Текст книги "Twilight "

Автор книги: David George

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4

Vaughn leaned against the wall just inside the doorway, peering through the dimness. In the corner nearest him, light emanated from a display panel, though it did not penetrate very far into Defiant’s simulated night. It illuminated the figure on the biobed, and spilled in patches onto the decking on either side. The quiet, almost haunting sounds of diagnostic tools trickled through the room and failed to fill it, like the distant strains of a musical instrument.

A shape passed between Vaughn and the display, briefly obscuring its light. Vaughn’s gaze followed the form: Dr. Bashir walked slowly along the length of the bed, checking the readouts, measuring his patient’s condition, making notations on a padd. After a few moments, the doctor reached up and touched a control, and the display above the bed went dark. The bed and its occupant vanished like the finale of a magic trick. The only light in the room now came from off to Vaughn’s left, where the only other person in the room, a nurse, sat working at a console; she had evidently muted the controls she worked, because all he could hear were the dull taps of her fingertips on the touchpads.

Vaughn straightened, pulling his shoulder away from the bulkhead, knowing the doctor would approach him now. That was the way of doctors, following their training not only to treat their patients, but to manage their patients’ family members and friends. Bashir would tell him to return to his quarters, to get some sleep, that there was nothing he could do for Prynn here. And Vaughn would make the noises expected of him, would resist the suggestions and then relent, promising to leave in just a few minutes; he would say just enough to placate the doctor and send him on his way.

“Sir,” Bashir said, speaking in a hushed manner that matched the still, dark medical bay.

“Doctor.”

“She’s resting comfortably,” Bashir said, not waiting to be asked. “I’ve given her a mild sedative to help her sleep, but she won’t even need that in a couple of days.” The doctor turned his head and looked in Prynn’s direction. “The skin grafts are doing very well, and her internal organs…” His voice trailed off, and he turned back to Vaughn before continuing. “Well, she was very lucky.”

Vaughn knew that. The blast that had sent Prynn flying unconscious across the bridge—that he thought had killed her—had done damage within and without her abdominal cavity, but the injuries to her viscera had been such that the doctor had been able to repair them with relative ease. The greatest danger to her had been in the first moments after the explosion, when she had come perilously close to losing so much blood that the extent of her other injuries would not have mattered. Had Dr. Bashir not been on the bridge, had he not so quickly transported Prynn to the medical bay…

Vaughn allowed the thought to die before completing it. He had already lived through the experience of believing his daughter dead; he did not need to revisit those emotions. “What’s the prognosis for her recovery?”

“Oh, she’ll be up and about in a few days,” Bashir said. “Perhaps even by the time we get back to Deep Space 9.” The repaired Defiant,having eluded the Jarada yesterday, had rejoined the convoy and resumed escorting it to Bajor. Still employing the cloak in the unlikely event that they encountered the Jarada again, the ship traveled at low warp, matching velocities with the slowest vessels in the procession. Consequently, it would be several days before Defiantarrived back at the station. “She’ll probably be able to return to light duty in about two weeks, maybe sooner,” the doctor went on. “Full duty about a week after that.” Vaughn looked toward the corner of the room where Prynn lay sleeping. “And what about you?” Bashir asked. “How are you feeling?”

Though the doctor’s voice carried no particular inflection, Vaughn interpreted the question as a reference to his emotional state: How are you feeling about having watched your daughter almost die? How are you coping with having issued the orders that mangled her body and nearly took her life?When he turned back to Bashir, though, he saw the doctor looking down at the gauzelike coverings wrapping Vaughn’s wounded limbs. One soft casing protected his left arm from elbow to fingertips, and the other, his right hand. His burns had not been as severe as Prynn’s, nor had they required grafts, but the dermal regenerations would take another day or two to complete.

“I’m tired,” Vaughn said. “But I’m all right. I assume I’m healing under here.” He raised his arms to indicate the dressings.

“That’s what Nurse Richter tells me,” Bashir said, tilting his head toward the woman working off to Vaughn’s left. Earlier, the zaftig ensign, newly assigned to Defiantfrom the station’s infirmary, had examined Vaughn and proclaimed his recovery proceeding as expected.

