Текст книги "Trill and Bajor "

Автор книги: Andy Mangels

Соавторы: J. Kim,Michael Martin
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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

JADZIA IDARIS

Inscribed directly beneath the familiar name, in the same stark, simple script, were the words:

BELOVED DAUGHTER, SISTER, STUDENT, FRIEND HOST OF DAX

Dax had the eerie sensation that she was standing at the edge of her own grave. At the same time, Jadzia was very much a stranger to her.

She moved quietly toward the still shape that now stood beside Jadzia’s obelisk. “I thought I might find you here.”

Julian didn’t seem in the least surprised at her arrival. He continued staring straight ahead at the grave marker, and the darkness that framed it. “You could have asked the Rio Grande’s computer to locate me.”

“Didn’t think I needed to. Besides, I needed to take a walk, too. I guess I owed her a visit as well.”

“Why? You never knew Jadzia.”

“True. But in some ways I know her better than anyone,” Ezri said, placing a hand on her abdomen. “Sometimes I wish I could have reallyknown her. The way other people did, I mean.”

“I think she would have liked you,” he said, before trailing off into brooding silence.

Then he turned to face her. For a moment, Julian’s grief shone through the darkness like a beacon. She felt a surge of relief when he changed the subject. “How did your testimony go?” he asked quietly.

Dax shrugged. “Bumpy, but survivable. Cyl seemed nervous about a few of the senators’ direct questions about the parasites. He kept insisting that a lot of them be redirected to a closed-door session.”

Julian nodded. “ ‘Security considerations,’ ” he said, using the general’s words.

“Doctor Renhol seemed to be trying to make an issue of Cyl’s need for secrecy,” Dax said.

“That’s rather ironic, coming from her.”

“No argument from me. I think she’s just positioning herself to run against Maz in the next presidential election.”

“Why does Cyl feel the need to hold back so many secrets?” Julian asked. “Now that the parasite danger has been dealt with, what’s the point?”

“I keep asking myself the same question. Senator Talris quizzed me about our mission on Minos Korva, and what we found there,” she said, reaching into her jacket pocket. She raised the fragment of Kurlan pottery into the light of the cemetery spires. “When I mentioned this, and your theory that it came from ancient Kurl, he became pretty curious about it. And Cyl insisted that the whole issue be kept under wraps. Like you said, ‘security considerations.’ ”

Julian stepped toward her, taking the shard and examining it in the near darkness. “Then I suppose he’ll be doubly glad that I wasn’t testifying beside you.”

She felt a frown creasing her brow. “What do you mean?”

“Before we arrived at Leran Manev, I was still researching the historical records on both Kurl and Trill,” he said, looking slightly embarrassed. “And I learned a bit more about the provenance of this thing.”

“It would have been nice to have known that before facing the Senate, Julian.”

“I’m not sure it has any significance. Besides, if your General Cyl hadn’t booted me from the building, we might have been able to let the Senate make that determination.”

“Or Icould have. If you’d told me everything you’d learned before we arrived on Trill, that is.”

His eyes narrowed and his jaw hardened, as though cast in iron. “Given Cyl’s fondness for secrecy, I tend to doubt that, Ezri. Besides, I told you everything I thought was important at the time. Most commanders don’t enjoy wading through too much extraneous information.”

She regarded him in stony silence for a long moment. Was he questioning her ability to conduct the mission with which Captain Kira had charged her? Or was it something more basic and petty than that?

You really don’t like being under me in the chain of command, do you, Julian?

Aloud, she said, “All right, what else did you find out?”

“Just that this piece is a fragment of the outer covering of an ancient Kurlan naiskos.”

“A what?”

He handed the fragment back to her. “A naiskosis a ceramic figurine made in a squat, roughly humanoid shape. They stood about forty centimeters high, and they were designed to be opened. The inside was filled with dozens of smaller but similarly proportioned internal figures, illustrating the Kurlan people’s belief that each individual is comprised of a diverse chorus of sometimes conflicting impulses and desires.”

Though Dax found Julian’s discovery interesting, she had to agree that it wouldn’t have been of any intrinsic value during her Senate testimony. She immediately regretted having questioned his judgment, and wondered if she hadn’t merely been projecting her own doubts about her ability to carry out the current mission.

Hold it right there, Counselor. You’re on the command track now, remember?

She suddenly realized that Julian was still talking about the naiskos.“I find one thing particularly intriguing about this artifact.”

