And how deadly it could be even now.
The three friends looked at the camp and then ducked back down behind the protecting boulders. “Do you think your doctor is in there?” asked Sesana. She looked strained and frightened.
“I don’t know,” Jake admitted. “But if that’s where Tikar Antol went, then the chances are that Dr. Bashir is there, too.”
“What do we do now?” Nog asked. “There are only three of us. We can’t just go charging into there. They’d grab us at once.”
“Sesana bit her lip. “There’s only one way,” she said. “Maybe I can slip into the camp.”
“No!” Jake said, almost forgetting to whisper. “You’re crazy. You couldn’t possibly get away with it.”
“Why not?”
Jake shifted his weight uncomfortably. He felt like a lizard on the face of the jumbled boulders. “Well, you’re too young,” he muttered. “And you don’t have any training for this kind of thing. And you’re a—well, you’re just a girl.”
Sesana glared at him. “My mother was no older than I when she slit the throat of a Cardassian executioner,” she said. “And she was just a girl, too, or so they thought.”
“Still,” Jake said. “There must be another way.”
Sesana shook her head. “No. Don’t you see, Jake? I am the only one of us who could possibly get inside the camp and hope to be unnoticed. I may be a girl, and I may be young, but I am also something else.”
“What is that?” Nog asked.
“I am a Bajoran,” Sesana said simply. “And you, Nog, have told us that the Turnaways are taking in Bajoran recruits. I do not think they have any Ferengi or humans among their number. So it has to be me.”
“I don’t like it,” Jake said.
Sesana smiled bitterly. “Do you think I like it? Still, it is our only chance. If only we can spot a time when I can make it in.”
They hid themselves there for a long time. Bajor’s seasons, like those of Earth, affected the length of the day. It was summer now in this part of Bajor, and the days were very long. But late that afternoon, the chance finally came. Nog heard the approach of another group, and as he listened, he told the others that these, too, were new recruits.
They hid close to the path. Soon the newcomers came into sight. It was a group of sixteen Bajorans—only one Turnaway leader, Nog had told them, which was fortunate for them, and fifteen brand-new recruits, both men and women. All were dressed in the ordinary Bajoran style, so Sesana wouldn’t stand out among them. The group came past their hiding place, and Sesana slipped away. She fell into step at the rear, and none of the Bajorans, still hot and exhausted from their climb down the ravine, noticed her. By the time the recruits passed through the narrow opening between the rockslides, Jake could no longer tell Sesana apart from the others. He hoped her cover would hold.
“Now what?” Nog asked.
“You heard the plan,” Jake said. They had worked it out during the long hours of waiting. Sesana would go into the camp, find out what she could about any prisoners—particularly any human prisoners—and would try to make her way back out after nightfall. The boys were to wait for her here, and if she did not return by dawn, they were to go back to town and spread the alarm.
Nog shook his head. “I think we have made a mistake,” he told Jake.
“Yeah,” agreed Jake. “I feel bad about letting her go in there all alone.”
“I know what you mean,” Nog said. “I should have offered to hold her anthrolite necklace for her.”
Jake scowled at Nog.
Nog shifted uncomfortably under Jake’s frown. “Well,” he said defensively, “I only mean that if she doesn’t come back again, that would be something that would bring a little profit.”
With a sigh Jake said, “Nog, we are going to take shifts keeping watch. I will take the first one. You rest until I ask you to replace me. And then you will watch. And until Sesana gets safely back, I don’t want to hear another word about profits. If I do, then I’ll do something nasty to you.”
“You wouldn’t hit me,” Nog said. “I’m your friend.”
“I wouldn’t hit you,” Jake agreed. “No, I’d just tell your father that you gave me a present. For free.”
Nog gasped. “You wouldn’t!”
“Don’t try me,” Jake said. “settle down now. I’ve got the first watch.”
Nog tried to make himself as comfortable as possible, sitting with his back against a boulder. Jake climbed a little higher, concealing himself between two huge rocks. He could just see the camp from here. The recruits had passed under the cloaking effect. They were just a small group of figures now, impossible to tell apart from the many others. But somewhere in there was Sesana, and Jake hoped that she would come back again safe and sound. If not—
Well, if not, Jake had no idea what to do next.
