But he was alive.
For a moment, Kirk felt unthinking elation rise up in him, but then went back to work, once again calling on the harsh discipline he had learned to set himself apart from dangerously enervating despair. The mission still continued. Lives were still at stake. There was no time for elation or relief or celebration. There was only the task at hand.
“Thank you,” Picard said through chattering teeth.
“You might want to wait on that,” Kirk cautioned.
Picard peered bleakly past Kirk, and Kirk guessed what he saw.
“Corrin Tal?” Picard asked.
“Your murderer,” Kirk said.
Picard did his best to smile. “Not a very good one, it would seem.”
“That’s enough!” Corrin shouted. “Leave him.”
Kirk gave a last squeeze of assurance to Picard’s hand, then pushed himself up. “Not likely.”
“I have enough bolts for you both,” Corrin said. “And I’ll be sure to leave you where B’ath b’Etel can enjoy what’s left.”
“You haven’t thought it through,” Kirk said calmly.
“Neither have you.” Corrin triggered the release on his weapon and the pressurized dart aimed at Kirk—
—didn’t fire.
Corrin’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Remember who checked the equipment,” Kirk said as he drew his own bolt gun.
Corrin triggered the release again. And again. Completely inoperative.
“Remember who made sure it was in the proper condition for the dive,” Kirk continued as he stepped forward, his own bolt gun held ready.
Corrin threw his weapon at Kirk, but Kirk easily dodged the wild toss and swung his own gun back to point directly at Corrin’s chest.
“It’s over,” Kirk said. “The good news is that you’ll only face trial for the murder of Nilan and Sedge.”
Corrin breathed heavily, defiant. “You still don’t know what’s going on here!”
“I know enough. Now get out of that thermal suit. Picard needs it more than you.”
Corrin refused Kirk’s order, went into a fighter’s stance.
Kirk raised his bolt gun. “The suit’ll still work even with a small hole in it.”
The Bajoran held his ground. “When you offered me a choice of equipment, you couldn’t know which bolt gun I’d take. So the only way you could be safe, is if you deactivated both.”
Kirk didn’t waver in his aim. “I did deactivate both, but then I reactivated mine.”
Corrin licked his lips, glanced at the bolt gun aimed at him, looked at Kirk. “You didn’t have time. I’ve heard the stories about you, Kirk. Master of the bluff.”
“Not this time,” Kirk said. “Don’t do it, Corrin.”
Corrin made his decision, leapt at him.
Kirk triggered the release.
With a dull thump and sudden puff of white vapor, the pressurized dart blasted from the bolt gun’s barrel.
Corrin stumbled to his knees in shock, looking down at the few gleaming centimeters of the metal dart protruding from his chest, from his punctured heart.
Blood pulsed from the edges of the wound.
Corrin looked up at Kirk in disbelief.
“Not this time,” Kirk said with a sad shake of his head.
Corrin’s mouth twitched up in a dying smile. Blood ran from his lips. “You still don’t know…” he gasped, then, eyes still open, staring into the Celestial Temple or into the void, he slumped forward to the cavern floor and with a sigh, stopped moving.
Kirk put his bolt gun back into its holster.
“I suppose…you’ll be able to explain that…” Picard rasped.
“I hope so,” Kirk said.
“How long…have I been down here…?”
“Not even a day.” Kirk went to Corrin’s body, started removing the thermal suit.
“Then I take it…you’ve been busy…”
“You shouldn’t talk,” Kirk said.
“You mean, I shouldn’t listen to you…when you talk…about going on a vacation…”
“The more you talk, the faster you’ll lose body heat.”
“No danger of that,” Picard gasped. “I’m all out.”
“Be quiet, Jean-Luc.” Kirk tugged on the Bajoran’s thermal suit, peeling it from the limp body. He saw that the network of disrupter scars he had noticed on the side of Corrin’s head and neck, also ran across the man’s shoulder and arm. On his rib cage, there was also a severely twisted scar that appeared to have required several grafts from other sections of his skin. To Kirk, it looked as if someone had once held a disrupter in direct contact with Corrin’s flesh, and discharged it. He didn’t want to think of the pain that would have caused. “I’ll just wash this off for you.”
