Sacraments of Fire

by David R. George III

  As Taran’atar began to stumble away, he espied the disruptor that his adversary had left for him in the hand of the dead Eline-dumayo. He doubted that the Ascendant would have provided him a weapon that could be repaired and fired, but he still thought he might make use of it. He considered the nature of Even Odds and its multiple cargo holds, and an idea began to germinate in his mind.

  Taran’atar rushed forward as best he could, limping on his broken leg, his arms held out straight before him. He reached toward the Ascendant’s wounded chest, and the alien moved to block him, as the Jem’Hadar expected him to do. Taran’atar adjusted his aim and struck his adversary’s shoulders, causing the alien to overbalance and tumble back to the deck. The Jem’Hadar’s dislocated finger bent further out of position, erupting in a fresh torrent of pain.

  Extending his wounded leg out to the side, Taran’atar bent and retrieved the disruptor. He tucked it into his belt, then headed for the ladder that had brought him to Even Odds’ top deck. Nursing his injuries as best he could, he lowered himself down and through the open hatchway.

  As he did, he glanced back along the deck and saw a trail of amber drops marking the course he’d taken. Taran’atar hadn’t realized he was bleeding, and he could only conclude that his broken bone had punctured his skin. He peered down past his waist and saw blood seeping through the lower leg of his black coverall and onto his boot. He considered what he would need to do to prevent himself from leaving a trail, then decided against it.

  No matter what I do, the Ascendant will find me, he thought. This ship is not that big, and I’m badly wounded. Even considering the damage that Taran’atar had inflicted on the Ascendant, the Jem’Hadar realized that he should not be asking himself how he could avoid his adversary, but how he could use their next eventual encounter to his own advantage.

  Taran’atar descended clumsily to the second deck, pausing only to close the hatch behind him, and then to open the next one below. He climbed down to the third level, and then to the fourth and lowest deck. There, he threw his back against a bulkhead and held his wounded hand up before his face. He quickly reached up and wrenched his dislocated finger back into place. Although momentarily torturous, the ache in his hand settled down to a dull throb.

  The Jem’Hadar then tore at his coverall, ripping both sleeves off. He tied one tightly around his thigh to stem the bleeding of his broken leg, and the other about his tibia in order to keep his fractured bone in place. He once more attempted to shroud, without result.

  Taran’atar didn’t wait to see how long it would take for the Ascendant to pursue him. He shambled as best he could along the corridor toward the starboard side of the vessel, and then aft when he reached an intersection. Behind him, he saw, his boot left amber smudges on the deck plating.

  Lurching down the corridor that traversed the length of Even Odds, Taran’atar performed a mental inventory of what little he carried with him, and reckoning what he could expect to find on the bottom deck. He might locate a weapons locker, but considering the sabotage he believed Even Odds’ crew to have perpetrated on their ship, he suspected that they might have hidden—or even destroyed—whatever armaments they hadn’t taken for themselves. If he could locate their bodies, he might find some of their weapons, but he also thought that the Ascendant would have been careful to collect them for his own use.

  Then again, Taran’atar’s adversary had been carrying only a single firearm. The Jem’Hadar had thrown his knife during the battle, leaving him with only the faulty disruptor. If he could locate some tools, he still might make use of the weapon. Since both of Even Odds’ two lower decks had profiled on sensors as housing engineering and cargo facilities, Taran’atar believed that he could find what he needed.

  As he tottered down the corridor, he pulled the disruptor from where he had tucked it into his belt. He examined the weapon as he worked to solidify the rudiments of his plan into a detailed prescription for survival. He would need to find an engineering compartment and then a cargo bay.

  Taran’atar stopped at the first door he reached. He worked to manually open it. In the on-again, off-again overhead lighting, he saw the interior of a turbolift. He moved on.

  The second door led into a refresher, but the third revealed an engine room. He went inside and spotted a toolkit almost at once. Within, he found instruments he could use.

  As Taran’atar worked to open up the disruptor, he heard a sound from off in the distance: the light ring of something tapping against a metal surface. Then he heard it again . . . and again: footfalls on the rungs of a ladder.

