Twist of Faith

by S. D. Perry

  “Meaning what? He’s responsible for the actions of every genetically enhanced person in the quadrant? That’s rather a big load. I’m not sure I’m comfortable sharing a mission with a martyr. I’ve dealt with them before—the Maquis was full of them—and you know what?”

  “What?”

  “They always get what they want: they always die.”

  Dax shook her head. “Julian’s not a martyr. He just wants the universe to be a just place.”

  “Oh, great,” Ro said. “So he’s not a martyr, he’s just crazy. And what about you, the Trill with a half-dozen lives behind you?”

  “Eight,” Dax corrected.

  “Eight, then. What do you want?”

  “I just want everyone to come home safe,” Dax said.

  Ro nodded. “All right, then,” she said. “We do agree on something after all.”

  After four hours, Ro dropped out of warp and they hit the first wave of turbulence. She turned over the pilot’s chair to Dax and went aft for some sleep.

  It was, Dax thought, like sailing through rough seas: not life-threatening, but requiring a pilot’s undivided attention. Dax tried to smooth out the bumps, but the inertial dampeners couldn’t compensate for the irregular chop generated by the plasma waves. Twenty minutes later, they hit a high-pressure ridge that tossed Ro out of her bunk. She rolled onto all fours, then ran into the cockpit even as Dax was calling, “Ro!”

  “Here,” Ro said, sliding into her seat.

  “Shields are on full and I’m down to one-quarter impulse.”

  “Give it a little more than that or we’ll be tossed.”

  Dax did as she was ordered and the surges seemed to even out. After she switched control to Ro’s board, she took a second to sneak a look through the viewscreen and saw a huge plasma plume swirl into a funnel, a red-gold streamer bursting from its center.

  “Wow,” Dax said, a second before the wave of turbulence struck them broadside. She would have, she knew, been thrown from her chair if she hadn’t been strapped in. Behind her, Bashir cursed as both he and Taran’atar belted themselves to their chairs.

  “Hang on to your stomach,” Ro said. “Here comes another one.” The runabout pitched and yawed while all around them plasma streamers erupted, flared, then faded, leaving red and green afterimages dancing on Dax’s retinas.

  “What’s our course?” Dax asked, trying to wrestle some usable data off her console.

  “Just turn the sensors off,” Ro said, blinking, trying to clear her vision. “They’re not going to be much use now.”

  The runabout was swept into a maelstrom of light and energy. Ro did not so much pilot the ship as goad it from side to side, avoiding globes of coruscating energy and ribbons of supercharged plasma. The inertial dampeners were almost worthless and anyone who wasn’t strapped in would have been pummeled into unconsciousness in seconds.

  Dax stubbornly kept checking the sensor feed, apparently more out of need to keep busy than out of a belief that she would be able to see anything. She was, therefore, able to exclaim triumphantly, “Starboard, fifteen mark seven.” Ro had spotted it almost at the same instant and no sooner were the words out of Dax’s mouth than the runabout was slipping into calm, open space.

  Turning to survey her comrades, Ro asked, “Everyone still here?”

  Taran’atar, leaning forward in his seat, was ignoring her, straining against the harness to look out the viewport, obviously preparing himself for whatever threat might be approaching. Dax was mussed, but looked excited. Ro recalled someone telling her that Ezri was prone to space-sickness, but she showed no sign of it now. In fact, she seemed to be actually relishing the rough ride. Conversely, Bashir’s complexion was waxy and nearly green. He was holding a full hypo in his shaking hand and now, slowly, carefully, pressed it to his exposed forearm. “I’ve been trying to do that for half an hour,” he said. Then, he looked at Ro. “And the Maquis used to hide in here all the time?”

  “Well, yes,” Ro said, and was tempted to leave it at that. Having a reputation for reckless courage was occasionally a useful thing. On the other hand, having a reputation for insanity was not. “But I’ve never been through anything like that. Our ships wouldn’t have held together. Whatever else Locken has done to his Jem’Hadar, he’s bred them to have strong stomachs.”

