Several paces behind the podium, President Bacco collapsed—not as though her knees had given way, but like so much dead weight. Ro arrived at Bacco’s fallen form at the same time as Ferson. The captain saw two holes in the bodice of the president’s dress. The red of Bacco’s blood radiated out from each like the rays of some dark sun.
As Ferson dropped to her knees and reached for the president’s wrist, the captain slapped at her combadge, which warbled in response. “Ro to Sector General,” she said. “Emergency medical support to the theater stage.” Without waiting for a response, she tapped her combadge a second time. “Ro to Lieutenant Aleco.” She peered out from the stage, and in the glow of the houselights, which had been activated, she saw security officers converging toward the rear of the auditorium, weapons drawn.
“Aleco here, Captain,” said a male voice. Because of the dedication ceremony, the lieutenant had taken over at tactical during alpha shift.
“Lieutenant, go to red alert; this is not a drill,” Ro said, ticking off in her mind everything she needed to do. “Raise the shields, lock all hatches closed, and secure the mooring clamps. I want no one leaving or entering the station, even to and from Starfleet vessels, and I want all ships to remain in place. And shut down all communications until further notice.” She paused, considering what other immediate steps she should take, and already she heard the blare of the red alert klaxons calling the crew to general quarters. “Raise the thoron shield too,” she concluded. She wanted the starbase sealed up as tightly as possible.
“Yes, Captain,” Aleco said.
“Ro out.” She looked down at Ferson, who had the tips of two fingers against the president’s wrist.
“I’ve got a pulse,” the agent said. “Weak, but it’s there.” Ferson wore a stony visage of professionalism, but the captain could see more than one emotion in her eyes: fear, desperation, guilt. It made Ro think that nothing could be done, but then Doctor Boudreaux arrived on the run; he’d doubtless been at the ceremony. The captain heard other footsteps hurrying toward them from behind, but she watched the doctor as he got to his knees and felt along Bacco’s neck.
“What happened?” Boudreaux asked. “Shot? With a projectile weapon?” Ro thought he spoke as much to himself as to anybody else, but Ferson replied.
“It looks like it,” she said in a voice that sounded impossibly unemotional.
The doctor used his thumbs and forefingers to open both of the president’s eyes at once. He leaned in and examined them, then seemed to see something else. He moved around to inspect Bacco’s head. Only then did Ro see the pool of blood beneath the president’s hair.
Doctor Bashir appeared and raced to the other side of Bacco’s body, where he dropped to one knee. He studied the president’s inert form, then looked to his fellow doctor, who punched his combadge with the side of his fist. “Boudreaux to Sector General,” he said. “Emergency medical transport.” He glanced at Bashir, and then at Ro, and finally at Ferson. Only the captain shook her head; the other two nodded.
“Keep me informed,” Ro said, and then she backed away a step from the horrible tableau: the two doctors and the protection officer kneeling over the motionless body of the fallen Federation president.
“Sector General, Etana here,” came the response over Boudreaux’s combadge. “Emergency transport on your order.”
“Four to beam in from my location,” Boudreaux said. “Go.” Blue-white streaks of light spilled down at once around the quartet, and all four began to fade in a bramble of whirling motes.
Even before they finished dematerializing, Ro turned toward the front of the stage—and toward chaos erupting on Deep Space 9. No, not chaos, she thought, even as she saw masses of her crew streaming through the theater’s exits on their way to their battle stations. They didn’t move in a panic—neither did the few civilians and journalists among them—but in an orderly fashion. Already more than half the auditorium had emptied, though only scant minutes had passed since the first shot.
A crowd that included Captain Sisko and Captain Dax looked toward Ro, half of them on the stage and half in front of it. Her first officer, Cenn Desca, stood beside her. All but four of the people she saw wore Starfleet uniforms, and a quick glance told her that, other than Cenn, all the members of her crew there belonged to security; the call to general quarters would have sent them to specific posts unless they detected a location of greater need, which clearly they had. Ro also saw another member of President Bacco’s protection detail; the captain surmised that the others had headed to the hospital, while the one had been left behind to monitor the situation. Chancellor Martok had also come out onto the stage, two of the Yan-Isleth—the Brotherhood of the Sword, who guarded the Klingon leader—at his side.
