He gave the order without hesitation. “Destroy the Bajorans.”
The snarling chirp of Darrah’s communicator dragged him from the abyss of a deep and dreamless sleep. He rolled from the bed, ignoring Karys’s angry muttering, and padded barefoot across the floor to the chair where he had thrown off his uniform. He glanced out through the slats across the window, one hand reaching up to massage the back of his neck. Tension sat across his shoulders in a thick yoke of stiffened muscle. Light rain was drumming on the glass, and he blinked as a distant flash of lightning glittered in the distance. His fingers closed around the communicator brooch as the faint grumble of thunder reached the house.
“This had better be good,” he growled, raising the device to his lips.
He heard Myda’s ever-weary intonation. “Wait one moment, Inspector. I’m patching in a signal from the keep.”
“What?” His annoyance flared in unison with another lightning bolt. “Off duty means off duty—”
The very real fear he heard in the next voice made him stop dead. “Inspector Darrah? This is Tima, I’m a novitiate serving with Ranjen Gar…”
And suddenly Darrah was very much awake. “Is he all right? What’s wrong?”
The girl was on the verge of tears. “He’s gone! He was supposed to be back here hours ago, with Vedek Arin’s party from Derna…”
Darrah nodded. “Yeah, I saw him at the port. They didn’t arrive?” He shifted the slats and peered out at the encroaching storm front.
“The others did. Ranjen Gar stayed behind. They said he was with an Oralian, a cleric called Pasir…They took a flyer to Hathon…”
“Then he’s probably there. Try the Hathon city central comnet—”
“We did!” she insisted. “And Traffic Control as well. The flyer never went to Hathon, Inspector! No one knows where it is!”
“Osen…” Darrah’s throat tightened as he whispered his friend’s name. Abruptly, he found Gar’s last words to him echoing through his thoughts. I will admit I too have had some concerns of late. Darrah clamped down hard on the instinct to jump to a conclusion, but it was hard to hold back the notion that the priest could have been dragged into something dangerous.
“What’s wrong with Gar?” Karys called from the bed.
He waved her into silence. “Myda, are you still on the line?”
“Yes, boss,” said the law officer.
“What have you got from Traffic Control?”
He heard a heavy sigh. “Running a search right now, sir, but so far it seems that the flight plan filed by the Cardassian was a dud. I got a report from one of the precinct air units that a flyer matching the same description was seen heading west toward the Kendra mountains.”
Darrah instinctively looked in that direction, and straight into the teeth of the thunderstorm. “No crash beacons, no alert signals?”
“Not a one, sir. It’s like they vanished.”
“Not on my watch,” he growled, flinging off his night-shirt. “Tima?”
“Y-yes?”
“We’ll find Gar, don’t worry.”
“Thank you, Inspector.” He heard the click as Tima dropped off the network.
“Myda!” Darrah snapped. “Put together a search pattern and a rescue team, have them assemble at the port. Drag whoever you need to out of bed, and get a fast flyer routed to my house right now.”
“Boss,” came the wary reply, “the storm’s a real monster. Weather control has been trying to pull the teeth on this one, but it’s going to hit scale four before daybreak.”
“Just do what I said,” Darrah retorted. “If Gar’s lost out there, it’s not the Prophets who are going to rescue him, it’s us.” He tapped the communicator, ending the conversation, then grabbed at his clothes as another bass rumble of thunder swept across the city.
Karys stood, a sheet wrapped around her. “Mace, what are you doing?”
“My job,” he replied, pulling on his uniform.
The rain intensified, clattering against the window.
“Look at it out there,” she retorted. “You know how lethal the tempests can get this time of year.” His wife touched his shoulder. “I know the man is your friend, but you’re a ranking officer of the Watch. You could let someone else handle this.”
He nodded. “You’re right, Karys, I could.” Mace snatched up his gear belt. “But I won’t.” Above the sound of the rainfall, he heard the whine of antigravs. Myda had done as he’d ordered.
