Bloodletter (star trek)

by K. W. Jeter

  “I hope you don’t feel that this time we’re sharing together is wasted.” Rafod smiled as he strolled beside Odo. “I assure you that I’m learning a great deal from you.”

  More than you realize, thought Odo. If his own face had been capable of it, he would have smiled back. The Cardassian wouldn’t even realize how much he’d learned, until it was too late.

  Their route led them to the active—officially so—sectors of the station. To the drydock itself. Odo detected Gri Rafod’s attention going up a notch, a tensing of the spine into full alertness. As they walked through a shower of sparks from a bank of welding torches, the dull gray shape of the Cardassian vessel loomed before them, its flanks crossed with scaffolding and the heavy cables of the overhead cranes.

  Chief Engineer O’Brien stood before a shop computer panel, head lowered as he punched up progressively more detailed layers of schematics on the screen. “Some kind of problem, gents?”

  “No, of course not. Merely routine.” Odo stood with hands clasped behind his back, gazing across the drydock’s bustling activity. Shouting voices and the clash of metal against metal assaulted his senses. While in the empty spaces belowdecks, he had tuned his hearing for maximum sensitivity, to pick up the slightest sound; now, he simply flowed an extra layer of molecules across the tympanum inside each ear, to block the loudest noises hammering through the air. “Busy, I take it?”

  Gri Rafod wasn’t as fortunate; without filter plugs such as those O’Brien and his crew wore, the drydock’s noise level made it difficult for him to follow even a shouted conversation. Still, it was wise to remain cautious in front of him; Odo could see the Cardassian watching from the corner of his eye, as though an attempt to penetrate the vessel’s mysteries might happen at any moment.

  “We’re about back up to speed.” O’Brien shrugged.

  “Now that we got that little, uh, miscommunication sorted out.” The chief engineer had left the jacksledge sitting in the middle of the drydock, a squat and silent totem of power and a warning to the Cardassians against any further interference.

  “Have you had a chance to work on anything else around the station? I know that there was a small plumbing problem the commander was concerned about—”

  A sheet of meter-thick plate slipped and fell, its edge striking the drydock’s floor with an impact that Odo could feel through the soles of his boots. Beside him, Gri Rafod winced in pain.

  The accident had distracted O’Brien’s attention; when he turned back after looking to see that no one had been injured, his expression was puzzled. “What plumbing problem?”

  He’d been keeping his speech gruff, as though to indicate he was still annoyed at having been arrested and taken in hand restraints to Sisko’s office. Odo glanced quickly at Gri Rafod, to see if the Cardassian had picked up on this lapse.

  Before Odo could say anything, O’Brien caught himself. “Oh, you mean the hydraulics system.” The security chief nodded. “That was no problem. You can tell the commander it’s all been taken care of. Ready to go.”

  “Fine. I’ll tell him when I see him.” He turned to Rafod. “I’m afraid I’ll have to cut our little tour short. As you so considerately observed a while ago—it’s about that time for me.”

  As they headed for the station’s Promenade and the security office, Gri Rafod shook his head, as though his auditory organs were still ringing. “It’s a pleasure to be out of that place.”

  Odo said nothing, but gazed with satisfaction at him. The Cardassian didn’t suspect a thing.

  She almost didn’t see him until she bumped right into him. Preoccupied with her thoughts, the deep brooding in which the commander had left her, Major Kira stepped into her quarters as the door slid open. She looked up and saw the station’s head medical officer standing there, holding a book in his hands.

  “What are you doing in here?” The invasion of privacy would have offended her, even if she had been in a better mood.

  Julian Bashir smiled as ingratiatingly as possible under the circumstances and placed the book back on the shelf. “Don’t you remember? You coded me one-time access, so I could give you the results of your medical tests.” He picked up his data padd from the corner of the desk set into the bulkhead and turned its small screen toward her. “I think you might recall that you wanted to keep it, um . . . private.”

  “Right.” She rubbed her forehead. “Okay, I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to tear your head off.” Kira sat down heavily on the corner of the bed. “So, what’s the verdict?”

