Star Trek: Terok Nor 03: Dawn of the Eagles

by S. D. Perry

  “One plus seven,” she said, her voice unheard over the deafening screech of the alarm. She’d transposed two of the numbers.

  Focus. You know this, you know the numbers, so you do it, just do it. She typed it in again, forcing herself not to hurry—and the alarm shut off in mid-scream, the last echoes falling away over the treetops as she called up the next set of numbers, and the next, working her way into the system. Focus, the nine days of atonement, the slash-dot key, four halved was two, plus…

  As she watched the complicated command sequences flash by, she understood that without these codes, there would have been no chance at reprogramming the system. If it worked, Bajoran ships would read as Cardassian. The majority of the cells would still have to stay hidden, but their shuttles could be moved to Derna or one of the other moons, the communications equipment there repositioned. Everything could change.

  7, characters ksi, 3, 3…9.

  There. The last digit was in. She took a deep breath, watched the screen go blank, back to a waiting status. Had it worked? She didn’t know how to confirm, and she couldn’t risk staying any longer. Someone would come to see why the alarm had gone off, and she meant to be far, far away by the time they showed.

  She unhooked the sling and half slid down the tower, giving herself a few more bruises in her hurry to be elsewhere. She thudded heavily to the forest floor, stopping only long enough to stuff her belt into her pack, grabbing her comm as she darted into the woods.

  Shakaar spoke her name as soon as she tapped the switch, his voice riding waves of static. She kept moving, taking deep breaths, stretching her legs for a run. She thought she heard the hum of an approaching ship, a faraway drone in the rapidly cooling air.

  “It’s done,” she said.

  “Is…safe…send up…raider?”

  “I have no idea,” she said, and she was sure of it now: a ship was coming. She broke into a sprint, pumping her arms for speed, jumping over fallen logs and crashing through the underbrush, more concerned with gaining distance than with stealth. She tripped over rocks, slid down sudden drop-offs, ran and ran and finally stopped, unable to go any farther.

  She doubled over, hands on her twitching legs, gasping for breath. The skimmer had been coming from the south, she was sure of it, and she was headed north. By the time they realized that someone had cracked the access panel, she’d be well out of reach.

  She raised herself up, deepened her breathing, and heard something she hadn’t heard in a very long time—the telltale sonic boom of a Bajoran raider as it prepared to leave the atmosphere, echoing out from behind the hills that hid much of what was left of the resistance.

  Kira clenched her hands into fists, counting seconds, breathing through her open mouth so she could hear the roar of particle cannons firing. But she heard nothing. A brown bird, flapping through the brush. Wind in the trees. Her heart, pounding.

  We did it, she thought, she believed. It was too soon to know anything for sure, but she couldn’t help her belief. She started moving again, her breath coming more easily as she worked her way down the ridge. She even found the capacity to laugh as two more raiders went up, noisily scraping the sky as they broke through the sound barrier.

  Dukat had just finished his weekly call to Athra and was feeling nostalgic for home. His wife was pregnant again, a happy result of his last brief visit to Cardassia Prime, and positively glowed with good health and humor. She had images to show him of the other children, stories of their accomplishments. This child would be their fifth.

  Sixth, he thought, but quickly shook the thought. He did not often think of the son he had lost, a casualty of Cardassia’s poor conditions before the annexation. Athra never spoke of him.

  He sat back in his chair after his faithful wife had bid him a heartfelt good-bye; he wished he could be home more often. As it was, the extra day or two he spent on Cardassia whenever he went to present his periodic progress reports was all he could spare, often in conjunction with his reports to Command. Before the insurgency was under control, he’d been lucky to manage that. Perhaps with this birth, he would arrange to take a more substantial vacation, a week or so…

  And, of course, a stopover at Letau as well….

  A signal at his door, although it was late. The operations center staff was minimal at this hour, only a few men moving about among the softly blinking consoles. He saw that it was Glinn Trakad, and sighed.

  He motioned the soldier inside. “Yes?”

  Trakad carried a padd, held it up. “Summary of surface transmissions for the day, quotas, incident reports.”

  Dukat nodded, reaching for the padd. Trakad brought it to him, stepped back as the prefect scanned the reads.

  “Anything of interest?” Dukat asked.

  “A malfunction with one of the sensor towers. Possible sabotage attempt.”

  Dukat glanced up. “In what way?”

  “An alarm was tripped, suggesting that someone tried to access the diagnostic system with an unauthorized passcode,” Trakad said. “And the lock on the tower’s relay was tampered with.”

  “Has the system been compromised?”

  “No. It’s been triple-checked. Everything is in working order.”

  Dukat frowned. “So, someone tried to break in and failed…?”

  “Yes, but the alarm was shut down before the ground team arrived,” The glinn said. “Not disabled, but turned off. They would have had to have a code to override it.”

  “But the system is still working?”

  “That’s right.”

  Dukat shook his head. “Contact the Bajoran Institute of Science at once. We will need to alert the engineer who designed the program to see if it is malfunctioning.”

  Trakad nodded.

  “Anything else?”