“Thank you, Julian,” he said.

“It’s my job,” Bashir said, and then seemed to reconsider his response, because he added, “You’re welcome, sir.” Then, apparently out of things to say, he added, “Well. Have a good night then.”

“Rest well, Doctor,” Vaughn said.

He watched Bashir walk over to the nurse and, when she looked up from her console, hand her the padd he had been using. The doctor asked her to monitor certain readings of their lone patient, and she took more than a cursory glance at the data she had been given. After a few moments, evidently satisfied, she said, “Yes, sir.”

Bashir departed through the door opposite Vaughn, leaving him mildly surprised at not having been encouraged to vacate the medical bay himself. Delighted to have been wrong, he felt one side of his mouth curl upward slightly. He found people whose behavior he could not always predict interesting, primarily because he encountered so few of them. To this point in his tenure aboard DS9, Vaughn had not been particularly intrigued by Bashir—the man’s actions had so far been eminently foreseeable, no matter his genetic enhancements—though he did like the doctor, whose keen intellect seemed matched by an intense sense of compassion.

With Bashir gone and the nurse busy, Vaughn paced over and stood beside Prynn’s bed. Her form, her features, remained indistinct in the darkened room, but he didn’t need light and eyesight to see his daughter. As he peered down at where he knew she lay, her image rose easily in his mind. Small sounds spread from around her like audible shadows, hints of the objects that cast them. The tiny electronic hum of a medical device buzzed near the center of the bed, knitting together flesh. Farther up, above her, the low, almost inaudible beat of the diagnostic display marched in time with a small blinking indicator, both signaling the panel’s quiet mode. And at the head of the bed, Prynn’s breathing, hard but even, confirmed her continuing life.

Vaughn closed his eyes and issued a long sigh, an expression of exhaustion and relief, he knew, but only somerelief. From the moment he had seen—had thought he had seen—Prynn die, tension and fear, anguish and guilt, had cleaved to him, even through the revelation of her survival. His daughter had endured, yes, but if nothing else, the century of his life had brought him the sure knowledge that all existence fades, fragile as a leaf in winter. Whether Prynn eventually fell to earth first or he did, he felt he could no longer cling to a life that did not include her.

And yet he also knew that it might be beyond his ability—perhaps now more than ever—to change their circumstances. His previous efforts to reconcile with his daughter—he had made several attempts through the years—had all been vigorously rebuffed. Just a few weeks ago, after the surprise of finding himself assigned to the same post as Prynn had waned, he had asked her to have dinner with him; she had told him to go to hell. Now, with his orders not to return fire against the Jarada having contributed substantially to her injuries, his chances with her had likely worsened.

Strange,he thought, the way things sometimes work out.After living a turbulent life for so many years, Vaughn had recently dispatched many of the burdens of his decades of work, had seen into himself and then chosen to look back out in a new direction. He had wrestled a lifetime of difficult, sometimes painful duty, and won himself a reprieve. He had arrived at Deep Space 9 almost a new man, intent on finding his way to a life lived for simple joys, and not just for professional obligation. And when he had done that, he had found Prynn again. But she had still not found him.

If only it had been the work,he thought. If he had neglected his daughter in favor of his career, he could, even at this late date, atone for it. But his work had not been the problem; the problem had been what he had done.

The enormity of what Vaughn had brought down on Prynn seven years ago had never left him—and never could—and now he had compounded her pain and, consequently, his own. He leaned forward in the darkened medical bay, straining to see her face, but he could only discern the vague shape of its outline. He reached up, his wrapped right hand extending to where her arm would be. He wanted—he needed—some contact with his daughter, but before his hand reached her, he stopped and pulled back. For what seemed like a long time, Vaughn stood there, both maintaining a vigil and struggling for hope.

At last, he stepped away from the bed and walked over to where the nurse had continued working. She looked up at his approach, and as he had when she had examined him earlier, he noticed her eyes; a distinctive blue-green, they stood out, complementing her pale complexion and her reddish blond hair, which she wore in plaits that joined behind her head.

“Nurse,” he asked, “do you know what Ensign Tenmei will be able to remember?”

