Sacraments of Fire Read online

  Kira closed her eyes and visualized all that she had been through. Within the Celestial Temple, she witnessed the first meeting between Benjamin Sisko and the Prophets, during which it surprised her to hear, more than once, of her gods’ concerns that corporeal beings would destroy Them. And then . . . and then . . .

  And then Kira had not been Kira. She lived days, weeks, months somewhere—somewhen—in Bajor’s past. In the identity of Keev Anora, she worked as part of a movement to free slaves from servitude, and in so doing, to unknowingly help rebuild the Celestial Temple. As Keev, Kira also fell in love with a freedom fighter named Altek Dans.

  She opened her eyes, half expecting that she would find herself aboard the runabout she’d stolen—Rubicon—or in a bio-bed in Defiant’s infirmary. Instead, she saw Taran’atar regarding her, if not with a look of concern, then at least with a posture that suggested his interest in her well-being. Is this real? she asked herself. Is this part of an Orb experience? Are all or some of my memories false? Kira clearly recalled consulting the Orb of Destiny before appropriating Rubicon and heading it into the wormhole. She wondered if everything that followed her opening the ark had been a vision imparted to her by the Prophets, or simply a dream, or even a delusion.

  But that doesn’t make sense, she realized. By the time she approached the Orb, Taran’atar had been long dead. Kira had no real sense of how long she had spent in the Celestial Temple, but considering the abilities of the Prophets, she recognized that events that seemed to last months to her might easily have taken place in only a day—or even less—in real time.

  Regardless, no period of time—no matter how brief, no matter how long—would have allowed for the resurrection of Taran’atar. As she considered that, Kira found that she could not keep her eyes open. Her mind began to drift as sleep—or unconsciousness—began to pull her into its folds. Just before slumber took her, she reached the only conclusion she could: she must have emerged from the Celestial Temple not in the moments immediately after she entered it, or even days, months, or years later, but sometime in the past.

  TARAN’ATAR STUDIED KIRA NERYS as she lay on the transporter stage. He had recognized her as soon as the glowing green hyperboloid had vanished, leaving her in its place. At the same time, he thought of Iliana Ghemor, who had employed a subliminal waveform to transfer his innate obedience from the Founders to her. And then there had been Kira’s counterpart in the parallel universe, and Ghemor’s as well.

  But he knew Kira. He had spent enough time with her on Deep Space 9, and then with the others who shared her visage, to know. It required a moment for him to be sure, but when he drew close, he saw it in her expression, in the way that she knew him.

  Taran’atar noticed more than her identity, though. Kira did not wear her Starfleet uniform, but civilian attire: a yellow-green vest atop a maroon shirt, and brown pants. Dirt smeared her clothing, her hands, her face. Exhaustion wrapped her like a cloak, and confusion dimmed her normally bright eyes.

  He watched her as she lost consciousness, and he wondered what had happened to her. Her presence so deep inside the Gamma Quadrant surprised him, as did her traveling alone, aboard an object that looked like one of the sacred relics of her people. When last he’d seen her, more than two hundred fifty days previously, after he’d been freed from the forced servitude of Iliana Ghemor, Kira had given him the choice of remaining on Deep Space 9 or leaving the station on an old, decommissioned Bajoran scoutship, to go wherever he chose to go, to do whatever he chose to do.

  Except that I didn’t really have a choice, Taran’atar thought. Jem’Hadar never do.

  Odo had sent him to the Alpha Quadrant as an observer, and to follow Kira’s orders as he would have any of the Founder’s. But what sounded like the simplest of commands hid an obvious complexity: Jem’Hadar did not observe, other than in their role as soldiers. In so many ways, he failed in his attempts to do as Odo had bade him, but worse, his weakness allowed Iliana Ghemor to take control of him in the most obscene way, substituting herself for the Founders in Taran’atar’s mind.

  Taran’atar had served Ghemor well, and in so doing, had betrayed Odo and the rest of the Founders. That he eventually freed himself, and then allowed the Deep Space 9 crew to take him into custody and bring him back to the station, did not matter. His failures did not vanish in the performance of other deeds.