  It had taken some resolve on her part to ask a favor of Bashir. For some time now, she had found him, of all the DS9 crew members, to be the most personally irritating—completely at odds with her style of doing things, her notions of how to conduct oneself. She had long ago bolted herself into the direct approach, to put her foot down and pile right into any problem, any confrontation with another person. That was so she could endure, and even admire, Benjamin Sisko, even when she was 180 degrees opposed to him; she was never in doubt as to what the commander’s feelings were. But Bashir relied too much on charm—or at least what he must’ve thought was charm—and an easy, flattering manner, none of which she trusted. Stop trying to be friends with the universe, she wanted to tell him. And get on with your job.

  “Nothing.” Bashir shrugged and tossed the data padd back onto the desk. “There’s nothing at all wrong with you. All the test results are within normal ranges. Perhaps a little elevated on some of the electrolytes, but nothing I’d worry about. You’re probably just tired.” His would-be ingratiating smile appeared again. “From overwork.”

  She didn’t know if she was relieved or not. She’d asked him to run the tests and draw a blood sample after-hours, when the only medical unit staff on duty would all have been over in the emergency facilities. He’d assured her of confidentiality, that no one else-particularly Commander Sisko—would know that she’d been there; that was part of his duty as a physician. So now, if she didn’t need to be concerned about that, and the tests had all come out clear, then she only had to worry about what had prompted her request in the first place.

  “It’s no secret how hard you push yourself.” Bashir gazed up at the ceiling as he musingly rubbed his chin. “Now, if I were your personal physician—if you’d put yourself under my care exclusively—I’d prescribe a long course of relaxation. A rest shift with no thoughts of duty or work . . . a fine dinner, a bottle of wine, pleasant company . . . ” He brightened. “Say, with me. How does that sound?”

  Kira groaned inside herself. That was another reason she had taken a dislike to him. The same thing about which she had commiserated with Dax and every other humanoid female aboard the station. You couldn’t say hello to him without it leading to a come-on—a serious overestimation of his own appeal.

  “It sounds like a bad idea.” She laid her head back against the pillow, not even caring what ideas might be zipping through Bashir’s head now. “As you said, I’m probably tired. Too tired.” He didn’t seem to get the message. Or did, but chose to ignore it. He went on scanning across the items on her shelves, the few books, the various little remembrance-enhancers of her past—there weren’t many of those, either. That was a result of her own war on whatever scraps of sentimentality might still be left inside her, and the fact that a childhood spent in refugee camps didn’t give one much to fondly look back on.

  “Really, Kira, you can do better than this.” Bashir’s voice became mock-chiding as he examined the small, portable chip-player sitting between its minuscule speakers. He shook his head. “This is pathetic—barely adequate.”

  “It works; that’s all I care about. And I got a good price on it from Quark—something about it having fallen off the back of an interstellar transport.” Her problem was getting into moral debt with Bashir—he’d done her a favor, having run her tests at a time when he knew that she knew he was already swamped with getting the station’s quarantine module up and running. So now, she supposed she had to have
a semblance of conversation with him, when all she really wanted to do was boot him out of her quarters. “I suppose you think I should have something totally modern and up-to-date.”

  “Oh no; by no means. You should have something classic.” He didn’t appear to be joking around. His face lit with enthusiasm. “Right now, I’m restoring a vintage Earthside music-playback system. Talk about old-fashioned: you wouldn’t believe the size of the media it uses. The discs are nearly the size of your hand.” He held up his own to demonstrate. “But the Theta decoding algorithms are just pure gold—the last great Sinclair-Moffett design breakthrough. They were supposedly up for some kind of Nobel prize before they died. . . .”

  “I had no idea.” She gazed up at the ceiling, struggling to conceal her boredom.

  “When I’ve got it up and running, it’s magic. The walls just fall away, and you’re in the Concertgebouw in old Amsterdam, or the pre-restoration Carnegie. Better than a holosuite—at least as long as you keep your eyes closed.” His voice dropped a few tones in pitch. “You should come by my quarters sometime and listen to it.”

