Star Trek: Terok Nor 02: Night of the Wolves

by S. D. Perry

  His comm crackled and he almost relaxed before he recognized the fragmentary transmission as Cardassian. “Terok N…reporting…prisoner…ip…out.”

  Holem could scarcely breathe. He spun the ship’s dials frantically, trying to pick up any other transmission, but there was nothing else. Bajor loomed ever larger in front of him, and he had to prepare for the heat and violence of re-entry.

  Swallowing his terror, he clutched the flight yoke and shot his raider through the turbulence. He struggled to orient the ship once it broke through, struggled with feelings of shock and disbelief as he pointed the little raider in the direction of Tilar. There was nothing he could do. Lac was gone.

  It had been a full day of study and prayer. Final services had ended, the late meal had been taken; Kai Arin was exhausted when he finally retired to his chambers, hoping to read a bit and go to bed, and the last thing he wanted to do was discuss Opaka Sulan with one of the vedeks. Especially Gar Osen. Vedek Gar had been very vocal in his opposition to Opaka’s activities these past two years, ever since she had taken her son and left her stone cottage. Arin had publicly renounced Opaka’s status as a vedek of the church, but he had not issued an Attainder, despite having threatened to do so. Vedek Gar had been trying to persuade Arin to make good on that threat ever since.

  Of course, it was possible that Gar wished to speak of something else, he told himself when he answered the late-night rapping at his door, but the kai doubted it. And truly, it was just as well. He’d known for some time that he and Osen needed to speak; it could be put off no longer. Much as he did not wish it, the kai invited his old friend into the small library that served as his study chamber, trying to prepare himself for the conversation ahead.

  Arin owed much to the vedek, owed his very life to him. When the old Kendra Shrine had been destroyed, Arin had tried in vain to save the Orb that had been housed there. He could still clearly remember stumbling through the smoke, the walls falling all around him, retaining the divine object his only thought. He would have died, but that Gar Osen had pulled him to safety.

  Gar began before he’d even taken his seat, his tone pleading, his words coming rapidly. “Your Eminence, surely you are aware of the dwindling numbers of faithful who come to attend our services. Opaka’s message is becoming widespread, not just in this province, but on all of Bajor. Others are spreading her teachings. Other vedeks, Your Eminence! You must denounce her words by formally Attainting her. You must stop this…this wildfire before it spreads any further.”

  Arin chose his words carefully. “The fire of which you speak has already consumed most of our world, Vedek Gar.”

  Gar was taken aback, as the kai knew he would be. “Your Eminence, what am I to conclude from such a statement? Surely you are not trying to tell me that you now reject the D’jarras? That you’ve…given up?”

  Arin shook his head. “No, Vedek Gar. I have not given up. I have…reconsidered. In the two years since Opaka left, I have studied and prayed and thought upon her words. And I have come to see the power behind them. Bajorans are finally becoming free of the despondency that has plagued us for twenty years. They no longer see themselves as victims. They are fighting back.”

  “But of course you do not condone the fighting, Your Eminence. You must not condone it.”

  Arin was troubled. “I have begun to question many of my own beliefs, Vedek Gar. What you say is true…but our world has never known such a struggle, and I fear that if we cannot unite, we will be broken. A successful leader must be able to admit that he was mistaken.”

  “Yes, of course, Your Eminence, but you must tread lightly around this delicate matter—”

  “Vedek, I should inform you that I mean to write a series of new sermons, with a very different message from what I have taught in the past. I will call for an assembly tomorrow, to announce the change.”

  “Your Eminence, I must—”

  “I thank you for being such a valuable adviser to me over these many years, Osen,” Arin said. “I will forever be grateful to you, for your counsel and your friendship. But I believe that for now, my closest adviser must be my own heart.”

  Gar’s eyes flashed with anger. “Kai Arin, I believe you pay too much mind to false counsel, and not enough to the prophecies.”

  Arin felt a flash of annoyance. Had Osen just accused him of having a false heart? He gestured to an ancient book spread open on a kneehole desk behind him, an original printing of the Oracle of Spires, a collection of prophecies from long ago.

  “Vedek Gar, I have studied the prophecies all my life. There are many verses that contradict what is said regarding the D’jarras. You know as well as I do that it is possible to twist the meaning of these verses to suit one’s own agenda. I will not be accused of picking and choosing among the prophecies in order to bolster a particular argument.” Arin was aware that his hand had tightened into a fist. He consciously relaxed it, and continued. “The Prophets have fallen silent to me, but I know They watch over us still, and make Their voices known to those who would listen. When I see how Opaka Sulan’s efforts have been rewarded, I see—I hear—what Bajor is telling me to do. And I believe it is time to listen.”

  Gar was speechless as Arin dismissed him. The kai was ambivalent as the other man left the small chamber, sorry for his old friend—Gar had been unwavering in his faith, in his reliability as an assistant and counselor. They had worked closely together for many years. But Arin had come to acknowledge that the old caste system was not serving them well, and as Opaka and others like her had spread their message, he’d felt the change in the air, a feeling of possibility among the people that seemed like a kind of rebirth. Contrary to what he’d believed all these years, it had been far from injurious to morale for the people to leave their D’jarras behind. He realized that what he felt was mostly relief, to finally admit to Gar what had vexed him so in recent times. Gar had always been the greatest supporter of the D’jarra way.

