Twist of Faith

by S. D. Perry

  “My firm conviction is that the heresy was destroyed during the battle—and therefore that the battle itself was sanctioned by the Prophets. Did the attackers not travel through the Temple gates? I put forth that we have acted with unnecessary haste, presuming too much, and that we should now await further guidance from the Prophets.”

  Yevir saw, with no real surprise, that everyone now had their hands on the table, except for himself. He wanted to hear the opinions of the others before speaking; after all, it was likely they would look to him for the last word, and though he did not consider himself to be gifted politically, he knew that every notion should be heard. No one liked to feel dismissed, even if their ideas were rejected in the end. He accepted the fact of their acquiescence with no pretensions of humility, just as he accepted the reality that he would one day be kai—perhaps not after the upcoming election, but it was inevitable. His path was clear.

  The discussion went around the table, Eran calling each vedek by name, each stating his or her thoughts in turn, no two alike. Scio Marses believed that the matter should be opened to the Assembly, or at least the part of it that they could openly claim. Kyli Shon wanted to consult the Orb of Contemplation; Sinchante Jin, the Orb of Wisdom. Bellis Nemani insisted that they send a covert team to the station, to gather data, and Eran put forth the idea of allowing Kira Nerys into their confidence. She was, he pointed out, a devout woman, though Vedeks Kyli and Bellis disagreed strongly with the idea, reminding them all of how difficult Kira had proved to be in the past. The discussion, if not heated, was quickly becoming antagonistic. Gone were the traditional formalities of hands-on-table.

  “We mustn’t trust any information we don’t collect for ourselves,” Bellis argued. “Isn’t it obvious? And Kira knew Istani, from Singha. For all we know, they were acting in collaboration—”

  “—and you think she wouldn’t come to the Assembly for confirmation, if she had talked with Istani?” Eran asked. “We need Kira. She runs the station and the people trust her. Granted, she can be obstinate, but her faith and loyalty to Bajor aren’t in question—”

  “Faith, perhaps not, but loyalty? You know the stories of her and Kai Winn,” Kyli interrupted, his face flushed.

  “Forget about Kira, and Istani,” Frelan said. “The Prophets will show us the way, when the time is right!”

  Yevir had heard enough. He placed his hands palms up on the table and closed his eyes, breathing deeply, turning his face to the high ceiling, to the sky beyond.

  Their intentions are true and right, but they argue their own opinions. What is the way? How can I be a vessel of Your wishes?

  He listened, to the small voice at his deepest core, the voice of his pagh, vaguely aware that the debate around him was finished, the angry words giving way to silence. When he opened his eyes, he saw that everyone watched him.

  “Vedek Yevir, you wish to speak?” Eran asked. His tone was hushed and respectful.

  “Thank you, I do.” Yevir smiled, gazing at each face with warmth. “We all want to do what we think is right. Because we love the Prophets, and we love the people of Bajor. I know that each of us feels that the Prophets speak to us through our emotions, but I ask that we set aside anger and dissent at this moment, and meditate on what we share. On our love.”

  He had their full attention. Only a few years ago, he would have marveled at the concept that he, Yevir Linjarin, would someday lead such important people through a crisis, but all he wanted now was to share his vision.

  “We have too often become entrenched in politics…but simply loving is also not enough. Like all matters, this is one that calls for action as well as faith. As we have all agreed, the heresy must be contained—but our course so far has not been worthy of us, and I feel regret for what has happened. I grieve; I feel shame. But I know too that the Prophets forgive us, because They know our hearts, and know that we mean only to express our love.”

  They were smiling back at him now. They understood, and it made him happy to see the self-doubt washed away, to see their faces shining with restored purpose. They hadn’t forced Istani Reyla to run away, after all.

  “What would you propose?” Eran asked.

  “As you all know, I once served on the station during my days in the Militia. I could approach Kira, and talk with her as a friend—but discreetly, a day or two from now. I wouldn’t reveal so much as to burden her with the kind of decisions we’re facing, of course. But if the tome is on board, and she has knowledge of it, I’m certain she would tell me.”

