“It’s true. Tain has considered the situation carefully, and decided that you have become more of a risk than an asset. Your mission is officially over.”
“But… Dukat! He knows I am here, you must speak to him regarding these new policies of his. I know he does not mean to put me in harm’s way-“
The agent laughed. “Dukat! Tain has no business with that fool they call the prefect. Oh, Pasir. You have been alone here for too long. It’s a shame I don’t have time to explain it all to you. It’s rather a good story, actually.”
Pasir began to feel desperate, taking a step toward the man. “Have you come to take me home, then?”
The man smiled. “I’m afraid not, my friend.”
“Friend?” Pasir spat. “You are no friend of mine. If this isn’t an extraction…”
It was quite before Pasir knew what was happening that the other man had moved so near to him, so near that a Cardassian phaser-those used by the Order, set to disintegrate-could effectively do its job. He had time to register disbelief, but that was all.
The agent stepped away and holstered his weapon. Pity, to destroy such a miracle of medicine. He’d heard that the process was considered something of an art. He let himself out of the cottage and headed back toward his skimmer without another thought, making so little noise as he moved that he might as well have been floating.
Chapter 13
Lenaris woke up early the next morning, his body protesting against the effects of the night spent sleeping on the ground. Even after all the years spent in the resistance, he had never gottten especially used to sleeping out in the open.
He rolled up his things and observed the sky in the not-quite dawn, the stars still visible in the pale sky. Terok Nor winked as if it were chiding him, and he looked back down at the ground, feeling the impact of all that had happened.
He had been right about the Valerian freighter, but he had been wrong about this. The Pullock V raid had been a disaster, and now the cell had broken apart. Lenaris didn’t know when he’d felt so thoroughly despondent; it had been bad after he’d left the Halpas cell, but this was different. This was worse.
The others were waking as well, but as he wandered the vicinity of the mostly empty field in front of him, he realized that Taryl was nowhere to be found. After circling the area in a panic and questioning the others, he ran back toward the village, calling her name the whole time.
The village was deserted. It had always been rough, but without any people in it-chattering, eating, working, or even sleeping-it looked positively eerie. “Taryl?” Lenaris called. “Are you here? Please, answer me!” He thought he saw a light on in her cottage, but maybe it was just wishful thinking. He headed for the little house, and drew back the door.
She was there, sitting at the corner worktable with a single light burning above her, her shoulders hunched. Lenaris thought she was crying, and took an uncertain step toward her. But when she turned, he saw with momentary shock that she was not crying at all-in fact, she was smiling.
“Holem!” she exclaimed, leaping to her feet. “I have to show you what I found!”
She gestured to the table, where a rudimentary com-link was set up on a tiny viewscreen. Taryl had been sifting through Cardassian comm traffic. Lenaris sat down and perused the small screen with the improvised keypad, using a clumsy translation program so that he could read the Cardassian characters. It was difficult to make out, but from what he could gather, the Cardassian comnet had run a story about Pullock V-but this was no ordinary Cardassian newsfeed, churning out propaganda about manufactured Cardassian victories. The casualties, the damage to the facility-it was all here, in plain language-at least as plain as could be interpreted by Taryl’s translation software.
“Why… would they do this?” he wondered.
“I don’t know!” Taryl said, delighted. “But I’ve already copied it and posted it on a buried channel of the Bajoran ‘net where the Cardies can’t delete it! Do you see, Holem? We’ll be heroes!” She giggled, and then sniffed. Through her jubilance, she had still been crying intermittently, that much was plain by the pink blotches underneath her eyes.
“This is great!” Lenaris said. “If other Bajorans know that we staged an attack offworld-“
“A successful attack,” Taryl added.
“It could help to fuel the resistance all over the planet!”
Taryl laughed again, wiping new tears away.
Lenaris kept reading past the point that Taryl had highlighted, and then he came to a part that he knew she was not going to react to quite so triumphantly. “Taryl,” he said carefully. “Have you read this entire thing?”