  He turned back to the book of prophecies he had been immersed in before Gar came to call. He found the verse he had been reading, and traced a finger along the line of text. The time of accord shall bring an Emissary, and the Emissary shall bring a new age to Bajor.

  “The Emissary,” Arin murmured, just before he felt cold fingers slip around his throat.

  “I’m sorry,” said a familiar voice, and the kai, clutching at those icy fingers, turned to stare into a pair of eyes that seemed strikingly reptilian, though Arin had never noticed it before. “I’m afraid I can’t let you call that assembly, Your Eminence.”

  The kai didn’t understand. He struggled, but the pressure only increased, and images of joy and sorrow and regret ran through his mind; it was as though it was all coming together, becoming a coherent story. His last thought was of the Orb he had lost, the great tragedy of his life in service to Them…. If Gar had not dragged him out of the shrine when he had, could he have saved the Orb of Truth? Could it be, as the people often murmured, that the Orb had not been destroyed at all, but…taken…?

  Black flowers bloomed in his eyes, and the struggle was too great, blotting out his thoughts, and then there was nothing, nothing at all.

  Miras Vara sat up abruptly in her bed, sweating and cold. She swept her damp hair from the nape of her neck, breathing deeply as reality began to piece itself together again. She was in her bedchamber, in the small apartment where she lived alone, across the way from the Ministry of Science, where she worked. It had been a dream, only a dream…never frightening, exactly, but it was the same dream she’d had with increasing frequency in past weeks. This time, it had been different.

  As always, she had been walking alone in the night, outside the periphery of Cardassia City where she lived and worked. Her feet had been bare, and the stony road had pierced her soles, but there was no blood, no pain. The ground beneath her, invisible in the dark, gave way to softness, coolness like nothing that occurred in nature, at least not on her world…And it occurred to her that she was going somewhe
re, some specific destination that she had never visited before, and that it was vital she continue on.

  This was the part of the dream that she had experienced many times before—walking alone at night, a sudden understanding that she had a purpose, even though she didn’t know what it was. But before tonight, she’d always woken shortly thereafter. This time, she had continued to walk for a much greater distance than ever before, traveling blind until the darkness gave way to the fragile light of dawn.

  The ascending sun cast a yellow pall across the ground, which, to Miras’s astonishment, was coated in something spongy with an undercurrent of subtle prickliness—something green. She knew what it was, but only from books, from her brief school rotation through the agri program.

  In the distance, not far from a deep stand of wood—real, living trees—she could hear noises, not mechanical, not humanoid, but soft gruntings and cluckings that she recognized as being from animals, from livestock. She was drawing close to a farm. But Cardassians were not farmers, and Miras began to suspect that she was no longer on Cardassia Prime at all. It was then that she recognized she must be dreaming, the most realistic dream she could ever remember having.

  She walked through the misty, early light. It was cool, but not uncomfortably so. She marveled at the scene unfolding before her. A farmhouse stood near the copse of dark trees—she’d never seen so many trees together. There were animal pens, a broad stable, a vegetable garden, variations of things she’d seen in captures but never in life—and yet everything was astonishingly detailed, the dirt floor of the yard, the strange, rich smell of growing things. Insects fluttered up from the ground cover, which was everywhere.

  She approached a farmhouse, a sturdily built cottage made of clay bricks, black clay like that which could be dug from Cardassian mountains. But she had already decided that she was on another world, and became more certain when she saw the figures moving beyond the windows of the small house. Though she couldn’t make out their features, they were not Cardassian—they were leaner and more graceful than any Cardassian she had ever seen. And yet there was something familiar about them, too…

  One of them emerged from the house then, and Miras felt her breath catch. The woman was a Cardassian—or, at least, she had the same Cardassian cranial ridges, with dark hair and pale gray skin.

  She’s Hebitian. The awareness dawned on her like the early light that played across the fertile land. An ancient ancestor, from the first great civilization to arise on Cardassia Prime. Miras had been to see the Hebitian ruins, and she realized suddenly that she was not on another world, after all. She was in another time.

  The woman was carrying a jug, fashioned from the same ebony clay as the bricks that made up the farmhouse. Her long, obsidian-black hair was loose about her shoulders, and she was dressed in a white linen garment, cut on the bias to grace the curves of her body. She teased a strand of hair around one of her slender, tapered ears, and then she turned. She saw Miras, and smiled at her. Raised her hand.

  Miras was startled, having somehow assumed that she was only observing. This attempt to interact…Her dream was realistic to the point of uncanniness. Could this be real? Could she have been drugged, somehow, and brought here without her knowledge? It was absurd to even think such things, but she was helpless not to, it was all so realistic.

  The woman began to speak, and Miras could not at first understand her. The Hebitian seemed to realize it, spoke slower, more minimally—and Miras suddenly found that she could understand her perfectly well, as though she’d just remembered that she already knew the language.

