by Cory Rushton
Without waiting, she turned back to the doors just as a figure shimmered into view directly in front of her, its wild blue eyes filled with a mad hunger.
Corsi ran faster than she’d run in years, legs pumping and lungs burning, crashing through the scrubby brush and past the thick local pine trees.
She was just as worried about the wounded Lauoc, left on his own behind her, as she was for the team members ahead of her. If the creature wasn’t as mad as she thought, if it decided to double back for the easy mark, Lauoc would pay for her gamble with his life. Everyone knew that security often had to make the ultimate sacrifice. Galvan VI had brought that reality home to Corsi rather brutally—seventy percent of her security force died there. But sometimes you had to decide who to save instead of just risking your own life. Lauoc knew that, but Corsi prayed she wouldn’t have to live with the consequences of her decision. She’d only just buried Ken Caitano….
All she could do was to keep running, committing fully to the decision she had made. Nothing killed faster than indecisiveness.
“Hello, meat,” said the Vorta, its teeth black and rusty-red with grime and blood, barely recognizable from his image in the stained glass.
Carol tried to pull her phaser up, aware that she couldn’t miss but also curiously certain that she would. The Vorta was faster, grabbing her wrist and squeezing hard enough to break it. The phaser fell to the ground. His other hand darted for her throat, his sharp nails scratching the skin. His breath was fetid, and between the stench and his iron grip Carol had to fight to retain consciousness.
Behind her, Jarolleka’s knees buckled. To him, Carol knew, Upshallar had returned, returned to kill the last son of Ajjem-kuyr and his strange allies. Tears began to stream down his paralyzed face.
“We’ve…come to help,” gasped Carol. “The war’s…over.”
“The war?” wheezed the Vorta. “The war against heresy never ends. Never. I came to bless this place, and now I must condemn it. I condemn thee, disbeliever!”
Carol managed to make her arms work, but her blows were weak and getting weaker as the air left her lungs and her vision began to fade. “You’re not a god!” she gasped.
“Aren’t I?” His mouth opened, and the grimy teeth began to move toward Carol’s cheek.
Carol shut her eyes, nearly unconscious, the blood roaring in her brain. This was how she was going to die? She survived combat, Galvan VI, and Teneb, only to be the last victim of the Dominion War, at the hands of a cannibal Vorta with delusions of godhood?
Just as his thin scabby lips brushed her skin, a shadow fell across the Vorta and his victim, and his grip loosened. Carol dropped to the ground like a stone as the Vorta lurched forward, hit from behind by a thick branch.
“If you are a god,” snarled Jarolleka, breathing heavily with the effort to force his limbs into motion, both hands gripped tightly on his impromptu weapon, “you’re a pretty pathetic one. We don’t need your condemnation any more than we need your help.”
The Vorta glanced back at him, shoulders hunched, a terrible smile playing across its pale features. Jarolleka paled and took an involuntary step backward.
“It doesn’t matter what you need,” said the Vorta. “You are to serve us.” Shimmering, the Vorta disappeared. Dimly, through the pain that wracked her body, Carol noted that the disappearing effect didn’t look like a Jem’Hadar shrouding—which was a biological ability of that species, one the Vorta didn’t share—but looked similar to what happened when a Federation observer post’s duck blind was activated.
Jarolleka looked around wildly, whimpering.
Carol rose to her knees, rubbing her bruised neck. “It’s a shroud,” she hissed, every word painful. “It’s…it’s just a kind of natural law.”
The Corotican looked into her eyes, and it seemed to Carol that he calmed visibly just before something hit him hard from behind. He buckled forward, his arms barely resisting his fall. Carol tried to scream, but no sound came from her damaged throat.
A shape hurtled out from the entrance to the base, leaping up and over Carol before she had time to duck. She fell backward, looking up to see Vinx putting his shoulder into a shimmering figure.
Both combatants fell to the ground, but Vinx leapt to his feet first, catching the now-visible Vorta on the chin. Blood spewed from the Vorta’s mouth, but Vinx showed no mercy, following up with another solid blow to his stomach. The Vorta collapsed to the ground, and Vinx slowly pulled his phaser and carefully set the weapon to stun.
“Good night, buddy.” Vinx fired a short burst into the Vorta’s chest.
Carol forced herself to stand. “How did you know where to throw yourself?” she whispered.
Vinx smiled, wiping his brow with a dirty uniform sleeve. “The bad guy always goes for the dame first.”
“That’s so…old-fashioned.”
“I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy, toots,” he said with a shrug that involved his entire upper body. “And I did it…my way.”
Chapter
10
Tarsem Johal slowly turned his combadge over in his right hand, letting the light from the Corotican sun catch it as he repeated the gesture. The sacrifices his crew had undergone since the Dominion War began—Moseley on the Ogun, for example—had largely been unrelated to their work here on Coroticus. They were scientists, archaeologists and historians, and like everyone in the Federation they’d become accustomed to pursuing their research in peace, undeterred by an angry universe. Well, barring the occasional discovery of a primitive supercomputer or the sudden appearance of an angry and omnipotent godling.
Where had he heard that before? Johal smiled softly and glanced down at the shining combadge again. Saed Squire, imparting his wisdom to the unwary scientists under his protection. He seemed to know every obscure story of Federation archaeology gone awry, and have at least three plans prepared to deal with each and every eventuality. Just as he’d had a plan for protecting Coroticus as best he could while ensuring his crew escaped safely.
Johal hadn’t realized, until Corsi and her team caught the renegade Vorta, just how much he’d been dreading the possibility that the madman was Squire. To know that the man’s last actions were uncomplicated by a subsequent period of murder and insanity meant that this small story had a decent ending; it was part of a much larger story of sacrifice and despair, and eventual triumph, but Squire had gone out as he’d have wanted.
