Sacraments of Fire

by David R. George III

  “Yes,” said the Fire. She paced forward, and Aniq had to quickly scramble out of her way. She approached the destructive device and drew her gaze slowly upon it, from nose to tail, eyeing it appreciatively. “Yes,” she said again. “This will do nicely.”

  7

  Ro walked along the main deck of the Plaza, along its outer edge. Above her, the curved transparent bulkhead that girded Deep Space 9’s sphere at its equator arced from atop the third level and then back to encompass the residential deck below. Night had fallen on the station, and the holographically projected daytime sky had given way to the actual starscape.

  From her vantage, Ro could see down past the meandering walking paths in the green grass of the residential deck and out into space, to DS9’s horizontal x-ring. Both of the Starfleet vessels docked there for the dedication ceremony, and in the days afterward, had finally departed; Captain Dax had taken Aventine to enforce a blockade of Andor, while Captain Sisko had directed Robinson to the Helaspont Sector in order to forestall a potential Tzenkethi threat. Numerous other ships remained moored along the x-ring, mostly transports that had arrived during a second solid day of receiving new civilian residents to the starbase. The independent merchantman Oxis Dey, which had briefly caused some concerns when it had arrived early at DS9, had proven nothing more than its master had claimed it to be, and the ship had come and gone without incident.

  As Ro made her way around the Plaza, she reveled at the crowds filling it, at the buzz of voices speaking in assorted languages, at the aromas emanating from the various eateries, at the eclectic mix of species represented. Though Bajorans and humans predominated, the captain passed people who were Efrosian, Boslic, Arbazan, Caitian, Benzite, and Frunalian. Among the throngs, she spotted the transparent skull of a big-brained Gallamite, and the bright yellow wings of a shockingly tall Aurelian. For the first time in two years, the Bajoran system had a space station that looked and sounded like the crossroads of the quadrant.

  And it’s starting to feel like home, Ro thought. Even after everything that had happened, she could not escape the sense that she belonged there. The thought made her smile. It also pleased her to see a number of her crew; they’d worked especially hard over the prior two days, working double shifts as they brought in the civilian population. Coupled with all of the events before that, they certainly deserved some rest and recreation.

  While patrons flocked to virtually every establishment on the Plaza, some places appeared even busier than others. Ro doubted she could have squeezed into Starlight Gems & Jewelry, Alidosa’s Fine Art, or the Sports & Recreation Reservation Office even if she’d been an Ithenite. Loud, rhythmic music and flashing varicolored lights bathed a packed dance floor at Vestel’s Deep Space Night Club, and although the captain couldn’t see beyond the entryway of Worlds Apart, the host at the restaurant turned prospective diners away at the door.

  Although Ro hadn’t eaten at Worlds Apart yet—it had only opened the previous night—she loved the idea of the place: each night, using projections of holographic recordings, the head chef set the restaurant in a different locale, tailoring the menu accordingly. DS9’s primary counselor, Phillipa Matthias, had raved about both the culinary offerings and the romantic décor; during her dinner there with her husband, the place had been situated on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the spectacular Borvalo Falls on Bajor. A small, tasteful sign below the name of the restaurant identified the second night’s backdrop as Titan. According to Phillipa, the dining room would be on a frozen lake beneath the prominent rings of Saturn—presumably without the usually opaque nitrogen atmosphere and the death-inducing cold.

  As Ro continued around the Plaza, she heard a particularly raucous clamor up ahead. When she reached the source, it didn’t surprise her to find Quark’s brimming with customers. Past the wide entrance in the half wall that separated his establishment from the broad Plaza walkway, every table sat filled, including those Ro could see at the front of the second and third levels. Likewise, people congregated around all of the gaming surfaces: poker, dabo, and dom-jot. Ro also felt sure that, beyond the polished silver bar at the back of the main room, patrons also filled the three levels of holosuites.

  Wearing a well-cut jacket with more colors than a spectrum, Quark mixed drinks at the bar. With the skill and confidence that came from long experience, he smoothly moved left and right, pulling bottles and glasses from the shelves with impressive speed. He appeared to be holding conversations with several customers, and Ro knew from personal observation that his Ferengi ears missed nothing.

  Ro could not prevent herself from smiling again. She knew the night’s commercial success would delight Quark, and that delighted her. For all his capitalistic zeal, the Ferengi had shown her great kindness and caring in the time they’d known each other—and perhaps never more so than in those first few hours and days after the assassination. Their relationship—closer than a simple friendship, but something short of a long-term commitment—had actually lasted, off and on, for years. Owing to their responsibilities, both professional and personal, they sometimes went lengthy periods when they did not spend time together, but Ro always believed that she could count on him.

  After watching Quark for a few moments—Ferengi Businessman in His Natural Habitat, she thought—the captain completed her circuit of the Plaza by passing Café Parisienne, Bella’s Confections, and the Replimat, all of them just as busy as the other establishments. She then turned coreward and entered one of the four large atria serving the deck. People congregated even there, consulting the interactive holographic directory of the starbase, enjoying the artwork adorning the bulkheads, or just sitting on the benches lining the area.

