by Olivia Woods
“When his assignment was over, Ataan was recalled to Cardassia, as we both knew he would be eventually—but not before we wed, quietly and in secret.”
“Because mixed marriages are forbidden among Cardassians,” Iliana said.
“Premarital dalliances outside one’s species are one thing,” Vaas said. “But a mixed marriage is seen as a threat to the sanctity and purity of what Cardassia values the most highly.”
“Family.”
“Yes.”
“That must have been difficult for you both.”
“Ataan always returned to me as often as his duties permitted over the years. Love endures.”
Vaas fell silent, and Iliana replayed the tale in her mind, sifting through the words chosen, the details given and omitted, her changes in inflection, the movements of Vaas’s eyes, face, and hands, and the subtle shift in posture as she spoke. Iliana parsed it all, individually and collectively, and quietly reached her verdict.
“That’s not the whole story.”
Vaas shrugged. “It’s all you need to hear.”
“Not if you want to be reunited with your husband.” Iliana rose to leave.
Vaas grabbed her arm and forced her to turn around. “I did as you asked!”
“Let go of me,” Iliana warned.
“I told you the truth about how we fell in love!”
Iliana delivered a sharp blow to Vaas’s sternum with the heel of her palm. The other woman fell backward, winded, and dropped to a sitting position on the floor.
“No,” Iliana said. “You told me things that were true, but you weren’t honest. Lies of omission are still lies, Vaas. And the truth, I now believe, is that you were already a dissident when Ataan was assigned to Bajor. Perhaps you were born into the movement, or perhaps you weren’t. But you were its inside operative at Bajoran Intelligence, and when the dissident leaders learned about Ataan, he became your assignment. Your task was to seduce him, to make him fall in love with you, with Bajor, and eventually, when he was sufficiently ensnared, with the dissident movement itself. All so that when he returned to Cardassia, he would be one of you. A believer. A double agent in the service of sedition.”
“I love my husband!”
“Perhaps you do. But that wasn’t something that happened immediately. It came later. It was something you learned over time.”
Vaas glared at her as she finished catching her breath. “You have…an impressive imagination, Intendant.”
“Only because I’ve known…others like you, Dakahna Vaas. You put your world and your people before everything else, and you make whatever sacrifices are necessary in their service.” Iliana unsealed the door and stepped through it. “I have no intention of allowing that cycle of misery to continue.”
“You sadistic, lying filth!” Vaas roared, lunging toward the door as it closed in her face. Iliana could hear her pounding her fists against it while she screamed. “Is this how you gratify yourself? With mind games? Why are you doing this? Give me back my husband! Ataan!”
Iliana couldn’t get to the turbolift fast enough.
Of all the inversions she had encountered since learning of the alternate universe, this one had been the most…what? Shocking? Distressing? Unbelievable? What word could possibly be sufficient to describe the raw emotional upheaval of learning not only that both Vaas and Ataan were still alive in this universe, but also that they were joined together?
Happy. It made you happy.
She recoiled from the thought as quickly as it came, suddenly understanding why she had sabotaged any chance she had of earning the love of either of them. That, after all, was what she had wanted all along, wasn’t it? To somehow win them over to her, these alternates of the people she remembered having loved and murdered—as if she could atone for what she had done to them, and thereby recover some semblance of the happiness she’d always believed she had lost forever.
But to accept the possibility that she might find a source of joy outside of the revenge she so craved introduced an intolerable element of doubt—one that she knew she had to crush at any cost if she was ever to know what it was to be whole again. Ataan and Vaas were the source of that doubt, a challenge to her resolve that she had to overcome.
Even if it meant killing them both.
Again.
“Murderer! Terran monster!”
Vaughn found it difficult to argue with Winn Adami as she lunged at Ashalla’s destroyer.
He’d been conscious since his capture—unlike Kira, who had been out cold when more Klingon troops had moved into the demolished refectory in the aftermath of Taran’atar’s rampage and taken her and Vaughn back to one of their ships.
He’d felt fortunate to be able to walk under his own power; the Jem’Hadar may have dealt him a nonlethal blow in knocking his legs out from under him, but they still ached—as did his left scapula ever since it had struck the dining hall’s hardwood floor. That Vaughn had no broken bones—only a minor laceration on his forehead and a wound from a finger-length shard of wood that had become embedded in his right forearm—was certainly as much a product of luck as anything else.
But it wasn’t until after he’d been marched outside and across the smoking, corpse-strewn desolation of Vekobet that he realized Kira had been the lucky one; she’d been spared having to see the carnage that she and Vaughn had unintentionally brought down on this place by crossing over and drawing Iliana’s lightning down on those around them.
Stow that kind of thinking, Mister, he told himself sternly. You didn’t provoke any of this insanity. Get your head right, and do it now!
Once he and Kira had been beamed up to Terok Nor, the Klingons immediately separated them; they placed Vaughn alone in a bare cargo hold, leaving him to wonder whether his captain had been transferred to someplace similar, or if she had simply been sent directly to her death.
I said, stow it!