  I do. The words the woman used were presumably Hebitian, a language that all schoolchildren learned the fundamentals of, as their modern language was built upon it. She’d studied linguistics at university, as well. The third time the woman repeated her simple statement, Miras understood it perfectly.

  “I have been waiting,” the woman said.

  “Do you mean—you have been waiting for me?”

  “I have been waiting.”

  Miras looked around for any evidence that the woman could be referring to another—and was struck anew at the strange, rich beauty of this long-ago world, understanding now where she was. The landscape was hilly, but the hills were gentle and rolling, not the usual needle-sharp crags of obsidian that made up her Cardassia. The grunts and screeches of animals were clearer now, more pronounced, mingling with the sounds of a trickling brook somewhere in the trees and the chir-chir-chir of what she imagined were wood-crakes, birds that most experts believed had been extinct for centuries.

  “I have something to show you. It is something precious.”

  “What…what is it?”

  “It is for your eyes only, Miras.”

  Miras followed her into the farmhouse, not surprised somehow that the woman had called her by name. The room they entered was clean and filled with light, aesthetically pleasing in a utilitarian way.

  The woman went to a wood table that sat against one wall. She opened a flat obsidian box that lay atop it, reached inside—and as she started to lift out whatever was within, the edges of Miras’s perception began to blur. The colors of the room became indistinct, began to meld into the cacophony of unfamiliar sounds and smells. She closed her eyes, and then opened them again—

  —and found herself sitting in her own room, kicking at the bedclothes and pulling her sweat-soaked hair away from the back of her neck.

  She closed her eyes again, took another deep breath. Tried to hang on to the indistinct image from the dream’s very end, wanting to know what the woman had been about to show her. Something larger than the palm of her hand, something flat with a slight curve, made from dark polished wood and adorned with bright pigments. The object was heavily carved with an ornate design, a design that resembled…a face. It was a mask. The Hebitian woman had been trying to show her a mask.

  What does it mean? Miras lay back in bed, closing her eyes again, but she slept no more that night.

  Opaka Sulan settled for the winter at a large camp near the northernmost edge of the Sahving Valley. There had been a city here once, Genmyr, that had extended almost to the edge of the forest, more than twenty kellipates away. Genmyr had been a major textile exporter, in Bajor’s simpler industrial times. The majority of the residents—those who had stayed behind, who either couldn’t afford to leave when the occupation had turned ugly or had still believed the Cardassians meant to treat them fairly—had chosen to resettle after an “accidental” fire had swept through the city many years before. The fire had destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of families, made the greater community even more reliant on their oppressors. There were people who said they’d actually seen a group of Cardassian soldiers set the fire, but of course word was not proof and even if it was, there was no recourse.

  Many of the broken city’s natives had made camp here for more than a decade, year round. There were temporary shelters here, like Opaka’s fabric tent, and there were a few more substantial dwellings, though nearly all the buildings had a transient quality, lending a kind of anxiety to the camp, as if all its inhabitants expected the day to come when they would have to pack up their families and move on.

  The land itself was still mostly barren, but the valley was sheltered from the worst of the cold and there was a river only a few minutes away. It was a good place to winter, and many families came each year, seeking community in the hard months. The camp had already swelled to twice its size since the leaves had begun to fall, since the last of the meager crops had been harvested, and the former vedek knew that more would come—many more, to hear her message of unity. She hoped she was up to the task. The people here had embraced her as their guide in matters of spirit. Many were already coming to her for direction, alone and in groups, and while she did the best she could, offered advice from the heart and spoke what she believed, she was often afraid of faltering.

  She sat on the floor of her shelter, alone. A few of the camp residents had taken it upo
n themselves to build her a wood pallet, which made sleeping on the ground much more comfortable. They’d wanted to do more, but she wouldn’t have it; they had few enough resources, and she tried to see that all was shared.

  She folded her arms around her legs, listening to the movements of life outside—children playing, people working together. Good sounds. It was often difficult for her to find a moment to herself, and usually she was thankful for it; the company of her spiritual family helped to stave off the loneliness that sometimes overwhelmed her, since Fasil had gone his own way. She’d been without him almost two full turns of the season, and still missed him terribly. But today she wanted to have a moment of peace, needed a moment to herself to reflect on the man who had been one of the greatest living inspirations to her—because he lived no more. She had received word that Kai Arin had been found dead in his sanctuary, apparently of natural causes.

  Looking back, Opaka could see how her spirituality had grown under his tutelage, could recall many of his services that had touched her faith so profoundly, and she indulged in a moment of tearful regret as she recalled their last conversation. She wished she could have parted ways with him on more amiable terms. But of course, were it not for the disagreement, she would never have left. It was more reason to be grateful to him, for forcing her to be stronger, to be brave enough to do as she had.

  Someone whipped back the flap of her makeshift tent, and she hastily wiped her eyes. “Yes? I…I wish to be alone for a moment, if it can wait.”

  “Mother.”

  She turned, and saw her son standing in the entryway of her rough home. It had been over a year since he had left to fight in the resistance, and many months had passed since he had visited her last—months during which she had not known if he was alive or dead.