After that, Radovan had checked on her several times to find her still alive and, fortunately, sleeping. Now, stopping just inside the door, he saw that the drug had worn off. “You’re awake,” Radovan said to the girl.
She continued to stare at him from the edge of the bed, motionless, without saying a word. She remained so still that he wondered if she might somehow be asleep, though he had no idea how she could stay sitting while dozing. He took a step forward, and at last the girl moved. She pulled her hands from beneath her legs, spun around, and threw her little body onto the bed, then slid down the mattress to the floor. She then raced over to him and started slapping her hands against his leg.
“I want Mommy!” she yelled. “I want Mommy!”
Radovan looked down at the caterwauling child. Thankfully, he didn’t have to silence her, since his flat sat on the third and highest floor, at the end of the building, so that his bedroom shared no common walls with another unit. Additionally, the flat below his had gone unoccupied for the past couple of months. In a way, the girl’s behavior fascinated him, but he discovered that his patience quickly grew thin. He felt himself grit his teeth, but he once more made an effort to restrain his temper.
Radovan crouched down and caught the girl’s hands in his own. She struggled to free herself from his grip, but quickly abandoned the effort. She stopped yelling and looked into his eyes. “Your mommy is on board her ship,” Radovan said. “She’ll be back in a few days to get you.”
“No!” the girl shouted into Radovan’s face. He shook her hands once, firmly.
“Yes,” he told her.
The girl puffed out her cheeks. “No,” she said again, though at a much lower volume. “I want Mommy.” She dropped her head and looked down. Tears pooled in her eyes. Radovan felt sorry for her, though he knew he could not afford to indulge such sympathies.
Somebody knocked at the front door.
Both Radovan and the girl whipped their heads in the direction of the unexpected sound. “Mommy!”
“No, it’s not your mommy,” Radovan snapped at the girl.
“Mommy! Mommy!”
Radovan reached out and slammed the bedroom door, then grabbed the girl. She squirmed in his hands, trying to get away, as he picked her up and carried her over to the bed. Radovan thrust her into the pillows and pinned her to the mattress. He leaned in, bringing his face close to the girl’s. Her eyes went wide, and Radovan felt satisfaction in seeing her fear; he needed her to mind him.
“That’s not your mommy,” Radovan said again, and he realized that he wanted to convince himself as much as he did the girl. He had planned so meticulously, but then he’d forgotten to take the girl’s stroller from the Deserak Wilderness. If law enforcement had tracked him down, though, would they knock on his door?
Maybe, if they’re not sure I’m who they’re looking for, Radovan thought. Maybe they want to interrogate me . . . or search the flat.
The knocking came again. Though muffled by the closed bedroom door, it still sounded louder, as though the visitor had decided to pound rather than merely knock.
Radovan reached up and pointed in the girl’s face. “Be quiet,” he said sternly. The girl didn’t say another word, but she also didn’t look away.
Radovan pushed away from the bed and quickly exited the bedroom. As he pulled the door closed behind him, he saw that the girl hadn’t moved from where she lay against the pillows, but had turned her head to glower at him. Despite the knocking, he almost felt relieved when he pulled the key out of his pocket and secured the lock.
The pounding stopped. Radovan waited, hoping that whoever had chosen to pay a call on him had thought better of it and left. He couldn’t imagine who would have come to his door other than law enforcement. He had no living family—most had perished during the Occupation, while his brother had died later, in an off-world accident. He also had no real friends, only colleagues and acquaintances, and he—
“Tavus?”
Radovan knew the voice on the other side of the front door at once. It belonged to Winser Ellevet, the woman who’d come home with him after an Ohalavaru rally two weeks earlier. Radovan hadn’t attended any events since then, nor had he seen or even spoken with her. She’d attempted to contact him several times, leaving both written and verbal messages for him, but he hadn’t responded.
“Tavus, can you hear me?” Winser said. “I went by E.T.T. Three today, so I know you’re sick.”
The declaration enraged Radovan. How dare this woman visit his occupational site—this woman who didn’t really know him, who had for months pursued a friendship with him, only to eventually entrap him to sate her carnal desires. How dare she.
Radovan marched to the front door, intending to throw it open and confront Winser. He wanted her to know that she had violated his boundaries, and that he would have nothing more to do with her. And he wanted to tell her loudly.
At the door, Radovan reached for the knob . . . and then froze. Is this smart? he asked himself. If he faced her, if he yelled at her, she would discover that he had lied about being sick. Did she know that he had been away from E.T.T. 3 all week? Radovan feared doing anything that could prove suspicious to law enforcement, or that could cause Winser to begin asking questions, especially if the abduction of the Avatar became public.
Radovan leaned in close to the door. “Ellevet, is that you?” He spoke just loudly enough for her to hear him, but softly and roughly enough to suggest he actually suffered from an illness.
“Yes, Tavus, it’s me,” Winser said in an animated tone. “Let me in so I can help you.”
“Thank you, Ellevet, but I shouldn’t. I’m still contagious.”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Just a bad coryza,” Radovan said. “It’s nothing serious, but I just need time and rest to get better.”