  And so the choice Kira had set him had been no choice at all. His actions merited punishment. Kira refused to see that, but the Founders would not.

  Taran’atar had boarded the weaponless scoutship and headed it into the Anomaly. Once back in the Gamma Quadrant, he set course for the Dominion, where he anticipated a swift death. His crimes had become legion, from biological breakdowns—his aging body’s lack of dependence on ketracel-white had been joined by the occasional need to eat, sleep, and dream—to mental damage—the realignment of his allegiance by Ghemor—to his questioning the sanity of the Founder leader and his attempted murder of Kira Nerys. Not only did he deserve to have his life ended, he welcomed it. The very essence of his being told him that he would rather die as a Jem’Hadar than continue to live as an aberration, and as a failure.

  But Taran’atar had never reached the Dominion.

  One of the doors to Two Bay swung open with the creak of unlubicrated metal on metal. Allo Glessin, formerly a medic in the Cardassian Guard, served in the same capacity aboard the ship. He crossed the bay quickly, the rap of his heels against the deck echoing in the large, nearly empty space. He carried a medkit with him.

  “What’s her story?” Glessin asked as he mounted the transporter stage and kneeled beside Kira. Without waiting for a reply, he opened the kit and extracted a scanner and readout tablet. Taran’atar watched him, alert for any indication of the prejudice he had witnessed between the two races, in both directions. He detected none.

  “I do not know her ‘story,’ ” Taran’atar said as Glessin began waving the scanner above Kira’s body. “She is from the Alpha Quadrant, but I do not know how she came to be here.”

  “How do you know she’s from the Alpha Quadrant?” Glessin asked.

  “Because I saw her living there,” Taran’atar said, choosing to wait until he spoke with the captain before he said more. “I did not knowingly beam her aboard. Standard sensor sweeps detected an object out in space, ahead of the ship. It radiated energy, but it scanned neither as a vessel nor as a weapon. Captain Dezavrim chose to bring it aboard for closer examination.”

  As he studied the readout, Glessin said, “It didn’t scan as a weapon, but I notice that Dez sent you down here by yourself to retrieve it.”

  “My function is security,” Taran’atar reminded him.

  “And you certainly do it well,” Glessin said. Though the medic did not smile or change his tone, Taran’atar recognized the comment as arch. He saw no reason to respond to it.

  Glessin finished his scans and stood back up. “What is her condition?” Taran’atar asked.

  “She’s not in bad shape,” the medic said. “I can’t find any indication of a head injury or any other significant damage to her body. I do read some scrapes and some bruising here and there, but nothing out of the ordinary. She has heavy concentrations of lactate in her muscles, and an increased heart rate, suggesting that she has been physically active recently. She’s also suffering from mild dehydration. The status of her neurotransmitters indicates that she is also mentally fatigued. She’s fallen into a deep sleep, and that’s probably the best thing for her.”

  “You do not intend to treat her?” Taran’atar asked.

  “Oh, we’ll move her to sickbay, get her rehydrated, and deal with her minor skin injuries,” Glessin said. “There’s really nothing more that’s indicated, other than to keep her under observation.”

  “I will notify the captain.”

  Glessin peered past Taran’atar, over toward the transporter control panel. “You
can beam her directly to sickbay.”

  Taran’atar looked at Kira. “No,” he said, even before he knew he would speak. He startled himself by refusing the medic’s advice. He did not immediately understand why he had done so, but as he studied Kira’s sleeping form, he perceived something about her that he really hadn’t during the time he’d known her: vulnerability. Taran’atar had never judged the captain as a match for himself in battle, but the demonstration of her capabilities had still impressed him.

  Lying alone and asleep on the transporter platform, with no apparent weapon or even the authority of her Starfleet uniform, Kira appeared utterly defenseless. Taran’atar had abandoned his assignment to Deep Space 9, he’d forsaken Odo’s orders to obey the captain, but until she recovered and demonstrated her fitness, he would not leave her side. Instead, he settled onto his haunches, maneuvered one hand beneath Kira’s back and the other under her knees.