“About the accident, you mean?” Richter asked, and Vaughn nodded. “Probably nothing at all. When she was awake earlier, she didn’t know why she was in the medical bay. It’s possible she might eventually recall being on the bridge, but the accident…” The nurse shook her head from side to side.

Prynn had spent most of yesterday unconscious, initially as a result of her injuries, and later, owing to the anesthesia administered prior to surgery. She had awoken a few times today, and though extremely tired, she had been coherent. Vaughn had been visiting the medical bay during one of her periods of wakefulness, and he had gone to her bedside. When their eyes had met, she had offered a wan smile, but Vaughn had known better than to take such an event to heart. He had simply been happy that Prynn was alive and would recover without any problems—at least, without any physicalproblems. He hoped that the most significant damage she had suffered had been to her body, because flesh often healed more quickly than the heart or the mind.

“Thank you,” Vaughn told the nurse. He walked to one of the room’s two exits, the doors sliding open before him. He stopped and looked once more toward Prynn, then continued out into the corridor. The shadowy ship seemed empty. Most of the crew would be asleep, he knew, with only a skeleton staff on the bridge and in engineering.

As Vaughn headed for his cabin, he knew that he would have to determine a new course of action, that he would have to figure out what to do, for himself and for Prynn. He understood that it would not be easy, and on top of that, that despite whatever efforts he ended up making, he might not be able to bring about the resolution he so desperately sought with his daughter.

Only one mission in his life had been more important. And more difficult.

5

The rain fell cold and hard. Kira reached the boulder at a dead run and threw herself down behind it. Her hands pushed into the sodden ground as she landed, mud oozing up wetly between her fingers and engulfing them. She rolled quickly onto her side and pulled her hands free, then regained her feet and crouched behind the great rock.

Why did I agree to this?she asked herself, not for the first time. She hated the holosuites. Seeking a setting in which to meditate was one thing, but this was another. Simulation or no, she was miserable. The temperature must have dropped fifteen degrees during her descent from the top of the ravine, low enough now that her breath emerged into the air in a white plume. Her uniform, soaked through two hours ago, added at least ten kilos to her frame. And the rain, misty and relatively warm at first, now plummeted down as though it had been hurled at the ground, as though the fat drops were themselves weapons in this battle.

Kira paused, catching her breath after her last dash. Around her, the unrelenting rain struck the saturated earth with a sound strangely reminiscent of applause. I ought to take a bow and end this right now,she thought. The holosuite safety protocols ensured that she would not suffer serious injury during the course of the program, she knew, but nothing prevented her from being wretchedly uncomfortable.

Lightning flashed overhead, illuminating the scene with an uncanny clarity, and lending everything an eerie, bluish white cast. Kira waited for the darkness to reassert itself, then bent low and peered out from around the boulder. It could almost have been night, so dense was the cloud cover. Thunder boomed, closer now than it had been, reminding her of the ever-encroaching sounds of warfare during the Occupation: grenades, mortar fire, bombs. Fresh and vibrant even eight years after the Cardassians had been driven from Bajor, the memories felt more unpleasant than the weather.

The ridge where Kira squatted clung to the side of the ravine five meters above its floor. Across from her and down, she could make out the shapes that marked her destination: a copse surrounding a small structure of some sort. “They hide within the canyon,” Taran’atar had told her before the simulation had begun. “And they watch for pursuers.”

Kira waited for the lightning to aid her reconnaissance. With each series of flashes, she focused on a different section of the ravine floor. Up and down the canyon, she saw nothing: no beings, no vehicles, no animals, and no visible traps. Or maybe the whole area is a trap,she thought. As inhospitable as the weather had been, the geography had proven even more difficult: the canyon walls fell steeply; the mud, as well as loose stone and shale, made footing precarious; and no obvious routes—either naturally formed or created by wear—had revealed themselves beneath Kira’s scrutiny. She considered herself fortunate to have made it this far without incident.

She flexed her fingers, washing the mud from them in the rain. Lightning once more brought the scene into stark view. The stand of trees might be concealing something or someone, Kira thought, but the structure seemed the more likely hiding place, especially given the conditions. She wished she had a tricorder or a phaser with her—either would have allowed her to gather more information, and provided her with additional options—but she had agreed to Taran’atar’s suggestion that she equip herself with only a knife.

