Sacraments of Fire

by David R. George III

  “Oh,” Kira said. She had anticipated that Dez and his crew would not want to bring her back to the wormhole themselves. Under other circumstances, she would have had no problem arranging transportation for herself, but she didn’t actually need to return to the Alpha Quadrant—and for the sake of maintaining the timeline, she probably shouldn’t—at least not visibly. It was critically important, though, that she make sure that Even Odds arrived at Bajor at the same time or prior to the arrival of the Ascendants. “I was hoping that you could take me back to Deep Space Nine directly.”

  “What is it with you Alphies?” Sleedow said, her good spirits turning that quickly to annoyance. “You get yourselves lost out in space, and we rescue you, but that’s not good enough. You expect our crew to abandon everything we’ve planned for ourselves just so we can give you a ride home.” Kira saw the members of the crew at other tables turn their attentions toward the first officer, whose voice had risen.

  “Facity, please,” Dez said, settling his hand atop hers. She pulled away from him.

  “Don’t,” she said. “This should infuriate you, too. We’re not a transport service.”

  “Actually,” the captain said, “there was the time that we took the Second Margrave of Dionby Four—”

  “Stop it, Dez,” Sleedow said. “This isn’t funny. Hey, I liked Jake, and—” She looked over at Kira.“—I’m sure that the captain here is a fine person, too.” The words seemed to cost her an effort, Kira thought, but not a great one. “That’s not the point. We have our lives and our livelihood on this ship, and we shouldn’t be expected to turn it into a ferry just because somebody from the Alpha Quadrant demands to go home.”

  “I’m not demanding anything,” Kira said quietly.

  “Jake didn’t make any demands either,” Dez said. “He asked us to take him home and we turned him down, just as Captain Kira has asked, and just as we’ve turned her down, too.” According to Jake, the Even Odds crew had been unwilling to bring him all the way to the Alpha Quadrant, but later, they had traveled to within three light-years of the wormhole on a search for treasure. While on a world there, they helped trigger the reappearance of the Eav’oq, and the shift of the Idran planetary system to a volume of space where it encompassed the Gamma Quadrant terminus of the wormhole. It then became a relatively short journey for Jake to return to Bajor.

  “I am concerned because I don’t really have anything with which to barter for transport back to the Alpha Quadrant,” Kira said.

  “I’m sure the commanding officer of Federation Nine can think of something to promise one of the pilots she finds at the spaceport,” Sleedow suggested.

  “I’m sure I can, too,” Kira said. “I can also make that promise to you: provisions for the Even Odds . . . medical supplies . . . tools and parts for the ship . . . assistance with repairs.”

  “What kind of things could we get from an old Cardassian ore-processing station?” Feg called over from another table. The attention of everybody in the room remained on Kira’s conversation with Dez and Sleedow—the attention of everybody except Taran’atar, it seemed, who continued to stand at attention and stare directly ahead.

  “It’s a Starfleet facility now,” Kira said, realizing that, back in her own time, Deep Space 9 could no longer be characterized as Cardassian or Federation, since it had been destroyed.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Sleedow said. “The Even is a state-of-the-art vessel. We keep it upgraded ourselves. We don’t need any of the things you’ve offered.”

  “Something else, then,” Kira said. She looked to Dez, hoping that his avarice would drive him to reveal what Kira could promise him in exchange for the Even Odds taking her to Bajor.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, holding his hands open and empty before him. “Facity is right. Your station has nothing we need.”

  Kira felt defeated. She realized her mistake. She had chosen to include the crew—and especially Sleedow—when making her request because she thought that, if she had approached the captain privately and convinced him to take her back to Bajor, the others—and especially Sleedow—might bristle at not being a part of the decision-making process, thus causing Dez to change his mind. Kira could have continued trying to coax Dez and Sleedow and the others; could have offered them something else she knew they would value, such as Bajoran antiquities; could have offered them anything at all; but she believed that such attempts would have demonstrated her desperation to get Even Odds to Bajor, which would have cemented their resolve to stay away. She would have to think of something else.

