Demons of Air and Darkness

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  She walked off. Idly, Ezri tried to recall what, exactly, Curzon might have done to offend Andor’s representative to the Federation Council. She couldn’t remember ever having met her, but that was hardly conclusive—Curzon had annoyed plenty of people he had never met.

  Shrugging, she turned to Shar, who looked as unhappy as Ezri had ever seen him. In fact, it was really the first time Ezri could ever remember seeing him unhappy.

  Based on the conversation, she could guess why.

  “Do you want to talk about it, Shar?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t, Lieutenant, but thank you for asking.”

  Ezri thought a moment, then decided to go for broke. “I take it there are three people on Andor waiting for you to come home to take part in the shelthreth?”

  Shar whirled around, his antennae raised. In a quiet, stunned voice, he asked, “You know about that?”

  “I’ve been around for three centuries, Shar—I’ve known a few Andorians in my time.”

  Nodding, Shar said, “Yes, of course you have.”

  “And I know how important the shelthreth is.”

  Shar’s face hardened. “Not you as well, Ezri. I know that I have a duty to Andor. And whether anyone back home understands this or not, I’m fulfilling it in my own way. But now Zhavey is making threats.”

  “What can she do?”

  “She can have me reassigned to Andor.”

  Ezri frowned. “Last time I checked, Federation Councillors didn’t have any influence over Starfleet personnel assignments.”

  “Respectfully, Lieutenant, I don’t think you fully appreciate the power of politics. And she knows Commander Vaughn.”

  Dax’s frown deepened. “You think she’d convince Vaughn to transfer you? I think you underestimate him, Shar. You’ve been doing superlative work. I ought to know—I sort of used to have the job,” she added with a smile.

  “Thank you, but unfortunately, I think you underestimate Charivretha. It would be just like my zhavey to talk him into transferring me. She might even go so far as to explain why.”

  “Even if that’s true, Vaughn doesn’t strike me as the type who’d authorize transfers for personal reasons. And even if he did, I can’t see Kira approving it.”

  “Your confidence is touching, but I’ve only been here a few months. I haven’t done anything to command that kind of loyalty—certainly not enough to refuse the request of a Federation Councillor. Besides, why do you think I’m not on the Defiant?”

  “That’s a good point,” Ezri said. “Why aren’t you on the Defiant?”

  “Because Zhavey asked the commander to leave me behind so we could talk.” Some of Shar’s coarse white hair fell into his face, and he brushed it out of the way. “Although the talk accomplished nothing that we haven’t already said in our private communications.”

  Remembering how much more painful it was to deal with her own mother in person than over subspace, Ezri could see Councillor zh’Thane’s logic in believing that an in-person plea might be more effective. Saying that, however, would not help matters, so she tried another tack:

  “Shar, maybe you should consider what she’s saying.” At the Andorian’s sharp look, she added, “I’m not taking her side. Believe me, I can quote you chapter and verse on the subject of parental guilt and not doing what they expect you to do. I’m not saying you should reconsider your position because it’s what your zhavey is telling you to do. What I am saying is that you should examine the situation without considering her at all. Forget about what she wants. Think about yourself—and think about the three people waiting for you back home. They deserve some consideration, yes?”

  Shar said nothing.

  “Just think about it, okay?”

  Sighing, Shar said, “I have thought about it. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, Lieutenant, but I’ve already made up my mind. Being in Starfleet is what I want—it’s all I’ve ever wanted, since I was a child. I’m not going to give it up now, and I’m certainly not going to let Zhavey hold me personally responsible for the fact that the Andorian species is dying.”

  12

  THE DELTA QUADRANT

  THESTARS ARE WRONG.

  Kira had that same thought every time she left the Bajoran sector. For years in the resistance, she had depended on the stars in the sky over Bajor. It was better to move at night when they were on the run from Cardassian patrols. Scanners could fail or be jammed, but all she had to do was look up to know precisely where she was. Even when most or all of the moons were visible, she still could see enough of the constellations to orient herself.

