Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Young Adult Books #2: Stowaways

by Brad Strickland

  As Whitefoot lumbered along, Jake and even Nog gradually got used to the swaying gait. At least they wouldn’t fall off—though Jake knew his rear end would be sore for days after the uncomfortable ride. An hour out from Sakelo City they came to a hillside that sloped down away from them. “This is where the Cardassian mining operation began,” Sesana said. “you see what they did.”

  Jake took a deep breath. They were on the rim of a vast crater, a crater so wide that the other side was out of sight. Nothing grew there that he could see—it was just a jumbled, barren wasteland, cut by deep ravines and dotted with gray boulders. Here and there poisonous-looking green pools of water shimmered under the brassy sky. “They’re out there?” Nog asked, awe in his voice. “How will we ever find them?”

  “They’ll find us, more likely,” Sesana muttered. “But I’ve heard my father talk about the old days. He says the rebels used to come out from Fanto’s Rip to attack the Cardassians. That’s where we’re going.” She urged Whitefoot forward.

  Jake clutched fistfuls of the animal’s hair desperately as they went downhill. The slope was much deeper than he had thought at first. By the time the lopp had leveled out again, they were a good thousand feet lower than they had been. Like a huge, shallow bowl, the Scar sloped away from them, dropping away to an unknown level somewhere out under the baking sun.

  “One good thing,” Sesana said. “If Tikar Antol came here in a landtran, then I know the way he must have taken into Fanto’s Rip. There aren’t many roads down into the Scar, and there’s only one that leads close to the Rip. So we’ll come in from that direction.”

  “We saw them leave in a landtran, anyway,” Jake muttered. Sweat stung his eyes. It was getting hotter and hotter. Sakelo City was in the tropics of Bajor, and the sun was intense. “What exactly is the Rip?”

  The Rip, Sesana explained, was a ravine cut by erosion. It led to the Deadly Lake, a wide, shallow expanse of poisonous water at the center of the Scar. “The Cardassians had finished with this section of the Scar when the erosion started,” Sesana said. “They didn’t care. The story is that one of the sub-prefects, Gul Fanto, used to dump the bodies of slaves who had died from overwork into the ravine. So it came to be called after him. Now it’s a deep gorge, and they say that the rebel camp is somewhere inside it, but cloaked.”

  “Cloaked?” said Nog. “What do you mean, cloaked?”

  “A Bajoran rebel stole a small Cardassian spaceship, and then captured a Romulan vessel,” Sesana told him. “It was a famous exploit. The Romulan ship was badly damaged, but the rebel flew it back to the planet here and brought down the cloaking device. Tikar Antol wound up in possession of it. Thanks to the cloaking device, the Cardassians were never able to find the Turnaway camp.”

  Nog grunted. “Oh, great. And now we’re out looking for it. By the profits of my ancestors, I wish I’d never left Deep Space Nine.”

  They stopped twice for sips of water, and then they continued west in a curving track that led them deeper and deeper into the Scar. From time to time they passed silent evidence of the Cardassian occupation: temporary storage buildings, rusted to ruin, molybidenal landing pads blown over with drifts of fine yellow sand, mineshafts choked with rubble. At last, three hours after they had entered the Scar, Sesana reined in Whitefoot.

  “We’re close to the Rip,” she said. “I think we had better approach on foot.”

  “Finally!” Nog said.

  “I think we had better speak very quietly, too,” Sesana warned.

  They slipped off Whitefoot’s back. Jake’s thighs ached, and his legs felt weak. Nog could hardly stand at first. After some stamping and groaning, though, he said he was ready to go. They drank some water—it had become warm and unappetizing in the heat of the sun—and then they went carefully forward. They came up over a low rise, and Sesana pointed. “There is the road,” she said in a whisper.

  Jake shaded his eyes and squinted. The “road” was more like a bare scrape, unpaved and narrow, winding between boulders and low bare hills. They approached it, and then Sesana handed Whitefoot’s bridle to Jake.

