The Long Mirage

by David R. George III

  “I do not take kindly to threats, and neither does Mister Calderone,” Steinberg said, his tone icy. “Remove this man, and do not allow him back in the building unless he is carrying eight hundred thirty-one thousand dollars.”

  Spinelli wrenched Nog’s arm and hauled him back toward the doors. The operations chief tried to resist, but the strongman probably stood forty centimeters higher and outweighed him by fifty kilos. When they reached the doors, Nog opened his mouth to call back to Steinberg, to say that he would go retrieve the rest of the cash and bring it back—but then he heard a click, and after that, much fainter, metal curving easily around metal. He didn’t hear it much outside of the holosuite and Vic’s program, but he recognized it at once: hinges.

  Nog whirled around so quickly, he spun out of Spinelli’s grasp. In the middle of the right-hand wall, between a tall cabinet and a credenza, a floor-to-ceiling panel had swung open. A man stood in the suddenly revealed doorway:

  Bugsy Calderone.

  He cut an impressive figure. Tall and broad-shouldered, he wore an impeccably tailored black suit, with a ruby-colored tie around his neck and a matching handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket. He had sharp features and a deeply lined face. Drifts of white dusted his otherwise black hair. Smoke curled up from the smoldering end of a cigar sticking from one side of his mouth.

  Spinelli grabbed Nog again, but when the thug saw Calderone, he froze. The mobster eased into the room with a dignity and grace that seemed to belie his reputation. He strode around the table and approached Nog. The operations chief could not help but think that Calderone intended to put the business end of a firearm against his head.

  The mobster stopped a couple of paces from Nog. “I must tell you,” he said in an oily tone, “that you are not in charge of this situation. You never have been.” Calderone peered across the table at Steinberg, who stared back without saying a word. The fear in the room seemed ­palpable—not from Nog, but from the men who worked for the mobster.

  Calderone took the cigar from his mouth and motioned toward where Sperano stood in front of the duffel of cash, which the thug had repacked. “You brought me a third of my money,” the mobster said. “That’s a good start, but it’s not enough—not enough to settle Fontaine’s debt, and not enough to save his life. Depending on how this conversation goes, it might not be enough to save your life.” The guard in the far corner snickered, and Calderone threw him a look that suggested he had just earned a serious demerit in the eyes of his boss.

  “Mister Calderone, I want to give you your money,” Nog said carefully. “All I want in exchange is Vic Fontaine.”

  The mobster smiled, but Nog had seen such expressions before, and so he knew that it meant nothing but trouble. “I guess I’m not making myself clear,” he said. “Either you produce the rest of my money right now, or I’m going to put a bullet in the head of Vic Fontaine.”

  With Calderone’s mention of Vic’s full name, two other people appeared in the previously hidden doorway: another of the mobster’s henchmen—and Vic. The singer looked terrible. He wore the same clothes Nog had seen him in a week earlier, when Vic had been abducted. His face wore the scars of having been beaten: bruised flesh, bloodied scabs, and an eye swollen shut. The man behind Vic pushed him forward with the muzzle of a pistol.

  “All right,” Nog said to Calderone at once. “You win.”

  Calderone looked at him, then took a puff of his foul-smelling cigar. “So quickly?”

  “You’ve made your point,” Nog said. “There’s no use dragging it out. I can get the rest of your cash and bring it back.”

  “Really?” Calderone said. “And you wouldn’t take the opportunity just to put some mileage between you and Las Vegas, now, would you?”

  “Why would I do that?” Nog asked. “You already have four hundred thousand dollars of my money.”

  “Of my money,” Calderone corrected him. “And the answer would be that only money and Fontaine’s life were at stake before. Now it’s your life too.” The mobster snapped his fingers in the direction of Spinelli, who reached into his jacket and pulled out a firearm. He pointed it at Nog. “Now then, let’s all go get my money. If you’re not lying and you to take us to it right now, then I’ll let you and Fontaine go. If not . . .” Without looking, Calderone pointed back at Vic, his thumb and forefinger in the shape of a pistol. “Bang,” he said, and then he aimed his pantomime weapon at Nog. “Bang.”