  In space, it was the same thing. Navigational equipment wasn’t always reliable, particularly when you were being fired on. Again, the stars were always there for her—as long as the Prophets provided a view of the other suns in the galaxy, she could find her way.

  Before becoming first officer on Deep Space 9, she had spent very little time out of the Bajoran system, and even when she did, she’d had other things on her mind—picking up supplies, or some other errand related to the resistance. For most of the first twenty-six years of her life, the stars as they were seen from Bajor were her anchors. It was something she could depend on in a life that had precious little of that.

  The first time she went through the wormhole and into the Gamma Quadrant, the disorientation had been almost painful. Her anchor was gone. Everything was arranged differently, and Kira—at the time, still not accustomed to working with reliable Starfleet equipment—found herself in the uncomfortable position of being forced to depend on technology far more than she was used to.

  Now, seven years later, it was hardly an issue. She’d made dozens of trips to the Gamma Quadrant, and had traveled all over the Alpha Quadrant, from Cardassia Prime to Earth. Still, every time she found herself far away from home, there was that feeling that the sky was somehow lying to her.

  As the Euphrates came careening through the gateway, piercing the the thick green jet that choked the passage, the sky told her a new lie, one as big as the one it told her when she went through the wormhole.

  She kept going at full impulse when they cleared the gateway—she wanted to get away from the radioactive waste as quickly as possible. Taking up a position about a hundred thousand kilometers from the gateway, Kira did a sensor sweep.

  Her eyes went wide and she felt her jaw go slack. “Oh no . . .”

  “I assume,” Taran’atar said, “that you have just noticed the waste concentration bearing 273 mark 9.”

  Kira nodded. “That single mass is putting out more radiation than everything that’s in orbit of Europa Nova right now combined. If we let that go through, the planet’s as good as dead.”

  “Can we destroy it?”

  Kira shook her head as she studied the readings. “Best we could do is blast it into smaller pieces. Impact damage might be less, but it wouldn’t alleviate the radiation.” She didn’t have to remind Taran’atar that they no longer had a tractor beam, so trying to alter its course as they’d done before wasn’t an option.

  “Colonel, I’m picking up a vessel,” Taran’atar announced. “It’s the source of the jet.”

  “Do you recognize it?” Kira asked.

  Taran’atar said, “No. It does not match anything in Starfleet records, nor any ship I have knowledge of.” He peered at his sensor readings. “Length, seven thousand meters. Hull is made of an unidentified alloy that appears to include elements of duranium and holivane.” Kira had no idea what holivane was and, just at the moment, didn’t care. Taran’atar continued, “ Indeterminate weapons capacity. They appear to operate on channeled matter-antimatter reactions but, based on what I have been able to read through the interference from the radiation, it’s an inferior engine design.”

  “If they’re producing antimatter waste on this scale, that’s not surprising. Anything else?”

  “Fully ninety percent of the ship is dedicated to cargo space. Based on its size and configuration, I believe the ship is a bar
ge for the hazardous material.”

  “And they decided they had a perfect dumping ground.” Kira felt revulsion build up in her gut and work its way to her extremities, which she had to keep from shaking. Even at their absolute worst, the Cardassians never did anything so repugnant as to dump highly toxic material into a populated region. “It must’ve thrilled them when the gateway opened. I wonder if they even bothered to see if there was an inhabited planet on the other side.” A brief urge came over Kira to lock the runabout’s phasers on the ship and destroy it just to teach these people—whoever they were—a lesson. She set the impulse aside. “What else?”

  “There are no docking ports. They also have an unusual shield configuration.”

  “Unusual how?”

  “There are seven of them, though most are offline right now. They appear to have been enhanced in some way. I’ve never seen a design like this.”

  Kira noticed that there was none of the scientific curiosity she would expect from, say, Nog or Shar in Taran’atar’s tone. He was simply reporting the facts as he saw them.

  The Jem’Hadar continued, “At present, most of their systems are offline. I am not reading any life signs.”

  Blinking, Kira said, “None at all? That ship’s got to have a crew of at least several hundred. Could the radiation be interfering?”