  They were nodding, pleased with the moderate and reasonable plan—and with having the immediate responsibility for what to do taken from them. It made him feel cynical to think such a thing, but he could not pretend blindness. Yevir knew each of them to be a worthy vedek, but he also knew that they missed having a kai to make the difficult decisions.

  “I know it’s asking a lot, but if you would place your trust in me, I believe that I could further our interests here, and thus the interests of all of Bajor,” he finished, fully aware that their trust was already his. He didn’t enjoy playing the politician, but there was really no choice, and he was deserving of their confidence. He had been chosen, after all.

  As they gazed at him lovingly, he thought of the Emissary, of all he had done for Bajor—and all that Bajor was becoming because of the Emissary’s work.

  I won’t let it fall apart because of some heretic’s scratchings. I owe that to the Emissary, for choosing me, and I owe it to the Prophets, for Their boundless love—and to all of Bajor, because I am here to serve.

  The seven were in agreement, all as one. Yevir would go to Deep Space 9 and make things right. He would find the heresy and burn it, and scatter the ashes so that no one else could be tainted by its evil ever again.

  Hopefully, no one else would have to die. He would pray for it, anyway.

  Chapter Nine

  After a full day of triage and surgery, of making calls that meant life or death with only an educated hope that his decisions would prove sound, Bashir was exhausted…but as his backlog of critical cases wound down, he found himself wishing for more to do. So many lost, so many that no one had got to in time, who could have been saved; not only was it painful to review the incredible waste of life, having no pressing matter to attend to meant that there was nothing to keep him from what he thought of as the death watch—those cases for which there was no reasonable hope.

  And nothing I can do, nothing at all. For all I’ve researched and studied, for all my abilities, I may as well wish them better.

  There had been six in all. Now there were three in the infirmary’s ICU, the room quiet and still but for monitor sounds and the stifled tears of the visitors. A nurse moved lightly between the beds, assuring that there would be no more pain for the dying.

  Bashir stood in the doorway from surgery, looking at them, struggling to believe that he hadn’t failed. He’d beaten Death throughout the day, through proper diagnosis and delegation and surgery, cases he tried to keep in mind as he gazed out at the ICU ward. Mostly he thought about the operations, because he had been able to touch the problems, to physically heal them. A sternal fracture that had caused a mediastinal bleed in a Bajoran girl, only 11 years old, healed. A compound fracture had nicked the femoral artery of a Bajoran security officer, who would have bled out if Julian’s hands hadn’t been fast enough. The flail chest on the visiting Stralebian boy, the open-book skull fracture of the human ensign who had been on leave from the Aldebaran—they all would have died if his skills had been lesser.

  But that doesn’t help these people, does it?

  It was faulty reasoning, of course, and logically he had no cause to feel guilt. But feelings weren’t necessarily logical. He couldn’t blame himself for the majority of the deaths that had occurred on the station, because most of them had been instantaneous—forty-six plasma burn fatalities, a single rush of energy that probably hadn’t even been experienced as pain. The rest of them had been lost to broke
n seals at the main lower core hull breach, except for two blunt trauma cases, victims of falling debris. There had been nothing that anyone could have done.

  Of the nearly two hundred people injured, twenty or so had been critical, and only eleven of those had required immediate surgery or stasis. With the help of Dr. Tarses and the Bajoran surgeon, Girani Semna, they’d gotten to everyone. Three compartment syndrome cases had been treated and released; all three would be shipping out to the advanced medicine facility at Starbase 235 for biosynthetic limbs. Except for some head traumas, a few incidentals, and those recovering from surgery, the immediate crisis was past—

  —but for the three of you. Six, and now three, a death watch because I don’t know enough.