Vaughn tested his prison. All the access panels and ventilation shafts had been welded shut, and recently from the hasty look of the workmanship. He had no tools with which to engineer an escape; the Klingons had taken his combadge almost immediately, and the bay was utterly empty.
All he could do now was wait.
Forty minutes after his arrival, a group of Klingon guards tossed Jaro and Winn into the cargo bay with him. Both of them were beaten and bruised, and their rumpled, torn clothing was covered in particulate rock, as if they’d been dug out of a cave-in just prior to their capture.
“I guess Kira and I didn’t buy you quite enough time to get away after all,” Vaughn said, regret sitting in his belly like an inert, indigestible lump of stone. “The Klingons must have discovered the escape tunnel.”
Jaro nodded sadly. “They did.”
“But you mustn’t blame yourself, Elias,” Winn said. “I know that you and Kira did everything you could.”
“But the Klingons got what they came for anyway,” Vaughn said glumly, despite the stern voice of experience that continued to insist that he belay that sort of negative self-talk. “And right now that adds up to Kira, both of you, and probably everybody and everything else we were trying to get safely out of Vekobet.”
Winn shook her head vigorously, a motion that caused a small cloud of dust to rise from her hair. “No, Elias. The only other captive we know of besides Kira and the three of us is Dakahna Vaas.”
Vaas. Vaughn recalled the name, and quickly associated it with the black-haired Bajoran woman he’d seen at the camp infirmary.
Vaughn allowed himself to grasp at a slender reed of hope. “Opaka and the artifacts?”
And Prynn?
“They got away,” Winn said.
Staring off into the middle distance, Jaro said, “Once we realized that the Klingons had found the tunnel, we doubled back with Vaas, hoping to stall our pursuers just a little longer.”
“That gave Opaka, Prynn, and the others just enough time to reach the Yolja River with the artifacts,” Winn said. “One of the other enclaves was
to pick them up there.”
Prynn did make it out of there. Thank God, Vaughn thought. He felt an enormous sense of relief as the Bajorans went on to tell him how confident they were that their gambit had worked—a turn of luck they both insisted would never have come to pass but for Kira and Vaughn’s having engaged the Klingons, thereby slowing down their eventual discovery of the escape tunnel.
Unfortunately, the worry that both Bajorans felt for Dakahna, from whom the Klingons had separated them immediately after their arrival on the station, was as palpable as either their confidence or their gratitude.
After Vaughn explained what he knew of their improvised holding pen, both Bajorans by mutual decision knelt together and began to pray. They invited Vaughn to join him, but he politely declined.
Even if I were a believer, he thought, I’m really not sure I could continue to be one after what I’ve learned today.
Though his inner turmoil remained unspoken during the prayers, the Bajorans seemed to sense it nevertheless. Maybe they could read it in his face, for when they concluded their communion, they both walked toward him and regarded him with grave expressions.
“We know about what you did at the infirmary,” Jaro said, though there was no accusation in his tone. The doctor looked down at the deck as he spoke, as though uncomfortable gazing into the eyes of the living doppelganger of his dead friend—the man who had also killed that friend.
“Yes,” Winn said. “It was a tragic choice.”
And a choice that Vaughn knew he could neither unmake nor justify.
Just as he couldn’t imagine making any other choice, given the same circumstances.
It’s a good thing I don’t believe in hell, he thought. Otherwise it’d be my next long-term posting, sure as gravity.
Winn reached toward Vaughn’s face. He resisted the urge to flinch as she gently grasped his earlobe between her thumb and forefinger.
“We know why you had to do it, Elias,” she said, closing her eyes as she read his pagh. “Just as we know what the deed must have cost you.”
“I suspect that the cost would have been far higher,” Jaro said, tears standing in his eyes, “had you allowed Elias’s suffering to continue.”
“Or had you left him and Prynn to the tender mercies of the Klingons,” said Winn, releasing her hold on Vaughn.
He took an unsteady step backward, collecting his scattered thoughts and emotions. Their forgiveness both shamed and relieved him, though he doubted that Prynn would be this understanding any time soon.
Some three hours into their captivity, the room shuddered—a low, momentary vibration that seemed to Vaughn almost familiar. It felt like a greatly amplified version of the slight sensation of acceleration caused by Deep Space 9’s maneuvering thrusters, as though they were being fired at full burn.
Not long after the persistent and slightly disorienting acceleration effect began, the door to their cage opened again, and a group of Klingon guards delivered another eight weary and dejected rebels to the cargo bay. As soon as Winn noticed that Miles O’Brien was among them, she underwent an abrupt and total transformation.
She went berserk, screaming accusations and epithets as she pushed against the rebels in her naked desire to commit violence against their leader.
“Back off!” Keiko Ishikawa shouted back, placing her body squarely in Winn’s path. “It wasn’t him!”
“He cannot escape responsibility for this!” Winn roared.
“He didn’t do it!” Tigan shouted from behind Ishikawa.
“Who, then?” Winn demanded. “Who among you was responsible for carrying out the atrocity at Ashalla? For slaughtering two million people?”
