Sacraments of Fire

by David R. George III

  Something thumped topside. Behind him, Draco crewed sensors on a lateral control panel. “Debris falling from the walls of the chasm,” she reported. “The structure is unstable.”

  Scans aboard Defiant had revealed the unsound ramparts, another reason that Blackmer had counseled against taking down a runabout. He even suggested to Cenn that perhaps they should delay before entering the chasm, but the first officer feared what the Ohalavaru might do below the surface of Endalla. Blackmer had to agree that waiting for the extremists to emerge on their own did not seem the wisest course.

  The security chief also considered encouraging Cenn to allow Commander Stinson to lead the effort to apprehend the Ohalavaru and prevent them from completing whatever misguided plan they had conceived. Although the first officer had so far contained the strong opinions he held about the actions of the extremists, Blackmer worried that, if the situation led to a confrontation, Cenn might act rashly, endangering himself and the away team. The security chief also did not want a phaser set to kill leveled at any of the outlaws, and while he did not necessarily think that Cenn would do such a thing, he also could not be sure—not with the beliefs Cenn held so deeply directly challenged by the Ohalavaru. In the end, Blackmer had elected to trust the professionalism of the first officer, rather than confronting him.

  The shuttlecraft continued down into the fissure. Blackmer had engaged the automated helm system because of the many adjustments required to negotiate the angular, wildly uneven surfaces of the chasm walls, but he stayed prepared to take control of the auxiliary craft should the need arise. He also programmed Tyson to descend slowly, which would more readily allow for quick changes to its course if the earth shifted around the vessel. Several more times, rocks fell onto the shuttle from above.

  “We are halfway there,” Blackmer announced, consulting the navigational readout.

  “The Ohalavaru continue to move around outside their vessel,” Draco said.

  Blackmer peered through the tall, wide port that angled sharply up from the bow and swept in a convex arc up to the overhead. In the darkness in front of Tyson, he could see only those spaces illuminated by the shuttlecraft. He looked at Cenn, whose steady expression could not hide his anxiety. “What do you think they’re doing down there?” the security chief asked. In part, Blackmer wanted the first officer’s analysis of the situation, but more than that, he hoped to gauge Cenn’s emotional state.

  “I don’t know,” Cenn said, staring straight into the darkness in front of the shuttlecraft, and then he shook his head. “I don’t understand anything that they’re doing or that they’ve done. None of it makes any sense to me.”

  Blackmer wanted to know if Cenn’s lack of understanding originated with the views that the Ohalavaru held about the Prophets, so drastically different from the first officer’s own. He would not ask such a personal question—not of a superior, not in front of other personnel, but also because, though Blackmer had a solid working relationship with the colonel, they were not close.

  “Do you think—”

  The shuttlecraft crashed into the side of the chasm. The vessel jolted hard, nearly throwing Blackmer from his seat. He grabbed onto the console and steadied himself. He reached to take control of Tyson, but then the vessel righted. Blackmer halted the shuttlecraft’s descent as he searched the helm and navigational displays for an explanation of what had happened. Draco provided the answer.

  “There’s been an explosion below us,” she said. “Nothing on the scale of what created the fissure, but still of considerable force.”

  “Is everybody all right?” Cenn asked, and the other three members of the away team all replied in the affirmative.

  “The explosion must have shifted part of one of the walls,” Blackmer said. “It struck the shuttlecraft on the starboard side, forward of the drive cowling. I see no threat to hull integrity.”

  “I am reading a large amount of rock that’s just fallen to the chasm floor,” Draco said. “And . . . I no longer detect any life signs.”

  Blackmer and Cenn looked at each other. “Were they crushed?” the first officer asked.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Draco said. “Sensors pinpointed their last position a distance from the rockfall.”

  “Then what happened to them?” Blackmer asked. When nobody had an answer, the security chief asked Cenn if they should continue downward. Cenn nodded.

  Blackmer reactivated the automated helm system, and the Defiant shuttlecraft resumed its descent into the darkness below.