  “Several flyers—three, I believe—were detected leaving atmosphere late this afternoon, but air traffic says there were no ships scheduled for departure, no flight plans filed.”

  “Are there any ships currently unaccounted for?”

  “You think the resistance stole them?”

  “Well, without knowing all of the facts, I can’t say, can I?” Dukat said. He smiled thinly at Trakad, printed the padd to show that he’d seen the day’s reports. “Check airfield inventory. I want all of our crafts accounted for. And see to it that the security unit from that tower is brought here.”

  He handed the padd back to Trakad, who nodded quickly, a slight bow before leaving. Dukat waved him on, idly wondering if the few remaining insurgents were up to something. But no. The Bajorans were a cowed people, pacified once more by their religious amenities, submissive to the will of the Union. In truth, he couldn’t afford it to be otherwise, with the pressure to produce more always weighing on his shoulders. In any case, he would take no chances, looking into any reports of potential resistance activity himself.

  It was much like being a father, he often thought, overseeing a planet of children, some willing, some willful. It was a balance, knowing when to encourage, when to provide strict correction, but one he felt he excelled at finding. As the Bajorans grew, culturally, intellectually, they would come to appreciate him more, to understand the choices he’d made.

  I’ll be remembered here long after I’m gone, he thought, and smiled, leaning back in his chair once more.

  12

  Thrax, finished with his station business for the evening, closed out the reports on his office computer, relieved to have finished the tedious chore after an especially trying day. But he didn’t shut down his system after the mainframe link was disconnected; instead, he put a personal call through to Cardassia Prime.

  It was some time before the call was answered, and he began to wonder, with disappointment, if the party he was trying to reach might have left her new “office” already, but she finally responded to the call, her face filling the tiny screen and causing Thrax to break out into a foolish grin.

  “Hello,” he said to her, feeling the welcome tremble that always at
tended their correspondence.

  “Hello,” she replied, her voice musical and soft, projected from his faraway homeworld. How he missed it. How he missed her! “To what do I owe this occasion?”

  “I know it has been a long time,” he apologized. “My business here keeps me from contacting you as often as I would like.”

  “Just your business?” she asked. “Not…threats?”

  “No,” he said firmly. “There are no threats, I have told you. I am safe. I only wanted to let you know…I located a dissident on the station, someone who is to return to Cardassia Prime tomorrow. A woman—a correspondent for the Information Service.”

  “What is her name?”

  “Natima Lang. Do you know of her?”

  “No, but I’ll see what I can find.”

  “It could be helpful to do so. She is affiliated with Gaten Russol. But more interesting to you and me—she contacted a member of the Detapa Council here on Bajor. An exarch at one of the old settlements.”

  The woman’s eyes shone with interest. “Do you think he is a dissident as well?”

  “Time will tell,” Thrax told her. “But I believe he may be.”

  “And you believe this is good news for us?”

  He nodded. “If the Detapa Council continues to oppose the government to gain power, it could eventually wrest the Union out of the military government’s hands. It seems that the handful of dissidents I have been tracking have begun to add more followers to their ranks—followers in the civilian government.”

  The woman nodded. “This could be favorable for us. But the Detapa Council may be no more in support of us than Central Command has been.”

  Thrax frowned before his face twisted into a rueful smile. “Have you always been such a pessimist, Astraea?”

  She smiled back, embarrassed. “No, Glinn Sa’kat,” she admitted, “only realistic.”

  He laughed quietly. It always amused him that she continued to refer to him by his military title—even his colleagues on the station called him by his first name. But for her, it had become almost a sign of affection to maintain the formality he had shown to her upon their first meeting. “Well,” he said. “I thought it might be useful for us to find out more about these people, the dissidents. If there is any question that supporting their cause could serve to help us in the future—”

  “I agree,” she said. “I don’t suppose they could detest us any more than Central Command already does.”

  “One hopes not.” Thrax fell silent.

  There was so much he wanted to say to her, but he would have preferred to do it in person. He had never been able to convey his feelings regarding her, not even when he was with her, on Cardassia Prime. His support of her position within the Way was much more important than their personal relationship, a relationship that had started when he had discovered her walking in a near daze along the periphery of Cardassia City, trying to put some meaning to the frightening visions she had been having. If the Fates hadn’t intervened that day, hadn’t seen to it that he would find her there—But of course, Oralius watched over Her guide. It was meant that he would find her, and he hoped it was meant that he would be reunited with her someday on his homeworld—sooner rather than later.

  Two quartiles, three at most, he promised himself. No more than another year, certainly. He would be done with this place, and with Dukat.

  “The Bajoran religious man we spoke of…he is still safe?”

  “I can’t be certain, but I believe so,” he told her. “The one they call the kai is still safe, and I believe the man from your vision has a connection with her. That is what Prylar Bek tells me, but he will reveal no more.”

  “He is mistrustful of you?”

  “No,” Thrax said. “I believe he trusts me now, since I gave him the information to get his kai to safety before the detection grid went online. But he is simply not at liberty to reveal information. It is much the same way…that I feel about you, Astraea. I would guard you with my life.”