  After checking her sensors, Ro fired the maneuvering thrusters and pointed the bow of the runabout toward Sindorin to give everyone a good look. It was a small world, closer in size to Mars than to Earth, a blue-green orb dappled and streaked with graywhite cloud. They were parked over the northern ice cap, which was tiny, no more than the faintest hint of a white bull’s-eye in an otherwise blue dartboard.

  “What’s our approach vector?” Bashir asked, checking the sensor feed.

  “The landmass we’re looking for is in the southern hemisphere, so we can’t see it from here. Hopefully, they can’t see us, either. I’m going to go in fast over the ice cap, try to stay low and approach near sea level. Everyone okay with that?”

  “You’re the pilot,” Bashir said.

  “That’s right,” Ro said.

  Less than two minutes later, Dax announced, “Something decloaking on the port side. Two hundred meters. It’s big. Oh, hell, it’s a Cardassian weapons platform.” Ro hit the port thrusters and the runabout lurched to starboard. Behind her, she heard Bashir groan. “It’s trying to get a lock on us. Shields are up, but…”

  The runabout bucked and slid to port, the inertial dampeners pushed beyond their ability to compensate. Ro tried to coax the ship back into a semblance of level flight, but the bow kept sliding away underneath her feet, slicing through the atmosphere at a steep angle.

  “That was a direct hit on our aft power coupling,” Dax yelled over the noise of rushing air. “We’ve lost deflectors, tractors, environmental…everything. Somebody find some power.”

  Bashir, working the engineering board, yelled, “On it!” Seconds later, Ro’s board lit green and she fed as much power as she dared into the shields and stabilizers. The nose lifted, the bumps smoothed, and the air circulators began to clear the air.

  Another bolt of energy sizzled into their stern, and the runabout staggered, but did not tumble. “We’re out of range,” Ro announced. “Where the hell did they get a Cardassian weapons platform?”

  “If the damage to the Romulan ship was any indication,” Bashir said, “Locken has been pirating whatever technology he can. It wouldn’t surprise me if he salvaged that platform from the aftermath of a battle somewhere at the edge of Cardassian space.”

  “Great,” Ro replied. “But they know we’re here now. Do we abort?”

  “Not an option,” Bashir yelled, pointing out the bow viewport.

  Three ships were flying in formation up out of a gray cloudbank, weapons firing. In the split second before she threw the runabout into a roll, Ro saw that Bashir’s guess must be right. None of the ships had a familiar configuration, but all had familiar elements. One had the hull of a Jem’Hadar fighter, but was armed with Romulan disruptors half-surrounded by a Breen impeller wing. Another was a wingless Klingon bird-of-prey, outfitted with Federation warp nacelles. The third was composed of so many different bits and pieces that Ro couldn’t even guess where it all came from. They shouldn’t be able to fly. How could they make all those systems compatible? Ro dumped all their reserve power into the engines and redlined the thrusters, pressing her back into her seat.

  The patchwork fighters’ first shot cut through the shields as if they were gauze. Seconds before her control board overloaded and died, Ro set the stabilizers for glide and locked them into position. “Everyone out!” she cried, unlocked her harness, and reached under her seat for her bag even as the runabout’s belly slapped into the first layer of cloud cover.

  Taran’atar was already standing on a pad, his weapons satchel slung over his shoulder, when Ro took the three steps from the pilot’s chair to the transporter. She pulled a med kit from a storage locker and h
ooked it to her belt, then turned to look for Bashir. It was more important that the doctor get off than anyone else, and Ro wasn’t sure that the batteries held a big enough charge for two transports. But Bashir hadn’t moved from the engineering board and was only able to stop working long enough to make a second’s eye contact. “Go!” he shouted. “The presets are gone. I have to stabilize power to the inertial dampeners and the transporter’s compensators or you’re going to end up as a couple of smears spread across twenty kilometers of terrain.”

  “But you should go!”

  Bashir only shook his head and manipulated the controls, his hands moving faster than Ro could follow. “You couldn’t do this,” he said.