  “There’s a moderate level of activity at the Vrynax Two spaceport,” Dez said. “You shouldn’t have too much trouble finding somebody headed toward the Anomaly—somebody who could use what your station can provide them.”

  A figure suddenly appeared without warning beside the table, and Kira looked up to see that Taran’atar had crossed the room from where he’d stood guard. “I will also be disembarking the ship at Vrynax Two,” he said.

  The mess hall erupted. Feg and Triv stood up at their table and vocalized their objections. Fajgin, Itriuma, and Mellias also spoke up, imploring the Jem’Hadar not to leave. Only Dez and Sleedow remained quiet. Kira had no idea why Taran’atar had suddenly elected to exit the ship when she would, but she wondered if she might somehow use his decision to her advantage.

  After a few moments, the voices settled, though Kira could hear Feg and Triv still grumbling to each other. Beside Kira, Dez rose and faced the Jem’Hadar across the table. “Taran’atar, you’re a member of this crew,” he said. “You’ve been with us for a while now. I thought you liked it here.”

  “I have been useful here,” Taran’atar said. “That has been satisfying.”

  “Then why would you want to leave?” Dez persisted.

  “I do not necessarily want to leave, but I have an obligation.”

  To me? Kira thought, surprised. She did not feel that Taran’atar owed her anything, nor would she want him to act out of a sense of duty to her—at least, not under normal circumstances. For the moment, she held her tongue.

  “An obligation to Captain Kira?” Dez asked. “I thought that you left the Alpha Quadrant of your own accord.”

  Kira wondered how much of his story Taran’atar had told Dez and his crew. She couldn’t imagine the Jem’Hadar sharing very many details of his life, but it seemed reasonable that when Taran’atar had agreed to become a member of the Even Odds crew, they would have wanted to know certain specifics. They would want to be sure that nobody—not from the Dominion, nor from the Federation—would show up and either demand that they surrender him, or worse, exact retribution by destroying the ship.

  “I left by my own choice,” Taran’atar said. “As I will leave here.”

  “Why?” Sleedow asked, the single word awash in accusation. “What has she promised you?” The first officer pointed at Kira, but didn’t look away from Taran’atar.

  “Captain Kira has promised me nothing. She did not know that I would do this. I did not know that I would do this. I only learned that she would be departing the ship just now, when you told her that you would leave her at Vrynax Two.”

  “But why would that compel you to want to leave, too?” Dez asked. He seemed to be genuinely trying to understand Taran’atar’s reasons.

  The Jem’Hadar regarded Kira before continuing. “The captain is an excellent Starfleet officer, and an able soldier,” he said. “But it is a considerable distance from here to the Anomaly, and there are forces in the Gamma Quadrant yet hostile to the Federation. The Alpha Quadrant War did not end that long ago. I do not want Captain Kira to make her journey unescorted.”

  “Thank you,” Kira said.

  “We don’t want you to go,” Dez said. “If you do, would you come back and rejoin us?”

  Taran’atar did not answer right away, but looked off to the side, his expression pensive. At
last, he said, “Once I depart the Even Odds, I do not foresee returning to the ship.”

  Dez marched away from the table, over to the far corner of the mess hall, where he stuck his hands onto his hips. When he turned back, his tone became imploring. “We need you, Taran’atar. You fit into our crew well, and you provide us with a measure of security that we’ve never had.” He paused, clearly reaching for the argument that would induce the Jem’Hadar to change his mind. “You have made yourself indispensable aboard the Even. I think that means you have an obligation to this crew.”

  “I would not disagree,” Taran’atar said. “That leaves me with having to choose between obligations, and I have done so.”

  “Let him go,” Sleedow told Dez.

  “Facity,” Dez said, walking back over to the table and taking her hand. “Facity, on Lodontus Three, Taran’atar saved your life.”

  “I know,” Sleedow snapped back. “But we don’t need somebody who doesn’t want to be here.”

