Original Sin

by David R. George III

  But then a flurry of yells went up, and Radovan knew that Starfleet had returned. He looked in the direction of the raised voices and saw people pointing—not skyward, but straight ahead of them. Radovan stared at the dome until at last he spotted the objects of their attention: figures out on the unprotected surface of Endalla, clad in environmental suits, approaching the force field.

  Rejias wheeled around, peering in all directions. Radovan did the same, understanding that the Ohalavaru leader believed they would be attacked from all sides. But all around the dome, the sterile landscape stretched away, empty of anything except the excavators.

  Just as Radovan looked back toward the oncoming figures, the first of them passed through the dome. Six more individuals followed, arranged in a V-shaped formation, three to the left and three to the right. All of them had their hands raised and opened—demonstrating, Radovan supposed, that none of them held any weapons. The faceplates of their helmets reflected the pale blue of the dome, obscuring their identities, but Radovan assumed that Captain Vaughn led the group.

  Once more, everybody looked to Rejias. When he raised the mining implement and pointed it at the seven interlopers, the Ohalavaru all moved out of the way, allowing him an unobstructed line of fire. The figure in the center of the intruders slowly reached to the sides of their helmet, twisted it a quarter turn, then lifted it off.

  It was not Vaughn, Radovan saw. It was Benjamin Sisko.

  Radovan felt his jaw drop open at the unexpected sight of the Emissary, who had been a prominent presence in Bajoran life for more than a decade. Instantly recognizable, the charismatic Sisko gazed across the inside of the dome with a penetrating stare. Radovan had always found Sisko enigmatic, having seen the religious icon numerous times on the comnet over the years, and twice in person. Not long after the end of the Occupation, when Radovan had been in Ashalla as part of a work crew repairing the capital’s infrastructure, he’d seen the Emissary speak at a reconstruction rally. Years later, after his return from the wormhole, Sisko had visited Radovan’s hometown of Johcat, presiding over the opening of the restored Nirvat Sanctuary, a historic temple that had been left in ruins by the Cardassians.

  Radovan’s views about the Emissary had varied over time, ranging from suspicion and distrust to confidence and regard. Radovan’s mother had been more consistent in her estimation of Sisko, believing that it made no sense for such an esteemed position to be occupied by an alien. Then again, she’d never had much faith in the Prophets either. “Where were they during the Occupation?” she used to ask. “If they’re Bajor’s gods, we’d be better off without them.”

  The Emissary leaned toward the figure on his right, who raised a hand and motioned at Rejias. His helmet dangling from the fingertips of one hand, Sisko strode toward the Ohalavaru leader with assurance. Rejias lowered the mining tool to his side as the Emissary reached him.

  “Are you Rejias Norvan?” Sisko’s voice sounded rich in timbre, and his dark brown skin appeared lustrous, almost as though glowing from within. Radovan thought that the Emissary’s bald head and goatee lent him a formidable countenance.

  “Yes, I’m Rejias Norvan.”

  “I’m Benjamin Sisko.”

  “I . . . know who you are, Emissary,” Rejias said. He spoke with a reverence that Radovan found odd. After all, Sisko occupied an important and venerable place in the mainstream Bajoran religion—a religion to which the Ohalavaru did not subscribe. Still, Radovan supposed, the Emissary had discovered the wormhole, had communicated with the Prophets and spent time with them in the Celestial Temple. Whether you considered the Prophets gods or simply powerful aliens, Sisko’s relationship with them counted for something. “We all know who you are.”

  “Good,” Sisko said. “Then I hope you’ll accede to my request that you and your people vacate Endalla at once.”

  “I’m afraid we do not accept Starfleet’s authority in this matter,” Rejias said.

  “I’m no longer in Starfleet,” Sisko said. “I haven’t been for years.”

  “With respect, Emissary, you are wearing one of their environmental suits,” Rejias said. “And so are they.” He pointed toward the six people who had accompanied Sisko across the surface of Endalla and into the dome. Radovan saw that they no longer stood in a V formation, but had spread out in a wide arc. As he watched, they slowly moved farther apart and forward, as though attempting to render their presence as nonthreatening as possible.

