Ghost Dance
Page 20
Eriih was frowning, but she didn’t care. She pressed on.
“I have no wish to be rude, but it seems to me that R’Mor has done more than enough to help those he injured. Thank you for your hospitality, but we must be on our way.” She touched her combadge. “Janeway to Voyager. Two to beam up.”
Nothing happened. She touched the badge again. No responding chirp. It was dead.
“I’m sorry, Captain,” said Eriih, “but your communications device and your weapons have been neutralized. A necessary precaution.”
He gestured, and seven burly, well-armed soldiers stepped forward. “It is noble of you. I admire your willingness to sacrifice. Since you will not yield up Telek R’Mor, I have no choice but to take you, his captain, in his stead. Your captivity will not be harsh, Captain Janeway. We are not barbarians. You will be made comfortable as you await your trial.”
“How long will that be?” Janeway demanded.
Eriih shrugged. “With so many to try, who can say? You are the last offender on the list right now, so it may take quite a while. A year or two, at the very least.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “But since your time is so precious, and we do appreciate what is at stake, we’ll see what we can do to nudge it along, hmmm?”
* * *
The purple ball sparked to life.
“What the—Seven, R’Mor, what’s going on?” demanded Torres. They were about to quit for the night and spend an hour winding down together at the Polynesian resort, when That Damned Ball started glowing.
“Unknown,” said Seven.
“Do not worry,” came the voice of Tialin the Shepherd, soft and melodious. The ball pulsated in time to the words. “Nothing is wrong. I am just taking a moment to congratulate you on your progress.
“If you are hearing this message, that means that you have learned how to utilize the orb I gave you. You have conducted experiments and called forth courage to face the unknown. You have learned how to gather the dark matter from space, from inanimate objects, from lower life-forms, from humanoids, even from a planet-sized object. You have understood the purpose of the sphere and have created your own safe place for the dark matter to reside until it is time for me to retrieve it. You have done well, very well. Had you not been able to figure this out on your own, you would not have been up to the task I set you in other ways either, and you would have been unfit custodians for so dangerous and volatile a thing as mutated dark matter.”
“So this was a test?” said Torres. “Of all the—”
“Telek R’Mor,” continued Tialin, “I have more information, for your ears alone. It was you who were technically responsible for the dark matter being unleashed on this system, though I know it was not your will. Listen, and decide if your comrades can bear the hearing of this news.”
Telek stared raptly at the ball. Torres couldn’t hear anything, but clearly Telek could. His eyes widened and his face paled.
“No,” he whispered. “That’s not possible. It cannot be, it cannot!”
The orb continued speaking silently to Telek, until finally it darkened. As if released from its grip physically as well as mentally, Telek staggered. Khala was there, gently propping him up.
“Telek?” said Torres. “What did it tell you?”
He licked his lips. There was fear on his face. “Something amazing—something terrible beyond imagining. I thought, in my dealings with the Tal Shiar, that I had some notion of what evil is. But I was innocent of the true depths of it until this moment. Lhiau must be stopped. He must! It all depends on it!”
“What?” cried Torres, exasperated.
“Everything!” It made no sense, and Torres opened her mouth to try again. But R’Mor was already heading for the turbolift and the bridge.
* * *
Telek leaned against the wall of the turbolift. “Bridge,” he told it. Frantically, Telek sought to gather his thoughts.
More was at stake than he could begin to articulate. Tialin had given him the knowledge, but he was free to share it if he felt it was the wise thing to do. He needed to talk to Janeway. She was a fellow scientist at heart; she would understand. And she could help him decide if this was something that the whole crew needed to know, or just the two of them.
Telek almost stumbled out of the turbolift in his haste. “Captain,” he gasped, but her chair was empty. “Commander Tuvok, where is the Captain?”
Tuvok did not look up from his console. “Dr. R’Mor, I suggest you return to engineering or your quarters. The bridge is no place for you at this time.”
“Why not? What’s going on? Where is Captain Janeway?” Now he saw how tense everyone on the bridge was, even Tuvok, in his Vulcan way.
Tuvok looked up, his brown eyes meeting Telek’s.
“Captain Janeway has been kidnapped.”
EPILOGUE
IT WAS BITTERLY COLD IN THE TINY CELL, AND IT stank. This was something Jekri had never before experienced. Her dealings with her prisoners ended once they had been sentenced. If she needed them afterward, she sent for them. She had never even seen a Romulan holding cell.
With macabre humor she mused that she should probably enjoy the experience. Soon enough, they would probably take her and interrogate her, and she knew what that meant well enough.
They had confiscated all her philotostan chips. She had not had the chance to have one embedded in a false tooth, as the more fortunate Sharibor had. No, they had stripped her naked, poked and probed her, removed all the chips she had secreted in her clothing and on her person, then flung these filthy rags at her and ushered her into this cell.
She sank down and huddled in a corner, drawing her knees up to her chest. For a brief instant, Jekri indulged in self-pity. She had been so high, so proud, once, and now she was dung on the boot of the Empress. She did not deserve this. She deserved respect. She had earned it with blood and loyalty, but they had ripped all dignity away from her. She supposed she could consider herself lucky they had not placed her with other prisoners. There were many who were here because of Jekri’s orders, and they would not be gentle once they saw her.
The chairman of the Tal Shiar would have died in the service of the Empire. She would have killed herself rather than face such disgrace as Jekri was now enduring. But at that farce of a trial, Lhiau and his cronies had ripped away all remnants of that august office from one Jekri Kaleh. She was no longer chairman of the Tal Shiar. She was nothing, no one, a corpse that had the temerity to still be alive.
She lifted her head from her knees. No. She was not nothing.
The chairman was dead, and with that death came an end to any loyalty she had to the rulers of the Empire. They had betrayed her. She owed them nothing now, not the Empress, not the Praetor or Proconsul, certainly not Verrak, who had wounded her more deeply than she would have guessed. She was her own person now, and she would be damned if she walked docilely to her execution.
She had to escape. And once free, there was only one thing she could do that would make the Empress again regard her with the honor that was her due. In order to resurrect the chairman, Jekri had to become the Little Dagger again, the thief and killer and stalker in the shadows.
It was a bitter draft. It was irony of the highest sort.
And it was the only logical thing to do.
About the Author
Christie Golden is the author of thirteen novels and fourteen short stories. Among her credits are three other Voyager novels—The Murdered Sun, Marooned, and Seven of Nine—as well as a Tom Paris short story, “A Night at Sandrine’s,” for Amazing Stories. On the strength of The Murdered Sun, Golden now has an open invitation to pitch for Voyager, the show.
In addition to Star Trek novels, Golden has also written three original fantasy novels, Instrument of Fate, King’s Man and Thief, and, under the pen name Jadrien Bell, A.D. 999.
Golden lives in Colorado with her husband, two cats, and a white German shepherd. Readers are encouraged to visit her Web site at www.christiegolden.com
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
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