“What’s that?” she said, hoping he hadn’t noticed her woolgathering.

“The philosophy behind the naiskosmakes me wonder if the Kurlans might not have been a joined species, like the Trill.”

“That sounds like a bit of a reach,” Dax said, shaking her head.

“Maybe. Maybe not. We know that the parasites have a relationship to the Trill symbionts. The presence of this fragment on Minos Korva suggests that they also had some connection to the Kurlans. Maybe there’s also a more direct relationship between Trill and Kurl.”

Looking at the fragment in her palm, seeing it in the context of Julian’s new information, Dax suddenly recognized what part of the humanoid form it represented: the mouth.

She heard a keening wail in the distance. Surrounded as they were by the remains of hundreds of the formerly joined dead, she found it impossible to suppress a shudder.

As if on cue, her combadge flared to life. The gravelly voice it carried needed no introduction.

“General Cyl to Lieutenant Dax. I’d like to see you back at the Senate Tower as soon as possible.”

Dax heard the wail again, and realized it was coming from the government sector. Dropping the naiskosfragment back into her pocket, she quickly tapped her combadge. “What’s going on, Taulin?”

“The transcript of your testimony has been leaked to the media. And the people down on the streets are starting to riot.”

6

Moments later, the Rio Grande’s transporter deposited Dax and Bashir in the Senate Tower’s expansive main lobby. A cacophony of shouts and screams from outside the building greeted them.

“Thanks for inviting me along this time,” Julian said, still sounding miffed at having been denied entrance to the Senate Chambers a few hours earlier.

But there wasn’t time at the moment to worry about that. Amid the crowd of office workers whose daily homeward journey had evidently been interrupted by the rioting outside, Dax noticed a tall, nattily dressed, silver-haired man directing a group of frazzled-looking young interns. He appeared utterly unruffled as he dispatched the cluster of young functionaries surrounding him to various tasks as though nothing at all remarkable were going on.

Julian had obviously noticed him as well. “Who’s that?”

“Senator Rylen Talris,” she said striding toward the man. “He had quite a few questions for me this afternoon. He also wasn’t thrilled with Cyl’s requests that I deliver some of my testimony in a special closed-door session.”

And I’ll bet he hasn’t been shy about complaining about that to the media,Dax thought. She wondered if the crowd outside was reacting to Talris’s contention that the Trill military was trying to cover up the entire parasite affair.

“I think I’ve read something about him,” Julian said. “Quite a man of the people, and very sympathetic to the problems of the unjoined. Which I find surprising, considering his position in Trill society.”

Dax frowned, hearing the tone of criticism beneath Julian’s words. “Why?”

“Well, in addition to serving in the Senate, doesn’t he also have a seat on the Symbiosis Commission?”

“Most joined Trill aren’t out to oppress the unjoined, Julian. Remember, some of us never even wantedto be joined in the first place.”

As the cluster of people surrounding Talris began to disperse, Dax noticed Cyl and Gard striding purposefully toward them from the bank of turbolifts that lined the gleaming black south wall. They came to a stop before Dax and Julian, just a few meters from Talris.

“How bad is the rioting?” Dax asked the general.

Cyl’s expression was weary and sour. “Bad enough, and it’s not just happening here in the capital. Unjoined agitators are coming together in large numbers at Mak’ala, and at some of the other symbiont spawning pools as well.”

“We have already increased security accordingly in all those places,” Gard said as they moved toward the senator. “No attacks on the symbiont pools have been reported as yet. But we can’t afford to wait until something like that actually happens.”

“At least we’ve found the right man to calm things down,” Julian said, nodding toward Talris.

Cyl nodded. “Though I have little truck with the politics of the malcontents, I can’t argue against Talris’s credibility out there among the Great Unjoined. Working with Talris is our best chance to keep the police/protester skirmishes from getting out of hand.”

“Our main concern is keeping everyone calm,” Gard said. “In fact, President Maz has just announced that the rest of the Senate inquests will be placed on hold until some semblance of order is restored on the streets.”

Dax wasn’t surprised to hear that; Maz was a practical, no-nonsense politician who had a fairly low tolerance for unruly behavior. But if the developing situation was indeed as dire as the picture Cyl and Gard were painting, Maz’s absence seemed conspicuous.

“Where is Maz?” she asked.

“She’s quite busy at the moment, as you might imagine,” said Cyl.