  “All right, all right,” Nog said. “I’ll take you.”

  “Then lead on,” Calderone said.

  Spinelli quickly moved to the doors and pulled them open. Nog headed in that direction, fully intending to take Calderone and his thugs back to the Shining Oasis and give the mobster the rest of the money. After that, he tried to tell himself, it would all be over.

  Except that Nog had been trained on Ferenginar in the art of negotiation, and both his education and experience made one thing abundantly clear to him: he could not trust Bugsy Calderone.

  iii

  * * *

  Kira walked beside Altek Dans through the immense chamber that lay deep beneath the surface of Endalla. The previous day, after the illumination of the roof of the chamber had caused vertigo in so many and an even stronger reaction in Altek, the work there had been briefly halted. Nobody knew exactly what had happened or why, though there had been no shortage of opinions—not among the scientists, who reserved their judgment for when they had collected more data, but among the vedeks present. Predictably, those in the mainstream faith saw it as some sort of message from the Prophets confirming their divinity, while the Ohalavaru viewed it as an indication of the significantly alien nature of the wormhole denizens.

  Everybody impacted by the sight of the chamber roof had recovered quickly, though it had taken Altek longer than the others. Medical scans showed that, whatever had taken place, it left no physical trace in the brains or the bodies of those affected. Most compared the incident to an Orb experience, though exactly what that implied depended on the perspective of the speaker. Nobody recalled any precise thoughts or images during their periods of dizziness, but that did not prevent many of them from proclaiming their vertiginous moments as proof positive of whatever it is that they believed.

  That morning, as they’d shared a meal aboard their shuttle, as they’d wandered the chamber and observed the work of the scientists and engineers, Kira had watched Altek for any lingering effects of his experience. He showed none. He had no real recollection of what he’d experienced beyond his initial swoon. The scientists had—wisely, in Kira’s ­opinion—decided to leave the roof of the chamber only dimly illuminated until they could figure out how to brighten it in such a way that it could be studied safely. One idea had been to empty the chamber of people, but leave remote viewing equipment inside, or perhaps recording devices. The scientists would explore those and other options until they ultimately reached a decision on a course of action.

  Beside her, Altek pointed. Kira looked in that direction and saw a man and a woman standing in front of a wall near the far reach of the lights that had been set up in the chamber. The vedek nodded, and she and Altek altered their path. As they walked, it felt to Kira almost as though they entered a tunnel. She reflexively glanced upward, then experienced a moment of anxiety as she recalled what had occurred the prior day. But when she looked up, Kira saw that the light in that part of the chamber faded before it reached anything solid—whether the roof of the chamber far overhead or some surface lower than that, she could not tell.

  When Kira and Altek arrived at their destination, the two scientists did not look away from their work. Kira recognized the woman as Alavor Ment, an archaeologist who had participated in the study of the formerly lost city of B’hala, which had been rediscovered more than a decade earlier by the Emissary. Alavor and her colleague stood in front of an expanse of wall that, at first glance, appeared no different from the ar
eas around it. The two scientists both carried padds, and they had set up what looked to Kira’s untrained eye like an overly complex holographic recorder. She suspected that the device, which stood waist high and featured a pair of complicated control panels, had other capabilities beyond producing holophotos—perhaps spectroscopic analysis or the like.

  Kira and Altek kept their distance from the pair of scientists, wanting to avoid disturbing their work. They positioned themselves off to the side so that they could see the object of Alavor and her colleague’s attention. Kira initially detected nothing that distinguished that particular section of wall, but as she continued to study it, she began to perceive gradations in its surface. She thought that she saw some lighter and darker patches, which could have been slight differentiations in pigments, or perhaps subtle concavities and convexities in the surface.