  In the cool, antiseptic air, the three patients were silent, sleeping or comatose. Woros Keyth, a Bajoran man who had worked in the admin offices, lay waiting for his brother to come from Bajor, to say good-bye. Keyth might have been saved, if he had been treated sooner. A subdural hemorrhage, the resulting intercranial bleed too far along by the time he’d been brought in, the brain damage irreparable. The blow was from a desk clock, of all things, when the AG had shifted; Keyth had been alone in his office, and hadn’t been found for almost three hours. Too late.

  Two beds away, the sleeping Karan Adabwe was watched over by her betrothed and one of her closest friends. Karan, an engineer, had been both burned and frozen, caught in the major plasma leak and exposed to an area of hull breach. It was a wonder that she was still alive, so much of her skin and muscle tissue had been affected. Her lover and a friend each held one of her poor, wretched hands, both crying, both certainly in more pain than Karan. She was beyond that, at least.

  Prynn Tenmei, the new Starfleet pilot, sat next to the last case, Monyodin, a lab tech. Bashir didn’t know if they’d been dating or were just friends, but either way, it was over. Monyodin was a Benzite, and had been in mid-core when a cloud of chemical polymer gases had been released from a temp bank of atmospheric regulators. The alveoli of his lungs had liquefied. In a non-Benzite, Bashir would have tried stasis and an eventual transplant; for Monyodin, for any Benzite, there was no chance. With their cellular growth patterns, even external transplants rarely took. All that could be done was to make him comfortable…and watch him die.

  It’s not my fault. There’s nothing that anyone could do.

  It was true, and it didn’t matter, not to the core of him. They were alive, but he couldn’t keep them that way.

  Bashir turned away, knowing that there were others to see, rounds to make, people he could still help. Knowing that the names and faces of the death watch would stay with him, as clear and crisp in his memories as he’d just seen them, until the day he died. He was aware that people on the station were starting to debate the long-term consequences of the Jem’Hadar attack, but if they could see what he had seen…he could personally testify to the tragedy of the short-term. It was more than enough.

  “…then perhaps I should come back at another time. How long will she be here?”

  Familiar, a familiar voice. Friendly. Shar, that’s Shar…

  “It shouldn’t be long, but I can’t really say; the doctor wanted her to wake up on her own,” a woman answered. “He said she could leave then, assuming her responses are normal. The concussion wasn’t severe, but we don’t take chances with head injuries.”

  “I understand. Would it be all right if I left these with you?”

  Ro opened her eyes, wanting very much to see Shar, understanding from the tone of the exchange that he was about to leave. She was in the infirmary, most of the beds around her full, the woman talking with Shar one of the nurses. Ro wasn’t sure what was going on, and the fact that Shar appeared to be holding a bouquet of bright green flowers only added to her disorientation.

  “Shar?” She rasped, and coughed, her throat dry.

  Both Shar and the Bajoran nurse turned toward her, the nurse immediately moving to her side. Ro sat up a little, light-headed but in no pain.

  “What happened?” Ro asked, and coughed again. The nurse miraculously produced a container of some mildly sweet beverage and stood by while Ro drank, gratefully.

  “There was an attack on the station, and you were brought to the infirmary with a head injury,” the nurse said kindly. “But your readings suggest a full recovery. I’ll go get the doctor.”

  Shar stood next to the bed as the nurse went off to find someone. He held up the rather exotic-looking bouquet of waxy, tubular blooms with a slight smile.

  “These are from Quark. I saw him on the way here and he insisted that I deliver them; he said he was too busy ordering new inventory for the bar to stop in, although he might later. He says that flowers are a customary gift for the ill or diseased. These are Argelian, I think.”

  Ro smiled in spite of her confusion, not sure if she was more amused by Quark’s gesture or Shar’s uncertain explanation. “I’ll be sure to thank him. Shar, what happened to the station? What happened to me?”

  Before he could answer, Dr. Bashir appeared from another room, walking slowly and looking harried, his hair uncharacteristically rumpled. The smile he gave her seemed genuine, though. He glanced at the bed’s diagnostic before moving to her other side, across from Shar. “Lieutenant, Ensign. I have a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

  “So do I,” Ro said, propping herself up on her elbows. “Chief among them, why is Quark sending me flowers?”