“Of course.” She’s also probably less than eager to be seen with anyone as closely identified with Shakaar’s assassination as the two of you are.

Suddenly, they were in Talris’s presence, and the senator was giving them his undivided attention. After Cyl facilitated a quick exchange of introductions, Talris gestured toward the building’s broad entrance, beyond which a sizable crowd was visible.

“It’s worse than I thought,” Senator Talris said, his lined face taking on a melancholy cast.

Limned in the glare of the street lights, the angry mob outside was surging forward across the courtyard toward the Senate Tower proper, chanting, screaming, and waving placards. Through the floor-to-ceiling transparisteel lobby entranceway, Dax noticed that the police and security guards outside had linked their arms and raised their clear riot shields to form a skirmish line. She also noticed that many of the building’s civilian workers remained trapped inside the lobby. She saw a small group of security guards enter the lobby, gesturing for the workers to vacate the area and to head for the relative safety of the stairwells and turbolifts.

“Senator Talris, please get to the turbolifts,” Gard said, reaching through an opening in the center of his outer tunic and retrieving a slim phaser pistol, apparently from an underarm holster. “You’ll be safest up in the office levels.”

“All right,” Talris said as the group entered the nearest lift. Dax noticed that the senator touched the keypad’s third-floor control.

Cyl had evidently noticed the same thing. “Senator?”

“I need to address the crowd,” Talris said in urgent tones as the lift began to ascend. “The speaker’s platform is on the third level.”

“Speaker’s platform?” Julian asked.

“Just what it sounds like, Julian. It’s a semipublic platform on a balcony overlooking the crowd,” Dax said curtly, even as Cyl and Gard seemed about to question Talris’s judgment.

“It’s shielded against small arms, but it’s visually open to the crowd,” said Talris. “It’s also equipped with dozens of holocams, for comnet-wide public addresses. And there’s a viewer right outside the Tower that ought to make me large and loud enough to get everyone’s attention.”

The lift doors opened onto the third floor, and Talris pointed across the corridor toward a door that Dax surmised must lead to the speaker’s platform. Several guards were already in place, and a pair of them were pushing a tarp-draped hovercart before them. Dax supposed they were present in anticipation of Talris’s need to use the balcony, but they seemed genuinely surprised to have company. One of the guards even drew a weapon before anyone could take a step out of the lift; Dax was relieved to note that he wasn’t aiming it at anyone.

Everyone’s jumpy,Dax thought. This is getting worse by the second.

Cyl was the first to speak to the guards. “Lieutenant, what is your current assignment?”

One of the uniformed officers in the corridor moved into a ramrod-straight stance, then answered. “Sir, we are deploying protective countermeasures in case the building should be breached by the protesters.”

“Do it with a few less men, Lieutenant,” Cyl said, his stern voice crisply conveying the order. “I want three armed guards with Senator Talris at all times. He’s about to address the crowd from the speaker’s platform.”

The guard nodded. “Understood, sir.”

“I don’t think this is wise, Senator,” Cyl said as the sound of phaser fire reached them from outside the tower.

Dax hoped they were only warning shots.

Talris’s face crinkled as he smiled, making him look like a beneficent grandfather. He chuckled as he said, “Given some of the risks you’ve taken lately, Taulin, some might question the wisdom of taking youradvice as well.” Dax supposed Talris was referring to Cyl’s recent decisions with respect to Bajor. Cyl, who had evidently known Talris for many years, did not appear to be offended.

“I’ll be fine, really,” Talris told the general, his eyes twinkling. “Now let me go. I have a rampaging horde to calm down.”

Talris stepped out of the lift to join the guards, leaving Dax and the rest of the group standing inside. Facing the lift, the senator touched the keypad on the wall, causing his confident face to disappear behind the lift’s closing doors even as a trio of guards moved toward him.

“We need to get to the tower’s security center,” Cyl said, his sullen tone making it clear that he wasn’t keen on leaving Talris’s side, guards or no guards. He tapped a special code into the lift’s keypad, and the conveyance began to descend. “From there, we should be able to track exactly what is going on top-side.”

“You mean outside the tower?” Julian asked.

Cyl nodded. “The security center has secure Z-twelve connections. We’ll bypass the public comm channels and link directly to the defense grid. That way, we’ll be updated about every location where there are major protest gatherings. We need to stay on top of the situation not only here, but at Mak’ala and elsewhere.”