  CENN RAISED HIS PHASER as he followed Lieutenant Commander Blackmer toward the rear of the shuttlecraft. Draco trailed behind the first officer, while Trabor would remain aboard Tyson to safeguard their vessel, to continue scanning the area, and to provide whatever support the away team required. Clad in environmental suits, the trio disembarked through the aft hatch, then moved along the shuttlecraft’s portside flank. Cenn peered forward as they walked, toward the area illuminated by the lights in the shuttlecraft’s bow and those in the helmets of the away team.

  To the right and left of Tyson, barely visible in the surrounding darkness, the craggy walls of the nascent chasm rose quickly out of sight. Fallen earth and rock lay strewn about, and just twenty meters ahead, the Ohalavaru vessel sat facing the shuttlecraft. Larger than Tyson, but smaller than a runabout, it had a triangular design not uncommon among Bajoran ships. Interior lights shined outward through several small ports, but Cenn saw no movement within the vessel. All around, granules of dirt and ash drifted downward like dark snow.

  “This close to their target, the sensors continue to function clearly,” Trabor said across the comm system that linked the shuttlecraft with the away team’s environmental suits. “I’m detecting only the three of you. No life signs aboard the Bajoran vessel or anywhere in the vicinity. The rear hatch of their ship reads open.”

  “Acknowledged,” Blackmer said. “We’re going to investigate the ship.”

  The security chief started forward, his movements looking slow and clumsy in Endalla’s lower gravitation. Cenn followed him across to the civilian vessel, and then along its starboard bulkhead, until they reached the stern. There, a wide panel had dropped from the rear of the vessel to form a ramp, matching the configuration aboard Tyson. Light spilled from the opening onto the ground.

  “Wait here,” Blackmer said, holding up one hand, flat. With his other hand, he raised his phaser and sidled along the aft bulkhead until he reached the ramp. He bent low and looked into the ship, then quickly pulled back.

  The security chief’s movements and his confidence impressed Cenn. As the ranking officer and commander of the away team, the first officer had intended to take the lead, but Blackmer had suggested otherwise. While Cenn had served in the Militia for many years, he functioned on Deep Space 9 mostly in an administrative capacity, as much Starfleet liaison to the Bajoran government as Ro’s exec. He rarely left the starbase on missions, and he had almost no practical experience in environmental suits. The reality of all that reduced the bruising of his ego, but it did not remove his desire to be first on the scene to capture the Ohalavaru.

  “The ship is empty,” Blackmer said. “I’m going inside. Cover me.” Draco acknowledged the order, and Cenn watched as she moved her head to and fro, continuously shining the lights of her helmet across the area and scanning it with her eyes, alert for trouble.

  As Blackmer surveyed the interior of the vessel, he maintained a running commentary. He reported finding nothing at all of interest. Several storage compartments had been left open and empty, suggesting that the Ohalavaru had taken equipment with them.

  “The explosives,” Cenn proposed.

  “Evidently,” Blackmer agreed. “That could explain the explosion we detected down here, but . . . to what end?”

  They don’t need an end, Cenn thought. He did not think of the Ohalavaru as insane, but as rebels dedicated to
a destructive cause, naysayers who found their value in stripping away the peace and love that others nurtured and cherished. Cenn could only speculate as to the cause of such behavior, but it would not surprise him if he learned that it had taken root in the terrible injustice and oppression of the Occupation. Sixteen years gone, Cenn thought, and still we bear the scars.

  “I’m coming out,” Blackmer announced. When he appeared at the top of the ramp, he stopped and said, “Trabor, is there any indication where they might have gone?”

  “No, sir, there’s nothing on the sensors.”

  Draco stepped forward, to the bottom end of the ramp, and squatted down. The lights from her helmet illuminated the surface, and as she turned her head, they chased along the ground. “Footprints,” she said. She stood up and activated the beacon on the wrist of her environmental suit.

  “Let’s go,” Blackmer said, turning on his wrist beacon as well. He trotted down the ramp to join the crewwoman. “Same configuration as we move forward. I’m on point. Draco, you’re in the rear.”