  The Ascendant was coming.

  BEHIND A LINE of irregularly stacked cargo containers, Taran’atar sat on the deck, his injured leg twisted out in front of him. The pain had not completely subsided, but it had changed, from a sharp, piercing sensation to a deep, abiding ache. His scorched shoulder had gone numb, and his re-set finger pulsed only dully. He thought that he might actually be able to shroud again, but he elected not to try.

  From his position, Taran’atar could not see the large hatchway through which he had entered the cargo hold. He had inserted an optronic coupler into the shirtsleeve he’d tied about his thigh, spinning the device to tighten the fabric just above his knee. His makeshift tourniquet had stemmed his bleeding, and so he’d avoided leaving an amber trail leading directly to his location, but he still expected the Ascendant to readily track him down. Taran’atar had taken cover behind the gray, cube-shaped cargo containers not for the purpose of concealment, but for protection. Once his adversary—

  A leaden thud resounded through the half-empty hold, a sound Taran’atar recognized as the activation of the inner hatch’s manual release. The Jem’Hadar had closed it behind him when he’d entered the expansive compartment. The rasp of metal on metal followed as the Ascendant forced open the hatch, then pushed it closed. The alien had taken seconds longer than Taran’atar had anticipated to reach the hold, and the Jem’Hadar hoped that the inexact work he had performed—quickly and under duress—would not only provide the result he sought, but that it would not do so too early.

  Taran’atar waited, but he heard no footsteps. Alert to the amount of time passing, and also to the possibility that somebody other than the Ascendant might have entered the hold—the scoutship’s sensors had placed the Jeflinic life-form on the lower decks—the Jem’Hadar scuffled to his feet. He made only a cursory attempt to do so silently. He supported himself against the cargo containers, shifting to one side in order to peer past the edge of the last one in the row. As he moved, he felt the tug of his belt around one of his arms, hindering his movement. He adjusted his stance, then leaned out so that he had a clear line of sight to the hatchway.

  The Ascendant stood there, staring with his remaining eye in Taran’atar’s direction. The overhead lighting continued to blink off and then on, and then off once more. By the time it illuminated the cargo hold again, the Ascendant had started racing toward the Jem’Hadar.

  Concerned only moments before that his adversary would not arrive soon enough, Taran’atar suddenly grew anxious that the Ascendant would reach him too quickly. The alien’s long legs devoured the distance across the hold. His chest still wore a cloudy mask around his wound, and cords of muscle and nerve hung from the dark hole where his eye had been.

  Taran’atar braced himself as best he could on his intact leg. He prepared to launch a volley of punches, visualizing in his mind how he would meet the Ascendant’s attack. In the flashing overhead light, the alien appeared to grow closer in discrete increments, as though bounding across the hold. Over the final stretch of deck, the Ascendant sprang, disappearing into darkness as the lighting panels again switched off. Taran’atar cocked his fist, trying to time his assault.

  A brilliant blue-white flare suddenly threw the entire compartment into garish relief. The roar of the explosion reached Taran’atar a fraction of a second later. The concussive force of the b
last knocked him to the deck even as a windstorm burgeoned in the cargo hold, capturing both the Jem’Hadar and his adversary in its swift currents. Taran’atar felt himself lifted into the air as he saw the Ascendant’s direction change in mid-leap, both of them carried toward the great, ragged hole that had been torn in the compartment’s outer hatch, exposing the ship to space.

  The flash of the detonating disruptor pistol faded, replaced for a few moments by the orange glow of fire. Before the Jem’Hadar had affixed the weapon to the outer hatch, he had rigged it to overload. The lighting panels in the hold began to flicker, not with the regular off-and-on cadence Taran’atar had so far witnessed aboard Even Odds, but sporadically.

  The cargo containers shifted, their bulk pushed forward by the atmosphere blowing out into the void. Several toppled from the stacks, one of them breaking apart and loosing heaps of clothing onto the deck. A flurry of garments flew with the rush of air out into space, but the weight of the containers held them in place against the diminishing gusts.