“Captain—” Martok began, but Ro cut him off with a raised hand. She pointed to Sarina Douglas, the highest-ranking security officer she saw and who stood directly in front of her.
“Lieutenant Commander, I want the theater sealed and security posted at every entrance. I also want teams around each of the visiting dignitaries,” Ro ordered. “A minimum of four guards for each. If they haven’t gone already—” She glanced up at the chancellor. “—take them into the backstage facilities and lock them down. One dignitary to a room, with all the security and aides they have with them in the theater.” She turned to Cenn. “Go with them, Colonel. I’ll need you to keep everybody calm.”
“Yes, sir,” Cenn said.
“Captain,” Martok said, “my men and I—”
“Are invited guests here, Chancellor,” Ro said, interrupting the Klingon leader again. “That means you’re my responsibility. I need you and your men locked down and safe until I can determine the situation.” She fixed him with her most serious, most challenging look, which, under the circumstances, cost her virtually no effort.
“Very well, Captain,” the chancellor said, and he and his guards started toward the wings with Cenn and the security personnel, leaving Sisko and Dax standing with Ro.
“You’ve locked down the station?” Sisko asked.
“Yes, until we find whoever’s done this,” Ro said.
“So how can we help?” Dax wanted to know. “I’ve got twelve of my crew here.” She gestured toward the auditorium, where Ro saw those members of the Aventine crew clustered together.
“And I’ve got seven,” Sisko said. “Plus my wife and daughter.”
Ro nodded. She knew that the journalists and resident civilians on the starbase had been drilled in emergency procedures for their own safety, which typically meant taking the shortest route to their quarters or another designated, non-Starfleet location; resident guests would typically be instructed to take cover in the nearest appropriate place. “For the moment,” Ro said, addressing Dax, “I’d like you to take Captain Sisko’s family and the crews of both ships into backstage rooms here. I’ll assign security to you.” Dax looked to Captain Sisko, the most senior of the three officers. He nodded, and Dax immediately stepped away and activated her combadge.
“And what about me?” Sisko asked.
“Talk to your family first,” Ro said, “but then I need your help. I’ve put a—” Ro’s combadge chirped.
“Blackmer to Captain Ro,” said the voice of the starbase’s security chief. She could hear the strain in his voice.
Ro hit her combadge. “Ro here,” she said. “Go ahead.”
“Captain,” Blackmer said, “we’ve captured the shooter.”
• • •
Bashir materialized with Boudreaux and Ferson in the emergency transporter bay in Sector General. The still-breathing but badly damaged body of Nanietta Bacco lay before them. Nurses Etana Kol, Edgardo Juarez, and Kabo waited in front of the platform. Behind them, an array of medical equipment stood at the ready.
Etana and Juarez immediately jumped up onto the platform and held out medical tricorders to the two doctors. As Bashir accepted a device from Juarez, he saw the nurse glance down at the president. He clearly rec
ognized her at once; his mouth fell open in an expression that mixed surprise and horror.
Bashir held up the tricorder, which Juarez had already opened and activated. As Boudreaux examined the president’s head, Bashir worked over her torso. He scanned the holes in her chest and identified two blunt-tipped projectiles still inside her body. One appeared to have fractured one of Bacco’s ribs and ricocheted down and to the left, lodging in the paraspinal muscle tissue surrounding the thoracic spine. He detected damage to a facet joint and the vertebra below it, suggesting possible partial paralysis for the president.
If she even survives, Bashir thought. At that point, paralysis seemed like one of the better potential prognoses.
