Sacraments of Fire Read online

Kira nodded, then continued. “I told you all I know: that I was caught in the wormhole and then somehow discharged from it,” she said. “Obviously on an Orb, since that’s how you found me.”

  “Are you aware of what happened to the artifact?” Dezavrim asked. The nonchalance with which he posed the question seemed to Kira like a cover for his considered interest.

  “I didn’t even know I was on an Orb,” she said. “I have only your word about that.”

  “Not mine,” Dezavrim said. “Taran’atar’s.”

  “I was alone in Two Bay when I transported the artifact aboard,” the Jem’Hadar explained. “It disappeared almost at once and left you behind.”

  “I can’t tell you how that happened because I don’t know,” Kira said. “But I’ve witnessed an Orb carrying a passenger. I was aboard Deep Space Nine when an Orb emerged from the wormhole. We beamed it aboard the station, and it deposited one of our officers onto the transporter platform. She’d last been seen entering the wormhole. When she appeared, the Orb vanished. We never saw it again.”

  “I see,” Dezavrim said. “Well, that’s good. We were concerned that we’d found an important Bajoran religious icon and then somehow lost it. It’s good to hear that’s not the case.” He injected his voice with relief, but Kira believed she also heard disappointment. She thought that if Dezavrim had gained possession of an Orb of the Prophets, he would’ve been happy to present it to the Bajoran people—for a price. It reminded her all too well of when Grand Nagus Zek had extorted a fortune from her people in exchange for the Orb of Wisdom. If Dezavrim—

  Dezavrim. The name suddenly sounded familiar to Kira. “What did you say the name of your ship is?” she asked.

  The captain smiled, and for once, his expression looked genuine. “The Even Odds, an independent courier.”

  “The Even Odds. Captain Dezavrim.” Kira realized that she knew the captain—or she at least knew of him—but the name of the ship resonated. How could I have missed that? She quickly scanned her memory and finally succeeded in plucking out the information she sought, in the form of a nickname. “Dez?”

  “That’s right,” he said. “We found Jake Sisko last year.”

  Last year. That confirmed the deduction she’d made about the timeframe. “You brought Jake to the Idran system, almost all the way back to the wormhole,” she said. “And Opaka and Wex, too.” Wex had been the assumed identity under which Odo had made his way back, briefly, to the Alpha Quadrant.

  “Yes,” Dezavrim said. “I hope Jake spoke well of the Even’s crew. We enjoyed having him with us. We even invited him to stay.”

  “So he told me,” Kira said. “And yes, he had very good things to say about the people aboard the Even Odds.” In the rousing story Jake had told her about his experiences in the Gamma Quadrant, she could not mistake the strong bonds he had formed with Dezavrim’s crew—and with Dez himself. By the end of his tale, though, Jake exposed his own disillusionment—mild, but real—with the Even Odds captain. He didn’t speak in detail about that aspect of his adventure, but Kira inferred that the younger Sisko had discovered firsthand that not everybody he would come to love shared his values.

  Kira looked down at herself and saw that she still wore the same shirt and vest she had donned that morning. However long ago that was, she thought. No matter how much or how little time she’d spent within the Celestial Temple, it did not mitigate the problems in thinking about a morning that had occurred seemingly in her past, but that wouldn’t dawn for another six or so years.

  Dirt covered her clothes, and for an instant, she envisioned herself lying supine on the ground amid a landscape of lustrous fractures, then, in another environment, bolting frantically through a narrow cave. The images faded before she could concentrate any of her attention on them, but she supposed it served as an explanation—if real—of how her clothing had become so sullied. She noticed the clean skin of her hands and assumed that somebody aboard Even Odds had washed her exposed flesh. Probably Glessin, she thought, unless he had a nurse or other assistant.

  “Would it be possible for you to supply me with something clean to wear, Captain?” Kira asked Dezavrim.

  “Please call me Dez,” he said. “Some of the crew have already set aside a selection of clothes for you.” He motioned to a corner, where a chair held a small stack of folded apparel.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m guessing you must be hungry,” Glessin offered.