The lift descended below the first floor, then stopped at an unmarked sublevel. The doors opened on a wide, bustling room whose walls were covered with monitors. Uniformed military personnel swarmed throughout the chamber, punching keypads, reading data, watching the screens, or vigorously discussing the events now unfolding on the streets of Leran Manev and other locales with others not present in the room.

In all her lives, Dax couldn’t recall having visited this place before. But she had been in other command centers like it—sprawling yet cramped control rooms filled from floor to ceiling with unbeautiful, solidly utilitarian computer keypads and monitors—both on and off Trill. She assumed that this was but one of perhaps dozens of similar security command centers located around the planet.

They quickly caught up with Cyl and Gard, who were already being briefed by an authoritative-looking female officer. Her head was nearly shaved clean, making the dappled purplish spots on her temples clearly visible. Dax immediately recognized her as someone to be reckoned with.

After casting a suspicious eye on Gard, the woman turned to Cyl.

“You have something to say, Colonel Rianu?” Cyl said gruffly.

“Permission to speak freely, sir?”

“I don’t have time for parade protocol right now, Colonel. Out with it.”

“Thank you, sir. I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to bring that man down here, General.” She nodded toward Gard with icy politeness.

Dax understood the colonel’s apprehension. After all, Gard had killed the head of state of an allied planet. It was pretty hard to keep one’s name and face out of the newsnets after such an incident. Gard’s deed, as well as the official pardon that had apparently followed it, had arguably made him far better known than befitted a Senate security operative long accustomed to working in the shadows.

Cyl appeared a good deal less understanding. “Colonel, Hiziki Gard is my trusted right hand, at least for the duration of the current crisis. I expect you to give him whatever resources he asks for—and to obey his orders as though they had come directly from me. Do I make myself clear?”

“You do, sir.” Dax was impressed at how impassively the colonel took the general’s browbeating. She suddenly recognized her.

“That’s Colonel Behza Rianu,” Dax whispered to Julian. “She’s supposed to be one of the best in the Defense Command.”

“She certainly seems to have things well in hand here,” Julian said.

“She has political ambitions, too. As well as a quick temper that’s kept her from achieving a Senate seat so far.”

“Are you sure she’s not advancing because she’s not joined?” Julian asked.

Even after everything she had witnessed so far today, Dax couldn’t have been more surprised if he had suddenly lobbed a grenade into the room. “I can’t even find the words to answerthat, Julian.” She glared at him for a moment, then attempted to resume listening to Colonel Rianu’s briefing. But in the back of her mind, Julian’s question echoed, and a small part of her knew it was relevant. Especially today.

In clipped, businesslike tones, Rianu informed them about the planetwide movements of various radicals, which she identified as anti-joining agitators associated with the neo-Purist movement, political radicals inspired by the late Verad Kalon’s anti-symbiont Purist group. Consciously putting aside her unpleasant memories of Verad, who had briefly succeeded in stealing her symbiont from Jadzia, Dax listened, turning with the others to watch a cycle of images scrolling past on a large bank of wall-mounted monitors. The holoscreens showed other government buildings in Leran Manev and elsewhere, the Symbiosis Commission, the Caves of Mak’ala, and two other smaller symbiont spawning grounds. Around each of these places, throngs of obviously discontented Trill humanoids had gathered.

The military presence was heaviest near the Symbiosis Commission’s copper-hued towers, though that structure was better protected than most of the other buildings in Leran Manev’s government sector; after all, it was practically surrounded by a moatlike body of water, with only a few roadways and powered hover routes leading to it. Dax noted that the building’s landing pads were filled with military defense craft, and that police were pushing the throngs slowly back away from the roadways that led directly to the Commission building.

Outside the Senate Tower, however, the situation was much worse. Protesters were throwing whatever was handy, and the guards were responding with force. Batons rose and fell, and the actinic flash of phaser fire split the air, some directed at the protesters, some aimed at the police. In the bunker, Dax noticed several people gathered near one monitor, each speaking into separate comm devices. On their viewscreen, she saw a flash of light as a soldier targeted a civilian sniper; the monitoring officers cheered momentarily, congratulating the soldier over one of the comm units. Dax assumed they had helped the shooter pinpoint his target. Though she was no stranger to combat, the sight of it occurring in the once tranquil Trill capital made her feel almost physically ill. After all, it was the living legacy of Verad, whose poisonous, invidious memories still lingered within her because of her symbiont’s brief joining with him.

