Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - 057 - Fearful Symmetry

by Olivia Woods

  Looking like a Bajoran, Kira remembered.

  “Kira, what is this all about?” Shing-kur asked. “Why are you so interested in-“

  An alarm tone rang through the operations center. “Warning,” the computer said. “Multiple unauthorized transport signals detected.”

  The air shimmered across the room as three uniformed aliens beamed into ops, brandishing bulky, blunt-ended energy rifles. “Get down,” Kira shouted, pulling Rokai down behind the console with her. The others dove for cover as well, but Zhag wasn’t fast enough, and fell victim to a pale violet bolt of energy that burned a hole into his broad chest, killing him instantly. Telal and Shing-kur returned fire from one end of the communications console, while Kira attempted to create a crossfire from the other end.

  That was when she got her first good look at the invaders: tall, somewhat reptilian-looking with bumpy gray skin and short, bonelike growths studding their jawlines and the sides of their heads. She failed utterly to hit them. “Who are they?” she hissed.

  “Jem’Hadar,” Rokai told her. “Soldiers of the Dominion, engineered to kill. You have to keep firing. If you let up, if they’re allowed time to concentrate, they’ll turn invisible.”

  You have got to be kidding me! Kira continued firing, sending up sprays of sparks whenever her blasts struck consoles or machinery banks. The Jem’Hadar shot back, but were diving for cover now behind an engineering control station, near the ops center exit, effectively cutting off any means of escape. If Rokai was correct, that was something Kira couldn’t permit. She eyed her disruptor pistol, and an idea formed.

  “Keep firing!” she told the others. “I need a few seconds.” As her allies kept up the assault. Kira released her weapon’s maintenance lock and pulled the back half of the pistol apart, revealing the isotolinium power cell within. Using her fingers, she started manipulating the components surrounding the cell, rearranging the three key contacts responsible for generating the forcefield that protected the charged liquid ampoule against accidentally releasing its stored energy in a single unregulated burst.

  Energy flow regulator, micro-forcefield inductors, coolant module…

  Rokai watched her as she worked. He looked…fascinated? She ignored him and completed the task at hand. Of course, for her plan to work, she needed to be able to set the charge off from a distance; just tossing it like a grenade wouldn’t be enough. She looked at her two remaining allies, realizing she didn’t know if either of them could shoot worth a damn. “Listen to me,” she told them over the weapons fire, knowing they couldn’t avert their eyes from the Jem’Hadar. “I’m gonna throw my weapon across the room. One of you needs to shoot it wherever it lands. Do you understand?”

  Shing-kur, crouching nearest to Kira, nodded. “Telal, you take it.”

  A pale violet bolt fried the control panel near Telal’s head. He fired back, telling Kira, “Whatever you’re going to do, just do it!”

  Kira blew out a breath and lobbed the pistol into the air. It clattered on the floor, coming to rest against the base of the engineering console. Shing-kur laid down suppression fire so Telal would be free to take his shot. Kira kept her head down, hoping the communications console they were hiding behind would withstand the blast.

  The Romulan hit his mark. The results were devastating.

  The energy discharge whited out the room, the explosion deafening in its intensity and catastrophic in its power. The ops center shook; floor plating buckled and shrapnel flew. Kira felt the comm console come loose from its bolts and rock once before it settled back down.

  Silence fell. Dust and debris covered everything. Kira tested her extremities, felt herself able to move, and determined that she was uninjured. “Everyone all right?” she asked.

  Rokai was coughing. Shing-kur and Telal stirred where they lay facedown, heads wrapped in their arms. The Kressari rolled over groaning, but claimed she was fine.

  Kira poked her head over the top of the console. The Jem’Hadar’s side of ops was in ruin, the walls and wreckage coated in splashes of amber. Blood, Kira guessed, just before she spotted one of the bodies. Parts of one, anyway.

  She exhaled, looking back down at the others. Telal’s head finally came up, arching an appreciative eyebrow in her direction. “You’re full of surprises, Bajoran,” he said. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

  Kira opened her mouth to answer, but nothing came out. The answer seemed just on the tip of her tongue, and yet it eluded her. Just like before.