The other projectile, Bashir saw, had injured Bacco’s right ventricle. She suffered from pericardial effusion—the escape of blood into the membranous sac enclosing the heart. He considered performing a pericardiocentesis to aspirate the fluid, but a thoracotomy would allow him to attempt to repair the heart. “Nurse Kabo, prepare for transport to a surgical bay,” he ordered, and she quickly turned to operate a control panel. “Pascal, what have you—”
The look on his colleague’s face stopped Bashir cold. Boudreaux held out his tricorder for him to read. Bashir saw a gruesome picture: a third projectile had penetrated Bacco’s skull just inside her hairline. Much of her brain had essentially exploded. Even if he could repair her heart—even if he replaced it entirely—there was nothing of Nanietta Bacco left to save.
Bashir gazed back down at the president as though in a dream—as though in a nightmare. He saw that she had stopped breathing, not that it even mattered. Bashir slumped down on the transporter platform.
President Nanietta Bacco was dead.
Fourteen
Keev lay on her sleeping roll, the last embers of the night’s fire fading before her. The faces of her gild’s members—not Synder and not old man Renet, but all the others—floated in the darkness that had fallen around the once hearty campfire. Earlier, they had shared their evening meal, a veritable feast compared to their typical fare. Cawlder Losor and Cawlder Vinik had trapped an adult hara cat that morning, allowing them a supper of grolanda stew, with mapa bread and the last of the treat that Veralla had brought back with him on his last run into Joradell, moba fruit.
For a change, their repast had been quiet, conversation—and, as had been the case in recent days, argument—forsaken for the rare pleasure of a full meal. Even with sated appetites, though, the peace hadn’t lasted much longer than the few remaining pieces of moba fruit. Soon after the pulp had been chewed from the last rind, Jennica had re-ignited the disagreement that had been plaguing the gild for the previous few weeks.
“It’s not working,” the young woman had declared, and everybody had known precisely what she’d meant. A group discussion had evolved—and sometimes devolved—from there.
It had been nearly two months since the explosions and cave-in that had come close to burying Keev and Altek. Reconnaissance by the gild—but for Keev, who required a couple of weeks for her foot to heal—revealed a small Aleiran exploratory operation in the Merzang Mountains, conducting tests for potential mining sites. Fortunately, despite the roof collapse they had caused, the Aleira hadn’t yet detected the caverns beneath the range. That meant that if the gild could clear the rubble and reinforce that section of the cave, they could resume using it to move escaped slaves to freedom.
If we can clear the Aleira out of the mountains, Keev thought. Veralla had decided after Keev and Altek’s close call that the gild would not attempt to dig out the blockage in the caverns—would not reenter them at all—as long as the operation above them continued. He deemed it too dangerous, and while he would listen to other points of view, no one had so far swayed him to relent. Veralla could not deny that the members of his gild already took risks in working to liberate enslaved Bajora, but he insisted that they minimize those risks.
To that end, they had chosen another course of action: they had begun sabotaging the work camp of the Aleira, though they took pains not to do so in any obvious way. Had the gild simply destroyed equipment or eliminated personnel, Aleiran security would have descended on the area en masse, making it impossible for Veralla and his troops to continue their mission—even if they managed to avoid capture. Instead, they started penetrating the operation under the cover of night, performing minor acts meant to mimic nature. They set small, undetectable charges to detonate in the ground beneath the heavy equipment the Aleira employed; they pumped water into the ground to soften it; and they caught burrowing animals in the wood and released them at the work site. They randomly loosened fittings, and they broke panels and hoses in ways that made it appear that mountain creatures had done the damage.
Not everybody agreed about the worth of Veralla’s plan to drive out the Aleira. Some, such as Jennica, urged a full assault on the operation, arguing that destroying the equipment and killing the handful of workers at the site would draw no more attention than the gild’s liberation of Bajoran slaves already did; security squads from Joradell already patrolled the surrounding regions, searching out the gilds. Others, such as Cawlder Vinik, contended that, despite the possibility of additional collapses, they should take the chance of clearing away the debris from the cave and reinforcing its walls and roof.