CHAPTER 7
That afternoon Jake saw lots of activity from his vantage point. A squad of Bajorans came out of the cloaked compound and onto a round, sandy level spot on the far side of the Rip. Jake thought that once, before the rockslides had choked the canyon, the sandy spot probably had been a seasonal pool, like the ones they had seen earlier.
Jake had been studying the landscape, and he had concluded that the Turnaways had done some clever engineering. During the rainy season, torrents of water would come pouring down the Rip. The rockslides would hold some of it back. They made a partial dam that would look natural from the air, as if part of the ravine walls had simply collapsed. But the Turnaways must have triggered the slides, because they served another purpose.
They would direct the floods of water to the deep channel cut through the Turnaway camp. Jake could imagine the canyon in flood season, with foaming brown water pouring through the narrow opening between the rockslides. From there the water would gush into the artificial channel, and then the center of the camp would have a sort of canal through it. At the lower end presumably the canal opened out again into the ravine. All this would help the Turnaways. After all, an enemy might reason, it would be impossible to establish a permanent camp in the path of an annual flood.
Now Jake wished he had a pair of binoculars. He could see the distant Bajorans on the sandy, round field going through some kind of exercises. He guessed they were learning personal combat skills, but he was too far away to see any details. A smaller group some distance from the first was obviously undergoing target practice. Jake saw the beams of phaser fire and the puffs of vapor where they struck the cliff side, where targets must have been set up. It was just too far for him to see anything clearly, though.
Suddenly someone laid a hand on Jake’s shoulder. He jerked with alarm—and then he saw it was only Nog. “You scared me half to death!” Jake whispered. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Nog said, grinning with his sharp teeth. “I got bored, that’s all. What’s going on?”
Jake nodded across the ravine. “Practice, looks like. Can you hear anything?”
Nog listened for a few moments. “Too far even for me,” he said. “All I can hear are some shouts of encouragement from the wrestlers, and the sizzling sound of the phasers when they hit the rock.”
“I guess you can’t tell if Sesana is in either group,” Jake said, feeling disappointed.
“Sorry,” Nog replied. He slipped down the slope and stretched his arms and legs. “You know, what I can’t figure out is why the Turnaways would want Dr. Bashir in the first place.”
“Huh?” Jake asked.
“Think about it,” Nog insisted. “They don’t want what’s-his-name, Carik, to be a Vedek. All right, that’s their privilege. I mean, the Federation never interferes in the politics of a planet anyway, as long as they’re local and don’t threaten other planets. So even if old Tikar wants to kill Carik before this Vedek ceremony, that’s a local concern. What are they going to do with Dr. Bashir—have him take on Carik as a patient and treat him to death?”
Jake turned that over in his mind. He had
been so worried about Dr. Bashir’s safety that he had not even asked himself the questions that Nog was raising, but his friend had a point. Although Bashir had concealed his true identity from Tikar, the Turnaway leader had to know that his captive was human. In this sector, that meant he must come from Deep Space Nine. Surely Tikar Antol must know that he had no need for a Starfleet hostage. Even if Tikar succeeded in assassinating a local religious leader, Starfleet could do nothing—not unless the Bajoran Council formally requested aid. And that was something the disorganized, squabbling council would not do. It made very little sense.
Jake said slowly, “Maybe they want Dr. Bashir for something else. Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with the Vedek at all.”
“Maybe,” suggested Nog with a yawn. “Maybe Tikar’s going into the spy business, and he needs the Space Falcon to show him the ropes.”
Jake shook his head. “That doesn’t seem funny anymore, Nog.”
“Humor,” said Nog, “is a matter of opinion.”