  “He didn’t say he didn’t want to be here,” Dez reminded her. “He said he has to go in order to fulfill his duty to Captain Kira.”

  Sleedow looked up at Dez, and Kira saw that all of the first officer’s suspicions and indignation and bravado had been replaced by something else. Not fear, Kira thought, and not sadness. Resignation, maybe?

  “So what would you have us do?” Sleedow asked Dez. “Take all that time out of our schedule just to carry one person back home?” She spoke as though she knew that Dez had been thinking exactly that.

  “Why not?” he said. “After our delivery to Vrynax Two, we don’t have that much lined up.”

  From another table, Triv said, “There’s the repatriation of The Pearls of Descan.”

  “We can push that back,” Dez said. “The Alvont will be thrilled whenever we deliver the sculpture.”

  “What about our research on the Mendicum Stone?” Feg asked. “We were going to survey the caves on Batrus.”

  “The caves aren’t going anywhere,” Dez said.

  “And we also talked about investigating those reports about a lost cache of Drensaar relics on—” Triv began, but Dez cut him off.

  “Enough,” he said. “I know all this. The question for us to answer is whether it’s more important to keep our schedule, but do so without the best security this ship and crew have ever known, or to maintain the level of our protection, but do so by having to delay some of our plans.” Dez waited for a moment, as though to allow the starkness of that choice to sink in for those present. Kira could not imagine the crew having a better protector aboard than Taran’atar, and they plainly believed that as well.

  When nobody said anything, Dez told Kira, “After we make our delivery to Vrynax Two, we’ll take you home.”

  “Thank you,” Kira said.

  “I hope this means that we won’t have to lose you, Taran’atar,” Dez said.

  “I told you that I have an obligation to escort Captain Kira back to the Alpha Quadrant,” the Jem’Hadar said. “Since she will make that journey aboard the Even Odds, there is no need for me leave the ship.”

  Dez took in a deep breath and sighed loudly. Kira heard similar sounds and general murmurs of agreement around the mess hall. Dez sat back down beside Sleedow. “Fac?” he said. “Is that acceptable to you?”

  “Oh, it is, Dez, it is,” she said. “But does that really matter?”

  “What are you saying?” Dez asked. “Of course, it matters.” He tried to take her hand again, but she quickly stood up and headed for the doors. Before she left, she looked back and said, “The next time we find somebody floating out in space, we’re leaving them there.” Then she turned and bolted from the room.

  “I hope this isn’t going to cause you any ongoing trouble,” Kira told Dez. She truly didn’t want to foment any rancor among the crew—particularly between Dez and Sleedow, who clearly had a relationship more complicated than just that of shipmates—but she also cared only so much. The important thing was that Even Odds was headed to Bajor.

  Kira only hoped that the ship would arrive before the Ascendants blackened the skies of her homeworld.

  II

  Fire

  16

  Sisko strolled along the path that wound through the greensward ringing Deep Space 9’s primary residential deck. It had been three months since he had last visited the starbase. The captain and his Robinson crew had spent the intervening time patrolling the Helaspont Sector. Fortunately, other than a tense encounter with Tzenkethi harriers immediately upon the ship’s arrival at the border, the assignment had proven uneventful.

  Above Sisko and down to the horizon, clouds scudded across a picturesque azure sky. The holographically projected scene looked and felt as real as anything he had ever experienced on a holodeck, an impressive feat of engineering considering the scale of the simulation. The imaging surface circled the equator of the starbase’s main sphere, a bulbous, semicylindrical bulkhead that curved outward from atop the three levels of the Plaza and then back below the crew’s quarters on the deck below. During DS9’s nighttime hours, the bulkhead faded to transparency in a reproduction of a sunset, allowing the stars to shine down from their place in the firmament.

  The captain felt better—happier, less stressed—than he had in a long time. He knew that the election of the new Federation president a month earlier, and all the consequences that followed from it, had a great deal to do with his improved state of mind. A sense of normality had been restored throughout the quadrant, not just because the population of the UFP had chosen its new leader in a special election, but because President Kellessar zh’Tarash hailed from Andor.