  Sisko glanced back over his shoulder. “Yes, they’re Starfleet officers,” he said. “One of them is Captain Vaughn. After he spoke with you, he reached out to me on Bajor.”

  “Why would he contact you?” Rejias wanted to know. “Because we’re Ohalavaru?”

  The Emissary blinked. “Until this moment, I didn’t know who you were,” he said. “Does that have anything to do with why you’re here?”

  Rejias hesitated, and for a moment, Radovan thought that he didn’t know how to respond. He obviously didn’t want to reveal the plans of the Ohalavaru, but he probably didn’t want to lie to the Emissary. Finally, Rejias said, “It doesn’t matter why we’ve come to Endalla. We’re Bajorans, which gives us the right to be here.”

  “Mister Rejias, I’m not a peace officer or a court official,” Sisko said. “I’m not here to arrest you or to judge what you do and don’t have the right to do. I’m here because Captain Vaughn contacted me at my home in Kendra Province and asked me to come.”

  “Starfleet has no authority to force us to leave Endalla,” Rejias maintained.

  Sisko breathed in deeply, then exhaled slowly. “As I said, I’m not in Starfleet. Yes, Captain Vaughn was charged with removing you, but you met his request with a threat of violence. He asked me to come here in my role as the Emissary of the Prophets in an attempt to resolve this situation peacefully.”

  Rejias waved the handheld mining tool in the direction of Vaughn and the other Starfleet officers. “And yet you brought armed officers with you.”

  Sisko nodded slowly. “Yes, they’re armed, but only for self-defense. You can see that none of them have drawn their weapons.” Radovan looked over at Captain Vaughn and the members of his crew and confirmed what the Emissary had said: all phasers remained holstered. “As for me, I’m not even carrying a weapon.” Sisko held his arms out, palms up, in a gesture of openness. “I agreed to come here as a mediating influence. I wanted to come alone, but Captain Vaughn couldn’t allow that. I didn’t want to exacerbate the situation, and so I convinced him to beam down to the surface and then walk here, rather than coming in an armed shuttlecraft.” Radovan believed that the Emissary had genuinely wanted to avoid provoking Rejias and his followers, especially after the Ohalavaru leader’s threat to Vaughn that he would detonate the network of mining devices, but he also thought that approaching the dome on foot had allowed them to investigate the equipment sown across the lunar plain. “We don’t have to be adversaries. This doesn’t have to be hard.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Rejias agreed. “If you leave now with Captain Vaughn and his crew, we can complete our mission here and depart as quickly as possible.”

  “Your mission,” Sisko said, seizing, Radovan thought, on the implied scope of the word. “What would that be?”

  “It . . . it doesn’t matter,” Rejias said. He clearly didn’t want to reveal the reason he’d led hundreds of Ohalavaru to Endalla.

  “It seems to me that it does matter,” Sisko said. The Emissary pointed to the device beside Rejias. “You and your people have planted mining equipment all over this part of the lunar surface. You plainly intend to excavate here, but the Chamber of Ministers and the Vedek Assembly have deemed Endalla hallowed ground. In addition to intruding on land that the Bajoran government has declared off-limits, and to preparing to conduct unsanctioned mining operations, you’re desecrating the place where thousands of people lost their lives. This is their tomb.”

  “More than that died during the Occupation,” Rejias said. His words sounded angry, bu
t he had actually softened his voice. “In that way, Emissary, all of Bajor is a tomb. We have not abandoned our planet.”

  “No, of course not, but there are numerous sites on Bajor that are closed to the people,” Sisko said. “The locations where the Cardassians committed their worst acts of butchery have not been turned into museums or memorials open to the public; some of them have been razed, while those that remain have been walled off as grim reminders of a period in history that should never be forgotten.”

  Rejias looked down, as though resigned to the verity of Sisko’s words. Radovan wondered what the Emissary would think of their plans to uncover a potentially greater truth. Would he be at all intrigued by their efforts to put the lie to the divinity of the Prophets? Or would he work even harder to thwart them in their quest to vindicate Ohalu? Radovan didn’t know for sure—Sisko had for some time, at least initially, sought to distance himself from his place in Bajor’s religion—but the latter possibility seemed far more likely.

