by Olivia Woods
And Iliana began to plan anew….
From the safety of her cloaked shuttlepod, Iliana watched the live images beamed from the Besinian freighter in grim amusement. The sight of Captain Kira and her crew scouring the ship for answers to the puzzling questions raised by the events of the last twenty-six hours was enormously entertaining. But it was apparently not a sentiment shared by Iliana’s current captive.
“You’re not her,” Ke Hovath snarled. “You’re not Kira Nerys. Who are you?”
Iliana shot him a bemused look over her shoulder. Safely contained behind a force field in the pod’s aft section, Ke seemed to have recovered somewhat from the manifold traumas she had inflicted upon him over the course of the day. It was an admirable feat; the immolation of almost everyone in his beloved village of Sidau still had to be fresh in his mind, right alongside the threats Iliana had made against his young wife, Ke Iniri.
Perhaps the young scholar was made of somewhat sterner stuff than appearances had led her to believe.
Or it might just be his shock at seeing the image of Captain Kira’s face on Iliana’s monitors, a sight that contradicted the man’s earlier belief that the Kira he knew was the one responsible for the recent horrors he’d been made to endure. This revelation seemed to have restored some of Ke’s shattered world, if only slightly. But apparently it had been enough to embolden him.
Iliana would need to deal with that.
She continued to watch as events unfolded on her screens. Kira was studying the bodies her people had found in the freighter’s engineering section. The captain was clearly taking great pains to reconstruct what had happened aboard the Besinian ship, but she evidently had yet to notice the active-scan cameras that were catching her every move, every nuance of every facial expression.
The destruction of Sidau had been regrettable but necessary—a precaution Iliana had taken to delay the inevitable pursuit she expected to come from Deep Space 9—by ensuring that no witnesses survived to tell the authorities what had happened, or what had been taken from them.
Kira and her medical officer were moving toward the airlock now, following the trail of life signs that had led them to poor, hapless Iniri. Iliana was careful to restrict that feed to a monitor that was out of the restrained Ke’s present line of sight, and routed the accompanying audio to her own personal earpiece. There was no value in allowing him to jump to the comforting conclusion that his beloved wife was being rescued. She was, after all, the most effective lever Iliana had over him.
“Oh, my God.”
The voice that issued from Iliana’s monitor came out as a whisper, from Kira’s medical officer, a young man the captain had addressed as Doctor Tarses. A young man who seemed overwhelmed by the killing ground he had found aboard the freighter. To his credit, the doctor appeared to recover from his revulsion quickly enough; Iliana watched impassively as he beamed out with a hysterical and traumatized Iniri.
Then Iliana kept her camera’s eye focused tightly upon Kira as the captain moved on to the corpse-strewn bridge, where a heavily disruptor-burned female Arken-ite and a charred, hulking Nausicaan lay unmoving in the bloodbath’s grisly epicenter.
The Besinian freighter and its variegated and anarchic crew had been among the more troublesome of Iliana’s assets. It had lately become so troublesome, in fact, that Iliana had come to consider it more liability than asset. The cargo vessel’s crew members were widely known within her organization for thinking themselves deserving of greater rewards for their contributions and for encouraging other mercenaries to voice similar sentiments.
Using them for Iliana’s mission to Bajor—without informing them it was intended to be a one-way trip—had given her the opportunity to rid herself of a growing nuisance, and also served to demonstrate the price of dissent to any like-minded mercs that might have remained in her employ.
When Defiant had finally caught up with the freighter, Iliana had immediately stowed the bound and gagged Ke in the vessel’s shuttlepod, then made quick work of the Besinian crew before rejoining her sole live captive, with whom she quietly slipped away from the scene of carnage that she had wrought. Then she had activated the little auxiliary vessel’s cloaking device to cover her departure from the freighter’s modest, single-craft-sized shuttlebay.
And from this remote and rapidly retreating place of relative safety she continued to monitor in detail everything that transpired on the doomed cargo ship.