“Nothing but the best for your friends,” Picard said dreamily.
Kirk crouched by the main opening in the cavern floor where the water’s surface was within easy reach. He pushed the thermal suit into the water, wringing it through his hands, rinsing out the blood. “You really should save your strength.”
“Adventure, Jean-Luc,” Picard said in a passable impression of Kirk’s tone and cadence. “Excitement…archaeology…a chance to see what…no one has ever seen…before.”
“I could just leave you here.” Kirk stood up again, squeezed the suit to rid it of as much water as possible.
“It’ll be…fun.” Picard started to laugh, but the laughter quickly became a coughing jag.
“On the other hand,” Kirk said as he helped Picard to his feet, “I could glue you back to the wall to feed the fishes.”
Picard took a steadying breath. “I used to have a fish in my ready room. Beautiful lionfish. When I’d go on away missions, I’d put a pellet of slow-release food on the wall of his tank.”
Kirk handed Picard the thermal suit. “Like the Andorians say, What goes around, comes around, but with a sharper knife.”
“Fish food. Not quite the shining culmination of my career I’d imagined.”
“Our careers aren’t over yet.”
“Thank goodness…if this is your idea of a vacation, I’d hate to see what you’ve got planned for retirement…”
Kirk frowned, but held Picard’s arm as he tugged on the suit. When Picard finally sealed it, pausing only slightly to touch the small hole in the suit’s chest, he was still shivering, though not as noticeably as before. The densely woven nanofabric functioned as a heat pump, keeping the warmth of Picard’s body insulated while drawing heat even from the icy water.
Immediate concerns taken care of, Picard looked around the cavern, stopped on the carved stone at the far wall.
“It’s an underwater temple. How extraordinary.”
“Not really,” Kirk said. “It didn’t start out underwater.”
“Still…” Picard suddenly looked concerned. “You do have a plan for getting us out of here?”
“Of course, I do.” Kirk pointed over to the equipment he and Corrin had left by the sunken stairs. “Two rebreathers, masks, vests…we’ll get you right up to the surface for liquids, some food, then head down again so we can do a proper staged ascent, let the nitrogen dissipate safely.”
Picard nodded, became serious. “Honestly, I…I did think it was over, Jim.”
“I know the feeling,” Kirk said.
“But seriously,” Picard added, “next time, I choose where we go.”
“I resign from the travel business,” Kirk said. “Let’s get out of here.”
They started for the rebreathers.
And stopped when the cavern filled with a sparkling golden light.
“Transporter…?” They both said the word, asked the question, at the same time. They both turned together.
And Kirk was certain Picard thought the same thought he did as he watched the body of Corrin Tal dissolve into the quantum mist of a transporter beam.
The Andorians were right. It wasn’t over…
Chapter Twenty-Eight
> BAJOR, STARDATE 55598.2
PICARD STILL STRUGGLED with the unreality of the past day.
He remembered being on the boat among the marker buoys. Sedge Nirra’s disintegration. His wild dive for Kirk, to carry them both to the safety of the water.
He remembered surfacing. The explosion. Then something…something pulling him down…pulling Kirk down…shadows and spikes and flailing arms that…
Past that, there was little that remained clear. He thought at one time Anij had come to him. He remembered thinking it odd. She had never learned to swim, so how could she be with him underwater?
But Worf had been there, too. And when confusion had seemed to be overwhelming, the Klingon had barked commands, keeping him focused. And then there was Will. And Deanna. Even young Wesley Crusher, annoying him, but also filling him with pride.
For a time, he had even wondered if he were on a holodeck that had malfunctioned. But Data explained that he was simply having a hallucination, brought on by oxygen starvation because of the fact he was drowning in the sea of an alien world. And then Beverly had told him to ignore Data and swept him away, and they had fallen together, in a zero-g, neverending embrace.