Her hand closed around his wrist. “You’re risking your life for him.”
“He’d do the same thing for me.” But as he looked into her eyes, Darrah knew that there was more to it than that, more than just the duty of his friendship with Osen. This isn’t any random misadventure taking place here. Something else is going on, something connected to Cemba.
The police flyer was settling into a low hover over the roadway outside the house. Grabbing his overcoat and his phaser holster, Darrah ran out into the rain without another word.
15
The rain across the roof of the enclave blockhouse was a constant rattle now, a sound like handfuls of gravel being thrown against the thermoconcrete construction. Outside, the pavilions snapped and cracked as they flexed on their supports, the cables holding them in place humming with vibration. Bajor’s sky was dark and heavy with menace, the night gloom mirroring Bennek’s soured mood. Aside from the sporadic flashes of lightning, the only illumination cast over the cleric’s room was the sullen glow of the communications screen.
The connection was thick with static; it was coming to Bajor on a side channel outside the normal frequencies open to Cardassian civilians. There was an illegal circuit concealed in the back of the communicator that, if it were discovered, would have meant instant arrest for the cleric. The fact that Hadlo was using it now to contact him filled Bennek with dread.
A flicker of lightning cast quick bars of white light through the room behind him, and on the screen Hadlo’s pale face reacted. “Bennek! By the Fates, are they already there? Are they firing? I can’t hear any shots—”
“It’s just a storm,” said the priest.
Hadlo nodded rapidly. “Oh, indeed, my friend, the storm is breaking upon us. This is the moment of our greatest testing, Bennek! The hammer falling…The clouds of ashes and the serpents rising…Do you see it as clearly?”
“What do you want?” Bennek almost shouted at his old mentor, afraid and angry all at once. Over and over he was forced to endure the priest’s directionless, unfathomable ramblings, and each time he spoke with the elderly man it seemed worse. Hadlo had never been the same since that day at the Kendra Shrine, and as much as Bennek was loath to give voice to it, he was deathly afraid that the priest had lost all sense of reason.
His sharp words seemed to make some impact on Hadlo, and the old man stiffened, regaining his poise for a brief moment. “This is the time. This is the moment I warned you of when we spoke in the library of the Naghai Keep. The purge has begun. All our churches are burning, Bennek. Burning.”
“Purge?” The word almost choked him.
Hadlo nodded, the image jerking and fracturing. “Kell’s promises to us have been finally broken, open to the world. The military are rounding up everyone who follows the Way. Shattering the masks and setting the scrolls to the torch.”
“No!” Bennek gasped. He glanced at the leather bag on a nearby shelf that contained his copy of the Recitations and his recital mask, suddenly needing to reassure himself they were still there.
“Listen to me, boy!” said the cleric, his eyes wide. “I have gathered as many of the faithful as I can, and we are fleeing the homeworld.”
“You…you’re on a starship?”
“Yes.” Interference turned his words into a buzzing rattle. “I cannot say much more. They are searching for us, and they may track this signal. It is scrambled, but I do not know how long that will remain secure. Listen!” His face came forward, filling the screen, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “We make fo
r the space beyond Quinor, where the plasma storms will keep us hidden.”
“The Badlands,” said Bennek. He had heard the Bajorans use the name for the area; it was a dangerous place to seek sanctuary, rife with furious plasmatic clouds. Many ships had been lost there, so the stories went, some swept away leaving nothing behind, not even wreckage.
Hadlo was nodding. “In time we will be reunited, but for the moment you must stay in sanctuary on Bajor. Oralius will keep you safe there.”
“No,” Bennek replied. “Master, it is not safe here! We are isolated and unprotected, and the enclaves are no longer places of shelter for us. We must come together and—”
“No!” Hadlo shouted, the feedback from his sudden outburst crackling over the static-filled transmission. “I forbid it! In Oralius’s name, you shall not leave that place! Sanctuary, Bennek, sanctuary! You will ensure the Way remains, I have foreseen it in my vision…That is your path, boy! You will do it! You will do it!” Without warning the image vanished, becoming a seething wash of gray static.