  With his head still down, Rejias said, “You and others may consider Endalla a tomb, and rightly so, but what we do will not tarnish the memories of the scientists who perished here.” Rejias finally looked back up at Sisko. “Quite the opposite, Emissary. Our work will honor their lives by following in their footsteps.”

  “What does that mean?” Sisko asked. “You can’t be claiming to have come to Endalla to study its ecosystem.”

  “No, not to examine the environment of a barren moon,” Rejias said. “But we are looking for evidence of something far more important.”

  “Evidence of what?” Sisko asked. Rejias declined to answer. The Emissary peered around at the people nearest to him. When Sisko looked in his direction, Radovan felt a physical sensation, as though a surge of electricity had raced through his body. A formless whirr rose in his ears. He stared back at the Emissary and felt a connection to him—a connection not well defined or easily comprehended, but nevertheless palpable.

  “It doesn’t matter what we’re looking for,” Rejias said. “What matters is that we’re not leaving until we find it.” He sounded resolute. Radovan envied him his certainty and clarity of purpose.

  The Emissary regarded Rejias silently for a moment, evidently taking his measure. Then he looked past the Ohalavaru leader. “I am Benjamin Sisko,” he said again, raising his voice to be heard throughout the dome, above the background purr of the transporter inhibitors. “You know who I am, and I now know who you are. What matters is that we are all of Bajor.”

  Radovan felt his brow crease at the description. Of Bajor? What does that mean? Despite his status in their religion and his relationship with the Prophets, Sisko could no more be considered a Bajoran than any other human—or any other alien from any other world.

  “And because we are all of Bajor,” the Emissary continued, “we all want the same things for Bajor: a vibrant society filled with good works and opportunity, built on the principles of amity and inclusiveness and peace.” Sisko turned in place as he spoke, addressing everybody present. “You are Ohalavaru. I am not. But that is of no consequence. I am not here because of our differences. The Bajoran government is not asking you to leave because of who you are or what you believe; right now, they don’t even know who you are. They only know that you are defying the current prohibition against visiting Endalla.”

  “I didn’t agree to that,” a man called out. Radovan tried to look through the group of Ohalavaru to see him, but couldn’t tell who had spoken.

  “Maybe not,” Sisko said. “Maybe you have a legitimate grievance with the Bajoran government. But there is a right way and a wrong way to pursue your goals. If you want permission to be here, to find the proof you seek, go through the proper channels.”

  Everybody stared silently at Sisko. Everybody stood their ground. Radovan thought about Vaughn and the other Starfleet officers. When he looked for them, he saw that they had ranged out farther, though they still stood on the periphery of the crowd.

  “As you can see, Emissary, we refuse the order to leave,” Rejias said. “We wish only to be left alone. We do not seek confrontation, but we will not back down.” Rejias raised the handheld mining tool and once more aimed it at the excavator beside him.

  Sisko’s gaze darted toward the potentially explosive device. When he spoke again, it was not to Rejias, but to all of the Ohalavaru. “The decision to seal off Endalla was not just a matter of protecting the sanctity of the memories of those who died here,” he said. “An isolytic subspace weapon tore away this world’s atmosphere and obliterated all life. That was just two years ago. Subspace might still be fragile here.”

  Radovan had never fully understood the nature of the weapon the Ascendants had unleashed in an attempt to destroy Bajor, other than that it attacked the underlying fabric of existence. And nobody seemed to know exactly how a Jem’Hadar soldier had foiled that effort, except that the cost of saving Bajor had been the loss of life—and the ability to sustain life—on Endalla. But Radovan had never heard that the surviving moon remained in any danger.

  “What are you saying, Emissary?” Rejias asked.

  “If you carry out your labors to mine Endalla, you run the risk of damaging subspace more,” Sisko said, responding to the question but still speaking to all the Ohalavaru. “You run the risk of completing the destruction of Endalla that the Ascendants started, and losing your own lives in the process.”