  She looked at Rokai, and again he was watching her intently.

  “You,” she snarled. She reached down and dragged him to his feet. “What did you do to me?” she screamed.

  “Nothing,” Rokai said calmly. “All I ever did was take care of you.”

  Kira’s eyes went wide. Her next words came out as a whisper. “You took care of me?” She snatched Shing-kur’s rifle and shoved the emitter against the Cardassian’s chest, gritting her teeth as she held it there, trying to will herself to pull the trigger in spite of her need to keep him alive.

  “Go ahead, shoot me,” Rokai said. “We’re all going to die, anyway. Other Jem’Hadar will be here soon. This is the end, don’t you understand? The Dominion is killing everyone. They’re slaughtering Cardassians by the thousands as punishment for turning against them. That’s why they’re here. I’m already dead, so you may as well get it over with.”

  Kira stared at him, frozen. For years she had thought of Rokai as Dukat’s brutal enforcer, the shadowy, all-controlling master of Letau. Now he was simply a pathetic old man who understood all too well that his days were numbered.

  But there was no way she was going to make it that easy for him.

  Telal stepped forward. “Do it,” he told Kira, and then raised his own weapon. “Or let me.”

  “No,” Kira said finally. “He doesn’t get to decide how this ends.” With one swift move, she swung the butt of Shing-kur’s rifle across Rokai’s face, not hard enough to knock him out, just enough to daze him and to discourage further outbursts. She handed the weapon back to Shing-kur, then recovered Zhag’s rifle for herself. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They encountered two more escaped prisoners on the way back to the hidden lift, both of them heavily armed: One was a hulking, thick-boned Lissepian who introduced himself as Mazagalanthi. His smaller companion, a tan-skinned, white-haired female, was named Fellen Ni-Yaleii, and her people, Kira learned, were called Efrosians. Telal was wary of being joined by more escapees, but Kira believed anyone who had successfully fought their way up from the cell blocks would be an asset to their objective. Shing-kur agreed.

  Unfortunately, the hidden lift wasn’t built to accommodate so many people at once, especially when one of them was a Lissepian. The two newcomers agreed to wait with Telal while Kira went down first with Rokai, accompanied by Shing-kur.

  As their descent began, the Kressari repeated her earlier question. “How long have you been here, Kira?”

  “I stopped counting a long time ago,” Kira said. “Why do you want to know?”

  “From the questions you asked in ops, it’s pretty clear you’ve been here for some time, maybe longer than any of us, and probably in isolation.”

  “You weren’t isolated?”

  “No,” Shing-kur revealed. “Conditions were brutal and security was tight, but small numbers of prisoners were permitted to interact periodically. New arrivals brought news, and we sometimes overheard conversations among the guards. It wasn’t difficult to stay abreast of events in the world outside…but it wasn’t that way for you, was it?”

  Kira didn’t answer. She kept her eyes fixed on the back of Rokai’s head. The lift began to slow down, then came to a stop. The trio stepped out, letting the elevator return topside to retrieve the others.

  Shing-kur took in the security door, then gazed down the dim, debris-strewn corridor. “This is where they kept you?”

  Kira nodded toward the passageway. “My cell is around the bend, where
the corridor ends. It was the only world I knew from the day I got here to the moment the power failed.” She paused, then decided she could put off her next question no longer. “Shing-kur…what year is it?”

  The Kressari hesitated. “I’m afraid I don’t know the Bajoran calendar.”

  “Do you know the Cardassian one?”

  “Yes,” Shing-kur said, and then told Kira what she wanted to know.

  Something inside her collapsed as she absorbed the information. She felt as if her knees might give out at any moment. Her grip on the back of Rokai’s collar tightened as she used him to steady herself.

  “Kira?” Shing-kur said.

  “Fifteen years,” she whispered. “How could it be fifteen years…?”

  Shing-kur’s pupils turned chartreuse. “I never imagined…I’m so sorry.” The Kressari’s glare became white as it focused on Rokai, who had been staring blankly at the security door since they emerged from the lift. “You should kill him now, Kira. He kept you down here all that time. He deserves-“

  “He’ll get exactly what he deserves,” Kira vowed, regaining her composure. “But first he’s going to help me find the one who did this to me.”