She shook her head. “No, just the first part-it told me all I needed to know. I was looking for the article Harta was talking about, the one about Lac, and I found this.”
“There’s more to it,” Lenaris said. “I think…” He pointed to the screen. She leaned over him to read it.
A Bajoran man apprehended two Cardassian women in a drainage ditch outside the vineyards in Tilar province. The women, including this reporter, were safely recovered, but the Bajoran did not survive.
“Oh,” Taryl said, her smile disappearing. Lenaris quickly stood, helping her back into her seat. She sat down hard, her expression fixed, unseeing, as more tears coursed down her face.
“Taryl,” he said softly. “It’s okay… it will be all right… but-we have to go, Taryl. We can’t stay here.”
It took her a few moments before she seemed to hear him. “You’re right,” she said faintly, wiping her eyes and doing her best to pull herself together, though it was clearly an effort. “We have to go. Let’s tell the others about this story. Maybe they won’t feel quite so eager to just forget about the cell once they hear it.”
Lenaris nodded, for he was hoping much the same thing. News that the Cardassians had actually taken significant losses from the attack did not make up for Lac’s death, or that of the others-nothing would. But it was still a victory, and this article would make it a symbolic one. Hopefully, it could at least inspire what was left of the Ornathia cell into continuing to fight.
Lenaris watched her as she gathered a few things, and the two left the village behind them. He felt a combination of raw, palpable emotions as they left, not knowing where they would go, not knowing how they would get there. But as she turned to smile weakly at him, as if to convince him that she would eventually be all right, he knew it didn’t matter, not now-for he would be going there with Taryl.
Dukat’s back was to the door when Damar entered his office, and the sight of the turned chair made the gil’s heart sink. He knew that Dukat was disappointed in him.
“You asked to see me, sir?” Damar finally spoke, beginning to wonder if the prefect even knew he had entered the room.
Dukat’s chair turned around very slowly, and Damar winced internally at his expression. His head was tipped down, his mouth pulled tight. But he did not look angry, exactly. No, he looked… sad. And Damar realized that he had done more damage to the relationship than he had thought.
“Hello, Gil Damar,” Dukat said. “How is your betrothed?”
Damar felt a tremendous crushing weight at the words, and he wondered if Dukat was deliberately trying to hurt him. “Our enjoinment… has been canceled,” he said tightly. The burden of what he had just said was a miserable one, and he struggled to keep his composure.
“Ah,” Dukat said. “So. You felt it necessary to work out the details of the transaction in person, on the planet.”
“Yes,” Damar said. “I wanted to be there when she woke up. I did not want her to learn the news from anyone else.” As he said it, he felt a small surge of confidence, at least for his relationship with Dukat, for it had not been an unreasonable motive, and he felt sure that Dukat would recognize it as such.
“Indeed,” Dukat said. “Personal matters can be so… complicated.” He spread his hands. “It’s a pity it had to occur when there was so much chaos going on here at the station. I suppose I hadn’t realized just how much I’d come to rely on you.”
Damar bowed his head and murmured an acknowledgment to the compliment.
“Unfortunately, it seems my superiors have other plans for you, Gil Damar. They are reassigning a number of my personnel to the border conflict. It seems there’s been something of an outcry within the hierarchy, from a story posted by that woman you saved, the other one. I am afraid you have been selected.”
“But-” Damar protested. “If it’s all the same to you… I prefer to remain on Terok Nor. Even on the surface, if I’m needed there. Please understand, Gul Dukat, it was only the most desperate of circumstances that-“
“I assure you, Gil Damar, this was not my decision. I would prefer to have you remain here as well. But the changes are made. You will be leaving the station within the next three days.”