  He stood up with the captain in his arms. “Let’s go,” he told Glessin. Taran’atar carried Kira all the way to sickbay.

  SHE WOKE to an unfamiliar face leaning over her.

  “Welcome aboard, Captain,” the man said in a deep voice, his tone more self-assured than hospitable. Humanoid, he had a muscular physique, gray skin, and light eyes. Not only did he not look familiar to her, but she didn’t think she’d ever seen a member of his species.

  Kira felt a strong sense of dislocation. She did not recognize the overhead she saw past the man, and when she glanced quickly around the small compartment, it all looked alien to her. She didn’t know where she was or how she’d gotten there.

  The man must have seen her confusion, because he said, “I’m Captain Zin Dezavrim. You’re in the Gamma Quadrant, aboard the independent courier Even Odds.”

  Still feeling foggy, Kira looked down and saw that she lay on a bio-bed, a thin sheet covering her legs. She pushed herself up and back, propping herself against the pillows at the head of the diagnostic pallet. She opened her mouth to ask how she had gotten aboard the ship when movement past Dezavrim caught her eye. Two other people approached her: a Cardassian man . . . and Taran’atar.

  A flood of images gushed through Kira’s mind. She saw the Jem’Hadar elder standing at the head of the conference table in the wardroom on DS9, where Starfleet, Klingon, and Romulan officers stared at him with more than a little apprehension. She saw Taran’atar at attention and stationary in Ops, satisfying Odo’s orders to act as a cultural observer with as much literalism as might be expected from an individual bred specifically for military action. She saw him shimmering into existence before her, weapon in hand, hurling an uneven blade deep into her chest, destroying her heart. She saw him in a holding cell, steadfastly maintaining his silence rather than defend himself. And she saw him as she had for the last time, just before the fabric of space had been torn apart and she had watched him die.

  “We encountered an object in space,” Taran’atar said as he and the Cardassian stepped up beside the alien captain. “An energy source too bright to visually identify.” Dezavrim looked for a moment at the Jem’Hadar, and Kira thought she spotted annoyance fleeting across the captain’s eyes, as though it displeased him that Taran’atar had offered such information. It made her immediately suspicious of Dezavrim, doubly so when he quickly covered his reaction by picking up the thread of the conversation himself.

  “It didn’t appear dangerous, so we beamed it aboard to examine it,” he said.

  “It resembled one of your religious artifacts,” Taran’atar said. That time, Dezavrim’s face did not react, but Kira nevertheless detected tension in his studied stillness.

  “An Orb of the Prophets,” Kira said. Another rush of memories burst upon her, but not of Taran’atar—of her own life. She pictured herself easing onto her knees in the Inner Sanctuary of the Vanadwan Monastery, opening the ark containing the Orb of Destiny, and letting its lambent form envelop her with its ethereal glow. Near Aljuli, at Bajoran Space Central, stealing a runabout from Chief O’Brien. In the wormhole, joining the battle between Defiant and a Romulan warbird. The Emissary meeting the Prophets for the first time.

  But other images confused her. A woman known as Kay Eaton, who looked uncannily like Kira, chasing through the paved canyons of a vast, dirty city, calling after a man named Benny. Another woman, Keev Anora, also a double for Kira, reconstructing an underground passage. Was that me? she asked herself even as the memories began to fade, like the dissolution of dreams upon waking. Was any of that real?

  “I have to tell you, we were all surprised to find the artifact carried a passenger,” Dezavrim said. It seemed apparent to Kira that he preferred to seek information rather than give it.

  “I was in the wormhole,” she said. “I think I was trapped there for a period, and then I was propelled from it, obviously by way of an Orb.” She remembered the conclusion she’d drawn just before losing consciousness. For the moment, she chose not to reveal her belief that, when she had exited the Celestial Temple, she had traveled backward in time.

  Dezavrim nodded his head, but Kira thought it did not signal any sort of understanding so much as an effort to keep her talking. “Do you mean that you didn’t exit the Anomaly—the wormhole, that is—of your own volition?”