  Taran’atar’s arm jerked against the belt he had tied around it, the other end secured to a handhold in the bulkhead. He craned his neck to look toward the compromised bulkhead where the outer hatch had been, and he saw the Ascendant tumbling toward it. The alien clawed at the deck, desperately seeking purchase.

  He did not find it.

  The Ascendant slid across the deck. He grabbed for the outer bulkhead as he slammed into it. His hand clutched at something there, momentarily halting his progress, but then he tumbled toward the jagged hole and through it. Taran’atar saw his adversary’s silver fingers holding on to a flap of uneven metal.

  As the atmosphere in the hold rushed out into space, its force continued to diminish. Taran’atar felt himself released by the gales, leaving him in an airless calm. He did not hold his breath, but released it very slowly, wanting to avoid damaging his lungs in an environment abruptly robbed of pressure. He kept his attention on the Ascendant’s hand, and saw a second set of fingers join the first as the alien attempted to climb back into the ship.

  Taran’atar quickly untied his belt from around his arm and staggered as fast as he could toward the hole. Pain shrieked through his leg. Above him, the lighting panels sparked three times in rapid succession, then died totally, plunging the cargo hold into darkness. Only the span of stars visible out in space provided a break in the otherwise-pervasive black.

  As Taran’atar neared the hole, he saw a shape blot out some of the stars: the silhouette of the Ascendant working to pull himself back aboard. The Jem’Hadar lengthened his stride as much as possible. He wanted to scream but didn’t, understanding the need to continue releasing his breath slowly, as well as the futility of crying out with no medium to carry the sound.

  The form of the Ascendant’s head and torso became visible against the backdrop of stars as he hauled himself back through the hole in the outer bulkhead. Taran’atar took one more leap across the deck, landing on his intact leg, then adjusted his weight so that he could kick with it. His boot connected with the Ascendant’s head, which snapped back.

  Taran’atar crashed to the deck, his broken leg taxed beyond its limits. A hand groped for his other foot, and the Jem’Hadar thrust the heel of his boot toward his adversary. It impacted against the Ascendant’s shoulder, but did not dislodge the alien’s grip on the bulkhead. Taran’atar kicked out again, hitting his adversary in the head. The Jem’Hadar cocked his leg once more, preparing to strike again, but he no longer saw the figure of the Ascendant.

  Reaching for the broken edge of the bulkhead, Taran’atar hauled himself forward so that he could look out into space. Even in the dim light provided by the distant stars, he picked out the Ascendant, its silver exoskeleton acutely reflective. The alien had been thrown from the ship, and even as Taran’atar watched, his adversary’s body grew smaller the farther he drifted from Even Odds.

  Taran’atar couldn’t breathe. He had emptied his lungs, and the explosion of the overloading disruptor pistol had cleared the cargo hold of its atmosphere. He turned away from the hole and looked toward the location of the inner hatch, the heavy door lost in the darkness. He pushed himself up, but when he tried to walk, he could no longer put any weight at all on his broken leg. He fell back to the deck

  Out of habit, Taran’atar refused to surrender. He began to crawl forward across the compartment. He intended to reach the inner hatch and open it, so that he could return to the ship’s atmosphere before sealing the cargo hold closed behind him. As he pulled himself along in the darkness, he pictured the hatchway ahead of him, judging its distance from him by memory.

  Taran’atar made it only halfway across the deck before he lost consciousness.

  “I FOUND HIM that way,” said Dez, still seated in the mess hall, across the table from Kira. Taran’atar had remained standing as he’d related the circumstances that had first brought him aboard Even Odds. “I was monitoring the Ascendant with passive sensors when Taran’atar showed up on the ship.”