  “Hold him,” she said. “I want to take a look.” She walked over to the roadside and then slowly followed the road for several hundred yards, with Jake and Nog trailing along behind. Whitefoot didn’t think much of Jake as a rein-holder. The big animal kept jerking his head and breathing hot, moist air on Jake’s neck and cheek. Finally Sesana pointed. “Yes,” she said. “The wind took most of the track, but see here.”

  Jake craned his neck to look. In the protected area behind a boulder a small patch of sand held the criss-cross pattern of a landtran tread. “That must be the track that Tikar left,” he said.

  “Yes,” agreed Sesana. “It’s at least a day old. But even better, there aren’t any outgoing tracks. That means that Tikar is still there—and your friend must be there, too.”

  They walked parallel to the road for what seemed to Jake like a very long time. At last they saw ahead the lip of a cliff that dropped away from them as far as they could see in either direction. “That is the Rip,” Sesana said, though Jake had already guessed that much.

  He was impressed. He knew that this part of Bajor had two seasons, a dry season and a rainy one. They were halfway through the dry season now, and it was hard to believe that for half the Bajoran year the Sakelo City area was drenched by pouring, lashing storms. Now, however, Jake could easily believe it. Only huge floods could have gouged out this tremendous gorge, cutting through sand and stone.

  The Rip was at least a kilometer across, more than half a mile. As they neared the rim, Jake could see that it dropped down for more than two hundred meters, nearly a thousand feet. The walls were streaked with red, orange, white, and gray layers of stone, and jumbles of stone at the bottom of the V-shaped gorge showed where there had been landslides. It looked desolate and fearsome.

  The sun was sliding down the sky, and afternoon shadows were stretching long when Sesana pointed ahead. “There,” she said. “There’s something.”

  Jake looked forward. “I don’t see anything.”

  Sesana pointed again. “There, just past those rocks. Aren’t those footprints?”

  Now that he knew where to look, Jake could discern faint disturbances in the sand, marks that made a track leading over the edge of the gorge. “Nog,” Jake whispered, “can you hear anything?”

  Poor Nog looked all in. He was panting with the heat, and he groaned miserably. But he stood listening intently, moving his head from side to side. “I don’t even hear a bug,” he said at last. “Just the wind down in the gorge.”

  They crept forward, cautiously. Although from a distance it had looked as if the footprints went right over the edge of a sheer drop, they now saw that there was a rough track down the side of the ravine here, a sort of ledge that led steeply down the face of the cliff. It might be artificial, made by the Bajoran rebels, or it might be a natural ledge—it was impossible to tell.

  “We’re lucky,” whispered Sesana.

  “Lucky?” croaked Nog in a disbelieving voice.

  “If the Turnaways had been as careful as they used to be, they would have swept out their footprints,” Sesana explained. “Then we would never have found this way down. The road leads down into the Rip farther along, but I’m sure it will be well guarded. This may be a back way in.” She looked at the two friends. “All right,” she said. “This is your last chance. Do we go back to Sakelo and call in the constables?”

  Before Nog could speak, Jake said, “No. It’s up to us.”

  “All right,” Sesana said. “Here we go. It will have to be single file.”

  “Nog had better go first,” Jake said. “He can hear anyone ahead of us before you or I could see them.”

  “Thank you, my friend,” Nog grumbled. “Anything to get out of this heat!” He went forward and moaned as he looked down the ledge. “I don’t like heights,” he complained.

  “Don’t look into the ravine,” advised Sesana. �
��Just keep your eyes on the track.”

  Nog looked most unhappy, but he cautiously descended. Sesana followed, leading Whitefoot. Jake blinked at how rapidly they vanished from sight. The track was very steep. He took a last glance around the desolate landscape of the Scar, swallowed hard, wished his heart was not thudding so loudly, and followed his friends down into the unknown dangers of the Rip.

  CHAPTER 6

  The narrow, rocky track led down at a steep angle. Sometimes it had almost worn away, and the three of them had to hug the cliff face to inch along. Sometimes a stone gave way under Jake’s foot and went bumping and thudding and crashing down, the small sound loud and echoing in the desert silence of the Rip. Soon Jake felt exhausted, sweating and gasping the hot air and trying to blink away the grit and dirt that the light breeze kept blowing in his face.

