by S. D. Perry
He was glaring at Ro as he spoke, and she decided that she was ready to end this particular party, hopefully with Yevir’s apology. Seeing Picard had left her off balance, but she was still confident that Colonel Kira would believe her word over Yevir’s. Ro knew she didn’t come off that well with a lot of people, but even her enemies knew her to be honest, and she had never lied to Kira about anything.
“Colonel, I absolutely did not,” Ro said. “Vedek Yevir is mistaken. I haven’t seen the translation or the book since we all met in your office this afternoon, and I had nothing to do with its transmission to Bajor’s communications network.”
Yevir smiled, a small, sanctimonious smile. “The word of a nonbeliever, that certainly holds its own with a lie.”
“Please don’t call me a liar,” Ro said, just tired of listening to him.
“I didn’t, child, I just don’t understand why you won’t admit to it,” Yevir said. “You’re the only one here with a reason. That treacherous book validated your damaged beliefs, and you couldn’t stand to be alone anymore, could you? A nonbeliever from a world that embraces spirituality—”
Kira was nodding along, her expression neutral. When he hesitated long enough to draw breath, she spoke quickly, looking directly at Yevir for the first time.
“I did it,” Kira said. “I uploaded Ohalu’s book.”
Yevir finally shut his mouth, but Ro felt her own hanging open.
Kasidy didn’t believe her. They all stared at her, and Kas saw her own feelings in their faces—Ro’s eyes were wide with incredulity, and Vedek Yevir looked like he’d had the wind knocked out of him.
“You’re joking,” Yevir said. He seemed smaller, somehow.
Kira’s chin was raised, her head high. “I gave a lot of thought to what you said earlier. You asked me what I thought would happen to Bajor if the book were made public, and after I considered it carefully, I came to the realization that you don’t know the Bajor I know.”
Yevir was the very picture of injured confusion. “Nerys, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The Bajoran people aren’t children,” Kira said. “They don’t need anyone to censor information on their behalf, and frankly, Vedek, I’m surprised and a little offended by the Assembly’s attempt to do so. It’s patronizing, it suggests that you don’t think the Bajoran faith is strong enough to tolerate a different perspective.”
“And this is your answer?” Yevir asked. “To send blasphemous and offensive words into people’s homes, like some kind of … of test?”
Kira didn’t hesitate, her manner angry but controlled. “And are you that desperately afraid that they’ll fail? I’m tired of wondering whether or not I’m being manipulated by people who say they speak for the Prophets. I have my own relationship with Them, and I trust my own judgment. And whatever you think about that, what gives you the right to decide what’s bad for me, or what’s best for anyone besides yourself?
“I see it as an opportunity for all of us. Here it is, over seven years since the occupation ended, and we still haven’t found our balance. I see our world as a place that’s trapped in transition. I see a struggle to integrate the cultural spirituality of thousands of years with what we’ve learned in the last century, and I think a good look at ourselves is exactly what we need to get through it, to create an atmosphere of positive change. To let every Bajoran reevaluate what the Prophets mean for their lives.”
Yevir was aghast. He ran one hand through his silvering hair, mussing it, his face screwed up in distress as he took a half step back.
He’s not faking it, he really thinks this is a holocaust. Kas could understand his reaction, could see perfectly why he felt so betrayed. And she could see why Kira might have done it; the politics couldn’t be plainer. The thing was, Kas still didn’t actually believe it.
“I love the Prophets,” Kira said seriously, still addressing Yevir. “And it doesn’t matter to me what anyone thinks of my faith, because I know the truth. Reading that book only confirms for me that the love of the Prophets can be interpreted in other ways. I prayed about this, and I truly believe it’s the right thing for Bajor. I’ve been given a sign, that the Prophets support us. Ohalu’s book belongs to every Bajoran, Vedek; please, have faith in us, have faith that each individual can only grow as the Prophets intend.”
Ro seemed almost to smile, and for some reason, that look of approval finally did it for Kasidy’s belief problem. Kira Nerys, who had been there for her, who had helped her find workers and apply for permits on her new home, who had been a real friend to her…Kira Nerys had just created absolute chaos for her and the baby. And she had done it on purpose.