The commander had briefly considered returning to active duty, delaying his retirement to finish the job here on Coroticus and replace the memories of those last frantic, tragic moments with something better. He looked back at the S.C.E. crew, shaking hands with the personnel who’d be left behind to finish the rebuilding of the observation post.
Seeing a Starfleet crew giving their all in the service of science rather than war, knowing that every effort had been made to correct the damage done to Coroticus not because they had to or because it was their fault, but because it was a sacred duty…Tarsem Johal knew that those better memories had already been made.
He was looking forward to fresh strawberries.
Dyrvelkada rubbed his chin thoughtfully, glancing up at the sky with both wonder and fear. “A war in heaven?”
Walking beside him in the funeral grounds, Carol nodded. Jarolleka, recovering from his injuries, walked at a discreet distance behind the Sibling and his female companion. “Heaven has been torn by the strife of gods. Ushpallar came to you to protect you, to protect all who walk and think upon the green world, but now he has returned to defend his own kind.”
The priest looked back over his shoulder at Jarolleka. “He Who Blesses and Condemns told us that he had destroyed Ajjem-kuyr for its disbelief. Now you are telling me that this was not true. Can a god lie?”
“You heard the rumors of shape-shifters?” The Sibling nodded. “These are the enemies of the gods, as you well know. They have been active among you. Sometimes, Ushpallar was your friend. Sometimes, he was your foe.” Well,
it had a certain kind of truth to it, thought Carol with a grimace.
“Our legends knew the shape-shifters of old, the Henjiqi who hunted our kind before we knew language or tools.” Again, he glanced at Jarolleka. “Please, my son, walk with us. If you believe what Carolabrama says is true, we have no reason to be enemies.”
“I’m not your son,” said Jarolleka with the faintest of snarls, but at a warning glance from Carol, he consented to walk beside the priest.
“Far from enmity,” Carol ventured, “your causes are more alike than you know. You both seek truth, each in your own way. The Henjiqi shape-shifters knew that Ajjem-kuyr could discover the truth through observation of the stars. And so they decided that Ajjem-kuyr would be destroyed.”
Jarolleka did not meet her gaze. Although they had not spoken of the Vorta or the events at the Jem’Hadar base, Carol knew that the Corotican was deeply troubled by what he had seen and felt. He seemed even more uncomfortable with Carol’s explanation of their recent history, but with no greater explanation of his own, he seemed willing to nurse his doubts privately.
Dyrvelkada was less willing to gloss over the inconsistencies. His demeanor was troubled, and he paused to glance again at the blue Corotican skies. “A war in heaven.” He looked back at Carol. “And how is it that your people know this?”
When Carol had come up with her plan for the containment of the cultural contamination, she had desperately tried to find a satisfactory answer to that question, which she knew would be asked. Now that the question had come, Carol surprised herself by having a sudden answer to hand, as though it had been lurking in her mind for months. She looked directly into Dyrvelkada’s eyes. “We know because the dark gods came to us, and tried to rule us as Ushpallar ruled you.”
The Sibling gazed at her thoughtfully for a long moment, before nodding once, and turning away to return to the safety of Baldakor’s temple. Carol knew, somehow, that her story was about to enter the region’s spiritual lore.
“That was the first thing you said to him that I believed,” said Jarolleka softly.
“Why that?”
He smiled faintly. “Because you said it with a sadness that cannot be false.” He came forward to embrace her, and she returned the hug. “I have much to do. I think that Dyrvelkada will support my application to rebuild the Academy, and help to raise the necessary funds. Your tale has seen to that. It is as though a balance needs to be restored.”
Carol nodded. “It seems that way to me, yes.”
Jarolleka shook his head ruefully and gave a hesitant grin. “It will be like starting over from the beginning, making the people see what we have to offer. We’ll have to go through the same persecutions, the same censorships. But it will be worth it.”
“Where will you seek to rebuild?”
This time, his smile was real. “In the field where I saw Ushpallar brought down by a mortal with a strange manner of speaking. It is time I began.” With a nod, he turned and followed Dyrvelkada’s path back to Baldakor.
She heard faint footsteps approaching from behind her. Was everyone on this planet addicted to sneaking up on her? She turned to see T’Mandra, who paused long enough to tell her that the da Vinci was to arrive within twenty minutes.
“Thank you, T’Mandra.” The Vulcan woman nodded curtly and marched off to find other errant personnel.
Carol smiled. She had indeed restored the balance between tradition and innovation on Coroticus, but she didn’t think anyone could blame her if she was pleased that innovation might have received just a little extra help on the way.
About the Author
CORY RUSHTON is a Canadian living in the United Kingdom with his lovely and patient wife, Susan, where he teaches English at the University of Bristol. Having now fulfilled a lifelong ambition to write for Star Trek, he feels that retirement from the world is the only rational option.
Coming Next Month:
Star Trek™: S.C.E. #54
Security
by Keith R.A. DeCandido
When a new security guard reports for duty, it sets da Vinci security chief Domenica Corsi off in ways that confuse both her staff and her sometime lover, Fabian Stevens. When Stevens confronts her, it only makes matters worse—until Corsi takes Stevens into her confidence….
Ten years ago, Corsi served on the U.S.S. Roosevelt. On a trip to the Federation world of Izar, Corsi was assigned to work with a local peace officer named Christine Vale to try to solve a multiple homicide. But the trail of evidence leads down a road Corsi refuses to take—a decision that will have tragic consequences for the young officer.
COMING IN JULY 2005 FROM POCKET BOOKS!
