind an open door, his face hidden, the light of open fires dancing across his mask. And she knew things, then, things that she had no worldly way of knowing.

“Sulan?”

The worry in Ketauna’s voice drew her back, back from what she knew had been a vision. A frightening one, but to hear the Prophets once more…to know that They had chosen her for this thing…

“I need to go back to my house,” she said.
The cellar.

“You mean…to your tent?” Ketauna asked her, taking her teacup. “At least let me accompany you—”

“No. I mean to my house…my house outside the keep, outside the Kendra Monastery. I need to speak to Vedek Gar. I’m going to go find my son…I will need him to help me.” She spoke her thoughts, as certain of them as she’d ever been of anything.

“Vedek Opaka, can we help?” It was Shev.

Opaka looked up at him. “If you would like to come along, then you may. I believe it might be best to have some help. Yes.”

“I’m coming too,” Ketauna insisted.

“Yes,” Opaka said again, her voice steady. “We’ll all go. There is something in that house that…I must find. I must find it before Vedek Gar does.”

The two men were silent, staring at her with something like awe, but Opaka had closed her eyes. She thanked Them for the burden They had placed upon her shoulders, praying that she would prove worthy.

Natima fumbled with the satchel that was tied around her waist beneath her skirt. Every little noise she made seemed to echo throughout the fetid hole she had been forced into, and she feared the Bajoran who waited for her outside the tunnel would immediately guess what she was up to. There were noises of dripping and sloshing that reverberated from everywhere; she hoped it would drown out her activity. From the satchel she managed to find what she wanted in the near total blackness—Veja’s comm unit, with a direct line to Terok Nor. Veja had asked Natima to carry it for her in her waist-satchel, since she claimed it spoiled the neckline of her dress.

Natima activated the communicator, and waited for Damar’s inevitable answer.

“Veja, do you have any idea what the hour is here on the station?”
His voice over the communicator was louder than Natima had expected, and she moved farther down the clammy tunnel as she answered him, fumbling for the volume control.

“Damar! It’s Natima! We’re in trouble!”

“What? Veja, I can’t hear you. Did you say you’re in trouble?”

Still too loud. Natima pressed her fingers over the pinpoint of a speaker and moved even farther into the blackness. She could see nothing, hear nothing but the ever-present liquid sounds that rushed through the tunnels. She counted on the noise to cover her own, but it seemed that Damar couldn’t hear her. She spoke louder.

“Damar! This is Natima Lang! A Bajoran has taken us hostage just outside of Tilar! There are more of them somewhere around here. He was speaking of something to do with balon, I got the impression it was important.” There was no answer. “Can you hear me?”

“I hear you now, Natima, but your signal is weak.”
Damar’s voice reflected something like fear.
“Is Veja all right?”

“She’s fine, Damar, I will look after her. But you must send someone. Did you hear all that I told you? There are more Bajorans around here, and this man is concealing something about balon.”

“I will send someone immediately.”

A crooked beam of light bounced into the offshoot. Natima whirled around, her fingers closed tightly around the communicator, as the Bajoran, dragging Veja by the arm, lunged at her, trying to get the device. Natima saw her chance and stepped to meet him, grabbing for his weapon, stuck in the waist of his tattered pants. She dropped the communicator but got her hands on the phaser. Veja ran when Seefa let her go to fight Natima for the weapon. The palm beacon fell to the floor, illuminating nothing.

They struggled in the cold dark, Natima’s terror lending her strength—and somehow the thing discharged, a brilliant burst of light and sound that tore into the low ceiling of the tunnel. Debris rained down and Veja screamed—but only once, the sound cutting off abruptly.

Natima still had the weapon. Seefa scooped up the palmlight, moving its beam across the darkness, clouds of dust obscuring its meager light.

Natima trained the weapon on the Bajoran, searching the murky dark for her friend—and let out a cry when she saw the crumpled heap on the muddy ground, pinned beneath a massive mound of ceiling stones. She was not making a sound, but she was alive, her face pulled back in an expression of agony.

“Veja!”

The Bajoran was there even before Natima, scrabbling at the rubble. Only her head and one arm were visible beneath the pile of rocks.

“Help me!” he shouted.

Natima dropped to her knees, tried to keep the weapon trained on the Bajoran as she dug with her free hand.

“You might as well put that thing down,” the man told her, without looking away from his work. “There was only one good blast left in the power cell.”

Natima did not know whether to believe him, but considering Veja’s condition it suddenly seemed unimportant. She put the weapon in the waistband of her skirt and began hauling the rubble away from Veja’s body. Veja had started to pant, taking in short gulps of air, her eyes shining with fear and pain.