Benneck snapped off the console and crossed the room, every footfall leaden and heavy. “I can’t do this,” he said to the air. “I…I am not strong enough to do this!” He savagely grabbed the leather bag and ripped the recital mask from it, gripping it in his fingers. “What do you want from me?” he demanded of the wooden face. “Have you forsaken us? Have you?” The cleric let the mask clatter across the table and he sat heavily. His eyes fell across a bottle of kanar that was discreetly hidden in the lee of a support brace, and he reached for it. The bottle was a quarter empty; it had already served him as a panacea in moments when his weakness had overcome him. The cleric twisted off the cap and filled a glass, draining it and letting the mellow fire of the liqueur race through him, steadying his nerves.
There was a knock at his door, and Bennek’s hand cracked the glass with a jerk of fright. “They’ve come,” he whispered to the discarded mask. “Come with guns to kill us all.” He swallowed another measure as the knocking became more strident. “It’s open,” he said loudly. “Enter and do as you will.”
But the figure that came in from the storm was not a soldier with a phaser rifle. “Bennek,” said Tima, shrugging off a rain-soaked cloak. “I didn’t know who else to turn to…”
In spite of his own concerns, the emotion in the woman’s voice made him push everything else to one side. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Ranjen Gar. He’s lost…He was in a flyer with Pasir and they never arrived at their destination.” She blinked back tears. “Oh, Bennek, I think something terrible could have happened to them.”
“Pasir? No, I can’t lose him as well…” It was too much for him. Suddenly, as if a wave of despair had dragged him under, the Oralian cradled his head in his hands. “Tima…Tima, everything is disintegrating around us. I’ve been forsaken…”
She came to him, putting her arm around his shoulders. “Bennek, no.” The Bajoran woman took a shuddering breath. “You must tell me what troubles you.”
“But your friend—”
Tima held him, and he found himself wanting only to do the same to her. “His friends are helping him. Let me…Let me help you.”
With a trembling voice, every fear and every hope poured out of Bennek as the storm battered the walls around them.
The rain lashed across the blackened disks of the flyer pads in hard, windblown waves that made the Watch officers curse and pull their jackets and caps down tight. Darrah glared at the cloud-wreathed sky, daring it to do its worst. And it will, he thought to himself. This is only the leading edge of the storm cell. There’s more to come.
He faced his men. “You’ve all got the pattern, you all know your assigned sectors. Coordinate through Constable Proka and Myda back at the precinct. The instant you find anything, you radio it in. Clear?” There was a chorus of assent, and he threw a sharp gesture at the parked flyers. “Then get going. But no heroics. I don’t want to lose anyone else out there.”
As the crews ran to their craft, Proka tugged on Darrah’s arm. “Boss? Got a problem. We’re a man short. You need a copilot and we haven’t got one.”
Darrah grimaced, making for his flyer. “I don’t give a damn about regulations,” he shot back. “I’ll search my pattern on my own.”
“Can’t let you, boss,” Proka insisted. “It’s filthy sky up there. You take a lightning strike or something—” He snorted. “No heroics, that’s what you just said.”
“I’m going,” growled the inspector, “and that’s an end to it.”
Proka nodded. “Thought you’d see it that way. So I got you a civvie volunteer instead.”
Darrah threw open the gull-wing hatch of the flyer and his gaze fell on the Cardassian sitting in the copilot’s chair.
“Inspector,” said Pa’Dar. “I was stranded at the port when the weather grounded my shuttle to Dahkur. I overheard the constable, and—”
Darrah looked at Proka. “That’s a very creative solution, Mig.”
The Watch officer stared back at him. “Needs must. He’s a scientist, isn’t he? He’ll know how to handle the scanners.”
Darrah waved the other man off and climbed inside the flyer, dropping smartly into the pilot’s couch.
Pa’Dar cleared his throat. “I realize it might be unusual for you to work directly with a Cardassian,” he began.