  “We’re closing on the shoreline,” Dax said, not looking up from her board, obviously trusting Bashir to do whatever had to be done. “We’re almost in range. Get on the pads!”

  Ro hissed a curse, then stepped onto the pad next to Taran’atar. “Don’t be long!” she shouted. Bashir waved reassuringly; then the cabin disappeared in a haze of silver sparkles. Seconds later, they materialized in a barren patch on a low hilltop surrounded by a ring of tropical vegetation.

  As soon as she felt the ground beneath her feet, Ro craned her neck back, scanning the sky for signs of the plummeting runabout. The sun was sinking into the western sea, streaking the sky with bands of ochre, orange, and crimson. Directly overhead, the heavens were already almost black, and though she knew to expect it, Ro was still rattled by the paucity of stars. This deep in the Badlands, only the brightest lights could cut through the thick curtains of plasma particles.

  Taran’atar tapped Ro on the shoulder and pointed to the east at a thin streak of silver light. “The runabout,” Ro said, then began to count in her head. When she reached sixty, she looked around the clearing for a pair of silver columns forming out of thin air. When nothing appeared, she counted to sixty again. Nothing happened. She tapped her combadge and called, “Team one to team two. Team one to team two. Please respond.”

  Nothing.

  She kept the channel open, losing hope of a reply as each second passed, but unwilling to give up. Just before the streak disappeared over the edge of the eastern horizon, Ro unslung her tricorder, checked their coordinates, and read them off into her combadge.

  Taran’atar hissed, “No,” threw Ro down onto the spongy ground, and covered her mouth with his hand. When he turned her head to the side, Ro thought he might be about to twist it off, but he was only trying to point out a patch of foliage at the bottom of the hill, barely visible in the deepening gloom. Leaves stirred where there was no wind and Ro thought she detected the barest glimmer of shimmering air.

  Taran’atar released his hold on her mouth and Ro whispered, “Did they see us?”

  Taran’atar shook his head once, then pointed at a stand of trees out of the line of sight of their pursuers. Taran’atar shrouded and disappeared. Ro sighed, unholstered her phaser, and started for the trees, staying as close to the ground as she could.

  Behind her, over the ridge of the hill and far to the west, Sindorin’s sun sank below the horizon and was swallowed by the sea. Night came on, moonless and with few stars to light the way.

  Chapter Ten

  Ezri shouted “They’re down!” almost at the exact moment the runabout was slammed by another disruptor bolt. Her stomach dropped as the ship began to roll to starboard, but Julian managed to redirect power from somewhere and stabilized the craft before its descent became too steep.

  Ezri checked the sensors again, hoping she could direct the transporter to beam them to within a couple of klicks of Taran’atar and Ro and found…nothing. “Sensors are gone,” she shouted over the rising shriek of reentry.

  “So is the transporter,” Julian yelled back. “Get in the pilot’s seat. Controlled reentry.”

  She did as ordered, pausing only long enough to buckle the crash harness and say a prayer. Seconds later, the pilot board flickered on, darkened, then flickered on again. Somehow, Bashir had rerouted all the remaining battery power to one of the only systems that seemed to be fully functional—the runabout’s antigravs, usually used only for liftoff and landing. They weren’t in free fall anymore—not exactly—but it was a stretch of the imagination to call what they were doing “flying.” The problem was that the antigravs couldn’t take this kind of abuse over any period of time. They would blow out if Julian kept feeding them power at the current rate and they were still almost ten kilometers up, moving much too fast.

  The solution, she realized, was simple, but it made her heart freeze in her chest. “Do you see what I’m going to do?” Julian called over his shoulder.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you handle it?”

  Ezri couldn’t answer immediately. He was, she saw, going to shut off power to the antigravs—and everything else in the runabout—and they were going to drop like a rock until the antigrav coils cooled off and recharged. Then Julian would fire up the engines again, just long enough to slow their descent to a survivable rate.

  “How many times will you have to shut off power?” she called, trying to memorize the panels while she could.

  “Three. The last drop should put us about one hundred meters above the canopy.”