Kasidy hated public confrontation, but there was no help for it, she needed to understand and she needed it now.
“How could you do this to me, Nerys?” Kas asked, and Kira turned away from Yevir, finally, her head not quite as high. She at least had the decency to look ashamed, but at the moment, Kas didn’t care a whit for Kira’s shame. What good did it do her?
“Kas, I’m so sorry,” she said, and it certainly looked like she meant it. “It was just—it was the right thing to do, I had to do it.”
“That’s fine, good for you,” Kasidy said tightly, folding her arms, and then she took a deep breath, baby, it’s okay, relax, then another. The kind of anger she was feeling couldn’t possibly be harmless. After another deep breath, she started again.
“So you and the Vedek Assembly have now each made a grand statement of how right you are,” Kasidy said, making the anger and pain become words instead of heat, struggling to keep her body from reacting to her distress. “I can appreciate that. But I didn’t ask how you could do this, I asked how you could do this to me. To be honest, I don’t care why, because all of this means that if I want a moment’s peace for the rest of my pregnancy, I’ll have to go into hiding.”
Silently watching her, Kira was obviously unhappy, her expression guilty and apologetic—which for some reason seemed to make things worse. How convenient for Nerys, that she could betray her friend and then feel sorry about it, knowing all the while exactly what she was doing. Kas knew she wasn’t being entirely fair, but decided that she was allowed.
She looked at Yevir, at the way he was practically wringing his hands, his thoughts as clear as if they were written in the air above his head, The mother of the Emissary’s child is unhappy, oh, dear, what can I do?
Relax. Breathe.
“I’m sorry, but this is not okay,” Kas said slowly, talking to herself as much as to Kira and Yevir, her words gathering speed as they poured out. “I can’t stay here if this is what it’s going to be like. I’m a person with a life, I’m not some indirect religious figure in a cause, and if you think I’m going to let my child be involved in any part of this particular dilemma, think again. Ten thousand Bajorans, dying so that my baby will be born into peace, so that he or she can be worshiped as some kind of spiritual embodiment, as some thing?”
Kas folded her arms tighter and then deliberately relaxed them, so tuned to the second life inside her that she almost reflexively protected it now. It wasn’t a matter of choice, her current priorities didn’t allow for choice; she just couldn’t have this in her life.
“I’ll leave,” she said calmly. “I’ll get as far away from here as possible. In fact, my things are already packed.”
I could leave. It sounded so possible, so easy. So tempting. Just…fly away, and never come back.
Her pronouncement was followed by silence. All three of the Bajorans in the room looked mortified, but as far as Kasidy was concerned, Ro was the only one with any credibility, the only one who hadn’t actually done anything wrong.
Before anyone could speak, a man’s unfamiliar voice spilled out of an open comm on Ro’s desk, deep and clear and very fast.
“Security alert, the Jem’Hadar soldier has killed at least two people and is no longer in containment. Starfleet medical officer down, needs emergency transport to medica
l facilities, Dax is with him. We’re at cargo bay 41C or C41, this is Commander Elias Vaughn, acknowledge.”
Kira hit her combadge as the last words were spoken, calling for medical transport, already striding for the door; Kasidy barely had time to get out of her way. Ro acknowledged and hit the security alert, and Yevir Linjarin stood uncertainly, perhaps wondering who he would complain to now.
Worried and wounded and afraid, Kas left immediately for her quarters, planning to throw the manual at her door as soon as she got there. No matter what else happened, she was moving away from DS9 as soon as possible.
Chapter Ten
A monster, looming. Troubled sleep, and pain. Someone calling his name. A bone-deep ache, so pervasive that his own body was a stranger to him, numbed flesh warming up just enough to scream at the cold, cold air.
But I’m dead.
It was Julian’s first whole thought in a while, and the paradox exhausted him. Kitana’klan had killed him, but he couldn’t remember dying so he couldn’t be dead. The pain was terrible, it made his next breath into a cry for relief that emerged as a helpless whimper.