“You are dead,” the Jem’Hadar had intoned as they had entered the holosuite, his manner even more solemn than usual. “Go into battle to reclaim your life.” It had always seemed such an alien philosophy to Kira. Even though she had often fought to save lives—her own and others’—it felt qualitatively different for her to act on the assertion that her life had already been lost. The simple shift of perspective required more of a commitment to the possibility of dying in battle than she believed healthy. For the right reasons, and there were many of them, Kira would willingly risk her life—and had done so on numerous occasions. But her instincts would always be to keep herself alive, not to recapture her existence from the clutches of death.

“Victory is life,” she said aloud now, echoing the Jem’Hadar mantra. Her breath puffed out before her, and she thought, Right now, I’d settle for “Victory is warmth.”Her joints had begun to ache, an effect of the chill and the damp.

Kira studied the structure as best she could from her present vantage. Small and constructed of stone, with a relatively flat, empty roof, the building projected an odd quality. No more than three meters tall, and just as wide and long, it featured neither doors nor windows, though a meter-square opening stood in the center of the wall facing her.

Easily defended from within,Kira thought. Anybody inside would be able to guard the entrance with a single weapon. Despite that particular advantage, such a design might still be characterized as strange. It was something else, though, that tugged at Kira’s sensibilities: the roof. If it was actually made of stone, how could a flat roof support itself? And if the structure contained materials other than stone, then all was not as it appeared, and that meant there might be subterfuge at work here.

Kira wiped the rain from her face and shielded her eyes with her hand. She needed to find a course down to the structure, one that would allow her a rapid approach. As she scanned the ravine, though, another sound gradually distinguished itself from that of the rainfall. A great rushing sound, like the rain but more intense, identified the source of the noise even before Kira located it. Crawling forward and leaning out past the edge of the ridge, she spotted an overflowing stream coursing below, between herself and the structure. The ridge must have blocked it from view during her descent.

Lying flat on the ground, Kira waited for the lightning to detail the stream for her. At its narrowest, she saw, the water looked to be only five meters across, but it flowed swiftly. Depending on its depth, she might not be able to ford the stream without being dragged from her feet, possibly even swept away. She considered traveling upstream or down in search of a narrower place to cross, but even had finding one seemed likely, she had no desire to prolong this experience. For Taran’atar’s sake, Kira did not wish to quit the simulation, but neither did she feel compelled to treat the success of this virtual mission as she would have a real one.

And even if she had wanted to invest as much effort as she could in this endeavor, she simply did not possess enough information to be able to do so. Taran’atar had presented her with a vague goal—capture a Rintannan, whoever that was—amid a few sketchy parameters: the need for stealth while descending into the canyon, his desire that she arm herself with nothing more than a knife. Kira would never have undertaken an actual mission like this without more data, including, most important, the reasonfor it. But when she had begun to ask questions, Taran’atar had either not wanted or not been able to supply her with answers. Instead, he had recommended that she treat the task as he always treated his: as duties divinely charged to him. Kira had not protested that the Prophets did not hand out assignments like military leaders, nor did she mention how unbefitting gods she found such behavior. Since she would be doing this for Taran’atar anyway, she had agreed to his conditions.

Seeing no ready path down to the ravine floor from her current viewpoint, Kira withdrew on her belly from the edge of the ridge, propelling herself backward with her forearms. Once back behind the boulder, she rose to her haunches again. She glanced down at herself and saw only a few small patches of orange where her uniform had not been covered or discolored by the dark mud of this place. Her boots were caked.

Kira waited for the lightning, then shifted her position to the other side of the boulder. Again, she peered out in search of a route from her location down to the structure. As she did so, she wondered what planet this was– Rintanna, perhaps?—and who lived here, and how and why Taran’atar knew of it. Had the Founders instructed him and his fellow soldiers to conquer this world, or had he come here as part of his own training? Was it a place in the Gamma Quadrant, or an environment entirely of Taran’atar’s own creation? No,she thought then. Not something he invented.While he had clearly demonstrated a remarkable capacity to encode holoprograms from memory—she remembered watching him battle the eight-legged monstrosity he had called the Comes-in-the-night-kills-many—Taran’atar had shown no indication at all of having an imagination.