“There’s got to be a way to resolve this without so much violence,” she said. “Can’t we release some neural gas in the plaza, or set up a phaser cannon for a wide-dispersal stun blast?”

“Either of those options could cause some deaths as well,” said Cyl, shaking his head.

“I thought Talris was supposed to speak to the crowd,” Julian said. “Shouldn’t he have started by now?”

Dax saw a look of surprise flicker across the faces of both Cyl and Gard as each of them realized that several minutes had passed since they had left the senator on the tower’s third floor. She knew they were thinking the same thing she was: What is taking Talris so long?

“Bring up all cameras on level three,” Cyl said to a nearby technician. “Focus the largest viewers on the speaker’s platform.” Dax could hear the urgency in his voice.

Multiple images came up on the screens, but none of them showed anyone at all. The speaker’s balcony was completely empty. “Where is Talris?” Gard asked. “What happened to the guards?”

“Talris might have decided to exercise the better part of valor,” said Julian.

“That doesn’t square with his reputation,” Dax said.

Cyl squinted at the viewers, studying them carefully. “Maybe they evacuated elsewhere because of the sniper activity.”

Gard shook his head. “This doesn’t add up. The balcony’s shields would have stopped a sniper. And the guards around Talris would have known that.”

Something about the images on the viewer was bothering Dax. Everything looked peaceful on and around the third-level balcony, as if nothing at all untoward were occurring a mere two floors below. It almost lookstoo peaceful.

A sudden realization struck her. “Magnify screen seven-Q, upper third quadrant,” Dax said to the technician who was beside Cyl. The screen image quickly changed, showing the profuse greenery that ringed the speaker’s platform. Above the dais was a red-plumed bird in flight.

Though its wings were fully extended, the bird was motionless, as though it had been flash-frozen an instant after takeoff

“Why is this image paused?” Cyl asked as he too noticed the discrepancy.

“It’s not,sir,” the technician said, his fingers sliding over a lit data panel. “This feed’s coming in live.”

Cyl pointed angrily toward the magnified and motionless bird on the viewscreen. “I see. So that fenzabird suddenly transformed itself into a fixed-wing aircraft. This feed is a still image!”

“Run the feed backward,” Rianu said, as several more of the technicians began working the panels in front of the anomalous image. Although index numbers scrolled backward rapidly, the images on the third floor and speaker’s platform viewscreens remained consistent—including the motionless bird. Finally, at minus nine minutes, the bird flew backward and returned to its perch. On another screen, a pair of guards pushing a tarp-covered hoverlift could be seen. One of them raised a hand from the hoverlift and aimed a small device directly at the cameras.

“Freeze it!” Cyl shouted. His eyebrows arched, and a look of anger flashed in his eyes. “These people are infiltrators. They sabotaged the feed before we even arrived.”

Gard was moving toward the turbolift before Cyl had even finished speaking. He pointed at a pair of armed guards as he sprinted. “You two are with us.”

Dax felt her adrenaline surge as she and Julian and Cyl moved toward the lift as well. Cyl tossed her a plisagraph, which she dutifully set for maximum scan before pulling the phaser from her hip to make sure it was fully charged.

“Set weapons to kill,” Cyl said as the lift enclosed them. “Whoever these people are, we can bet they won’t be very happy about being interrupted.”

Dax did as Cyl bid, though she wasn’t thrilled with the idea of killing. Then she turned toward Julian and saw that he had not switched his phaser past the “stun” setting.

Julian gave her a look that she wasn’t sure she was reading correctly. His eyes seemed argumentative and imploring at the same time. Because she was the one in charge of their mission, she knew she could order him to change the setting on his weapon. But she also knew that he had disregarded Cyl’s instruction because his primary loyalty was to Starfleet, not to Trill. That distinction set him apart not only from everyone else in the lift, but also from everyone else in the building.

Everyone on the planet, she realized.

He’s not one of us,Dax thought. Suddenly the current clash between joined and unjoined conspired with the sometimes conflicting feelings of Ezri Tigan and Ezri Dax. Starfleet training warred with Trill loyalty, threatening momentarily to overwhelm her.

And then the turbolift doors opened.

His heart in his throat, Bashir flattened himself against the wall as phaser fire rained in on them, burning a hole through the lift’s back wall. Cyl and Gard crouched near the floor, while Ezri and one of the security people Gard had brought along leaned forward to fire their weapons from the open, smoke-filled turbolift.