  There was a moment of awkward silence while Thrax tried to think of another item of interest. “So…after the next Bajoran council, I think I will try to make a connection with Yoriv Skyl, the Tozhat exarch,” he said. “To see if I can discern his leanings.”

  “A wise idea,” Astraea agreed softly, and there was another moment of silence. Their calls always seemed to be conducted this way, ending with strained pauses, loaded with unspoken emotions.

  “May you walk with Oralius,” Thrax finally said, and she smiled, though she looked disappointed, too.

  She signed off with a recitation from the Book. “‘To speak her words with my voice, to think her thoughts with my mind, to feel her love with my heart.’” Thrax repeated the words back to her, and she smiled, her eyes closing, as her image skittered from Thrax’s screen. He sat back in his chair and paused to reflect, to think exclusively of her for a moment, then he abruptly rose and left the security station, heading to his quarters for the night.

  Natima’s eyes were dry, but she felt like weeping. The transport had already left the station, and there was no looking back now—not that she would have wanted to. Still, she was going back to Cardassia Prime entirely contrary to her appointment. Dalak would be furious with her for this insubordination, but there was simply no way she could have remained on the station, not after what had transpired earlier today.

  She was the only civilian on this transport, which had little in the way of elbow room. There was a tiny commissary, small berths, two beds to a room, with a ’fresher that had to be shared—at least for the soldiers. Natima was lucky enough to have gotten a room to herself. Being a woman had a few perks, at least. She rested, as best she could, on the hard berth, and tried to shut her mind to the unhappy events that had unfolded earlier, but it was all she could think of.

  Had Quark really believed he could hide from her forever in the microcosm of Terok Nor? She had cornered him leaving his quarters early this morning, and had demanded an explanation—hoping against hope that he would actually have one. But of course, through his pathetic attempts to justify what he had done, Natima saw the truth: not only had he stolen from her, he wasn’t even sorry he had done it.

  She had threatened to turn him in to the authorities for his dealings with the Bajorans—or the very least, to turn him in for violating her acquisition number. She was going to have to explain it to the accounting department at the Information Service, a task she dreaded almost as much as facing Dalak regarding her sudden abandonment of her assignment. But then, she hadn’t turned him in after all—she still wasn’t entirely sure why.

  How foolish she had been, to trust a man who pretended to have a romantic interest in her—a Ferengi, no less! She could only assume that he had been using her from the very beginning, and yet, she had not even turned him in to save her own reputation. She knew that it was dangerous to draw attention to herself this way. If accounting were to closely examine her acquisition codes, would they find anything that would point to her status as a dissident? Natima didn’t think so, but she couldn’t understand why she would even consider taking the risk for someone as dishonest as Quark had turned out to be. She supposed she was just a fool, in the end.

  She was crying, now, which should have been a relief, but was mostly just a humiliation. She let herself cry softly for a few moments before pulling herself together. She would never go to Terok Nor again, or to Bajor, and if Dalak tried to make her—well, maybe she was done with Dalak, anyway. Maybe it was time to move away from the Information Service. She had long remained loyal to her employer in part because she’d believed that she owed her life’s success to the Service. But would it be so terrible, to attribute her success to her own actions? Maybe this was the push she needed to go in another direction, the sign that it was time to move into another phase of her life.

  Good-bye, Quark, she thought, and lay down again on the hard, empty bunk, wishing she could sleep.

  Vekobet had several abandoned districts that wer
e not beyond the boundary constraints, but they had fallen into ruin in the past twelve years. The desolation was due in part to destruction from skirmishes between Union and resistance forces, and in part to a lack of functioning utilities. But the population was inching toward expansion again, and most of the occupied houses in town were bursting at the seams with extended families. The older districts had to be considered for renovation, for the active portions of the cities were becoming dangerously overcrowded. Kalem Apren was helping to dig an irrigation trench in one of the newly reclaimed areas, having already helped to patch the roofs of three old houses that had fallen into disrepair. He was waist-deep in the muddy ditch when his wife Raina suddenly appeared, out of breath, her exuberance showing.

  “Apren!” she cried out. “It’s the comm! Someone is calling you—from off world!”

  Kalem wasted no time in dropping the shovel he had been using and clambering out of the muddy, half-finished trench. “Excuse me,” he cried hastily to the other men, though he did not stay to hear their reply. He raced after his wife through the old streets, stopping at brief intervals so that one or the other could catch their breath, occasionally locking gazes and laughing. Someone had repaired the long-range systems, unless Raina was mistaken, and Kalem knew from her expression that she wasn’t.

  Panting and gasping, he clutched at the receiver, hoping against hope that whoever had called would still be on the line—it was a good twenty minutes to and from the outlying settlement from where he and Raina had just come—but someone immediately replied to his greeting.

  “Apren! It’s Jas Holza! What a relief to finally reach you again!”

  “Holza!” Kalem exclaimed, hardly able to comprehend such an auspicious occurrence. “It’s been a long time!”

  “Yes—as you say. And I have good news for you, and for Jaro Essa and all the others.”

  “Do tell!” Kalem turned to Raina so that she could hear the exchange, both of them struggling to contain their excitement.