“Do you need me to bring you a doctor?” Ellevet asked. She sounded genuinely concerned.
“No, no,” Radovan said, adding a couple of hoarse coughs. “I’m already under a doctor’s care. I’ve got medication for my congestion and inflammation.”
“It doesn’t sound like it’s working very well.”
“Believe me, I’m much better than I was.”
Winser was quiet for a few seconds, and Radovan anticipated what would come next. “I’ve been worried about you,” she said. “I’ve tried to contact you a few times since you brought me back here.”
Since I brought you back here? Radovan thought, furious at the characterization. Winser had manipulated him, plied him with alcohol, and forced herself on him. He barely remembered that night or their encounter, and he felt grateful for the hazy memory. Once more, he tamped down his anger in the service of his greater destiny.
“I received your messages,” Radovan said. “I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch, but this coryza has really knocked me out. I’ve mostly been in bed.” He immediately regretted mentioning his bed, worried that Winser would draw some inference from it, or perhaps make some licentious reference to their one night in his flat. Mercifully, she stuck to talking about his illness.
“I feel bad that you’ve been so sick for so long,” she said. “Since you need to rest, I’d be happy to come in and help take care of you . . . serve you meals, keep you hydrated, bring you your medication.”
“That’s very generous,” Radovan said, though he actually believed Winser’s offer less selfless and more an attempt to ingratiate herself to him. “But I’m managing well enough, and I’d feel terrible if you were to become ill because of me.”
Again, Winser got quiet. Radovan waited for her footsteps, but when he didn’t hear them, he wondered what he would have to do or say to make her leave. Finally, in a low voice he could barely make out, she said, “I hope you’ll let me know when you’re better. I’d really like to see you again.”
“Of course,” Radovan said, though he had no intention of ever seeing Winser again.
“Okay,” she said, though she sounded less
than convinced. “Promise me you’ll get in touch if you need my help with anything.”
“I certainly will,” Radovan said. “Thank you for coming by. That was very thoughtful of you.” The words tasted mealy in his mouth.
“I’ll see you soon,” Winser said. Radovan thought the hope in her voice pathetic. He knew he should answer her in kind, telling her that, yes, he would see her soon, but he couldn’t.
“Bye,” he said, and he at least tried to inject a note of optimism into his tone. Once more, he waited for Winser to walk away, and at last she did. Radovan closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, pleased that she had finally gone.
He headed for the replicator in the wall beside his small dining table and chairs. He needed to order dinner for the girl. He decided that he would include a jumja stick for dessert, hoping that the sweet confection would placate her.
But Radovan’s thoughts remained on Winser Ellevet. He knew that she would return. Maybe not the next day or the day after, but he did not doubt that she would come back to his flat. He could again refuse to allow her inside, but would she accept that? Or would she instead make a scene? Radovan could not risk any unwanted attention.
And that means I can’t simply wait for inspiration to strike me, he realized. At least not here in my flat.
Radovan decided he would have to make a new plan. He would have to determine how best to get the girl out of the city without being detected. He would also have to figure out where to take her.
The sudden change to his plans should have flustered Radovan, but it didn’t. He chose to interpret it not as a setback, but as an acceleration of his timetable. Sooner than he’d thought, he would fulfill the purpose for which he had been born.
Perhaps very soon indeed.
Gamma Quadrant, 2386
Nearly two full days after the abduction of the children, Robinson’s tactical officer and chief of security, Lieutenant Commander Uteln, stood at his console on the bridge and monitored the ship’s progress through the Gamma Quadrant. To that point, the crew had identified twenty-seven regions of null space spread across multiple sectors. Based on the dispersion of those dead zones, Lieutenant sh’Vrane’s science staff—in particular Ensign Dalisay Dari Aquino, who specialized in numerical analysis—had utilized the data to pinpoint half a dozen possibilities for the most likely place from which the attack on the ship had been launched. The crew had already investigated two of those locations, finding nothing. The third had likewise proven empty, but a main-sequence star in the vicinity suggested another possibility. The captain had ordered Sivadeki to set course for the solar system.
Uteln studied his display as the ship’s long-range sensors gathered information from what lay ahead. “Scans show a seven-planet system,” he announced. “It’s populated mostly with gas giants, with two inner, terrestrial worlds. The rocky planets both have daytime surface temperatures in excess of four hundred degrees, far too hot to host any known kind of humanoid life.”
“Let’s conduct a survey of the system,” Captain Sisko said from where he sat in the command chair.
“Sir?” asked Commander Rogeiro, seated beside the captain.
“I know,” Sisko said, “but this is the best lead we’ve had.”
The captain spoke evenly, without betraying the deep levels of concern and anxiety that had to be churning within him. As a Deltan, Uteln possessed innate empathic abilities, but he didn’t need to use them to understand what Sisko must feel. A Starfleet captain, by definition, assumed responsibility for the lives and well-being of every individual under his or her command, and aboard starships that carried families of crew members, that extended to the civilians. That those abducted from Robinson were children exacerbated the situation, and that Sisko’s own daughter had been taken could have driven the captain to despair. Uteln had two children himself, and though both had reached adulthood more than a decade earlier, he couldn’t imagine the devastation he would have felt if they had been taken from him in their youth, or if either one of them preceded him in death. Captain Sisko’s composure impressed the tactical officer.