Another volley of shots passed back and forth before Bashir heard the sound of a pair of bodies crumpling to the floor in the corridor outside. One of the guards edged her way out the door, her weapon drawn and her stance defensive.

“Two down!” she said, her voice a low growl. Turning briskly with her weapon extended in a two-handed grip, the guard looked to either side, covering for the others. Suddenly, a phaser bolt shot her through the throat, half vaporizing her neck in a spray of wet matter. She immediately collapsed to the floor. Bashir instinctively started moving toward her, but restrained himself an instant later; the guard’s wound appeared mortal, and he knew there was no way to examine her without being killed himself.

Cyl and the remaining security guard fired in the direction from which the fatal shot had come, down a side corridor. Though the adversaries returned fire, Cyl and the guard continued shooting. Bashir heard a distant cry of pain, followed by the sound of another body hitting the tile floor.

Bashir crawled over to the fallen guard, even as Ezri moved with him, crouching with her phaser drawn and her scanning device raised. Bashir turned the stricken guard over to inspect her wound and saw immediately that she was beyond all help. Though the heat of the phaser beam had nearly cauterized her wound, it had also blown out her trachea as well as a great deal of her spine.

“I read three more humanoid life signs in that direction,” Ezri said, angling the small scanning device Cyl had given her toward the tower’s east corridors, then toward the building’s western side. Bashir recognized the palm-sized device as a powerful, Trill-specific bioscanner known as a plisagraph. “Three this way as well, including one that looks pretty weak.”

Gard tapped the remaining guard on the shoulder, then pointed down a side corridor. “We’ll take the east wing. Let’s hope one of those life signs belongs to Talris.”

Ezri shook her head. “I don’t think he’s here. I’m not reading any symbiont life signs on this floor. Other than our own, I mean.”

“That weak humanoid life sign you picked up might belong to the one we just hit,” Cyl said, frowning and nodding.

“He may not have taken a direct hit,” Bashir said. He still wasn’t happy about Cyl’s insistence that they shoot to kill. And despite the horrible death the infiltrators had just inflicted on the security guard, he still hoped their adversaries wouldn’t have to die unnecessarily.

Cyl gestured westward with his phaser. “Dax, Doctor, come with me. And stay sharp.”

The team split up. Cyl, Dax, and Bashir moved cautiously down the wide corridor, hugging the walls and pausing to take cover behind alternating rows of support columns and large potted plants. Eventually, they reached a three-way junction, where the body of one of the impostor guards lay.

Crouching beside him, Bashir noted that he was dead—and that the phaser clutched in his hand was still warm from recent use. “No life signs here, weak or otherwise.” He looked up at Ezri.

She consulted her scanner again. “My plisagraph is still picking up three Trill humanoid life signs, but that’s all. One of the others must be hurt. They’re down that way.”

Even as Ezri pointed toward a windowless, unlit segment of corridor, the plisagraph in her hand exploded in a shower of sparks as a phaser blast hit it. She let out a cry and spun into the wall, then crumpled to the tile floor.

Cyl hit the ground instantly, returning fire. Using the dead attacker as a shield, he sent a volley of blasts down the darkened corridor, briefly illuminating it as brightly as the noontime sky.

Dropping to the floor, Bashir crawled quickly across the three meters that separated him from Ezri. The look of shock and pain on her face alarmed him, and he saw that her right hand was red and blistered.

“Let me do something about those burns,” he said, reaching for the medical kit on his hip.

Using her uninjured hand, she grabbed his wrist, stopping him. “It’s not that bad, Julian,” she whispered, hissing through tightly clenched teeth. Her brave words didn’t fool him for a moment; she was obviously in agony. “Besides, this isn’t the best place for giving first aid.”

As if to underscore her words, more phaser bursts pulsed over their heads, and Cyl responded with another volley. Bashir turned and saw that Cyl was taking aim at the edges of the wall, rather than shooting down the middle of the open corridor. Moments later, a large chunk of rubble fell away from the wall in a cloud of smoke and dust. Cyl strafed the area just beyond it.

Bashir held his breath for a protracted moment, but no further salvos came from down the corridor. Cyl turned to face Bashir and Ezri. “Stay here and cover me,” he said, then pulled himself to a squatting position. A moment later he was sprinting down the corridor, zigzagging as he ran.

Despite the near darkness that surrounded Cyl, Bashir could see that the general had arrived unmolested at the corridor’s end. Cyl beckoned them to follow.