They had nothing to do but wait, and waiting was hard. Nog took over from Jake at twilight, and Jake tried to rest. He had no chance of going to sleep, of course, but his legs ached from the long trek down into the ravine, and he wanted the chance just to close his eyes for a few minutes. He quickly discovered that getting comfortable was impossible. The boulders were jagged and rough, and no matter how he leaned, a sharp little piece was sure to stick him in the back. He could not lie down on the sand, because there simply wasn’t enough sand here in their hiding place. He didn’t dare move away from the spot, either, because Sesana was returning here. Besides, in the gathering dusk he was uncomfortably certain that he would get lost in no time.
So he just sat there, shifting his weight and feeling miserable. Overhead the sky grew dark, and a few stars appeared. Looking up at them, Jake reflected that living out there, in space, was not so bad after all. Maybe Deep Space Nine could be dull at times, but his room was always comfortable, at least. And there his father, the big, reliable Commander Sisko, was in charge, and Jake didn’t have all the worry and concern of trying to keep track of the wayward Dr. Bashir. It was strange, though, sitting here on a planet and wishing he were back on the station. Only a day earlier he had been on the station wishing he were on the planet. Jake sighed. Life just wasn’t fair, and that was all there was to it.
“Sst!” hissed Nog from up above. “Someone’s coming!”
Jake sprang up and tensed his muscles. “Where?” he whispered.
“Coming through the path between the rockslides,” Nog replied. “Running.” After a moment Nog spoke again, sounding relieved. “It’s okay. It’s just Sesana.”
Jake had been holding his breath. He let it out in a long sigh of relief. He expected her right away, but it was five more minutes before she came close enough for him to hear, and another minute before he saw her, a dark shape moving through the night. She came straight to them. “We have to move,” she said. “They have a tracking field inside the compound, and I may have tripped it when I left. Follow me!”
Running after her was a nightmare for Jake. He stumbled, tripped, and stubbed his toes about a dozen times. They retreated to a place a kilometer or so up the canyon. Then Sesana asked Nog to listen for pursuit. “Nothing,” the Ferengi boy reported after a few seconds. “I hope you brought us some food. I’m starving!”
To Jake’s surprise, Sesana had brought them food, some hard-packed fruit bread. The taste was sweet and tangy, and a little of it filled Jake up. They swallowed water to wash it down. “Good,” Nog said. “What was that?”
“It’s ration bread,” Sesana told him. “Lots of calories, lots of energy. I have enough for one more meal for us all. But listen! I found out about Dr. Bashir.”
“You did?” Jake asked. He had been feeling tired before Sesana showed up, but now he was ready for action. “What about him?”
“He’s in the camp, all right,” Sesana said. “There’s a stone hut back from the other buildings, up near the fuel tanks. That’s where they’re keeping him.” She lowered her voice and went on: “Everything is all confused in the camp. It turns out that Tikar Antol is in trouble. He has lost lots of his followers, and lots of the others want to leave the band now that the Cardassians have gone away. He’s using this business of the new Vedek to draw more people in. That is lucky for us. I’d guess more than half the camp is made up of new recruits who don’t know the rules yet, so it was easy for me to slip around.”
“Yes, but what about Dr. Bashir?” demanded Jake impatiently.
“I’m coming to that,” Sesana returned. “You have to understand a few things to begin with. First, Tikar plans to assassinate Carik Madal—but after Carik is named Vedek, not before. He was terribly angry when he found out a young hothead had already made an attempt on Carik’s life. I think he’s ordered that the young man be killed.”
“What?” Nog asked. “When they both want the same thing?”
Jake said nothing. He remembered the grandfatherly Carik Madal leaning over the young man and saying, “I forgive you.” He reflected that Bajorans were complicated people. On one side, you had the old man who could forgive his attacker. On the other, you had Tikar Antol, who could kill a man just as an example to others.
Sesana was talking: “They don’t really want the same thing,” she was saying to Nog. “The assassin was just someone who was disappointed in the choice of Carik Madal. He wanted his own candidate to be named Vedek and to sit on the Council. But Tikar wants Carik dead just as a stepping stone to more power. He wants to control the Council himself. He wants to run all of Bajor.”
“What about Dr. Bashir?” Jake urged again.