The thought, the sensation, the feeling of that moment had been so comforting, that Picard had longed to surrender to it.
And the mere fact that he wanted to give in, made him determined to fight it all the more.
That’s when he had awakened, immobilized against—or within?—what appeared to be solid rock, dark and oily water lapping at his chest, under strangely bright patches of yellow and green he was unable to equate with any star maps he knew.
But he was so cold, and so exhausted, and so hungry, that he knew that this, at least, was reality. And he resisted those beckoning soothing memories of Anij and Beverly to embrace instead the cold and the pain.
Somehow, to then hear Kirk’s voice while concentrating on discomfort, at the time it seemed fitting. This trip, the two seemed to go together. Someday, he looked forward to returning the favor.
But first, Picard knew, he would have to survive the ascent to the surface. And with the appearance of a transporter beam in the underwater cavern, Picard concluded the odds of his survival had just taken a terrible turn for the worse.
Because it wasn’t a Starfleet transporter. And it wasn’t Bajoran.
With a final flicker of light, Corrin’s body was gone.
“Cardassian,” Kirk said.
“I concur.”
Both men turned again to the rebreathers, hurriedly picked them up, knowing that only seconds might remain until—
The golden light began again behind them.
Picard looked at Kirk. “Do you know what’s going on here?”
“I thought I did. But…”
“You can put those down,” Sedge Nirra said.
Kirk and Picard turned to look at the man they had seen die before their eyes.
“Now I know,” Kirk said quietly beside Picard.
Sedge was wearing a uniform of black leather, its chest piece and shoulder opening much too large for him. It was a Cardassian design, like the disruptor he aimed at his captives. He smiled. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Kirk and Picard lowered their rebreathers, laid them carefully on the cavern floor, obviously planning on using them again.
Sedge waved his disruptor at Kirk. “Bolt gun, too.”
Kirk slowly unbuckled the straps on the holster, let it slide down his leg, stepped out of it.
“That’s better,” Sedge said. “Now we can talk.”
“About what?” Picard asked. He took a small step to the side, knowing that Kirk would see what he was doing. They made a more difficult target if they were separated.
Sedge smiled at Picard. “Personally, Picard, I’d like to know why you aren’t dead. But I’ll settle for asking Kirk a few questions.”
Kirk shrugged innocently. “Me?”
“When did you decide Corrin was the murderer?”
Kirk frowned. “After you died.”
Sedge seemed intrigued. “Right after?”
“Until then, I thought it was you.”
Sedge nodded. “I could see that was the way it was going. That’s why I arranged my…departure from the scene.”
“Chromatic manipulation of the transporter’s radiant light signature,” Picard said.
“If you say so, Captain. I simply told a retired engineer what I wanted—a beam-out that would be visually indistinguishable from a disruptor disintegration—and he assured me it would be no problem.”
“Why go to all this trouble?” Kirk asked.
“You know the answer to that, Captain.”
“I know what you’re after,” Kirk said.
“I don’t,” Picard broke in.
But Kirk kept going. “I just don’t know why it’s all so elaborate. Why not just use your ship’s sensors to scan for the Orb?”
“Orb? What Orb?” Picard asked.
“Not that simple,” Sedge said. “First, I have no ship. At least, not one that could stay in orbit over Site Four without arousing suspicion.”
“Site Four?” Kirk asked.
Sedge motioned with his disruptor to take in the cavern and everything around it. “The excavation at Bar’trila. It’s what we called it during the Years of Deliverance.”
Picard tensed as he heard those words, knew how obscene they were.
“Years of Deliverance?” Kirk asked.
“It’s what the Cardassians call the occupation,” Picard said. He looked accusingly at Sedge. “You were a collaborator!”