  “If you don’t look directly at it . . . if you use your peripheral vision . . . you can actually see it better,” Altek said quietly.

  Kira tried to do as he suggested, gazing to the side of that section of wall. It made no difference, and so she eventually shifted her gaze again, peering past that area. At first, nothing changed, but then the variant patches appeared to pop, as though suddenly thrust into focus. “I see,” Kira whispered, and she worked to discern the blotches or undulations or whatever they were. Though she could not tell how they had been formed, the shapes gave the impression of having been created deliberately; there appeared a loose structure, both to the individual colors or contours and to how they all related to one another.

  “Are those . . . do you think those could be letters?” Kira asked quietly. “If not letters, then glyphs . . . writing of some kind?”

  Altek didn’t respond. Kira didn’t want to look away, concerned that once she did, she would not be able to reestablish her view of the characters or pictograms. “Do you see it?” Kira asked. When Altek still said nothing, she could not help but turn toward him.

  He was no longer by her side.

  Kira spun around quickly, thinking that he might have moved behind her or to her other side, but that hadn’t happened. She looked past the two scientists toward the darkness, toward where the lights in the chamber could not reach. She took a step in that direction, worried that Altek had wandered into that blackness, and hesitant to do so herself.

  Kira turned again to look behind her, back toward the larger, lighted part of the chamber. Movement caught her eye, and she looked in that direction, off to one side. Maybe fifty paces away, Altek stood facing an odd-angled corner, where several surfaces came together unevenly. He stared at the peculiar intersection, at the dark space it formed. As Kira watched, he raised both of his hands, fingers extended, palms out, as though he intended to push against the wall.

  “No!” Kira yelled. She launched herself toward Altek, pumping her legs as fast as she could, as hard as she could. She called out his name, but he took no notice of her. As she drew closer, she saw two dark areas on the wall before him—uneven depressions, with rounded edges, looking like some random, fuzzy-edged flaws in the construction. But then the hollows began to glow, and Kira saw that each formed the shape of a hand—mirrors of Altek’s own hands.

  “Dans!” Kira cried out, desperately trying to reach him in time. She bent low and tucked her shoulder, preparing to strike Altek at the waist, to get low enough that she could tackle him and pull him away from the wall.

  I’m not going to make it, she thought, even as she continued to race forward. She covered ground quickly, until only twenty paces remained between her and Altek. Fifteen paces. Ten.

  Altek touched his hands into the indentations in the wall. They fit perfectly.

  The chamber exploded in a brilliant coruscation of light. Kira struck Altek, and they tumbled to the floor together. His hands came free of the wall, but still the chamber burned with brilliant illumination. A few steps away from where Altek crashed to the floor, Kira landed on her back hard. She instinctively slammed her eyes shut and raised her arms up before her face. For a moment, she thought that something—a power source, maybe even a weapon—had detonated, but then the bright glow began to recede.

  Kira lowered her arms and opened her eyes. She turned to look at Altek, who lay on the floor beside her. The shape of his hands still glowed on the wall. He no longer appeared dazed, but in awe. He stared upward, and Kira followed his gaze.

  Far above them, the twining structure of the distant roof had vanished, somehow replaced with the infinite depths of space. Familiar patterns of stars dotted the heavens, constellations that had for generations endured above the surface of Bajor. Kira saw the Chalice, the Runners, the Candles, and others—including the Flames, a stellar configuration that had grown in importance over the prior seventeen years, ever since the Emissary had found the Celestial Temple. Benjamin Sisko had been born on Earth, which orbited one of the lower stars in the Flames.

  But the constellations could not hold Kira’s attention. Among them, a great pair of streaks emanated from a single source. A line of deep purplish blue and an arc of brilliant white emerged from a glowing point. Kira recognized it at once: the impressive twin-tailed comet that had adorned the skies of her youth for a month. She had been in the Singha refugee camp at the time, where, despite the privations of her family, her father had mined emotional sustenance for her and her two brothers as he shared with them the spellbinding astronomical pageant night after night.