  Another come-on. The man was relentless. Now, she could put him out the door with no guilt feelings. She was about to tell him so when she heard another voice speaking. It took her a moment to realize that Bashir had pushed the start button on the chip-player.

  She was off the bed and had shoved her way past him before he knew what was happening. She punched EJECT and pulled the chip out of the machine.

  “What’s wrong?” Bashir stared at her in puzzlement.

  “Nothing—” She grasped the chip firmly in her hand. “But you don’t want to hear this. It’s just some, uh, Bajoran folk music. Really monotonous.” That had been a screwup on her part, leaving the chip where anyone could come across it; she’d have to be more careful in the future.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t mind. I have very . . . wide-ranging tastes.”

  Yeah, I bet. “Some other time. Right now, I think I’m getting a headache.” The old lines were still the best ones.

  After he had left—finally—and she was alone, Kira pulled the bed’s mattress away from the bulkhead, enough to reveal the small hiding place she had created. She pried up the corner of the wall panel, and was about to drop the recorded chip in with the others, when she stayed her hand. She squeezed her eyes shut, breathing deep, and trying to control the pounding of her heart.

  Maybe Bashir was right. Maybe she needed a rest, a long one, during which she could somehow find a way to stop thinking about the things that shouted inside her head. Stop thinking, and stop remembering . . .

  Or perhaps it was Commander Sisko who was right. It was something different that caused her errors in judgment; she couldn’t even decide if it had been a mistake to approve letting the Redemptorists come aboard the station. Not fatigue, but something much more fundamental, the division that cleaved her soul. Between what she was trying to become, was pretending to be . . . and what she could never stop being.

  She drew her hand back, still holding the chip. She got up and put it back in the machine, then hit the PLAY button. She turned down the volume so there wasn’t the slightest chance of anyone outside the door overhearing, then lay back down on the bed.

  Eyes closed, she listened to the stern, compelling voice. It was the same as that on all the other chips in the hiding place, recordings of the illicit broadcasts of the Redemptorist leader on Bajor.

  The man’s voice spoke of blood and fire, the need for the great cleansing of their planet, the driving away of all intruders from beyond the stars. In shame, mingled with a fierce, irrational pride, Major Kira Nerys clenched her teeth and listened. A single tear welled up and traced a line across her cheek.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE HIDING PLACE had been changed several times already; to prevent the station’s security chief from finding it and exposing the unauthorized guest it held—the most important person to the future of Bajor. He was aboard DS9, and only a select few knew of his presence. The youngest of the Redemptorist microassembly crew hurried through the darkened passageway, head ducked to avoid the pipes above. He kept the parcel in his arms clutched tight to his chest, mindful of the awesome responsibilities he bore.

  “Unauthorized” was—as he had been instructed and as he had to keep telling himself—a relative term. At the end of the passage, he stealthily raised a little-used access hatch and began clambering down a set of metal rungs to the even darker level below. If he felt uncomfortable about breaking the regulations of the station’s administrators—these strangers who, from Chief Engineer O’Brien on up, had treated him and the rest of the devout with unexpected fairness—then he had to remind himself that their laws were as nothing compared to the dawning of Bajor’s glory and liberation. To remember that at all times was a test of his own faith.

  He came to the last rung, his next step dangling into unlit space. This sector was one of the most heavily damaged aboard the station, the narrow passages and shafts torn apart by the fire set by the departing Cardassians. The station’s autonomic defenses had managed to extinguish the blaze, but only after the local power grid and sensors had been charred to a nonfunctioning state. The smell of blackened filaments lodged tight in his throat.

  Drawing in as much of the stifling air as he could, he forced the hand clutching one of the rungs to let go. The drop into darkness was less than two meters, just enough for a spark of panic to flare inside his chest, the fear that he would go on falling forever.