  Kira hadn’t thought at all about food in the few minutes she’d been awake, but as soon as the medic mentioned it, she felt the emptiness of her stomach. “I’m very hungry.”

  “We’ll step out so that you can change your clothes,” Dezavrim said. “Once you’re ready, we’ll escort you to the mess hall.”

  “Thank you again,” Kira said. She pulled the sheet aside and swung herself up to a sitting position on the edge of the bio-bed. “Would it be all right if I took just a few minutes to talk to Taran’atar?” she asked. “We haven’t seen each other in a while.” She hoped her request wouldn’t sound suspicious to Dezavrim. She didn’t know how long Taran’atar had been aboard, or how much trust he had gained with the captain, but he seemed like a member of the crew—which astonished her. As much as she and Ro and the others had sought to make him feel comfortable—and even useful—aboard DS9, he’d never fit in. When he had taken that old, decommissioned Bajoran scoutship and departed the station for the last time—before his eventual final return to the Alpha Quadrant—Kira had been sure that he would head directly for the Dominion.

  To Dezavrim’s credit, he did not hesitate. “Of course, Captain,” he said. “We’ll see you in the mess hall when you get there.” He and Glessin withdrew, the door skimming closed behind them.

  Kira waited a moment, then hopped from the bio-bed and regarded Taran’atar. “It’s good to see you,” she said.

  “Why are you here?” he asked without preamble. “Are you pursuing me?”

  The accusation startled Kira. “No,” she said. “I didn’t come here intentionally, and even if I had, I didn’t know you were aboard this vessel.” She considered telling him that she had traveled back in time, but her years serving under Captain Sisko and her tenure in Starfleet had taught her the importance of the Temporal Prime Directive. She needed to find a way back to her own time as quickly as possible, while ensuring that she did nothing to affect the integrity of the timeline. Which is convenient for me, since I have no desire to inform Taran’atar just how and when he’s going to die.

  “Now that you are aware I’m aboard the Even Odds,” the Jem’Hadar asked, “what do you intend to do?”

  “At the moment, only to change my clothes and enjoy a meal.” Kira tried to recall the last conversation she’d had with the Jem’Hadar before he’d left Deep Space 9 for good. “When I gave you the option to remain on the station, or to leave on the scoutship to go wherever you decided to go and do whatever you decided to do, I meant it. I wanted you to have the freedom to choose, and the freedom to live out your life as you saw fit.”

  Taran’atar looked contemplative, but he said nothing. After a few seconds, Kira crossed in front of him to the corner of the compartment, where she rummaged through the clothing left for her. To her surprise, she found several garments that, while she might have been able to make them fit, would have been more appropriate for wear on Wrigley’s Pleasure Planet than aboard a space vessel, even an independent courier. Except that, according to Jake, the Even Odds crew weren’t couriers as much as they were fortune hunters—and perhaps, from another perspective, thieves.

  Kira eventually selected a pair of black pants and a dark-green shirt, along with some socks and undergarments. The shirt actually looked a bit big for her, but it bested her other options. She would just have to gather the material and tuck it into the pants.

  When she looked back over at Taran’atar, he said, “I did not wish to o
ffend you when I scoffed at the Prophets.”

  Kira tossed the clothing she’d collected onto the bio-bed. “You didn’t offend me,” she said. “My faith is internal to me. It can’t be bolstered or undermined by the opinions of others.” Kira also understood the personal crisis Taran’atar had experienced when he’d visited the Founder leader in prison and she’d announced to him that the Founders were not actually deities.

  “I once believed that my own faith could never be shaken,” he said. “But I have renounced my ‘gods.’ I have learned that the universe is knit together by ambition and lies, and that what I accepted as the truth for all of my life is not so. I no longer follow false gods, or any gods. I no longer believe in gods.”

  Although she worked hard not to show it, because she knew that he would object, Kira felt sorry for Taran’atar. She had always known that the belief of the Jem’Hadar species in the divinity of the Founders had been genetically encoded, rather than the result of some great truth. She knew some people argued that, because of their role in engineering the Jem’Hadar, the Founders actually could be considered gods to them. Kira did not subscribe to such opinions. Godhood was not relative.