Iliana watched as Kira received a report on the freighter’s bridge monitor. “Captain, I’ve managed to get the warp drive operational,” the young engineer said, “and have already initiated a restart sequence, which should take no more than fifteen minutes.”
As the engineer continued to furnish additional details, Iliana beamed inwardly. Her pursuers now had less than a minute before the sabotaged antimatter injector would do its lethal work. She leaned forward in her seat aboard the shuttlepod, watching the captain’s face intently, waiting to see if Kira would put it all together in time. It would be very disappointing if she didn’t.
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” the captain told her engineer. “Stand by for further instructions.”
Kira stood on the bridge, a thoughtful expression on her face. Iliana leaned forward anxiously in her seat.
A grin escaped onto Iliana’s face, then began to falter. Was killing her nemesis really going to prove to be this easy?
On the viewer, Kira’s expression suddenly changed.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” the captain told her subordinates.
There you go, Iliana thought as her doppelganger ordered her boarding parties to prepare to return to Defiant on her command. She felt perversely gratified by her opposite’s quick thinking and prudent suspicion; she had obviously begun to suspect that the fifteen-minute engine restart sequence her engineer had begun had also set into motion a far briefer autodestruct program.
Iliana glanced down at the chronometer on her wrist. But have your suspicions awakened in time to do you any good, Nerys?
Tapping the Starfleet combadge on her chest, Kira said, “Kira to Nog.”
“Nog here, Captain.” came the response from the freighter’s engine room.
“Shut down the restart sequence, Lieutenant.”
“Sir?”
“Shut it down, Nog,” the captain said curtly. “That’s an order.”
“Aye, sir,” replied the engineer. “Initiating core shutdown…. Uh-oh.”
“What is it?” Kira wanted to know, her face abruptly going pale.
“The antimatter injector isn’t responding. It’s continuing to cycle up to release, and the rate is accelerating. Sir, this thing is going to rupture any second.”
As Defiant extracted Kira and her people in a lightning-fast emergency beam-out, it occurred to Iliana that Inari could no longer serve as a tool to ensure Ke Hovath’s cooperation. As she settled back into her chair and executed the pod’s preset course for Harkoum, she decided there was no longer any point in allowing him to learn that she had been rescued.
Just as there was no longer any point in sparing the poor wretch’s feelings. The universe, after all, could be a terribly cruel and arbitrary place.
“Say good-bye to Iniri, Hovath,” she said softly as she allowed the Bajoran to see everything that was now appearing on her own monitor.
A few heartbeats later the freighter’s engine core exploded, and all the monitors aboard the shuttlepod went blank with static. Iliana lifted her hand and considered her prize, the green jewel of the Paghvaram glittering seductively in her palm.
Behind her, Ke Hovath screamed as if he would never stop.
3
EIGHT WEEKS AGO
Something was wrong.
Despite the near flawlessness of the manner in which Iliana had gained possession of the so-called “Soul Key,” the artifact obstinately refused to work for her. Her first attempts to access its power purely by force of will had been a dismal failure. When she’d questioned Ke
about it, the Bajoran had merely tried yet again to convince her that he knew of no use for the Paghvaram other than the one to which it had been put for generations: the annual ritual of the Dal’Rok—an elaborate morality play contrived to pacify the historically volatile villagers of Sidau.
Iliana then did what she considered the only logical thing: she demanded a demonstration. The Dal’Rok had always been a construct, after all—the collective fears of the Sidau villagers given form. If that was truly all Ke was capable of conjuring from the Paghvaram, then it was a beginning. Iliana wanted to see it, to know how Ke made it work.
She released him from his underground cell and took him to Harkoum’s surface, where Fellen and Telal had already rounded up a dozen or so of the most wretched transients from Iljar, the abject starport community on the edge of the broiling wasteland known on Harkoum as Tarluk V’Hel. Made up of undesirables from at least five different species, the miserable-looking group became wide-eyed with terror when they saw Iliana arriving with Ke.