  “The radiation could not interfere so much as to mask that many life signs, Colonel.”

  Shaking her head, Kira looked down at the display. They had a little over two hours before the mass would go through the gateway, so there was time to figure something out. But what? With no tractor beam and no way to destroy it effectively . . .

  Then she noticed something. “I’m reading some debris. Sensors say it’s primarily irradiated monotanium—along with organic matter. Looks like a ship was destroyed by the waste.”

  “A ship with a monotanium hull,” Taran’atar mused. “Even the Dominion was never able to refine enough monotanium to make spacecraft from it.”

  Kira couldn’t resist. “Looks like the Dominion doesn’t have the market on high technology.”

  “It would seem so.”

  Growing serious once again, Kira said, “Still, if even a monotanium ship couldn’t hold up to that waste, Europa Nova won’t, either.”

  “There is a Class-M planet in this system,” Taran’atar said, “less than a million kilometers from our position. There are, however, no high-order life signs.”

  Kira took a deep breath. “All right, I’m going to assume that someone is alive over there.” She opened a channel. “Unidentified vessel, this is the Federation runabout Euphrates. Respond please.”

  There was no reply.

  “This is the Federation Runabout Euphrates contacting unidenti—”

  “The tanker’s systems are coming online,” Taran’atar said suddenly. “Weapons are powering up—”

  “Raise shields,” Kira said half a second before the weapons fire struck the runabout. She immediately sent the Euphrates onto an evasive course that would take them farther away from the radioactive waste.

  “Shields at sixty percent,” Taran’atar said. “Shall I return fire?”

  Kira hesitated only for a second. The Jem’Hadar was bred for combat. So why not let him do what he does best?

  “Do it,” Kira said, and as she piloted the Euphrates away from the tanker, another salvo of weapons fire struck the runabout.

  “Shields are down,” Taran’atar called over the din of alarms. “Shield generators offline.”

  “Lucky shot,” Kira muttered.

  “No, Colonel,” Taran’atar said. “That shot was carefully aimed and modulated. Our opponent knew precisely where and how hard to strike.”

  Before Kira could respond to that, the runabout faded into an incoherent jumble. Her body suddenly felt disconnected from reality. The sounds of the alarms in the runabout faded, the feel of the cushioned seat under her dissolved. It was akin to being transported, but that didn’t come with such a feeling of disorientation—of removal from reality.

  For a brief instant that felt like it would never end, she was nowhere, felt nothing, was nothing.

  Then, slowly, her senses returned. Except what she now felt beneath her was hard, cold metal; she was lying down instead of sitting, and her hands were now bound behind her back. Instinctively, she struggled against her bonds, but they did not yield.

  She no longer heard alarms, but she did hear the constant thrum of a ship’s systems. The ship, however, was not the Euphrates. The silvery-blue colors that Starfleet favored had been replaced by dark browns and greens—the latter accentuated by the dim green lights on the ceiling. She saw unfamiliar interfaces and a smaller, cruder style of screen—a rounder design than the usual flatscreen displays Kira was accustomed to. A green-tinged miasma hovered in the very air of the ship, and it smelled like someone was burning plastiform. The gloom was palpable.

  Adding to it were the three humanoid corpses which also lay on the deck. Golden-skinned, wearing bulky uniforms, and most in pools of their own greenish-blue blood, these, Kira suspected, were the life signs that the Euphrates could no longer read. One appeared to be female, the other two male, one of the latter with thinning hair. All three had been cut to pieces.

  If these were members of the crew, they’d certainly paid for the act of dumping their lethal payload on Europa Nova.

  Of Taran’atar, she saw no sign.

  Then a huge figure stepped into view, walking purposefully toward her. The figure—whom Kira guessed was at least two and a half meters tall, though her worm’s-eye view gave her a skewed perspective— wore an imposing uniform of dark metallic armor. Most of its head was covered by a helmet with ridges that began close together at the forehead and spread out and around to the back of the head. The only displays of color beyond the blue-black of the armor were the alien’s mottled brown face, the streak of white on either side of the helmet’s middle ridge, and the streak of bright red under the leftmost ridge.