  “What do you believe in?” Kira finally asked him.

  “I believe only in seeking to fulfill my purpose,” Taran’atar said. “I am a soldier. It is why I first boarded the Even Odds, and it is the reason I stay. Victory is life.”

  Kira did not point out that Taran’atar’s so-called purpose had been intentionally inserted into his genetic structure by a race who did so for their own protection, and who considered him and all his people expendable. Odo had hoped to expand Taran’atar’s worldview, and Kira had done all that she could do to ensure his freedom. He had made a choice for himself—he hadn’t returned to the Dominion—but she didn’t know if that equated to him being free.

  She did know one thing with certainty, though. Taran’atar avowed, as all Jem’Hadar did, that victory is life. In his case, his final victory would end in the destruction of Even Odds, and in his own death.

  4

  The Hub hummed with activity. Dalin Zivan Slaine crewed the tactical station and, for the first time all day, she sat back and took a breath. She glanced around at the crew—Colonel Cenn and Captain Ro in the exec and command chairs, respectively; Ensign Vendora deGrom at the dockmaster’s station and Lieutenant Ren Kalanent Viss at communications; and Lieutenant Commander Nog at operations and Chief O’Brien at engineering. She then looked up at the ring of viewscreens hanging at the center of the control complex, above the situation table, and felt relieved to see only a few small vessels, most of them mercifully outbound from Deep Space 9. Long into their second consecutive shift, the command crew continued to coordinate the influx to the starbase of its ten thousand new civilian residents, a process that would continue the next day. Captain Ro had assigned almost all of her senior staff to a double shift in the Hub, saying that she wanted her most experienced officers on duty, both to maintain continuity throughout the arrivals process, and to leave no opportunity for error or vulnerability during a shift change.

  Even if the captain hadn’t ordered double shifts in the Hub, Slaine knew, it wouldn’t have mattered. Simply as a matter of practicality, nearly the entire crew had been on duty during the alpha and beta shifts that day in order to make the relocation of the new residents to the starbase proceed as smoothly and painlessly as possible. Though a number of problems had arisen, the crew had handled all of them well, preventing any major issues from developing.

  “It’s been quite a full day, hasn’t it?” said Ventor Bixx, who worked to Slaine’s left, at the adjoining security console. The Bolian lieutenant had stood in most of the day for Jefferson Blackmer. As DS9’s chief of security, Blackmer typically operated out of the Hub during his shift, but the captain had tasked him with investigating and interrogating the mysterious Bajoran who’d appeared on the starbase the day before via an Orb of the Prophets. The security chief had visited the Hub a number of times throughout the day, both to check in with Bixx, and to provide Ro with a status on Altek Dans.

  “It’s been such a busy day,” Slaine told Bixx, “that I think I might just spend all of gamma shift at Quark’s.” Slaine—a Cardassian officer whose rank of dalin roughly equated to that of a Starfleet lieutenant commander—had served under Captain Ro for more than two years, first aboard the old station, then at the ground-based Bajoran Space Central, and finally on the new starbase. In that time, she had developed an appreciation for the loquacious barman’s various establishments, the latest of which he grandiloquently called his Public House, Café, Gaming Emporium, Holosuite Arcade, and Ferengi Embassy to Bajor.

  “Not me,” Bixx said at once, his eyes widening. “Until the new residents get accustomed to the place, I think I’ll avoid the Plaza as much as possible.”

  “You’re right: it’s bound to be overcrowded down there for at least a few weeks,” Slaine said.

  “The park, too,” Bixx noted.

  “I guess I’ll just have to head for my quarters, prop up my feet, and open a bottle of kanar.” Bixx wrinkled his bifurcated nose in disgust, which produced the peculiar effect of making it appear as though he had a Federation Standard letter T stamped into the center of his blue face. “Have you ever even tried kanar?”

  “I have,” Bixx said. “It’s thick and syrupy and . . . it’s just not for me.”