That tiny sound of pain and he was with the pain, the sound bringing him closer to full consciousness as it defined him from the dark. He couldn’t think, the level of awareness too much, the totality of the pain making him afraid that he might lose himself—
—and then Ezri was there, talking softly, explaining that he’d been hurt and that they were going to the infirmary. He couldn’t see her, didn’t know if she was touching him, but her voice was enough. It was clear and firm and she told him that she loved him. Julian fell asleep before she finished, but he wasn’t afraid.
Vaughn should have called the alert as soon as he saw that there were no guards posted outside the bay. Neither he nor Dax carried a weapon, and if there was a situation inside with the soldier Kitana’klan, going in unarmed meant no chance. As opposed to a slim one.
His instincts telling him that the Jem’Hadar had escaped, Vaughn didn’t bother to think about procedure. With a curt nod from Dax, they walked through the unlocked door, Vaughn in the lead.
He took in as much as he could as soon as they were inside, wasting no input that could help his assessment. Smells of scorched material and blood, phaser fire, exposed insulation. There was a splash of blood on the inside of the door, and a trailed smudge leading to the first body, a Bajoran Militia corporal, young. Throat cut deeply after the body was moved, from the pool of it he lay in now.
Another young man at eleven o’clock some distance away, Starfleet medical lieutenant, still alive but in bad shape, deep claw marks seeping across his chest, a cauterizing pack at the base of his throat. There was a med kit close by, adrift in the doctor’s blood.
Bajoran Militia sergeant, the third victim, not far from the doctor. Another kid, his head twisted around at an angle that counted him dead.
Within a few seconds, Vaughn had all the information he needed to get things going. He stepped back to the door and hit the companel as Dax ran to the survivor, snatching up the bloody med kit before crouching next to him.
Vaughn relayed the prioritized facts quickly, spotting a dropped tricorder on the floor as Dax and the wounded doctor sparkled away to a medical facility. A Lieutenant Ro acknowledged, telling him to secure the situation as best he could, that security and Colonel Kira were on their way.
DS9 had underestimated the soldier, but it hadn’t been their fault. In the war, the Allied troops had mostly faced off against soldiers only weeks old, deadly but untrained, unfocused.
A Jem’Hadar who’d had extended training for hand-to-hand and small arms wasn’t nearly so easy to kill as a violently impulsive youth, however. The Jem’Hadar got faster and better at everything with practice, so even at a year or two of age, depending on how often they used their skills, the studied soldiers were effectively unbeatable without weapons. Their reflexes were simply better than those of most humanoids.
Obviously, there were species who could hold their own physically against the Jem’Hadar—Klingons, for example. But whereas Klingons’ code of honor could make them respect, even admire an enemy, the Jem’Hadar were bred to see every opponent as inferior; no respect, no mercy, and for a Jem’Hadar, victory was life. They weren’t interested in glory or lasting honor, just the win. How they got it didn’t figure into the equation, and that made them extraordinarily good at killing.
As soon as he’d signed off, Vaughn ran to the tricorder and scooped it up, setting the readings with one eye while he searched for a phaser. The Jem’Hadar soldier certainly had one of them, but perhaps not both—
—there, near a stack of empty boxes by the door. Vaughn paused in the tricorder adjustment long enough to grab it, the sharper sounds of his movement resounding through the cool air of the dead and empty bay. Only seconds later, the station went to red alert, a light panel on the bay wall starting to flash, a distant alarm sounding.
Vaughn ignored it, working on the tricorder. A shrouded Jem’Hadar standing still could be detected easily enough, almost all energy was observable, but to track one you had to be exact, and better at running science equipment than I am, dammit, what’s the formula… Vaughn knew a lot of theory, but rarely had to practice.
As with a ship’s cloak, gravitons were produced by a Jem’Hadar shroud aura. There was a way to pattern the residue, to follow it, but the trail dissipated quickly. Vaughn assumed that Kira would want to track Kitana’klan from ops, but he’d also gathered that the station’s internal sensors weren’t a hundred percent, and he knew that a full sweep on a station the size of DS9 would take time. It was unlikely that the sensors could even pick up such a delicate trace; from the reports Vaughn had read about the process, a tricorder was definitely the tool for the job. If he could follow the soldier for long enough to narrow the search perimeter even a little, it could make a big difference.