“None of us!” Ishikawa shot back. “It was the Intendant!”
Winn’s grief finally caught up with her anger, and she broke down. Jaro caught her as she fell to her knees, and the two of them wept as Ishikawa described what had happened, how the Intendant had called their bluff and carried out the very act that the rebels had only threatened.
“She said she would bomb another city if Miles didn’t surrender immediately,” Ishikawa said, now weeping as well. “We had no choice but to stand down.”
O’Brien came forward to meet the Bajorans, their grief reflected plainly in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he told them. “I’m so very sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen.”
As Winn continued to sob, she reached out to touch O’Brien’s ear, grasping the lobe in her trembling hand. For some time after that, Vaughn watched a catharsis unfold as the rebels and Bajorans together began to work through the worst of their shared anguish.
And finally, once much of the initial emotional storm had passed, he started asking questions.
“O’Brien…what’s going on aboard the station?”
The haggard rebel leader looked at Vaughn as if he had just noticed him for the first time. “You’re from the other side,” he realized, noting Vaughn’s distressed Starfleet uniform.
“Commander Elias Vaughn of Deep Space 9. After we lost our comlink with you, Captain Kira and I crossed over to Bajor, hoping we might be of some help.”
“Only two of you?” Tigan asked.
“It was all we could manage,” Vaughn said. “Some kind of scattering field is shielding local space from interdimensional transport. There was no time to do anything else.”
“We appreciate the effort, Commander,” O’Brien said. “It’s just too bad you wound up in the same mess as the rest of us.”
“I felt the station vibrate a short while before you were put in here. Can you tell me what’s happening?”
“The Intendant,” O’Brien said, shaking his head. “She had us make some insane modifications to the deflector generators and the maneuvering thrusters. The whole station is now moving at speed toward the Denorios Belt.”
The wormhole.
Jaro looked at Vaughn. “Is that where she expects to open the Temple Gates?”
“Temple Gates?” asked another of the rebels, Sloan. “That’s that crazy thing Ghemor warned us about, right? The religious thing? She was serious about that?”
“Yes,” Vaughn said, cutting off whatever explanation Winn and Jaro seemed poised to offer. “Think of it as a dangerous hazard the Intendant wants to exploit. It’s imperative that we stop her.”
“Commander, you’ll get no argument from us,” O’Brien said. “But this station is swarming with Klingons, and all my people have been penned up in cargo bays just like this one.”
“Then we’ll just have to be ready to act when the opportunity finally presents itself,” Vaughn said.
“Opportunity?” O’Brien said. “What opportunity? Look, Commander, with all due respect, I don’t know how they handle situations like this where you come from, but in this universe, you can’t simply fake an illness and expect the Klingons to open the door for you!”
“That isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Vaughn said.
“What, then? If we have a hope in hell, I’m not seeing it!”
Vaughn allowed himself a small smile. “We have one.”
17
Kira gasped for air as consciousness returned to her, accompanied by an eye-searing blast of light.
She felt hyperaware of everything, a side effect of the stimulant that had undoubtedly been used to force her awake. She was in a holding cell back on Deep Space 9.
No, she quickly realized. This is Terok Nor.
She stood flat against one wall of the cell, her hands encased in shackles that looked as though they had recently been welded into the bulkhead. She was missing her combadge, and Vaughn was nowhere to be seen.
Kira’s double stood in front of her, dressed in the familiar black garb of the Intendant, watching her with interest.
“I really have to hand it to you, Captain,” she said. “Beaming to the alternate Bajor before the Klingons’ static field could fully envelop the planet was a crafty bit of quick thinking. Apparently I wasn’t being paranoid af
ter all when I ordered the Klingons to scan the planet for anomalous quantum signatures. But what did you think you were going to accomplish in that rebel stronghold? Did you honestly believe those thugs masquerading as slaves were going to be of any use to you?”
Kira said nothing.
“That’s all right,” Iliana told her. “It was more of a rhetorical question, anyway. And it’s not that I mind your being here—quite the opposite, actually. You’ve saved me the trouble of going back for you.”
“Why?” Kira asked, tugging uselessly at her shackles. “So you can talk me to death?”
“Oh, good,” Iliana laughed. “You’re not completely demoralized yet. There’s still a little defiance left in you. That makes it all so much sweeter. Now I can’t wait to see your face when this Bajor names me its Emissary.”
“So that’s why I’m still alive?” Kira asked. “To give you an audience?”
“Of course not, Captain. An audience I already have. Klingons, rebels, even your geriatric friend…but best of all, I have two of the religious leaders behind the Bajoran dissident movement.” She held up her hand, displaying the Shard of Souls. “And with me in possession of a sacred artifact native to this continuum, they’ll be here to bear witness when I open the Temple Gates.
“So, no, Captain. You aren’t here to give me an audience. You’re here to suffer what I’m about to do.”
Kira finally decided she’d had enough. “What the kosst has happened to you? What can you possibly think all this is going to get you?”
“I thought that would be obvious to someone as devout as you, Captain,” Iliana said. “I’m going to get back my life.”
“What are you talking about?”