  Checking the chronometer on the directory, Ro saw that she had timed her stroll around the Plaza perfectly. She approached a turbolift, which opened before her, and rode the cab down to the deck below the equator of the starbase, which housed Sector General. The captain did not head for DS9’s massive hospital complex, though, but for the offices of the judge advocate general for Bajor Sector. The JAG functioned as an independent legal authority within Starfleet, outside the starbase’s chain of command.

  Ro entered the outer office of the suite assigned to Commander Gregory Desjardins and his staff. To her surprise, the commander sat at the desk there, a padd in hand, reading. “Oh,” Ro said. “I didn’t expect to see you out here. I thought I’d be greeted by one of your assistants.”

  Desjardins tapped his padd as he stood up, and the device’s screen went blank. “I try to keep the staff on daytime hours as much as possible,” he said. “Since I wouldn’t be meeting you until gamma shift, I sent everybody home.” He offered the statement with no hint of complaint, but Ro wondered if she should infer one. Although she’d met with Desjardins when he’d opened the JAG office on the starbase fifteen days earlier, and spoken with him via comm a couple of times after that, she didn’t really know him. Prior to his arrival, Starfleet had maintained the JAG office for Bajor Sector on Empyrion VI, under different leadership.

  “I doubt your staff all headed to their quarters,” Ro joked, hoping to take some measure of the commander through his response to humor. “Have you seen how busy it is on the Plaza? Or are officers in the JAG corps not permitted to indulge publicly?”

  “We can indulge publicly all we want to,” Desjardins said with a grin, “just as long as we do so legally.”

  Ro chuckled. “Of course.”

  Desjardins circled around the desk and gestured toward an open corridor across from the main entry. “Why don’t we go into my office?” He spoke Federation Standard with an inflection that marked him as a human raised in the Alpha Centauri system. Though significantly taller than Ro, he was not a large man and did not have an imposing presence. His dark hair had begun to gray along the temples, but his unlined face confirmed his mid-forties age.

  Ro followed Desjardins down the corridor, which curved slightly as they
made their way to its end. The commander stopped at the last door on the right, which opened after he submitted to a retina scan. He stepped aside to allow the captain to enter first.

  The office impressed Ro as stylish and Old Earth. Large hardcover tomes filled deck-to-overhead shelves on the lateral bulkheads. On either side of the door hung two framed pen-and-ink prints, one of a classical building that a plaque beneath identified as Université Panthéon-Assas, and the other of the main building at Starfleet Academy. Several diplomas were displayed beside the pictures. A circular table stood in one of the near corners, atop which spread several padds and an open book. A companel sat in the other corner.

  Desjardins passed Ro and made his way to his large wooden desk, which sat below a wide port that rivaled the one in the captain’s own office. It offered an expansive view of the x-ring from below. “Quite a vista,” Ro said.

  “I like to think of it as emblematic of the JAG office’s position as the foundation of Starfleet,” Desjardins said.

  “Really?” the captain asked, skeptical.

  “No, not really,” Desjardins said. “But it is a nice view.” He motioned to the chairs in front of his desk, and after Ro sat down, he sat beside her, rather than across from her. “So, Captain, I assume you’re here to talk about Altek Dans.”

  “Am I that obvious?”

  “Not you, no, but the situation is,” Desjardins said. “What is it I can do for you?”

  “After what’s happened—including the arrest of Enkar Sirsy, a Bajoran national—I’m concerned about the sudden appearance of a Bajoran man whom we can’t identify, and who won’t tell us where he came from or why he’s here.”

  “My understanding is that he emerged from the wormhole. Is that right?”

  “It is, but I’m not really sure what that tells us,” Ro said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that the aliens in the wormhole have plucked him from somewhere else in time and sent him here.”

  “Perhaps not,” Desjardins said, “but isn’t that a possibility? I mean, hasn’t that happened before?”

  “It has,” Ro said, “but it didn’t involve somebody coming out of the wormhole in an Orb.”

  Desjardins furrowed his brow. “Is that an important distinction?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, and that’s the problem,” Ro said. “And even if the wormhole aliens did send him here from the past, that doesn’t tell us why they did so. My security chief has interviewed Altek several times over the last two days, but we’re unable to corroborate either his identity or his story. He purports to be a doctor in a city called Joradell, on Bajor, which nobody’s ever heard of, and he insists that he poses no threat to anyone, even though he possessed a primitive projectile weapon when we brought him aboard. He otherwise claims ignorance about his situation.” Ro paused and shook her head in frustration. “Commander Blackmer believes that Altek is hiding something about his purpose, as well as protecting one or more accomplices.”

  “Stating that somebody has an accomplice necessarily implies that they’ve committed, attempted to commit, or conspired to commit a crime,” Desjardins noted. “What crime are you talking about?”

  Ro breathed in and out heavily, frustrated. “I understand your point.”

  “I’m curious: how has Altek’s attitude been?”

  “According to Commander Blackmer, he’s been more or less even-tempered,” Ro said, “though he has shown some signs of anxiety.”

  “I can imagine that being falsely imprisoned could be stressful,” Desjardins said pointedly, though he did not linger over the potential criticism. “Has he consented to a medical exam?”