“I’m coming to that,” insisted Sesana. “I heard some guards talking about him. I gather from what they said that someone at the landing field is a Turnaway spy. He reported that Dr. Bashir was on his way the moment he left the space station. The Turnaways knew from the beginning who Dr. Bashir was and that he came from Deep Space Nine. That is why they need him, but the doctor is not cooperating. Tikar is very angry. He tried to bully Dr. Bashir into taking a delegation of Turnaways up to Deep Space Nine, but Dr. Bashir refused. So now Tikar has sent for his own doctor, a Bajoran Turnaway who specialized in torture back during the Cardassian occupation.”
“T-torture?” croaked Nog.
Jake felt cold. “What are they going to do to him?” he asked.
After a moment of silence Sesana said, “I’m not sure. I think they are going to drug him and then let him fly his shuttle back to Deep Space Nine. Do either of you know what a vandellium device is?”
“No,” Nog said.
But Jake knew. Suddenly he felt not only cold, but chilled to the bone. “It’s an outlawed device of war,” he said, his voice shaking. “It isn’t an ordinary bomb. It explodes without any real destructive force. You could probably sit in a chair beside one when it went off, and the explosion would barely be great enough to knock the chair over.”
“Then why do you sound so scared?” Nog asked, his own voice getting edgy.
“Because it destroys living tissue,” Jake said. “Think of a phaser set on highest power. When it hits a target, the target vanishes. The molecules just fly apart. Well, a vandellium bomb is like that, but all that flies apart is living tissue—flesh and bone and blood. Even a small vandellium bomb could destroy every living person within a five-kilometer area. They would all vanish in puffs of steam, along with all the animals and plants in the area.”
“They’re going to fly one of those up to Deep Space Nine,” Sesana said.
Jake closed his eyes. He could feel his heart pounding. He imagined the Einstein docking at Deep Space Nine. Before Dr. Bashir could even go through the airlock, a small hidden bomb would explode with hardly a noise. But Dr. Bashir would vanish—and Jadzia Dax, Keiko and Miles O’Brien, Quark, Major Kira, his own father if he had returned by then, and more than three hundred people aboard Deep Space Nine. Just momentary puffs of steam, and they
would be gone. Then Deep Space Nine, intact and undamaged, would wait for the first to claim it. Jake had a feeling he knew who that first person would be.
Tikar Antol.
Haltingly, stammering a little, Jake tried to explain to the others just what a vandellium bomb could do to Deep Space Nine. “They need Dr. Bashir,” he finished. “The shuttle security interlocks will only accept his ID patterns. And since he is expected, I don’t think anyone on Deep Space Nine would give the shuttle a thorough scan before he docks.”
“No,” agreed Nog. “They can’t. I overrode the circuits, remember? That’s how we were going to get back undetected.”
Jake almost groaned aloud. It wasn’t just one Bajoran religious leader whose life was in peril. Everyone on Deep Space Nine was in danger. The three of them had to find some way to stop Tikar’s plan.
But what could three kids do against Tikar Antol’s army?
Jake did not know. Grimly, though, he realized that they would have to try.
CHAPTER 8
Jake studied the sketch that Sesana had drawn in the sand. “The prison hut is here,” she said, touching a big square with the tip of the rock she had used to mark the diagram. “There are two guards at the door. No windows.”
Jake took a deep breath. The prison hut lay on the far side of the ravine, halfway up a gentle slope. Behind the hut were a couple of fuel tanks, and behind them was the sheer cliff face. There would be nowhere to hide once anyone got well inside the camp—and to get to the hut, the person would have to go right through the camp. It looked hopeless. Reluctantly Jake said, “I think we will have to ask for help, after all.”
“Good!” Nog stood up and brushed the sand off his trousers. “Let’s get started right away, and—”
“Not us, Nog,” Jake said. He turned to Sesana. “You’ll have to go back to town. Tell your father what’s happening out here, and get him to notify the authorities. Maybe some of the monks will help—after all, Tikar is trying to assassinate the new Vedek, and—”
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Young Adult Books #2: Stowaways Page 6