  Slaine shook her head in disapproval. “Somebody foisted the cheap stuff on you,” she said. “You need to try an older vintage. Kanar doesn’t even begin to thin out for the first quarter-century, and it takes at least another decade for the subtlety of the flavors to emerge.”

  “I think I’ll stick to wyscot.”

  “Wyscot?” Slaine said, unable to prevent herself from rolling her eyes. She had sampled the Bolian liqueur on a number of occasions, and found it ineffectual. “I get the same experience drinking a glass of wyscot as I would from displaying an image of a glass of wyscot on a padd and then licking the screen.”

  Before Bixx could offer a riposte, a proximity alert issued a soft tone and displayed an amber light on Slaine’s panel. She quickly checked the readout and saw that a vessel had just crossed the outermost sensor net surrounding DS9. Bulky and slow-moving, it possessed the basic characteristics of a freighter. Under normal circumstances, Slaine wouldn’t have found that unusual, but with swarms of civilian transports making their way to and from the starbase that day and next, all cargo traffic and non-emergency starship maintenance had been scheduled for when the station had resumed normal operations.

  She looked across the Well toward deGrom, whose station sat on the Hub directly opposite her own. “Dockmaster, other than the transports, do we have any ships with an inbound itinerary for tonight?”

  “Negative,” deGrom replied at once. “We pushed everything back to expedite the ingress of the civilian population.” Despite her definitive response, the ensign tapped at her controls. A moment later, she confirmed her initial assessment. “The next ship on the schedule, other than the transports, is an Alastron cargo vessel called the Renel’tsah, due in tomorrow at twenty-one-thirty hours.”

  “Do your scans show an incoming ship?” the captain asked Slaine from the command chair.

  “Yes, on our outer perimeter, something that reads like a freighter.” Slaine initiated a detailed scan, then searched for its navigational beacon. “The ship identifies itself as an independent merchantman, the Oxis Dey.”

  “Vendora?” Ro asked, looking to the dockmaster.

  The ensign worked her panel, then said, “I’ve got it. The Oxis Dey is registered as an independent merchantman. The current timetable has it arriving tomorrow at twenty-two-ten hours. Records show it typically works the Galador Corridor: Klaestron, Farius, Kotaki, Kressari.”

  “Not this time,” Slaine reported. “Its beacon shows it coming from the Rexton Colony, by way of Nivoch.” S
he then stated the obvious, just to be sure that the captain and everybody else in the Hub understood the implication: “That route would have taken them along the edge of the Badlands.” The dangerous region of space posed many hazards to navigation and sensors, including numerous gravitational anomalies and frequent, massive plasma storms. Consequently, smugglers and other criminals notoriously utilized it for cover when fleeing authority.

  “Not just along the Badlands,” said Nog from the operations console. “The course between Rexton and Nivoch would bring the ship close to the Tzenkethi Coalition.” At the main engineering station beside Nog, Chief O’Brien nodded his head in agreement.

  Ro stood up from the command chair and started around the Hub toward the tactical console. “Give me a detailed scan, Zivan.”

  “Already under way, Captain.” Slaine knew that merchant vessels—particularly those carrying only cargo—made adjustments to their schedules all the time, for any number of legitimate reasons. Though ships more often ran late than early, neither circumstance typically would have been cause for concern. But after what had taken place on the starbase six days earlier, the crew was exercising an overabundance of caution. Anything unexpected necessarily raised suspicions, but when Enkar Sirsy had been cleared of the assassination, Ro had informed her senior staff that the most recent evidence to arise implicated the Tzenkethi. That made Oxis Dey’s route to DS9 all the more suspicious.

  The captain stopped beside the tactical console as detailed sensor data propagated across its screens. Slaine reported the merchantman’s capacity and its actual tonnage. “I’m reading standard midrange warp engines, minimal weapons . . . the shields look like they’ve been upgraded, but only marginally.”

  “Nothing unusual?” Ro asked.

  “Not so far.”

  “Keep checking.” The captain headed down the steps to Slaine’s right, into the Well. She peered up toward the communications console as she crossed past the sit table. “Kalanent, hail the freighter.”