  “Here,” Sesana said once when they had paused on a wider ledge. She handed him a colorful scarf.

  When Jake wiped his face with it, he felt the grime that had stuck to him. He sighed and looked at Nog, who had all but wilted under the heat. Nog’s bald head had a fine layer of dust on it, too, and he was panting for breath.

  “How much farther is it?” Nog asked with a groan. Sesana shook her head. “I do not know. I have no map, and there are only legends to tell of the Turnaways and their camp.”

  “Great,” Nog muttered. “We’ll come walking right into their open arms.”

  “I don’t think so,” Sesana told him. “You see, no one uses this track anymore. The Turnaways carved it out so their animals and vehicles could pass into and out of the Rip, but the Cardassians discovered it, so the rebels abandoned it. You can see how it has washed and fallen away. Once or twice I have been down here, looking for anthrolite crystals.”

  Nog looked more lively. “Anthrolite crystals? What are they?”

  With a smile Sesana said, “Nothing special. They are like little pyramids of orange fire. Sometimes they occur in ore deposits, but they have no practical value, so the Cardassians never took them. I like to make jewelry from them, though. Here, I have one—see?” She drew a necklace from inside her tunic. Jake saw dangling from it a little glittering orange-red crystal, flashing brightly in the sun.

  Nog’s gaze grew greedy. “Ah,” he said. “Maybe I could sell a few of these on Deep Space Nine—”

  Jake sighed and said, “Nog, we’re trying to find Dr. Bashir, remember?”

  Sounding irritated, Nog said, “I know, I know. But what’s wrong with combining a little pleasure with rescue? Now, if we could find some of these anthrolites—”

  Sesana had filled a soft canteen with water. Jake drank from it and tossed it to Nog. “Here. Have a drink, and then we have to go on with the search. You can worry about your sales later.”

  Nog grumbled and complained, but he took a long swallow of water and got to his feet again. The three resumed their downward march. As they descended, the cliff cut off the direct rays of the sun, and the heat grew a little more bearable. Still, the path was uncertain and treacherous. Sesana warned the boys against making too much noise, and Jake had to watch where he put his feet—it wouldn’t do for him to send a rock crashing down into the ravine, because they were getting very near the bottom of the trail and someone down there might hear it.

  The rocky floor of the Rip was a wasteland of bare stone and blowing sand. A hot breeze gusted through it, whipping up little dancing whirlwinds. Here and there the stone had been melted, and it had flowed into odd-looking orange-yellow puddles, where it had cooled and hardened again. Jake thought it looked like some kind of pudding that had been plopped down and frozen in place. Hardly any life showed up here. Jake saw occasional spiky green desert plants, like clusters of bayonets. A tough, wiry kind of yellow-green moss grew on the shady side of some of the boulders. Every now and then a scurrying black Bajoran insect, the size of an Earth ant but equipped with ten legs, would dart across their path. Aside from these, Jake could see no indication that anyone had been here since the Cardassians had left Bajor.

  “Is that melted rock from mining?” Jake asked Sesana in a whisper.

  “No. Battle,” she replied.

  Jake gulped and looked around. The puddles of melted and rehardened stone lay everywhere. From the size of them, the Cardassians must have been using starship-class phaser fire. He tried to imagine what it must have been like for the rebels, hiding here with great explosions of white-hot liquid rock bursting up around them. In his imagination he saw the small band of Bajoran freedom fighters, armed with personal weapons, hiding behind boulders. And from up above, perhaps from the rim of the ravine, came the searing phaser blasts that could vaporize flesh and bone. It must have been a terrible, one-sided fight. No wonder the Bajorans made heroes of the rebels, even of the unbelievers, the Turnaways.

  Finally the trail leveled out. They were on the floor of the ravine now, and looking back, Jake had a moment of dizziness. They had come down a trail at least three kilometers long. From here it looked like the smallest possible scratch on the ravine wall. And the climb out, Jake thought grimly, would be even more difficult than the descent.