Ke’s face registered disgust. “These people are afraid of you.”
“With good reason,” Iliana said.
“What did you do to them?”
She turned to look him in the eye. “I made sure their fear would be at your disposal.” She slipped off the Paghvaram and held it out to Ke. “Now show me.”
The Bajoran reached for the artifact, but Iliana yanked it back. “Know this first, Ke. Do as I ask, and I’m willing to let these people return to their lives, such as they were. But if you try any tricks, they die.”
Ke glared back at Iliana, his face a mask of pure hatred as he took the Paghvaram. She could see the flicker of indecision on his face before he roughly forced his palm through the gap in the bracelet into which the artifact was set. She could see that she had been right to threaten the captives; despite everything, Ke simply did not seem capable of enduring the idea of more innocents dying because of him.
He turned and stretched out his hand to the cloudless sky, palm out.
Once again, nothing happened.
Ke’s brow furrowed. He thrust his hand out again, squeezing his eyes shut in intense concentration. Beads of sweat formed on his brow in response to his mental exertions.
Still nothing changed.
“Why isn’t it working, Ke?” Iliana asked.
Ke opened his eyes. He lowered his hand and stared at his palm, shaking his head in disbelief.
“I don’t know.”
Iliana could see that he meant it. He was genuinely mystified by his failure. He truly expected the Paghvaram to work. A troubled expression enveloped his face, and after a moment he offered her a possible explanation.
“I’m no longer worthy.”
“Then you’re useless,” Iliana said, disgusted.
She drew her disruptor and shot Ke point-blank in the head. His body thudded heavily onto the dry earth, which greedily drank the blood that seeped from the imperfectly cauterized blast wound.
Telal sighed and stepped toward her. “Are we done here?”
The Romulan’s brusque tone irritated Iliana. None of her inner circle, save Shing-kur, seemed to appreciate the interest she had taken in the Bajoran artifact. And this latest failure to show them the reason Iliana had gone to so much trouble to acquire it could not help but raise doubts in their minds about her judgment.
But that’s a problem for another day, she thought.
“Yes, we’re done,” Iliana answered, still staring at Ke’s body.
Telal cocked his head toward their captives. “What do you want us to do with them?”
Iliana stooped to take back the Paghvaram. “Dump them back in Iljar.”
“Are you sure? They know what you look like.”
She restored the bracelet to her hand and started back toward Grennokar.
“I didn’t say they had to be alive,” she said over her shoulder.
Iliana wasn’t ready to give up. If anything, her obsession with the Paghvaram was only intensifying. Now the thing’s ineffable mysteries seemed to taunt her, making her more determined than ever to unlock the secret of its use.
At Shing-kur’s suggestion, Iliana turned the artifact over to her for scientific analysis while Iliana pored over file after file of Bajoran prophecy and theological scholarship, looking for insights that went beyond the empirical. For the part of her that was Kira Nerys, becoming reacquainted with her culture’s sacred scripture and spiritual philosophy felt a lot like coming home.
Even so, it was difficult to find anything that brought her closer to understanding the Paghvaram, in part because there was no reference to it in any of the texts that Taran’atar had sent her. It seemed to occupy no place in the history of the Bajoran religion, or in the indistinct visions of the future that paved the Paths walked by the faithful.
Needing a break from what increasingly felt like a pointless exercise, Iliana set aside her reading to look in on Shing-kur, who had spent most of the last several days in the workshop that she had transformed into her personal laboratory.
“Any progress?” Iliana demanded as she entered the lab. The Kressari was making adjustments to a ceiling-mounted sensor array whose scanning nodes were presently triangulated on the illuminated table directly below them, upon which rested the enigmatic bracelet.
“That depends on your point of view,” Shing-kur told her.
“Explain,” said Iliana.
“The scans I’ve taken are consistent with the Orb studies done aboard Deep Space 9. This stone is an Orb fragment,” Shing-kur confirmed. “But like its larger cousins, it defies any more meaningful analysis by conventional scanning equipment. I can’t tell you what it’s made of, or how it works, or why it works.”