He was just finishing with the tricorder when the colonel walked through the door, followed only seconds later by a Bajoran security lieutenant and five noncom guards, all of them armed. Good. He didn’t mind the idea of having an escort; it was highly unlikely that the Jem’Hadar wanted to be followed, and the more of them, the less likely he was to attack.
Vaughn rapidly outlined the residue-pattern theory, explaining that he’d never tried it firsthand. Kira liked it, recommending that they coordinate the effort with ops, letting the station’s sensors take over when they picked up a definite direction. She put a call in, absolutely on top of things, not looking at the two dead boys but not looking away, either. Vaughn was impressed.
One of the Militia guards volunteered that she’d worked as a sensor array tech and operator. Vaughn gladly turned the tricorder over to her and waited for Kira to finish her instruction to a science officer named Shar, in ops. Vaughn assumed it was zh’Thane’s child, Thirishar; he’d accessed DS9’s current personnel files before the Enterprise had docked, gaining all sorts of highly classified insight into some of the people on the station.
“Colonel, I’d like to apprise Captain Picard of this situation,” Vaughn said, as soon as Kira tapped out. “And ask him to stand by to assist.”
“Please,” Kira said. “And tell him I’m open to suggestions on how to resolve this thing before it goes any further.”
The tech/guard held the tricorder up, motioning at the door. “I’ve got it.”
They fell in around her, Kira and the tech taking the lead, Vaughn hanging back to talk to Picard. As he filled the captain in, he found he couldn’t stop staring at the dead corporal’s open eyes, his clawed throat, the fan of thickening blood on his forehead from a pair of deep cuts. He looked surprised, caught off guard by the end of his life. He looked dead.
If they didn’t find and stop the Jem’Hadar ASAP, a lot more people were going to end up the same way. Vaughn could think of a dozen ways that one determined person could destroy a space station without too much trouble, and that was without being invisible…or a Jem’Hadar soldier,
who was always willing to die if it meant he could take out his enemy in the process. To them, death meant nothing, but it was a victory if they didn’t go down alone.
Five minutes. If they didn’t have a clear idea of Kitana’klan’s intent by then, Vaughn was going to start pushing for a full evacuation. They couldn’t afford anything less.
Ezri acted unprofessionally. She didn’t reflect or consider. As soon as she stepped into the bay behind Vaughn, she saw Julian. And there was so much blood, what seemed like bucketfuls splashed across his face and chest, puddles of it all around him, that she knew he was dead. Knew it. And that was when she saw his chest rise, and when she took action.
Not thinking about the possible dangers, not thinking about anything but how important he was, how she had to make him stay with her, Ezri ran to him, grabbing the med kit off the bloody floor before dropping to his side.
He was so pale, the blood seemed ludicrously bright against his skin. His tattered jacket and the shirt underneath were soaked with it, but the gashes on his chest were only oozing. The seal patch on his collarbone might have stopped the major bleeding, she didn’t know, and she didn’t want to make anything worse by jumping to medical assumptions—
“Julian, can you hear me? Julian?” Ezri asked, not expecting a response, wondering why they weren’t already at the infirmary—and he let out a semi-conscious moan, so soft that she barely heard it.
He winced, his mouth twisted, an expression of hopeless suffering, and Ezri started talking, reassuring him. Comforting him. She took his hand, noting with alarm that his fingers were scarcely warmer than her own, keeping the alarm from her voice; she told him that she loved him, and that he would be all right.
She was looking at his blood-spattered face as the environment around them changed, as they were transported to an emergency table, flush with the floor on one side of the infirmary’s operating theater. Ezri quickly stumbled away and someone touched a command, the section of floor rising, Julian’s devastated body rising up to meet the waiting, healing hands of Dr. Girani. He wasn’t conscious, and his eyes were partly open, and Ezri didn’t know if he would live.