  The ravine twisted and turned and fell away before them. They descended an uneven slope and came suddenly on water and life. A round green pool, maybe twenty meters across—about sixty-five feet or so—lay with its surface rippled by the gusting breezes. Tough, spiky grasses grew along its edge, and Jake glimpsed something, some fishlike life-form, darting beneath the surface.

  “It is pretty,” Sesana said, “but the water is poisonous to people. This is a rain pond—the yearly rains fill it to five or six times its depth now, and then it shrinks to less than half this size in the dry season. The poisons collect as the water runs through the ravine. The only safe water down here comes from the deep springs—and no one but the Turnaways knows where those springs are.”

  “Note,” Nog muttered. “Do not drink the water.”

  They passed the pool and headed even farther down the ravine. After an hour or so had passed, Nog, who was still leading the way, suddenly stopped in his tracks, his pose intent. “I hear something,” he whispered.

  Jake listened, but for the life of him he could hear nothing except the faint rush of the wind through the ravine. But then, he reflected, he did not have Nog’s listening equipment. “What is it?” he asked Nog in a low voice.

  Not tilted his head a little. “Someone is coming down into the canyon,” he murmured. “I hear the clatter and scrape of boots. Sounds like ten or twelve people, at least. And I think their path is even steeper than ours was.”

  “We will have to be careful—and silent,” Sesana warned.

  They crept along. Then, as they came around an outcrop of rock, Jake saw them. Several figures, at least a dozen and possibly more, were climbing down the face of the cliff, along a scratch that was even narrower and steeper than the one they had used. He squinted. Although they were far away, he could tell that the people climbing down held on to a rope or cable of some kind. Nog closed his eyes in concentration.

  The climbers reached the floor of the ravine and walked away, vanishing around a curve. “Well?” Jake asked Nog.

  “Recruits, most of them,” Nog said. “It seems that the new Vedek is not popular with these people. They were complaining that a friend of theirs tried to kill him and failed. That must have been what we saw. But three of these people were talking like leaders. I get the idea that the new ones are going to be taken to the camp for training. That was about all I could make out.”

  “We’d better not get too far behind,” Sesana said.

  The three made their way forward, tense and ready to jump at a shadow. At last they came to a place where rockslides had almost blocked the floor of the ravine. Only a narrow channel was open. “I don’t like the look of that,” Jake said. “It could be a trap.”

  “Yes—or a sentry post,” Sesana replied. They moved to one side and found a place where they could scramble up the slope of jumbled boulders left by a
slide.

  As Jake raised his eyes over the summit, he blinked in surprise. There, a kilometer or more away from them, was a city, a secret city hidden within the Rip. He could see tents and structures made of what looked like scrap metal. Landtrans stood here and there, and people milled about in the “streets” between the tents and the buildings. On the slopes at either side of the ravine stood rusty-looking round metal tanks and a few metal buildings that might once have been warehouses or storage bins. Passing right through the center of all this, at the lowest point of the ravine floor, was a deep channel, bridged here and there by narrow planks or by arches of stone. And something was wrong with the sky above the hidden city.

  The sky wavered and shimmered. It was like looking through waves of heat, but heat did not cause the shimmering. Jake knew he must be seeing the effects of a cloaking device, but from the inside. If the cloaking device worked the way they did in space, then no observer from above could see the camp at all—or even detect it with sensors. If the Cardassians had tried to find the camp from space or even from low-level flights, they would have failed.

  And yet Jake realized that hundreds of people lived there, perhaps even a thousand or more. It was a formidable fighting force, especially when you considered the hit-and-run style favored by the Bajoran freedom fighters. Jake had heard Major Kira tell stories about her own days as an underground fighter on Bajor. Although she had lived on another continent, far away from the Scar and the Rip, she had stories of stealthy raids, sabotage, and even assassination that made Jake appreciate how deadly the Turnaway camp could have been during the Bajoran occupation.