  Cenn fell in again between the two Starfleet officers, activating his own beacon as the security chief moved out. Blackmer kept his wrist beacon aimed at the ground in front of him and slightly to his right; he plainly did not want to muddle the tracks left by the Ohalavaru. They had walked perhaps twenty-five meters before the footprints swerved to one side, directly up to one wall of the crevasse. Cenn saw that the impressions in the ground continued along the rock wall, but then Blackmer said, “What the hell is that?”

  The shock in the security chief’s voice dismayed Cenn more than the actual question. The first officer followed the beam of Blackmer’s beacon, which shined on the wall of rock ahead of them. Except that’s not rock—

  Cenn’s mouth dropped open. He gazed at the break in the wall and tried to make sense of what he saw. Where the rock ended—where it had been blown away by explosives, he thought—a smooth surface lay revealed. An unpolished black, it seemed almost to absorb the light that shined on it.

  “Do you see this, Trabor?” Blackmer asked. Scanners in the away team’s helmets transmitted real-time images of what they saw back to the shuttlecraft.

  “Yes, sir, I see it,” Trabor said. “Sensors are reading it as a sophisticated composite of the rocks and minerals around it. It’s as though it was crafted to blend in perfectly with the surroundings.”

  “It might look like the rock around it,” Draco said, “but if an explosion did this, then it’s clearly much stronger.”

  “Is this what the Ohalavaru are looking for?” Blackmer asked. “Is this what they’re trying to destroy?”

  “I don’t know,” Cenn said. “I don’t know what this is.”

  The colonel aimed his beacon to the right. He saw only more of the rock wall. When he swung it in the other direction, the beam revealed an expanse of the smooth, black material. His beacon traced along the surface for one meter, and then two. At three meters, the light exposed an irregularly shaped hole, as though it had been blasted into existence. “Commander.”

  “I see it,” Blackmer said, and he raced over to the side of the breach. Cenn and Draco followed. “Trabor, still no life signs?”

  “No, sir.”

  “That material, whatever it is, must be what’s interfering with our sensors,” Draco noted.

  “Stand ready,” Blackmer said. He turned off the lights on his helmet and wrist, crouched, and then darted forward. As he passed the breach, he looked into it, then came to a stop on its far side. “I saw lights inside, in the distance,” he said. “It looked like two environmental-suited figures. I can’t tell how far, but they don’t seem close. They appear to be lower than the level of the ground here.”

  “What do we do?” Cenn asked.

  “We can’t go in there,” Blackmer said. “They probably expected that we would pursue them here, so they may have the opening under surveillance. They also might have rigged weapons inside to prevent us from following them. Even if they haven’t, we don’t know what we’d be walking into.”

  Cenn thought about how they should proceed. He felt an overwhelming impulse to disregard the security chief’s caution and simply climb through the breach in pursuit of the Ohalavaru. Instead, he said, “I’m going to hail them.”

  Blackmer said nothing, and into the silence, Draco asked, “Is that wise, Colonel?”

  “I don’t think it’s unwise,” he said. “Commander Blackmer indicated that they probably expected us to follow them. Maybe they don’t know that we’re here at this moment, but for all we know, they may have sensors that function here. After all, they seemed to have known about this place.”

  “Maybe they did,” Blackmer said. “Maybe that’s been their goal all along.”

  “To find this?” Draco asked. “But what is this?”

  “I don’t know,” Cenn said again, but something nagged at him from the back of his mind. He pushed it away. “I don’t know what this is or what they’re doing, but we’re not just going to wait for them to come out—not when we don’t know what it is they’re attempting.” He reached up to the neck of his helmet to toggle his comm system to broadcast over a range of frequencies. Before he did, he said, “Do you have any objections, Commander?”

  Blackmer said nothing for a moment, and then, “No, Colonel, I have no objections.” Cenn didn’t know what he would have done had Blackmer opposed him.