  “You’re a Jeflinic, then?” Kira asked, and Dez nodded. Until Taran’atar had told his story, Kira had never heard of the species. “You were one of the crew members still on board—the only one left alive by the time Taran’atar arrived.” Many of those she’d met aboard Even Odds claimed to have lived on the ship for years, but the battle with the Ascendant had occurred just nine months earlier. Since Taran’atar’s scans had shown only two life-forms aboard—the Ascendant and a Jeflinic—Kira reasoned that Dezavrim had sent the majority of his crew off of Even Odds prior to the attack, perhaps in an auxiliary or emergency vessel.

  “Well, I was the only one that Taran’atar and the Ascendant could detect on sensors,” Dez said, putting the lie to Kira’s conclusion.

  “You employed sensor inhibitors?” Kira asked.

  “Not exactly,” Dez said. “I’ll let Taran’atar show you where the rest of the crew hid themselves. I told you that the Even Odds is an interesting ship.”

  “But you didn’t go into hiding yourself,” Kira said, stating the obvious in order to judge Dezavrim’s reaction.

  “Somebody had to face the Ascendant,” he said, “otherwise he simply would have seized the ship for his own use, or at the very least, he would have stripped it of whatever technology he could utilize and then destroyed what was left. Either way, I didn’t like the chances for our survival.”

  “You defended the ship on your own?” Kira asked.

  “No,” Dez said, and a pall fell over his features. “Brad-ahk’la stood with me. She functioned as the ship’s security, when necessary.”

  “She was the Eline-dumayo I found dead at the entrance to the command-and-control center,” Taran’atar said. “She had the disruptor pistol in her hand.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kira told Dez. She understood more than she ever wanted to the anguish of losing people under her command.

  Dez looked off to the side and slowly shook his head. “I brought her aboard as a gemologist, but when our previous security personnel left the ship, Brad wanted to take over that function as well. She considered that her primary job aboard the Even Odds, and she treated it very seriously.” He gazed back over at Kira. “On a personal level, it was hard to lose Brad, but it also underscored our need for somebody to assume her responsibilities. Fortunately, once Glessin treated his injuries, Taran’atar agreed to join us.”

  “I see,” Kira said, more sharply than she intended. She could not deny that she felt betrayed by the Jem’Hadar—not because he had nearly killed her, since he had been under Iliana Ghemor’s control at the time he’d done that, but because Kira had offered him essentially the same opportunity aboard Deep Space 9 as Dez had aboard Even Odds. I offered him the same opportunity, Kira thought, but with people who knew and cared about him.

  The story Taran’atar told had revealed why he hadn’t stayed aboard the station: he’d wanted to return to the Dominion, and to the life he
had known for most of his existence. Clearly, the distress signal transmitted by the crew of Even Odds had altered the Jem’Hadar’s personal trajectory. In initially defending them against the Ascendant, and then in subsequently becoming their security officer, he’d found a new purpose—albeit one that strongly resembled his lifelong purpose, and one that he could just as easily have undertaken aboard DS9.

  Taran’atar did not react to Kira’s blatant discontent with the decision he’d made, but Dez seemed to when he said, “It took some convincing.”

  “I know how obdurate Taran’atar can be,” Kira said.

  “No, I didn’t mean that I had to convince Taran’atar,” Dez said. “I had to convince most of my crew. When I retrieved him from Four Bay, he was unconscious and suffering from all the injuries he mentioned: a badly broken leg, a burned shoulder, and a dislocated finger, not to mention internal bleeding and deep bruising. It took our medic hours to initially treat him, and several more days to fully repair his leg.”

  Kira recalled the man who had tended to her in sickbay, Allo Glessin—a Cardassian. She remembered her own reaction when she’d first met the medic, an emotional, unthinking response born out of the anger and resentment she’d felt for Cardassians—for all Cardassians—during and after the Occupation. Considering the hundreds of millions of Glessin’s people who had died at the hands of the Jem’Hadar less than two years prior, at the end of the Dominion War, Kira imagined that it must have been difficult for the medic to minister to Taran’atar’s needs, and she said as much.

  “No, I don’t think it was difficult for him at all,” Dez said. “He’s a man of medicine, and Taran’atar was his patient, so he treated him with no hesitation that I could see.”