  The lift returned, depositing the rest of their group into the corridor, and Kira ordered Rokai to open the security door. The dal leaned into the retinal scanner, and at once the thick portal rose into the ceiling. Lights within came up automatically as Kira crossed the threshold.

  She wanted to laugh. The interior looked like the main room of a lavish Cardassian apartment: extravagant furnishings, artful decor, a sitting area, and a thronelike chair behind a massive desk. A corridor stretching back beyond the desk led to smaller rooms: a luxurious bedchamber with a spacious ‘fresher; a storage room containing equipment and supplies of a medical nature; a pantry full of emergency rations and even exotic liqueurs. Fellen found a small armory containing more than a score of energy weapons, plus plasma grenades, body armor, and survival gear of various kinds. A convicted gunrunner for a group of Federation rebels who called themselves the Maquis, Fellen deemed the arsenal “top-of-the-line equipment.”

  As Kira had suspected, the place was sustained by a dedicated power supply that wasn’t compromised by the damage to the prison’s main energy reactors. An on-site computer system ran the entire operation, everything from life support to transport inhibitors to the forcefields that gave extra protection to the dense outer walls. Rokai had told her the truth when he called this place a bunker; it was nothing less than a secret fortress where Dukat could barricade himself against the universe if he wished, and for a considerable period of time.

  “But why?” Kira asked Rokai while the others busied themselves throughout the bunker. “Why would he need a place like this?”

  The dal didn’t answer immediately; he was gazing almost wistfully at the great black desk. Shing-kur sat there now, hacking into the bunker’s mainframe in order to determine what other resources might be at their disposal in this place. It turned out that the Kressari was quite adept with Cardassian computers-her unusual proficiency, she had explained, was one of the things that had landed her in Letau when she was arrested on suspicion of espionage and conspiracy to commit bioterrorism, four years ago. She didn’t say if the charges were justified.

  Finally Rokai said, “Gul Dukat understood that the universe is capricious, and that one’s fortunes can change quickly, and inevitably will. He was a young man when he first learned that lesson, on Bajor, at the start of the annexation. That particular setback led to his being assigned to Letau as a sort of punishment. But he was convinced he would one day return to grace…and he did, again and again. His fortunes were like a pendulum that builds momentum with every swing: each triumph-and each downfall-greater than the last. He was even leader of Cardassia for a time, did you know that? No, of course you didn’t. But it’s true. He negotiated our entry into the Dominion, and under them he led the Union for almost a year before his fortunes reversed yet again. But no matter what twist of fate he met with, good or bad, he always returned here when he felt the need, to this refuge he created, a place where he could go to renew himself.”

  “Renew himself?” Kira grated. “That’s what you call what he did to me?”

  Rokai looked at her, his eyes narrowing sharply. “You were one of his excesses. I tried to convince him not to keep you. I told him it was too dangerous, that you were too dangerous. He wouldn’t listen…. Kira Nerys always was his blind spot.”

  Before she could respond, a startled sound came from Shing-kur. “What is it?” Kira asked.

  “The Jem’Hadar,” Shing-kur began. “They’re killing everyone.” She transferred the images on her desk monitor to the large holoframe on the opposite end of the room, so everyone could see. The invaders had evidently restored power to the cell blocks. Shing-kur had tapped into the surveillance system and was clicking through views of the sublevels, just as Kira had done earlier-only now, the bodies of prisoners and their Cardassian guards were strewn throughout every view as Jem’Hadar soldiers strode among them, shooting anyone they found alive. Kira watched, repulsed and mesmerized at the same time.

  Rokai had said they were engineered to kill. The implication was that they existed to serve someone else’s purpose. The thought was both horrifying and intriguing. Kira couldn’t help wondering how differently things might have gone if only Bajor had had creatures like this to defend it when the Cardassians decided to annex the planet. She studied the way the Jem’Hadar moved, the look in their eyes…eyes that projected only death.