  “Hailing them,” Cenn said. He initiated a transmission across multiple frequencies. “This is Colonel Cenn Desca of the Bajoran Militia and Deep Space Nine,” he said. “To the Ohalavaru—” He had been about to say, To the Ohalavaru extremists, but he stopped himself. “To the Ohalavaru, we have captured two of your vessels and taken four of your comrades into custody.” He listed them by name. “We have pursued your third vessel into the fissure you created when you bombed the surface of Endalla. We have commandeered your ship and followed you to your current location underground. We are offering you the opportunity to surrender yourselves before we are forced to take aggressive action.”

  Cenn waited. He expected to hear nothing. The security personnel stationed at Endalla One had reported that not a single one of their hails to any of the Ohalavaru vessels had been returned. The four who had been apprehended had also mostly maintained their silence. Tiros Ardell talked a lot, Cenn thought, but he still didn’t say much.

  “Colonel Cenn,” said an unfamiliar male voice, “my name is Travil Asand. I am one of the two Ohalavaru you are pursuing. My colleague is called Nelish Stoat.”

  Nelish, Cenn recalled, had been the pilot of the civilian vessel that had exploded on Endalla when its baffle plates had ruptured. No doubt a ploy intended to test Starfleet’s defenses and procedures on the moon. The colonel’s disdain for the Ohalavaru grew.

  “He and I surrender ourselves into your custody,” Travil continued.

  Cenn thought for a moment that the Ohalavaru must be mocking him, but he perceived no disdain in the voice. “Are you armed?”

  “We are each carrying a disruptor,” Travil said. “We hoped not to have to fire them, but we had to bring them to ensure that we would not be stopped prematurely. You have my word that we will not use them against you. As for our explosives, we have exhausted our supply.”

  “What guarantees can you provide for any of that?” Cenn asked.

  “Only my word,” Travil said. “Somehow, I expect that will not be enough for you.”

  “You and I agree at least on that point,” Cenn said.

  “We have only one condition for our surrender,” Travil said.

  “You are not in a position to make requests, and I am not in a position to grant them,” Cenn said. “I am here explicitly as an officer of the Bajoran Militia, deputized only to capture you.”

  “The condition is a simple one, and completely in your power to fulfill,” Travil said, as though Cenn had not spoken.
“You must come to us.”

  “Why?”

  “We have our reasons, which will become clear,” Travil said. “We promise that no harm will come to you, and that you will be able to leave at any time, of your own free will.”

  “Your word notwithstanding, that still seems like a foolish thing for me to agree to.”

  “It may seem that way, but it’s not foolish,” Travil said. “Stoat and I will not hurt you. If you review what’s happened so far here on Endalla, Colonel, you will see that my colleagues and I have harmed no one.”

  “You have trespassed on and damaged sovereign Bajoran territory,” Cenn said, unable to keep a note of anger from entering his voice.

  “I cannot argue that point,” Travil admitted. “But again, we took no lives.”

  “You put lives at risk.”

  “True, but we took pains to avoid causing any loss of life or even any injury.”

  Cenn hesitated. The Ohalavaru on the three vessels that had come to Endalla might or might not have endeavored to avoid killing anybody, but the first officer could not deny that no lives had been lost during their attack, and only minor injuries suffered. Perhaps he should take Travil at his word. At that moment, Cenn wanted nothing more than for the entire incident to be over.

  Across from him, Blackmer made a cutting motion with his hand across his neck. “Stand by,” Cenn told Travil, and then the first officer switched his comm system to transmit only to the away team. “What is it, Commander?”

  “Pardon me, Colonel,” Blackmer said cautiously, “but I am concerned that you are considering acquiescing to the Ohalavaru’s demand. As chief of security, I strongly recommend against such a course of action. It could be an ambush.”

  “An ambush by whom, Commander?” Cenn asked. “The crews in the outpost and aboard Yolja reported reading only two life-forms aboard, and our sensors have confirmed that. Even if those scans weren’t accurate, you saw the size of their vessel; with all the explosives they carried with them, how many people could they have brought down here?”