“Why are you doing this?” Darrah cut him off. “The missing Cardassian, Pasir. He’s an Oralian and you’re not. I get the impression that most of your people wouldn’t miss one of them lost in a storm.” Applying power to the thrusters, Darrah guided the flyer shakily into the turbulent sky.
After a long moment, the alien replied. “There are times when things are not as they seem, Inspector. I would think that as an officer of the law, you would be aware of that.”
“I suppose so,” Darrah admitted. “You know what? Right now, I really don’t care. I just want to find my friend, so work those sensors and help me do that.” He steered the flyer on a westerly course, and the ungainly police craft shot into the storm.
It was hard to reckon the passage of time in the flyer’s enclosed cockpit. Pa’Dar’s flight became a single round of chaotic rises and falls as the Bajoran forced the complaining ship through churning air. Outside he could see nothing but the sluice of hard rain streaking the canopy, and every few minutes there was a brilliant glare of blue-white as lightning surged. Pa’Dar glimpsed what could have been towering anvils of cloud or possibly mountain canyons; the image burned a purple blur into his retinas.
Hours. If felt like they had been up there for hours, and his eyes were becoming tired from staring at the relentless sweep of the blank bio-scanner screen. When he glanced over at Darrah, he saw the man’s fixed expression of concentration, watching him fight the flyer’s controls every second of the flight. The inspector gripped the steering yoke with a dogged resolve that was almost Cardassian in nature. The man is driven, Pa’Dar told himself; and on the heels of that came the question that had been plaguing him since the moment he had volunteered. What drives me?
At first it had been difficult to frame an answer. Kotan Pa’Dar was a rational thinker, a scientist with a reductionist mind-set. He was used to problems where the parameters were clearly deduced, where he could apply his knowledge and come to an empirical conclusion; but what was happening around him on Bajor did not lend itself to the same process.
There are connections. He was certain of it. Part of Pa’Dar knew that to be Cardassian was to live in a world where there were always machinations beneath the surface, but he was so close to this, so enmeshed in it that his inquisitive mind could not easily let it go. Rhan Ico’s shadowy behavior. The bombing of the Lhemor. The wall of silence thrown up around the aftermath of the incident at Cemba Station. Skrain Dukat’s manner, the chasm that had opened up in their friendship. All these elements preyed on Pa’Dar’s mind, wheeling and turning like the pieces in a child’s logic puzzle, never quite fitting into place.
A stutter of contact on the sensor panel illuminated for a brief moment, then vanished. Pa’Dar peered at the display, frowning. “Inspector?” he ventured. “There’s a lake…” He pointed. “In that direction.”
“Yeah.” Fatigue underlined the pilot’s voice. “It’s on the edge of the search pattern.”
“Can you circle over it?”
Darrah did as he asked, turning the flyer. “You have something?”
The contact returned. “I do,” he replied, the lines on his face deepening. “Metal fragments. A single life sign. But the signal is confused. I can’t get a clear reading.”
“Which one of them is it?” demanded the Bajoran. “Gar or Pasir?”
“I don’t know.”
Darrah programmed a quick and dirty macro into the police flyer’s autopilot and jumped from his chair as the aircraft fell into a wallowing hover over the storm-tossed surface of the water. Darrah knew where they were; the lake was a deep one, a natural formation that fed the Yolja River. He’d gone fishing there in his youth, and he still remembered the stories about it. If Gar’s craft had gone down here, it was beyond recovery. The sheer size of the inland sea and the kelbonite in the local rock would mean that tracking the flyer would be next to impossible. It was probably dumb luck that the Cardassian had managed to pick up a reading.
The hatch opened and a fist of wind punched Darrah back into the compartment. He pushed back, securing a rescue vest and descent tether around him. On the hull of the flyer a spotlight snapped on, turning to aim where the sensors told it the life sign was. Mace glimpsed a shape, the arch of a back covered in robes, facedown in the lake.
Star Trek Terok Nor 01: Day of the Vipers Page 29