  Bashir grinned, the expression as sincere as his smile—but she could see the strain behind it, could see that he was hiding some pain behind the sparkle. With how full the infirmary was, she guessed he’d had a rough day.

  “Oh, I can imagine,” he said. He opened a medical tricorder and passed the scanner over her head, his intense gaze shifting from the readout to each of her eyes as he spoke, his smile quickly fading. “Tell me, what’s the last thing you remember before waking up a few minutes ago?”

  She frowned, thinking. “There was…a murder on the Promenade. I remember meeting with you and Kira. And then I, ah, talked to Quark a little later about it, I remember that.”

  She’d gotten an isolinear rod from him, she’d gone to her office, and afterward…she recalled feelings of unease, even distress, but she couldn’t pinpoint the reason. Something about the holosuites? “I don’t know what else, I can’t remember.”

  The doctor nodded, setting the tricorder down. “I saw you on the Promenade not long before you were brought in; I’d say you’ve lost less than an hour of your memory. An amnesic gap is perfectly normal with this type of concussion, nothing to worry about. Your cranial blood pressure is stable and your neurographic scan shows no disruptions. You can return to duty…but if you find yourself feeling nauseous or dizzy, or unwell in any way, you’re to call for assistance and report back here immediately, all right?”

  Ro nodded, a little surprised at his excellent bedside manner. She really hadn’t interacted with him since coming to the station, and had assumed him to be generic Starfleet medical, patronizing and probably arrogant. “How did I get hurt?”

  “You fell from the stairs in Quark’s,” Bashir said. “Quark saw it happen, and brought you here. It’s lucky he did, too. With the way the station was bouncing around, you could have been seriously injured.”

  She started to ask about the station and the doctor hurried on, nodding toward Shar. “But I’ll let your friend fill you in on all of that. If you’ll both excuse me, I have rounds to make.”

  Ro thanked him and turned to Shar, who spent the next few minutes filling her in. She was amazed at all she had missed, and appalled by the station’s death toll, not to mention the loss of the Aldebaran.

  And Commander Jast. Hearing about her death hit Ro harder than she expected. A lot of Starfleet officers on board had a cold attitude toward Ro. Not surprising, really. She suspected most of them bitterly resented her presence on the station and were probably dismayed that Starfleet Command hadn’t made a move to arrest her for her past of
fenses. How the provisional government had persuaded the Federation not to exercise its rights under its extradition treaty with Bajor was a mystery. The end result, though, was that the Starfleet personnel on the station were forced to work alongside someone many of them believed belonged in prison. Or worse.

  But Jast had been different. The commander had gone out of her way to be amicable. At first, Ro thought it was because Jast also seemed to be awkward at making friends…but, just in the last few days, she had been starting to feel that the commander actually liked her.

  “…and with incoming communications basically inoperative, the only messages from the Federation have been relayed through Bajor, telling us to wait,” Shar continued. “Colonel Kira has all of the senior officers on standby for a briefing as soon as she gets word.”

  “What are we doing for defenses?” Ro asked, finally sitting up. Physically, she felt perfectly fine, but their conversation was making her stomach knot.

  “The I.K.S. Tcha’voth got here just after the attack, and six Bajoran assault vessels arrived a few hours ago, so we aren’t entirely defenseless,” Shar said, “but there’s great tension on the station, and the fear that war is once again imminent. It doesn’t help that the wormhole has opened three times since this morning, triggered by debris from the Aldebaran.”

  He lowered his gaze, speaking softly. “There’s to be a service at 0700 tomorrow, in memory of all those lost. If you’re not well enough to attend, it’s going to be broadcast station-wide.”

  Listening to his gently lilting voice, she could sense a change in him. He was tired, she could see that, but there was more—something deeper, more fundamental.