  Three years earlier, the Andorians, one of the founding members of the Federation, had caused shockwaves by seceding from the historic interstellar alliance. Mired in their reproductive crisis, their population had fallen victim on their world to a chauvinistic, anti-science movement. Zh’Tarash, at the time the leader of the Andorian Parliament’s Progressive Caucus, staunchly opposed secession. She also fought for a scientific solution to her people’s procreative woes, and worked tirelessly for reconciliation with the Federation.

  In the days prior to the special presidential election, zh’Tarash had seen her unstinting efforts rewarded. With the help of people like Julian Bashir, Ezri Dax, and Thirishar ch’Thane, the reproductive crisis had been solved. On the heels of that momentous achievement, the Andorians voted into power a new, progressive governing coalition, which, with the will of the people, applied for their world’s readmission to the Federation—an application quickly approved. After the subsequent revelation of the conspiracy within the Palais de la Concorde, zh’Tarash coasted to her election as UFP president.

  As he walked along the sinuous path, Sisko spotted a couple of young Bajoran boys equipped with paddles and what look like the rubberized sphere of a springball, although that sport did not require the use of anything but a player’s hands. He watched as one of the boys batted the ball up into the air, and then the other raced beneath it. The receiver attempted to catch the ball on the flat of his paddle, absorbing the energy of the impact with a sweeping downward motion. They seemed to be successful only about a quarter of the time, but that didn’t appear to dim their enthusiasm.

  Seeing young boys at play always made Sisko think of his own son, even though Jake had celebrated his thirtieth birthday that year. It had been so good to see him and Rena when they’d visited from New Zealand several months previously. He and Jake didn’t have paddles and springballs, but they did bring their fielder’s gloves and a baseball, and they enjoyed playing catch in the awe-inspiring setting of Glyrshar Canyon.

  Sisko beamed as he walked. He could not have been more proud of his son. Jake had married well, falling in love with a charming young woman who helped and supported him, who shared her life with him, and who loved him back. He had also taken definitive steps to follow his d
reams, accepting his admission into the Pennington School and studying in their comprehensive, demanding, and well-respected writing program.

  As Sisko neared his destination, it pleased him to think that both of his children lived in a society where Ishan Anjar had not been permitted to remain in power. Not Ishan Anjar, he corrected himself. Baras Rodirya.

  The design and construction of his conspiracy to seize control of the Federation government truly astonished Sisko. Beyond the misappropriation of Ishan’s identity during the Occupation, Baras had schemed to attain the office of president through a series of calculated deceptions and crimes. He began by setting himself up to be Bajor’s next representative on the Federation Council, and then maneuvered Krim Aldos out of the position. With the aid of his chief of staff, Galif jav Velk, Baras then concocted a complex plan not only to assassinate Nanietta Bacco and succeed her as president, but to forward his bellicose, isolationist agenda.

  Baras’ twisted beliefs had allowed him to align with the True Way, an underground Cardassian organization dedicated to restoring the Union as a military state, as well as to severing all ties with the Federation. While Castellan Rakena Garan visited the new Deep Space 9 so that she could attend its dedication ceremony, one of her aides, a man named Onar Throk, assassinated President Bacco. He did so by covertly implanting a device in Enkar Sirsy, the Bajoran first minister’s chief of staff. That device rendered her unconscious, allowing Throk to physically manipulate her into shooting the president, thereby manufacturing evidence of the crime and framing her for the murder.

  In the days that had followed, Enkar’s apparent guilt had provided Baras enough leverage to influence his colleagues on the Federation Council. He managed to convince many of them that, because a Bajoran had murdered the president, it became politically necessary to demonstrate that the Federation did not hold the Bajoran people in any way responsible for the ignoble act of a lone individual. When it came down to a choice between him and Lenith Agreho, the Federation Council member from Vestios, Baras won handily.