“Yes, sir,” Damar said miserably. He knew that Dukat had the power to override the transfer but had deliberately chosen not to, and he could not deny that it stung. Aside from the personal affront, he did not want to go to the border colonies. That he had ever been so foolish to think that diplomacy could solve the problems on Bajor! He wanted, he needed to stay here, to fight the insurgents. To kill them, if need be, for the expression that had been on Veja’s face when he had told her what had been done to her. To us. He knew that the memory would haunt him, that he would never forget it. Not if he lived to be two hundred.
Cold and dead inside, he bowed again to the prefect and turned to leave.
“And… Damar?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Thank you for your service here. I shall… miss your companionship.”
A sudden great sorrow blossomed in the emptiness, that he would likely never see Dukat again. “And I shall miss yours,” he said, and meant it.
He turned and left the room as quickly as he could, struggling to hide his expression from anyone he might encounter in ops. He needed to go about gathering up his things. And there would be just a little time left to say good-bye to Veja, probably forever.
“Miss Lang, you realize I could put out an immediate order for your arrest. Your actions translate to no less than treason!”
Natima felt sure that Dalak was exaggerating, as he was wont to do. Though of course she was in trouble with Central Command, the offending report had been removed from the comnet before anyone on Cardassia Prime probably even saw it. The story had remained on the Bajoran net for significantly longer, but that didn’t matter much-everyone here, Cardassian and Bajoran, already knew the truth anyway. For the most part.
“What would possess you to even write such a thing, let alone fail to censor it? This is so unlike you, Miss Lang. I am practically speechless.”
How Natima wished the latter part was true! “You have my deepest apologies, Mister Dalak. I suppose I am just not myself after the ordeal I was put through over the weekend. I honestly can’t tell you what came over me. I was feeling so much anguish over Veja’s condition, and the stress of being in that tunnel-“
“Of course, Miss Lang, I do sympathize.” Dalak softened his tone somewhat. “Perhaps it was unreasonable of me to put you to your deadlines without giving you sufficient time to recover.”
“I would never suggest-“
“No, no, Miss Lang, I insist. You must take an extra day for yourself.”
“An extra day. You are too kind, Mister Dalak. But what I really want to request from you is a new assignment. After all that I have seen and done on this world, I am eager to leave it.”
Dalak’s moon face managed to look impatient and surprised, at once. “A new assignment! Miss Lang, you and Veja begged for the positions on Bajor. You may have forgotten, but I was very, very reluctant to assign females to such a dangerous place.”
“That’s right, you were. And now I believe I have had my fill of what Bajor has to offer. It seems you may have been right, Mister Dalak.” It galled her to say it, but she was really and truly through with Bajor. The temporary madness that had urged her to write that story, to imperil her career-worse, perhaps, to make herself known to those in power as some sort of dissident… She would cheerfully go back to reporting on petty crimes and the latest military promotions. She could live for a thousand years without ever seeing another speck of red Bajoran dirt and be perfectly content.
“Fine, Miss Lang. I will see what I can do. But I have to warn you, I can’t promise that you won’t ever be sent back to Bajor after this. I need people with experience there. You were the best censor I ever had-before this slipup.”
“Thank you, Mister Dalak.” Natima didn’t believe his threat for a minute. She’d made him look bad; he would never send her back here. No, she had seen the last of this place-that much was certain. And she couldn’t be happier about it.
“Glinn Sa’kat,” Astraea said timidly, as she labored to keep up with the quick cadence of the man’s footfalls, “where are we going?”
They were walking toward the periphery of the city, through the warehouse district, back toward the Paldar sector, where Miras had once lived.
“You will find out when we get there,” the soldier told her.
“Am I in trouble? I told you, my name is Miras Vara. I… misfiled an object at the Ministry of Science. I am a criminal, a fugitive. Aren’t you going to arrest me?”
Sa’kat turned to her. “No,” he said. “I will not be arresting you-Astraea.”
She was confused. “But-we can’t go back to Paldar. I’ll be-Why am I not under arrest? I don’t understand any of this!”
“No,” Sa’kat said, “I imagine you don’t. You probably knew little or nothing about Oralius when you began having your dreams, am I correct?”