  That’s all they are, she judged. Death.

  “If there’s a way off Letau,” said Mazagalanthi, “we need to find it soon.”

  “Agreed,” Kira said. “Fellen, make sure the door is sealed. Telal, Mazagalanthi, you’re with me. All right, Rokai. Show us.”

  The room to which the dal led them was hidden behind a false wall in the back of the pantry, and it was unlike anything Kira had ever seen. She was surrounded by alien instrumentality, but was clueless about its function until she noticed the control pedestal that was juxtaposed with the raised platform that dominated the back half of the chamber: a transporter.

  Kira paused at the console, her fingers brushing lightly across the smooth surface. She found the power contact, and tapped it on. The pedestal’s slanted circular top lit up in a garish clash of purple and green, as did the rest of the machines in the room. The displays had all been configured to the Cardassian language. The current date came up, along with the date of its most recent transport, confirming that it was last used around the time she had last seen Dukat. And the coordinates-Kira looked up at Rokai. “Is this a joke?”

  Letau’s warden said nothing.

  “You expect me to believe this thing transported Dukat more than twenty light-years?”

  “There are a number of reasons the Dominion has come as close as it has to conquering the Alpha Quadrant,” Rokai told her. “One of them is technology that is vastly superior to anything we have in biological engineering, sensors, weapons systems, and teleportation.”

  “Telal?”

  The Romulan, who had been guarding Rokai, looked intrigued. “I’ve heard of such things,” he admitted. “The Dominion supposedly does have a limited ability to beam through subspace across interstellar distances. But I would not trust myself to operate such a device under these circumstances, and I would trust him even less,” he finished, sneering at their captive.

  “I have some experience with exotic technologies,” said Mazagalanthi, who had been scrutinizing the equipment. “I might be able to decipher its operation without having to rely on our prisoner. But I’ll need time.”

  “How much time?” Kira asked.

  “Hopefully less than it will take for the Jem’Hadar to discover this place,” the Lissepian replied. “However,” he added, moving toward her to get a better look at the control pedestal, “I don’t believe we should risk attempting to reprogram the coordinates. The safest and most
expedient course would be to stick with the presets-go wherever the last transportee went.”

  “That suits me fine,” Kira said. Telal volunteered to stay and assist the Lissepian, and to see what he could find out about their destination. Kira left them to their work, pushing Rokai out at gunpoint.

  When they were through the pantry, she asked him, “So Dukat’s Dominion masters gave him a subspace transporter as a reward for being a dutiful puppet?”

  “They knew nothing about it,” said Rokai. “During his time as leader of Cardassia, Dukat undertook a number of secret projects that involved quietly acquiring samples of ‘misplaced’ Dominion technology.”

  “He was planning to turn against them,” Kira realized. She laughed bitterly, shaking her head. “More schemes. More deceptions.”

  “Anything he did was out of his sense of duty to Cardassia.”

  “Keeping me in order to feed his sick appetite was his duty to Cardassia?”

  “As I said…you were one of his excesses.”

  “You make it sound like he couldn’t help himself,” Kira spat. “That’s not an opinion that’s going to prolong your life.”

  They arrived back in the main room. The dal shrugged. “You or the Jem’Hadar-what’s the difference? What can you do to me beyond what you’ve already threatened?”

  “I’ve had fifteen years to think about it,” Kira reminded him. “Don’t tempt me.”

  “And how much thought have you given to what’s changed in those fifteen years?” Rokai asked. “You have no idea what’s awaiting you out there.”

  “I’m way past the point of caring about what’s out there,” Kira said. “Except Dukat.”

  “Kira,” Shing-kur called from the desk. “I think I’ve found something you need to see.”

  Kira steered Rokai behind the desk so she could get a good look at its shatterframe display. On it was an image of herself…except that she had shorter hair, and she wore a red uniform emblazoned with the symbols of Bajor. The image was labeled COLONEL KIRA NERYS, BAJORAN MILITIA.

  Kira frowned, wondering what would motivate anyone to create a fake image of her. She turned to Rokai. “Explain this.”