The message of the recurring dreams had continued to unfold for her, although the images remained cryptic, violent, and strange. But she’d come to believe that the discovery of one of the Bajoran Orbs by a Cardassian would mean the end of their civilization-had come to believe it with all her heart, and that belief finally allowed her to embrace her insanity. She had no husband, no children. Her parents lived well outside the city, and she didn’t see them often. Her job was interesting to her, but not especially fulfilling…
And if I’m right about this-if this is a vision, a reality that will come to pass-then I have a responsibility.
She had spent many hours reading through the texts she could find on Oralius, on the Oralian Way-and while many were simple propaganda smears, she’d seen glimmers of a strange but interesting philosophy here and there. From what she could tell, the Oralians were simply spiritual seekers, not the decadent cult she’d always believed them to be.
The brief recorded message from Natima Lang had provided the final push. It had been waiting in her transmissions only the day before, and had confirmed Miras’s information about Gar Osen and the death of the kai-not directly, but clearly enough. Natima had been uncharacteristically grim, her expression solemn as she’d cautioned Miras not to continue concerning herself with affairs on Bajor. She’d added that going public with unapproved information was a punishable offense. When Miras had tried to return the call, she’d found that Natima was unavailable.
With clear evidence that there might actually be something to it all, Miras had acted. She’d packed a bag, made a few calls-and had then managed to scramble the Orb’s access code in the ministry’s database, making it impossible for anyone to retrieve the item without manually opening every single shipping container in the warehouse. All those years studying the ministry’s filing system, preparing for her life’s work, she’d learned a trick or two. There was a chance that nobody would learn of what she had done until someone actually attempted to find the Orb-but Miras wasn’t about to take the chance that she’d be so lucky. She had stepped across a line, a step she couldn’t take back.
The man seated beside her looked out the window of the transport shuttle, at the flat, endless desert stretching all around them, beautiful in the early morning light. “Have you seen the Hebitian ruins before, Astraea?”
“Not for many years,” said Miras, remembering that she was no longer Miras. She had taken the name of the woman from her dreams, whose face had become her own. She was Astraea now, and after what she had done-traveling under a false name, deliberately misfiling the Orb-she could never go home. She hoped that she would find her confirmation, out here in the desert. She hoped she hadn’t just thrown away her career, her life, for no reason at all. “I look forward to revisiting them.”
In the fairly spacious control cabin of the Bajoran carrier, Lenaris and Halpas were having a look at some of the old ship’s navigational systems. While Halpas confirmed that he had never flown this particular model, he was still familiar with most of her instruments. He pointed to a few components, explained their significance to Lenaris, who was feeling slightly overwhelmed with all the information he was quickly absorbing. This was different from studying old schematics-the knowledge Halpas carried included a great deal of information that never would have appeared in any manual.
“Those filter systems there are notoriously touchy,” Halpas pointed out. “While these gauges over here can be sluggish at first, once you warp up they get a lot more loose.” Lenaris nodded, taking it all in.
“The thing to remember is that a lot of the Cardassian ships have blind spots in their sensor grids, like their planet-based systems,” Halpas said. He spoke this in confidential tones, almost as though he expected someone to be listening. “I can show you what I mean once we get out there-” Lenaris felt a thrill at this kind of talk, Halpas’s confidence making it clear that this was really going to happen. “-and even more important than that, Cardassian ships have a tendency to require a power surge in order to arm their forward disruptors. As soon as they transfer power, everything else gets sapped-their navigational systems, their shields-and more importantly for us, their sensors.”
Lenaris nodded vigorously. He tensed as a faint whirring sound went up on the bridge. The lights across the navigational array flickered once, and then settled into a constant glow. The auxiliary systems had already gone online half an hour before, but it was looking more and more like this mission was going to happen. He was actually going to travel at warp-he was going to leave the B’hava’el system. And he was going to rescue his friend.
Halpas walked him around some more of the ship’s controls, quizzing him, pointing out subtle nuances he could remember from the sensor arrays. A few minutes later, Lenaris looked up as Taryl joined them in the cockpit, her expression bright and slightly anxious.
“The warp reactor is online!” she said. “Tiven said it was barely damaged at all-the biggest problems were the antigrav and the thrusters, but he thinks he’s fixed those well enough for a decent takeoff.”
“A takeoff!” Lenaris exclaimed. “I had no idea we’d be there already. We need to get a better idea of how we’re going to mask this thing’s signature before we can even think about it, or else-“
“Or else we just go for it,” Halpas said.