  “He did,” Ro said, “but because we do consider it a possibility that he’s come from the past, I asked Doctor Boudreaux to conduct his examination in the stockade instead of Sector General, as simply as he could, and without the use of technological equipment. He supplemented that by using remote sensors.”

  “And is he a Bajoran?”

  “As best we can tell, yes,” Ro said.

  Desjardins shrugged. “Maybe Altek Dans is what he says he is. Maybe he is a doctor from Bajor, and maybe he has no idea how or why he got here.”

  “Maybe,” Ro allowed. “But the president of the Federation was just assassinated here. I need to be absolutely sure about this man before I release him.”

  “I understand your concerns, Captain,” Desjardins said, “but I’m not sure how I can help you.”

  “I want to keep Altek in custody while we continue to investigate him,” Ro said. “Until we can confirm who he is and why he’s here.”

  Desjardins nodded slowly. “And he arrived here two days ago?”

  “I know, I know,” Ro said in a rush. “I can’t legally keep him in custody for more than three days.”

  “No,” Desjardins agreed. “Not without charging him with a crime.”

  “How about criminal trespass and illegally smuggling a deadly weapon onto a starbase?” Ro asked, only half-joking.

  “Did Altek intentionally board the starbase without authorization?” Desjardins asked.

  “When the wormhole opened and sensors detected the Orb emerging from it, we transported it aboard,” Ro explained. “As soon as it materialized, it deposited Altek on the transporter platform and disappeared.”

  “Then perhaps you should consider yourself fortunate that Mister Altek hasn’t brought charges against you for kidnapping and false imprisonment.”

  “That’s not funny,” Ro said.

  “No, it’s not,” Desjardins said. “You, of course, have latitude when it comes to discharging your duty in protecting Deep Space Nine and Bajor, but there is a line, Captain.”

  “Believe me,” Ro told him a little more vociferously than she intended, “I’m quite aware of all the lines Starfleet draws. Do I have any leeway here?”

  Desjardins turned his head and gazed through the port for a few moments, as though searching for an answer out in space. Finally, he said, “Under different circumstances—”

  “Such as?” Ro asked at once, interrupting the commander.

  “Well, if you required information about Altek from a distant location, you could legally detain him for the time it takes a subspace transmission to travel back and forth between the two points, plus one day,” Desjardins said. “But where would you send such a message? To the aliens in the wormhole? Regardless of whether they responded, that wouldn’t extend the time you could legally detain Altek.”

  “It’s possible that he didn’t come directly from the wormhole,” Ro argued. “He could have come from a world in the Gamma Quadrant . . . maybe even from the Dominion.”

  “You’d need some evidence to support such a claim, Captain.”

  “You know that we don’t have anything like that,” Ro said. She thought about simply charging Altek with some arbitrary violation of the law, but even if she could manage to get past an arraignment, she worried about the morality of such an action. While not as quick to defy orders or break rules as she once was, Ro wasn’t above doing so in support of doing what was right. But the captain understood the justification for not detaining people without reasonable cause, and the uncertainty she felt about Altek fell far short of her ability to rationalize violating that principle. “I just need more time,” she said, frustrated.

  “There is one other possibility,” Desjardins said. “Altek might not have boarded Deep Space Nine illegally, but he did enter the Bajoran system without warning, without permission, without documentation, and with a weapon. Bajoran authorities could charge him with those violations. Would that provide you the time you require?”

  “Maybe,” Ro said, folding her arms as she considered the possible course of action. “Maybe, though I don’t really know how much time we’re going to need—or if any amount of time will be enough to satisfy us about Altek.” She knew that she didn’t have many choic
es, though, and Desjardins’s suggestion seemed a viable option. Ro stood up. “Thank you for seeing me and talking this through, Commander.”

  “That’s one of the reasons I’m here, Captain,” Desjardins said, rising to his feet as well. As Ro started for the door, he asked, “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to take your advice,” Ro said. “I’m going to contact Bajor and speak to the minister of justice.”

  8

  Nog lay in bed, staring at the overhead. Sleep had not come easily to him during the past week, ever since—

  “Ever since,” he said aloud, not wanting to say or think more than that. Except that he couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened on the starbase, and what it would ultimately mean for the Federation and the rest of the Alpha Quadrant. If Doctor Bashir and Lieutenant Commander Blackmer proved right in their belief that the Tzenkethi had taken part in the assassination, then war with the Coalition, and maybe even with the entire Typhon Pact, would become a real possibility.

  Since the terrible events at the dedication ceremony, Nog had thrown himself into his work as a means of distracting himself. Even before the previous two days and the crew’s efforts to bring aboard the new civilian population, he had routinely worked double shifts. Nog had also spent time talking to Lieutenant Valeska Knezo, one of the starbase’s counselors, and he supposed that had helped to some degree, but he still felt low. He considered contacting Jake Sisko on Earth to talk with him, but he didn’t want to intrude in such a negative way on his old friend’s studies or the life he shared with his wife.

  “Computer, what time is it?”

  “The time is zero-two-thirteen hours,” came the immediate response, in the ubiquitous female voice Starfleet utilized throughout its starships, starbases, and other facilities.