  She closed her eyes then and almost turned to Julian to say, “I’m not a pilot.” But something made her stop. Ezri looked down at her hands and saw that she was manipulating the controls, resetting couplings and bypassing presets.

  Yes, I am, she thought, because Torias and Jadzia both were. Their knowledge, their skills, were hers. All she had to provide was her own force of will.

  “Ready,” she said.

  “Good,” Julian said, and she could hear the relief in his voice. “When I cut power, count to ten and then fire the antigravs again. Try to keep the nose up…”

  “Make sure you distribute the power evenly or we’ll go into a tumble.”

  Julian laughed mirthlessly. “You’re the pilot. Get ready. Here we go.”

  The lights went out. Suddenly, there was only the rush of atmosphere around the runabout’s hull.

  1…2…3…

  She had never before realized how many different noises runabouts made—the hiss of the air circulators, the ping of the sensor grids, the thrum of the engines—and now there was only this, the sound of gravity doing its job.

  …4…5…6…

  If the antigravs didn’t come back on and they reached terminal velocity, at their present height, it would take them about seventy-five seconds before they hit the ground. Why am I thinking about this?

  The power came back on and Ezri reengaged the antigravs. Her head snapped forward and she felt a shooting pain down her left side. Lights came on and the runabout bucked beneath her.

  Lights out. Count. The runabout was sliding to port. Must be encountering some strong turbulence. Made sense. It was a tropical area at sunset. Masses of air moving back and forth as the landmass cooled…

  …7…8…9…

  Lights on. The shock wasn’t so abrupt this time, so they must be moving slower. Either that, or she was ready for it. She fed as much power as she dared into the antigravs and waited for the lights to go out again. Once they were out, she knew it would only be two or three seconds before they hit the canopy and then it would all be luck, a matter of what was underneath them. Ezri wiped something out of her eyes, then realized it was warm and sticky. Blood? she wondered. Why is there blood on me?

  The antigravs died. Ezri looked over at Bashir, whose hands were still racing over the engineering panel…

  And then the lights went out for the last time.

  The station moaned and rumbled beneath Kira’s feet. Far below the Promenade, Nog was tearing something loose, something serious enough to vibrate through the station’s vast superstructure. She looked around the dimmed Promenade, half-expecting the walls to tumble in. Kira sometimes imagined that there was a nerve running from her inner ear, down through the soles of her feet, and deep into the bowels of t
he station; it often seemed as if she was more sensitive to the sounds of Deep Space 9 than anyone else aboard.

  Shar had just reported that work on installing the new core was going well. Structural connections ruined by the breakaway of the old core were being cut free and replaced in preparation for the new one.

  Viewed from the observation port in lower pylon two, the core detachment from Empok Nor had been a sight to behold, as engineering crews in EVA suits and worker bees carried out the complex task of freeing the massive lower-core assembly from its station. The runabouts Rio Grande and Sungari then gently towed the core right past her, into position for Phase Three of the transfer. She remembered that Dr. Tarses had likened it to a heart transplant, which, she supposed, was as apt a way of looking at it as any…especially since it was she who had created DS9’s great gaping wound.

  Walking toward her, emerging from the shadows of the closed Klingon restaurant, one of Ro’s deputies who had remained aboard with the skeleton crew was patrolling the Promenade. She nodded to him, recognizing the deputy as someone she’d seen regularly at shrine services, but he’d already looked away, carefully avoiding any overt display of disrespect as he passed her.

  It’s there, though, Kira thought, involuntarily reaching up to and feeling bare skin where her earring used to be. This stops now. She halted in the middle of the main floor and turned around. “Do you have a problem, Corporal?” she called out, her stern voice booming through the mostly empty Promenade.

  The deputy froze in his tracks, startled into an about-face, and came to attention. “No, sir,” he responded, still carefully avoiding eye contact with the colonel.

  Not good enough. “I thought perhaps you’d forgotten how to show proper respect to your commanding officer.”

  The corporal flinched almost imperceptibly as her voice blasted him. “Sir! No, sir!”