So when Jennica had declared, “It’s not working,” after supper, Keev—and everybody else, as it turned out—had understood what she’d meant. They argued the points they’d already made, trying to find some new way of persuading Veralla to their perspective. Frustrations abounded, surely a by-product of their inability to effectively continue their work after the cave-in. Voices rose and emotions flared, but Keev knew that everybody wanted the same thing: to return to freeing as many Bajoran slaves from Joradell as possible.
As the fire had died, so too had the conversation. Veralla eventually suggested that they get some sleep, and while there had been murmured agreement all around, only Keev and Jennica had lain down. Neither slept, though, continuing to regard their fellow gild members across the last few glowing cinders.
Keev did not even realize she had closed her eyes until she heard Veralla speak. Into the silence of the wood—which was not really a silence at all, but an olio of sounds that lacked only voices—he said, “There’s another choice we haven’t yet considered.” He talked, as he almost always did, in measured tones.
“Not go around the mountains,” Cawlder Losor said. “Forgetting about all the added dangers, it would reduce our effectiveness dramatically.”
“No,” Veralla said. “We could go around the mountains, but we all see what that does to our timelines.” Not long after the cave-in, Synder Nogar had returned from Joradell with two more escaped Bajora. They spent a few days in the wood, but doing so longer than that would have endangered everybody, depleting the gild’s supplies and hindering their ability to relocate their camp quickly, which they did at irregular but short intervals. Keeping twelve-year-old Resten Ahleen with them for as long as they had—out of necessity for her well-being—had been a burden on them. With the route beneath the mountains blocked and the Aleiran mining exploration ongoing, Veralla had little choice but to order the freed Bajora taken overland around the mountains. Synder and Renet Losig volunteered for the duty to lead the former slaves to the road to Shavalla. They had yet to return.
“What we can do is move farther down the range,” Veralla said. “We can try to find another cave, or maybe even a pass through the mountains.”
“But we can’t be sure another cave exists,” Cawlder Losor pointed out. “And even if it does, it could take years to map it and find a way through—if it even goes all the way through the mountain.”
Keev propped herself up on her elbow. “At the same time, we have no idea if a useful pass exists, but even if one does, traveling exposed like that would increase the possibilities of being spotted by the Aleira.” It occurred to her that Veralla already knew what she had just said, and what Cawlder Losor
had said. Keev wondered if he had brought up the prospect of displacing the gild to a completely new area not to rally the others to such a plan, but to guide them back to his first strategy. Veralla led the group and they would follow him no matter his decision, but she knew that, in matters as significant as relocation, he preferred to draw a consensus.
“We’d also be increasing our distance from Joradell,” Cawlder Vinik said. “That would be positive in some ways, but it would also increase our travel times and complicate our logistics.”
“It wouldn’t necessarily solve our problems long-term anyway,” Jennica added, “since there’s no guarantee that the Aleira won’t start up mining operations near wherever we go. And if they have success here, you can bet they’ll want to expand.”
Keev saw the opening that Veralla clearly sought, and she took advantage of it for him. “That sounds like a good reason for us to convince the Aleira that attempting to mine in this area is a bad idea. If we can force them to abandon the site now because it’s unsuitable, we can be certain they won’t return.”
“Veralla,” Jennica said, “if we just—”
Veralla shot to his feet in the darkness and turned. Keev saw the moonlight glint off the revolver suddenly in his hand, as though he’d been holding it all night—which she knew he hadn’t. He stood motionless, as though waiting, as though he’d heard something in the wood, out beyond the small clearing.
Keev followed Veralla’s lead, finding her revolver in her bedroll and standing up. The others scrambled to do the same. She strained to hear what Veralla obviously heard and caught the rustle of leaves the moment before a shadowy figure stumbled into their camp.
Star Trek: The Fall: Revelation and Dust Page 24