  “No, I didn’t.” Kira saw no reason to protect such information, but she resolved to be careful in speaking with Dezavrim.

  “But then who sent you from the wormhole?” he wanted to know.

  “The Prophets,” Kira said. She knew that she had interacted with the Prophets in some way while she’d been in the Celestial Temple, even if her recollected details of that contact had softened around the edges.

  “The Prophets,” Taran’atar said with undisguised contempt. “Your ‘gods.’ ”

  “Taran’atar, please,” said the Cardassian. “There’s no need to affront our guest.”

  For the first time, Kira made eye contact with the Cardassian. At least on a first impression, he appeared free of any artifice. Unusually so, she thought, and then reproved herself for it. She had stopped treating all Cardassians as a monolithic population of evil oppressors long ago.

  Except I don’t really know when long ago was, she thought. If I left the Celestial Temple sometime in the past, maybe the Occupation is still going on. The idea horrified her.

  “I’m Allo Glessin,” the Cardassian introduced himself, then leaned in closer to her and whispered, “I’m not one of the bad ones.” Kira felt her features redden as she wondered whether her mental generalization of Cardassians had shown. As though in response, Glessin stood back up and said, “I never served on Bajor or in support of the Occupation.” Kira took note that he did not use the term Years of Deliverance, a euphemism employed by some Cardassians for their brutal military takeover of Bajor. “I also deserted before the war, so it’s unlikely that I’ve killed any of your friends or family members.” Kira reflected that she had rarely met a Cardassian whose sense of humor she shared.

  “Allo does himself a disservice,” Dezavrim said. “He kills people no more than I do.” The captain gave Kira no outward reason to disbelieve the simple claim, but she did, and felt quite sure that Dezavrim had blood on his hands.

  But then, so do I. Context was critical, and Kira did not have enough information to accurately judge either Dezavrim or Glessin.

  “Not only does Glessin not kill people,” the captain continued, “he makes them well. He’s the medic aboard ship. He tended to you when you were brought on board.”

  “How long . . . ?” Kira asked.

  “In Bajoran time, you’ve been asleep for about eleven hours,” Glessin said. “You had some minor injuries, abrasions and contusions, as well as minor dehydration, all of which I treated. Mostly, I think you were just suffering from exhaustion.”

  Kira nodded. “So I’ve been asleep for eleven hours,” she said, “and you’ve all been standing here, waiting for me to wake up?�
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  Dezavrim barked out a laugh. “No, Captain,” he said. “We may consider you precious cargo, but Allo and I have other responsibilities. We came down when your readings indicated you would soon awaken.”

  Two details struck Kira. First, although it hadn’t fully registered the first time he’d done it, Dezavrim had just called her Captain again. While even in the Gamma Quadrant he might have known about her by reputation, Taran’atar had surely identified her for him. But Kira had held the rank of captain for only a relatively short period in her life. It had been only a little more than a year between when she’d transitioned from the rank of colonel—after Bajor had entered the Federation and Starfleet had absorbed a substantial segment of the Militia—until Taran’atar’s death. Based on that, she could easily deduce the timeframe in which she found herself.

  The second realization that drew Kira’s attention was that when she’d asked if they’d all been there, waiting for her to awaken, Dezavrim had replied that he and Glessin had other work to do, but he had failed to account for Taran’atar. She looked directly at the Jem’Hadar. “Were you here?”

  “Yes,” Taran’atar said. “I have been here since we retrieved you.”

  “Why?” Kira asked, genuinely curious. While Dezavrim did not inspire any sort of trust, she didn’t feel as though he considered her a prisoner, or a threat to his ship and crew. His description of her as “precious cargo” had not sounded inimical, but reassuring.

  “Actually, Captain,” Dezavrim said, “we were wondering why you were traveling alone in the Gamma Quadrant, so far from the Anomaly and Deep Space Nine.”

  “You’re familiar with Deep Space Nine,” Kira said.

  “We’re aware of it,” Dezavrim said. “Although we travel exclusively in the Gamma Quadrant, we stay apprised of events on the other side of the Anomaly. We also obviously have some crew originally from that part of the galaxy.”