Lenaris looked at the old man, expecting him to be either joking or ranting on one of his notoriously reckless plans-like the Valerian freighter, only this time, with him aboard instead of Darin. “If we do that, they’ll target us before we’re even out of the atmosphere,” he said.
Halpas laughed. “You’re thinking in terms of how a raider flies,” he told the younger man. “A ship like this can break through the atmosphere in the time it takes a raider to power up its thrusters. We’ll be halfway to Jeraddo before the spoonheads have even noticed us. And by then-“
“But once they have noticed us, we’re as good as dead,” Lenaris argued. “Their ships could outrun this thing even if it was operating at full capacity, brand-new. The trick is to stay beneath their notice.”
Halpas shook his head. “We’ll lose them,” he told Lenaris. “You just leave that to me.” He turned to Taryl. “So, just how many of these balon ships do you folks have?”
Taryl frowned. “Seefa took one, and then the other three who left must have taken at least two… we’ve got about twenty of them now.”
“Twenty! We won’t be needing quite that many. Let’s get back to the village and bring a few of them here… and while we’re at it, I suggest we find some more volunteers. I’m not sure the four of us are up to storming a Cardassian prison camp on our own, no matter how remote the location.”
Aro Seefa had successfully hidden the raider in one of the old drainage conduits, organized a modest food supply for himself, and made his bed. He’d slept, and woken with no idea of what to do next. The concept of leisure time was not one with which he was intimately familiar. In his experience, when there wasn’t something to be fixed or retrieved or altered or built, you slept or ate. And neither of those options was feasible when his stomach was so twisted, knotted with a growing certainty that he’d done the wrong thing, leaving the Ornathias.
Seefa had explored these drainage tunnels and ditches many times when he was young, though his aunt and uncle, who had raised him after the death of his parents, had repeatedly warned him not to. The tunnels were ancient, whole sections caving each spring, and they still flooded in the rainy season. But they ran throughout the farms and vineyards of the Tilar peninsula, holding endless fascination for most of the children that had grown up here. Seefa’s guardians had so many other children to look after-in all, they’d taken in fourteen occupation orphans who’d needed a home-Seefa had managed to explore the tunnels regularly, often using them to return to his family’s lands, where he would hide in the shadows and daydream about being grown and in the resistance, dealing out harsh justice to the Cardassians.
Seefa’s biological parents had been among the first Tilari casualties of the occupation. The Cardassians had announced that they would seize the Aro lands when Seefa was just a small boy. Like many of those farmers who couldn’t conceive of leaving their land, his parents had refused to relocate, expecting the Cardassians to eventually give up and leave them alone. But of course, it had not worked like that.
Seefa’s uncle and aunt, his mother’s brother and his wife, lived on one of the farms that the Cardassians had ignored-an unremarkable katterpod field, adjacent to the Ornathias’ portion of the vineyards, neither of which held much interest for the Cardassians. But the hilly, picturesque tessipates of the Aro family’s famous coastal vineyards-which had been in Seefa’s family for centuries-had been significantly more attractive to Bajor’s occupiers. The climate, right on the water, was well suited to their physiology-the winters mild, the summers hot-and they had promptly claimed it for themselves, turning Seefa’s childhood home into a Cardassian tourist attraction. Numerous resistance attacks over the years had made it less attractive, however, and the place was usually abandoned but for the handful of Bajoran collaborators the Cardassians had hired to keep it up.
His aunt and uncle had finally been relocated to one of the camps-for their own safety, according to the local Cardassian-kept magistrate-and the Ornathias had mostly managed to keep out of sight, moving to the far edge of their old lands. Many of the smaller farms had been allowed to continue-the Cardassians needed someone to refill their bread baskets-but they had refused to give up their stolen prize.
To be so near his family’s rightful portion of the vineyards made Seefa’s heart burn. He could smell the sea on the breezes that passed through the tunnels; a few moments’ walk would take him to the ruins of the home where he’d once lived with his family. It was painful to be here. And yet, this was his home. This was the place he hoped to return to with his own family, where he and Taryl would raise their children, where they would someday die and be buried.
Taryl. She still had not come, though he was sure that she would know to look for him here. They had both played in the tunnels as children, had used them as adults to evade capture, more than once. He was left to assume that she was too busy trying to fix that useless carrier to be concerned with his whereabouts-assuming she even made it back from the trip with Lenaris…
Seefa felt his stomach knot tighter. He didn’t like not knowing where she was, what she was doing. If anything happened to Taryl while he was just sitting here, he would never forgive himself.
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.
Chapter 9
Opaka 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’jarras 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.