  He rolled off a mound of singed insulation material and got to his knees. The impact had jarred the parcel loose from his grasp, and he fumbled about for it with a growing desperation. At last he found it, right on top of the wire marking the rest of the way to the hiding place. He crawled forward, holding the parcel even closer to himself.

  “Arten . . . how good to see you.” In the dim light, a smile rose on the face of the most important man on Bajor—or off the planet, since he had been smuggled aboard DS9. “I thought perhaps you had forgotten about me.”

  Though the words were obviously said in jest, they still made Arten’s gut feel hollow. “Of course not—” His own words rushed out. “How . . . how could . . . ”

  “Never mind.” Hören Rygis, the leader of the Redemptorist movement, unwrapped the parcel that had been set before him. “Of course, your services are greatly appreciated. By all the faithful.”

  Still on his knees—the hiding place was too small for anyone to stand upright—Arten turned and made sure that the flexible panel had sealed shut behind him, preventing any light or sound from leaking out. Though Hören spoke in a low, even soothing, voice in this enclosed space, Arten couldn’t help hearing that other voice, the one from the broadcasts that went out to the Redemptorists scattered across the surface of Bajor. It must be a miracle, a sign of their cause’s righteousness, that the source of those hammering, apocalyptic sermons, with their calls to revolution and a burning purity, hadn’t yet been detected here in the bowels of the station.

  Hören set aside the flasks of water and the food containers. At the bottom of the parcel were its most important contents. He held up the blank recording chips, turning them between his thumb and forefinger so they sparkled in the portable lantern’s glow.

  “Through such simple things,” he mused aloud. “Thus is that day hastened, that all true Bajorans will rejoice to see. By virtue of the simple . . . ” He turned a sharp glance toward Arten. “You would do well to remember that.”

  “Yes . . . ” He nodded, wondering just what Hören had meant. Some words of wisdom seemed to be no more than those that he already knew, homilies with which even the nonbelievers would have agreed. Others, he had realized bit by bit . . . the other words could mean things much deeper. And darker . . .

  “In truth, however, you needn’t have worried about me.” Hören opened a flask and took a drink. “I had a visit last cycle from one of your companions.” He spoke casually, as though of a neighbor he had welcomed into a sunlit hous
e.

  Arten felt his spine stiffen. “Oh?” It was his appointed task to carry supplies to the hiding place, to bring the blank recording chips, and to carry away those with the fiery words locked inside. “Who was that?” He had wanted to ask why, but had held his tongue.

  “Your group’s leader. Deyreth Elt. He brought me a few things.” Hören pointed to the items on a ledge that had been improvised on the space’s rounded wall. “Nothing much.”

  “And was that . . . ” He couldn’t restrain his growing anxiety. “Was that the only reason he came to see you?”

  “By no means.” Hören picked through an opened container, looking for a choice morsel. His long-fingered, almost delicate hands were at odds with the broad-shouldered bulk that seemed to push against the hiding place’s confines. Arten felt, as he had before in the man’s presence, that all the available space was somehow being absorbed, leaving only a thin margin in which to exist, bringing the harsh angles of that face right up against his own. Hören licked a dab of sauce from a fingertip. “Deyreth and I had a most intriguing conversation.” The angles sorted themselves into what might have been a kindly smile on another’s face. “About you, as a matter of fact.”

  His heart stopped for a moment, then raced to catch up with the shallow breathing he tried to conceal. He couldn’t speak.

  “Calm yourself. You have nothing to be afraid of.” Hören’s voice lowered even further from that on the recording chips. “Self-doubt is not a characteristic of those wearing the armor of faith.” The smile vanished. “Do you doubt yourself, Arten?”

  “I . . . I don’t think so . . . ”

  Hören sighed. “You’ll have to work on that. In the meantime, bear in mind that Deyreth is one of the oldest Redemptorists, one of the first to have accepted the revelation of struggle, back when we were a ragged band hunted by the Cardassian oppressors and Bajoran collaborators alike. Deyreth is worthy of your respect, a man of great devoutness, confirmed in the truth of his beliefs. Perhaps a little too confirmed—do you follow what I’m trying to tell you?”