Iliana found it difficult to keep the frustration out of her voice. “So what you’re saying is, you can’t determine anything beyond what Starfleet has already been able to learn about the Orbs.”
“Not quite,” Shing-kur said. “There is one important difference. I can tell you with absolute certainty that this object is not from this universe.”
“We already know that! It came from the wormhole—”
“That isn’t what I’m talking about.”
“What, then? How can you know it came from another universe if the scans can’t even tell you…” Iliana stopped herself and looked at the artifact, realization slowly settling in. “The bracelet?”
Shing-kur nodded as blackness swelled in her eyes. “The bracelet.”
Although Iliana was willing to concede that the bracelet that held the Orb fragment was beautiful, it was otherwise unremarkable. “What’s so special about the bracelet?”
“Nothing, in and of itself. The metal is simply a solid band of gold composite, consistent with pre-modern Bajoran craftsmanship…but its quantum resonance signature places its origin in the Intendant’s universe.”
The Intendant’s…? Iliana thought, her mind racing. But according to the files, the alternate Bajor doesn’t have any Orbs. They haven’t even discovered the wormhole that the Orbs came from yet!
Then suddenly, she had the answer.
“Of course,” Shing-kur continued, “I’m not quite sure yet how this information can help us, but it is a curious…Are you all right, Nerys?”
Iliana had started pacing the room, feeling a smile begin to spread across her face that Shing-kur was already sharing with her.
“It’s fate,” Iliana whispered.
Shing-kur’s eyes adopted the aquamarine-and-pink hues of mild confusion. “I’m…not sure I understand.”
Iliana could scarcely contain her mounting excitement. She went to the Kressari and grabbed her shoulders.
“We’ve been thinking about this all wrong, Shing,” she said. “This thing is an Orb fragment. It’s a construct of the Prophets. The Prophets exist outside of time. A Bajoran would say it works when it’s fated to work.”
“Meaning what?” asked Shing-kur. “We have to wait for this thing to decide when the time is right bef
ore we can get any use out of it?”
“No. Yes. No—” Iliana gestured with her hands, groping for the words that would explain her sudden flash of insight. Finally she said, “It can’t be a coincidence that my need for justice has led me to this, to the Paghvaram, so soon after I learned about the Intendant! Don’t you see? I’m not meant to use this thing here. I’m meant to return it to where it belongs—to the place where it’s needed—where there’s a Bajor that’s still waiting for the one who is destined to open the Gates of the Celestial Temple.”
Shing-kur’s eyes shifted to pale blue—the color of her profound uncertainty—as she tried to process what she was hearing. Iliana couldn’t help but feel pity for her. Shing-kur couldn’t see. She wasn’t Bajoran, and she couldn’t possibly understand the immense vista of possibility that had just opened up before Iliana, now that she finally understood which Path she needed to walk.
The Path of the Emissary.
“But what about Captain Kira?” Shing-kur asked.
Iliana grinned. “Captain Kira can wait. First we deal with the Intendant.”
The plan that Iliana ultimately approved was Shing-kur’s, and it was shocking in its audacity.
Iliana’s immediate goal was to eliminate the Intendant and take her place. The solution seemed obvious enough: Taran’atar had already confirmed that scans of the dimensional transport module—the handheld device that could bridge the two known universes, invented by the same clever human who was now leading a doomed rebellion against the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance—were stored in Deep Space 9’s computer system. It seemed reasonable to think Iliana could use those files to fabricate her own DTM and beam across the dimensional gulf to the alternate Harkoum. From there…
From there, everything got a lot more complicated. For one thing, their knowledge of the alternate universe was limited to the information collected by the crew of Deep Space 9, and it was appallingly superficial—there was no way to be sure about what might await them on the other side of the dimensional gulf. For another, while Iliana might be physically identical to Intendant Kira, she lacked sufficient knowledge of her target to pull off an effective long-term impersonation.