  A murmur of voices went up in the dome, coinciding with a wave of movement as many of the Ohalavaru, seemingly out of instinct, stepped back from where the Emissary stood with Rejias. Radovan didn’t move. He studied the two men facing off against each other, wondering who would prevail in their battle of wills.

  But then the quality of sound within the dome changed. At first, Radovan thought that people had simply stopped talking, but then he realized that the hum of the transporter inhibitors had decreased. He frantically looked around for Vaughn and the other Starfleet officers, seeing first one and then another with their gloved hands on inhibitors. The lights on those devices had gone dark, signaling that they had been deactivated. Radovan knew what would happen next even before he heard the high-pitched whine of a transporter beam.

  Around the dome, bright white motes and vertical streaks of light formed over people. Rejias immediately lunged forward and grabbed up an inhibitor from the pile of those being attached to excavators. As he switched it on, Vendoma and several others did so too. In his mind’s eye, Radovan envisioned himself doing the same, but he found himself frozen in place, unable to move. The whine continued as people began to dematerialize, while the transporter effect around Rejias and Vendoma and the others who had picked up and activated inhibitors faded.

  The Ohalavaru leader pointed his handheld mining tool at the excavator. As Radovan’s vision started to fade, he knew that Rejias wouldn’t depress the triggering pad. Though Radovan judged him steadfast and determined in wanting to prove Ohalu’s doctrine, he didn’t think the Ohalavaru leader possessed the strength of will to take extreme action.

  Then Rejias fired.

  In the final instant before his vision went dark, Radovan saw the bright yellow beam shoot into the excavator. The mining device exploded in a fiery light that consumed Rejias and the others who had stayed with him. Everything glowed red, and then everything turned black. In a subjective moment that could have been a second or a year, Radovan wondered whether he’d been safely beamed away from the inferno, or he’d been caught in the blast and brought to the precipice of death.

  Both possibilities excited him.

  • • •

  Lying on the sofa in the living area of his flat, Radovan thought about when he had materialized aboard Vaughn’s Starfleet vessel, U.S.S. James T. Kirk. Several scores of Ohalavaru stood beside him on the rectangular platform of what he recognized as a large-scale cargo transporter. Everybody looked around in confusion—everybody but Benjamin Sisko, who had also been beamed up from the surface of Endalla.

  From everything
that had taken place, Radovan had gleaned Vaughn’s plan. The Starfleet captain employed the Emissary as a distraction. Sisko’s interaction with Rejias gave Vaughn and his crew time to shut down enough inhibitors to allow them to beam everybody up in the dome using multiple transporters. Perhaps the initial strategy had been for Sisko to convince Rejias and his followers to leave Endalla of their own accord, but it didn’t matter. In the end, Vaughn succeeded in moving the Ohalavaru off the Bajoran moon.

  Afterward, Radovan and the others had been taken back to Bajor, where they’d faced questioning at Militia headquarters. Only then did they learn the fate of Rejias Norvan, who had indeed fired his handheld mining tool at the portable excavator beside him. Six other Ohalavaru managed to activate transporter inhibitors so that they would not be beamed away by Vaughn’s crew, but Radovan doubted that any of them had expected Rejias to trigger the detonation of all the excavators they’d networked across that plain on Endalla. All seven of them perished in the resulting firestorm, the heat of which turned that section of the lunar surface into a frozen lake of black glass.

  All of the Ohalavaru had been released on probation. The subsequent investigation found Rejias responsible for what had taken place, and the powers that be found little reason to charge his followers with anything beyond trespassing. The Bajoran government did request assistance from Starfleet in establishing a security presence on Endalla in order to prevent other Ohalavaru from returning to the moon to seek the alleged proof of their beliefs.

  In the darkness of his flat, Radovan stared up toward the ceiling. He did not feel like himself. Even disregarding the naked woman lying in his bed at that very moment—an incident completely out of character for his life—his ongoing bad dreams left him feeling hollowed out almost every night. Lately, he walked through most days in a state of mental grayness, his interrupted sleep weighing down his waking hours with constant fatigue.