  The alien stopped, looked down on Kira, and spoke one word in a deep, resonant voice that carried the promise of a painful death.

  “Prey.”

  13

  FARIUS PRIME

  SOTHIS IS IT, Quark thought. We’re going to die.

  What galled him the most was that it was Gaila who engineered this. The beloved cousin to whom he had lent that latinum to get his arms business started— and this is how he repays me. He undermines a business deal just to take some misguided revenge on me. How could Gaila, of all people, forget the Sixth Rule of Acquisition? “Never allow family to stand in the way of opportunity.”

  No, Gaila just sat there, smiling his “I won” smile as if he hadn’t just ruined things for his own client. The Iconians would never get a better offer than this. The Orions were not likely to engender much confidence as a potential buyer after killing their own negotiator.

  He probably had that same smile on his face after he had Quark’s Treasure delivered to DS9. Gaila had always claimed that the malfunction that caused the ship to be transported over four hundred years into the past wasn’t the result of sabotage, but Quark had never believed it.

  One of the two burly Orions looked over at Tamra and smiled lasciviously. “Just so’s you know, Quark— after I kill you, I’m takin’ the dabo girl for myself.”

  Tamra smiled right back.

  The Orion’s face fell. This was not the vacuous facial expression of a woman whose main purpose was to provide distracting eye-candy for the customers. This was closer to one of Gaila’s smiles.

  Then Tamra grabbed one of those idiotic tassels from her waist and threw it into the middle of the room.

  Quark quickly closed his eyes and covered them with his hands. When the flare went off, a huge flash of light filled the room. Quark could see the glow even through his eyelids and hands.

  A hand grabbed his left arm and yanked him out of his chair.

  He opened his eyes to see the room in chaos. The Iconians, t
he Orions, and Gaila were all blinking, trying to clear their vision and obviously failing miserably. For his part, Quark was being dragged toward the door.

  The only person standing between the two of them and that door was Malic, crying, “Kill them! Kill them!”

  “I’m blind! I’m blind!” one of the burly Orions screamed over Malic’s voice. He had, Quark noticed, dropped his disruptor.

  The other Orion, though, still had his disruptor, and took Malic’s instructions to heart; he fired. Luckily for Quark, he was as blind as his panicky comrade: the shot went about a half a meter over Quark’s head.

  The blond Bajoran, still dragging Quark with one hand, clipped Malic with her other arm, knocking the Orion to the floor. In the same motion, she bent over and picked up the dropped disruptor.

  Another shot flew over Quark’s head, closer this time.

  “Quark! You won’t get away with this, cousin!” Gaila was, Quark noted, facing away from Quark, yelling at a bulkhead.

  When they reached the corridor, Quark yanked his arm free. “What took you so long? I was starting to think you were going to wait until he actually pulled the trigger.”

  Lieutenant Ro Laren glowered at him from under her unnaturally colored hair. “You’re welcome, Quark.”

  DEEP SPACE 9 (FOUR DAYS AGO)

  “I’ve got a little bit of a problem.”It hadn’t been easy for Quark to come to the security office. He had, in fact, spent the last day staring at the door to Ro’s office, trying to figure out what to do.

  Normally, of course, he wouldn’t even need an excuse to go to the security office. After all, Ro was there, and that vision of Bajoran loveliness was more than enough reason for Quark to contrive a feeble excuse to drop in.

  But this was different.

  It had seemed innocent enough when it began nearly two weeks ago. An Orion named Malic had entered the bar with a business proposal: he wanted Quark to negotiate a deal for the Orion Syndicate on his behalf. The terms had been pretty vague at first, as had the payment—all Malic had said was that it would be “worth your while.” It wasn’t as if the syndicate in general didn’t have money, and Malic in particular was obviously a wealthy man, so Quark wasn’t terribly concerned on that score. The syndicate had, in fact, turned down Quark’s long-ago overtures for membership, so the fact that they were coming to him with a business proposition was enough to get Quark’s lobes tingling.