“Is it really a lead, Captain?” Rogeiro asked. “A star system with no habitable planets?”
“Either the beings who attacked us have a home somewhere or they’re nomads,” Sisko said. “If they continuously roam, we may never locate them, or if we somehow pick up their trail, we may not be able to overtake them. But if there’s a world that they call their own, we need to find it.”
For his part, Uteln concurred with the captain’s assessment. Though the tactical officer could cite examples of species with no fixed home, who traversed the universe as a way of life, he also knew that the vast majority of spacefaring races founded and maintained planetbound civilizations, across one or more worlds. “Initiating solar-system survey protocols,” Uteln said. “What about probes, sir?”
“No, let’s not launch any probes yet,” Sisko said. “If there’s any chance of the children’s abductors being in this system, I want to retain the element of surprise.” From a tactical standpoint, Uteln agreed that the Robinson crew should attempt to remain concealed from their adversaries as long as practicable.
“Commander Sivadeki, set course for the system,” Rogeiro said. “Tangential approach, rapid deceleration, and hide us in the Kuiper belt. Commander Plante, prepare the ship for its lowest functional profile.” The conn and operations officers acknowledged their orders and worked their consoles. On the main viewscreen, the field of stars streaked off to starboard and up as Sivadeki set Robinson onto its new heading.
While the ship sped toward the outer reaches of the planetary system, Uteln programmed Robinson’s sensors to methodically scan the planets and their moons, the star, and the space in which they all dwelled. As the ship eventually dropped out of warp and took up a position beside a large asteroid in the Kuiper belt, Uteln studied the results, as did Lieutenant sh’Vrane. Three hours after arriving in the system, the science officer spoke up.
“Commander, I’m detecting an orbital anomaly in the second planet’s moon,” she said, addressing Uteln from her sciences station along the aft section of the bridge. “Can you confirm?”
“Checking,” Uteln said. He accessed the gravitational data collected for the second planet, which showed that only one natural satellite revolved around it. He also called up the information gathered for the moon. Using the mass of the two astronomical bodies and the distance between their center points, he calculated the barycenter of their paired system, then plotted the planet’s wobble and the moon’s orbit. He then matched his results against the corresponding sensor data.
They didn’t match.
“I see a discrepancy too,” Uteln told sh’Vrane. He locked down the tactical console and stepped over to the sciences station behind him. He examined sh’Vrane’s display and confirmed that they had both discovered the same divergence. Uteln pointed to the number on the screen that measured the difference between the moon’s expected orbit and its actual orbit. “That’s not much of a variance,” he said. “Could the gravitational pull of one of the gas giants account for it? Or several of them?”
“No, the orbits of the gaseous worlds are too far away to account for it,” sh’Vrane said. “And the two planets in the next higher orbits are both on the other side of the star right now.” Her antennae curled slightly downward, in a movement that Uteln had learned to read in the Andorian as puzzlement. “It may not be a large disparity, but it is significant.”
Uteln grasped for another explanation. “Could the system contain a microsingularity?”
“I considered that possibility as well, but our scans are negative,” sh’Vrane said. She stared at the display on her console. “Orbital perturbations don’t just happen. There has to be another mass out there.”
“Another mass?” Uteln asked.
“Probably another planet, but in a much closer orbit than any of the gas giants,” sh’Vrane said.
“Are you suggesting a cloaked plane
t?” Uteln asked, unable to prevent skepticism from entering his voice.
“Not necessarily,” sh’Vrane said. “I know we only detected seven planets, but is it possible that we missed one?”
Uteln beat back his inclination to reject the science officer’s suggestion out of hand and instead considered the situation. “We conducted preliminary scans to determine the gross characteristics of the system, such as the number of planets, via long-range sensors,” he said, thinking through the problem. “That means that we identified worlds visually, by way of their reflected light against the blackness of space, or by their darkness created by their transit in front of their star.”
“In theory, our scans could have failed to find a planet if it absorbed most of the light that shined on it,” sh’Vrane reasoned, “or if it somehow shined brilliantly on its dark side while passing in front of its sun.”
“It’s possible,” Uteln said.
The science officer stared at the display on her console, and Uteln watched as her antennae slowly straightened. “There has to be another mass out there,” she said again.
“Can you tell what it might be, and where?” Uteln asked.
“I think it must be a terrestrial world, between one and two astronomical units from the star, and on this side of its orbit,” sh’Vrane said. “I’ll create a search grid.”
“Transfer it to the tactical station,” Uteln said. “I’ll adjust the sensors.”
As the science officer deftly operated her controls, Uteln returned to his station. Once sh’Vrane had plotted out a search pattern and sent it to the tactical console, Uteln programmed it in and started a sensor sweep. Then he reported to the captain and first officer the discrepant readings and the corresponding actions he and sh’Vrane had taken.
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