  Kira marveled at the comet above her, in a sky where the roof of the chamber should have been, and she felt the bitter­sweet memories of lost family. She could not look away as the radiant ball of ice, dust, and gas plummeted into the atmosphere of Bajor. It brightened the heavens in its last moments of light.

  Before it faded completely, Kira peered over at Altek. He continued to behold the spectacle, even as she saw the reflected light dying on his face. Past him, on the wall, the outlines into which he had pressed his hands also dimmed. When they disappeared, Kira looked back up. Not only had the comet gone, so too had the night sky, replaced by the shadowy roof of the chamber.

  Kira struggled to stand, her balance off. Not wanting to waste time, she gave up, choosing instead to clamber over to Altek on her hands and knees. She saw his head lolling back against the floor, his eyes closed, his body unmoving. When she reached him, she grabbed for his wrist. She felt for a pulse and failed to find one.

  She slapped at the combadge on her robe. “Medic!” she called.

  iv

  * * *

  “The wormhole is opening,” reported Ensign Elvo Minnar from the tactical station.

  After receiving word from Wheeler Stinson aboard Defiant, Blackmer had stood up from the command chair and made his way down into the Well, where he faced the situation table. “Let’s see it,” he told Minnar.

  “Yes, sir.” The controls of the tactical console chirped in response to the ensign’s commands. Above the sit table, the holographic display resolved into a swirling rush of blue and white as the wormhole terminus leaped into existence in the Alpha Quadrant. A bantam ship sailed from the heart of the turbulence, and Blackmer immediately recognized the lines of its hull. “The Defiant has emerged from the wormhole,” Minnar announced needlessly, but the acting captain did not say anything.

  Better too thorough than not thorough enough, Blackmer thought.

  As Defiant altered course and swept toward Deep Space 9, a second ship appeared in the center of the spinning light. “The Jem’Hadar battle cruiser has also exited the wormhole.”

  “Thank you, Ensign,” Blackmer said, suppressing the urge to smile at the young officer’s earnestness. “Status of their weapons?”

  “Powered down, sir,” Minnar said, confirming not only the plan previously agreed to, but also the readings the DS9 crew had already received from the communications-­and-sensor buoy in the Gamma Quadrant. “Once the Jem’Hadar vessel left the wormhole, it also lowered its shi
elds.”

  “Commander,” said Ensign Vigo Melijnek from the communications station, “we are being hailed by the Jem’Hadar vessel.”

  “Put it on-screen,” Blackmer said. He stepped back and gazed up at the ring of viewers that hung above the sit table’s holographic display. The screens blinked, and then a smooth, wrinkle-free face appeared. It filled the screen, likely indicating the sender employed the virtual-scanner headset favored by the Dominion.

  “Odo to Deep Space Nine.”

  “This is Commander Blackmer.” The first officer had spoken with Odo several times while the Defiant crew had chaperoned the battle cruiser to the Alpha Quadrant. Blackmer had listened to the shape-shifter’s initial report of the situation with a considerable degree of suspicion—not of Odo, but of the proposition of nearly four thousand individuals seeking independence from the Dominion. It simply did not sound believable. Blackmer could certainly understand oppressed people seeking another way of life than in continuous servitude to the Founders, but he found it difficult to imagine the Great Link, which ruled with an iron fist, allowing such defections. Like many in Starfleet and throughout the Federation, the DS9 exec had viewed the Dominion’s postwar isolationism as a positive development, but conventional understanding held that the Gamma Quadrant power had closed its borders in both directions.

  “The crew and passengers have been eager to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the Dominion,” Odo said. “Now that they’ve made it through the wormhole and into the Alpha Quadrant, they would like to waste little time in finding a world on which they can settle.”