But Sedge shook his head, unperturbed. “Corrin was the collaborator, Captain. Back then, he was a trustee named Rals Salan. He worked for me here, overseeing his own people for additional privileges. A sterling example of Bajoran solidarity, wouldn’t you say?”
“A trustee…” Picard said. “Working for you…?”
Sedge ran a hand along the edge of his neck, its width so inconsequential when compared to the wide raised collar of his uniform. A collar designed for the cobra neck of a Cardassian. “The procedure is painful,” Sedge explained, “but proved extremely worthwhile.”
Picard understood at once. A moment later, so did Kirk. “You’re a Cardassian?”
“There’s a reason why no one was ever able to prove a charge of collaboration against me,” Sedge explained. “During the Years of Deliverance, Sedge Nirra did not exist.”
Picard adopted a formal tone. He had had encounters with the Cardassians. They had left him with scars, but also with the knowledge of how best to deal with them: from a position of arrogant strength.
“Tell us your real name,” Picard said firmly, deliberately not sounding like a worried prisoner. He spoke as one officer, one equal, to another.
Sedge responded in the way Picard had anticipated.
“Gul Atal, Prefect, Lharassa Protected Enclaves. At least I was,” Sedge amended, “until the Bajoran Resistance launched an attack on our excavation here. The Obsidian Order knew the Orbs were real. Believed them to be a source of immeasurable power. Did all they could to collect them.”
The Cardassian’s expression became grim. “And if there was one they couldn’t possess, then they did all that they could to be certain the Bajorans couldn’t claim it by default.” He waved his disruptor around the cavern. “We were only a day away from discovering these caves when the Resistance attacked. I called for fighter support. The Obsidian Order sent them—but to release the river, keeping the Orb from us, and from the Bajorans. I was betrayed that night. Rals Salan with me. But the foolish glin who thought he’d killed us never stopped to finish the job. And now, he’s dead, Rals is dead, and I am the only one left to avenge that betrayal.”
“Whatever war you fought with your own people is over,” Picard said. “The Obsidian Order is finished. There’s no one left who cares. But the Bajorans will want you because of what you were—not a prefect. A slavemaster!”
Gul Atal, the C
ardassian with a Bajoran’s face, grinned momentarily, as if he appreciated Picard’s show of spirit. “Would you call a horse a slave, Picard? Bajorans are animals. So by definition, they can’t be slaves. Only tools.”
“They drove you off their world,” Kirk said.
Atal’s grin faded. “We did our best to help them, but they tried our patience.”
“Self-serving lies!” Picard snapped. “When you had looted and despoiled Bajor so there was nothing left to send back to your decaying homeworld, you abandoned it!”
Atal instantly fired his disruptor at the rebreather beside Picard and sparks flew from where the beam hit the pod’s outer covering. A split-second later, the rebreather launched itself into the water with an explosive squeal as an interior pressurized air tank ruptured.
Picard took one reflexive step back, then retained enough presence of mind to take another step sideways. He noted with satisfaction that Kirk took advantage of the attack to do the same, increasing the distance between them again. They could still return to the surface with one rebreather, after they had dealt with Atal.
“It’s time for this conversation to end,” the disguised Cardassian said. He pointed his weapon at Kirk. “You found the temple, Captain. And I am suitably impressed.”
Kirk’s frown revealed his disbelief. “How could you miss it?”
“Professor Nilan hid it from me. He manipulated the data from the divers’ maps, held back information from the site plan.”
Picard could see that Kirk seemed to understand what Atal was referring to, but he didn’t. “Why would Nilan hide anything from you? From Sedge Nirra, I mean?”
Atal nodded at Kirk. “Tell him.”
“The consensus seems to be that there’s an Orb hidden in Bar’trila. I figured that someone was trying to find it to steal it, and at the same time, that Nilan was trying to keep it hidden, in order to protect it.”
Picard saw the solution Kirk had uncovered, made his accusation of Atal. “You murdered Nilan so he couldn’t hide anything from you anymore. Then you arranged for your own murder to keep Kirk off your trail.”
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