“That’s right,” she said, and the mention of the name Oralius confirmed to her what she had begun to understand-that this man was somehow connected to her dreams, to the Hebitian woman, the mask and the book.
“It is not an accident that we have met.”
His proclamation did nothing to clarify her confusion. “Are you… are you taking me to the book?”
“You’ll find out when we get there,” he said again, and she was surprised to see that he was smiling.
“Glinn Sa’kat,” she said carefully, “are you an Oralian? Is that what this is about?”
He walked a little slower, seeming to consider. “You know, I suppose I never considered myself to be an Oralian. There are no more Oralians, not really.”
They came upon an old sidewalk, out of the city’s edge and back to where she could set her feet on syncrete again. The hard surface, while somewhat punishing to the soles of her feet, was a relief to her ankles after walking in the unsturdy gravel and sand. They’d reached the dead industrial zone, haunted by shadows and hot, dry winds.
Sa’kat went on. “The last people to walk the Way disappeared many years ago. Central Command tried to round them up and exterminate them, ship them to Bajor and the surrounding colonies, where they were never heard from again. But they didn’t get everyone. There were still a few left behind. They weren’t killed, they simply… went underground. And then they stopped practicing altogether.”
“And you-you were one of those?” It surprised her, since he appeared to be so young-not much older than she was, by her estimation, though it was not always easy to tell with soldiers. Something in their hardened expressions seemed to make them ageless.
Sa’kat shook his head. “No,” he said. “I was not. But my parents were.”
Ah. “The Way is not dead, only…”
“Only sleeping,” he finished. “Waiting. Waiting for you.” He began to walk quickly again, and she scrambled to keep up.
“But why me?” she protested. “As you say, I knew nothing of Oralius when I began to have those dreams, when I saw the woman by the creek. She showed me a mask! She said her name was Astraea-“
Sa’kat stopped walking. “You saw her?”
“Yes. Who… who is she?”
“She is-or was-a guide, for Oralius.”
Miras shook her head, still not understanding. “Oralius, who was he? Why did people follow him?”
“Not him,” Sa’kat corrected her. “Oralius, though She has no corporeal form, is usually referred to in the feminine, at least in the sect favored by my parents.”
“No corporeal form? Like a… a ghost?”
Sa’kat laughed. “A ghost, a spirit, if you like. She follows no linear time, and She does not inhabit a body, like you or I. She is always with us, but She needs a guide, a spiritual vessel, to channel Her. We have been without a guide for nearly a century. After the death of the last guide, it was written that Her Way would collapse, until the emergence of the next guide.”
“The next guide,” Miras repeated. She was beginning to understand now. She was beginning to understand that Sa’kat believed she was that guide. Although she was not certain if she believed it herself.
“How can you be so sure that this is-“
“I can’t be sure,” he said, cutting her off. He resumed walking. “Nobody can be sure of anything, can they? But there are those things that we believe strongly enough, that we would be willing to take serious risk for them. That is the definition of faith, Astraea.”
“Faith,” she echoed, quite without realizing that she had spoken it aloud.
They had passed through the rusting dead zone and were beginning to come into the portion of the city that was inhabited. There were a few pedestrians milling around up ahead of them on the sidewalk, along with the occasional soldier, dressed identically to Sa’kat, patrolling the sector.
His voice dropped to a confidential tone. “I will tell you more of this when we arrive. You will be safe there. I have many contacts, in all facets of society, who will do whatever it takes to keep you from harm’s reach.”
Miras was overwhelmed. “And you will show me the book?”
“Yes,” he said. “It is almost time to begin.”
He smiled at her then, and she saw powerful feelings in his gaze: awe and fear, amusement, and a shining brightness that she could not name.
“It is time for us to be reborn,” he said, and for the first time since she’d dreamed of the Hebitian woman, since her life had effectively been hijacked by the Orb, she felt as if things might work out, after all.
Chapter 14