It took another twenty minutes, but Kira finally identified a path for the final leg of her descent. The additional time actually benefited her, because the rain eased, the lightning became less frequent, and the already dark afternoon began transforming into night. With a bit of luck, she would be able to approach the structure in stages, moving in the darkness from one point of concealment to another. She waited again for the lightning, taking a last opportunity to imprint her planned route into memory.

Then she moved.

Seven strides back along the ridge, she raced with one hand out in front of herself and the other to her side, using the feel of the foliage as an additional guide to her recall. Her hand raked through small, wet leaves, sending a spray of water up along her arm, and sounding, she hoped, like wind among the plants.

With her seventh step, just where she expected, there came a break in the bushes. Kira turned abruptly and felt for the slope with her foot. Finding purchase, she followed with her other foot and stepped sideways down the incline. Twice, she had to jog around larger bushes, and her footing continually threatened to give way, but she managed to reach the ravine floor before the lightning flared again.

Kira could hear the stream speeding loudly past her now, just a few paces away. She turned to her right, perpendicular to the source of the sound, and walked forward until her hands found an outcropping she had spied from above. She dropped to her knees behind the rock, removing herself once more from the potential view of anybody who might be looking out from the structure, or even from the copse, for intruders.

It took almost three minutes before lightning struck again, but Kira was prepared for it. As soon as the flash faded, she dashed out from behind the outcropping, turned toward the stream, and ran forward. At the point she judged to be at the edge of the rushing water, she leaped. As cold as the weather had been, the water seemed colder still. Iciness clutched at Kira’s flesh through her already drenched uniform, but fortunately the stream came up only as high as the tops of her calves, allowing her to maintain a long stride. On the fourth step, though, her foot plunged into a depression, the water reaching up to her waist. She attempted to pull her other leg forward, to sustain her pace, and she might have made it had the current not been as strong. As she fell, she threw her weight forward as best she could. The frigidity of the stream shocked Kira physically. Her breath was forced from her lungs, and she gasped in a mouthful of dirty, gritty water.

Kira jerked her head backward, bringing her face clear of the stream. She felt the force of the current driving against the length of her body. Her feet came up off the streambed, and she began to be pushed along. Trying to breathe around gulps of water, she flailed with her arms, desperately searching for a handhold on something, anything, to prevent herself from being carried away. Her fingers closed familiarly around a fistful of watery earth, but the mud squeezed out from her hand and left her holding nothing. Kira reached with her other hand and felt the bristly texture of grass. She seized the stalks and pulled. The grass came free, but she moved forward enough to grab again, and this time, both hands found the grass. With all of her might, Kira hauled herself forward, her upper torso landing over her hands on the ground. She stopped for a moment, trying to bring a spate of coughing under control. Finally, she swung her legs up onto the bank and rolled away from the surging water.

Kira lay on her stomach for long minutes, her arms folded up beneath her chest, her forehead resting on the wet grass. The roar of the stream resounded as her breathing gradually returned to normal. A delicate mist tickled the back of her neck, but she couldn’t tell whether it was the lighter rainfall or spray from the stream.

Kira pushed herself up onto her knees. She knew she had to find cover before the next stroke of lightning revealed her to whoever might be watching. She looked around, trying to establish her bearings. The location of the stream was obvious, and she had a rough idea of the direction of the structure, but it was no longer clear to her where she might conceal herself. She had seen several such places from atop the ridge, but she was no longer sure exactly where they were.

Gathering her strength, Kira rose and raced along the level ground. Lightning flared suddenly, revealing a large, tangled shape not far in front of her. She stumbled immediately to a halt, then groped in the ensuing darkness until she reached the gnarled form of the upended tree. She ducked behind the knotted, petrified roots, swinging her back to rest against them.

Next time,Kira thought, and then, There won’t be a next time.Again, she considered putting an end to the simulation. She had seen it through this far, though, and so she might as well finish it.

This is what I get,she jokingly reproved herself, for thinking about the feelings of a Jem’Hadar.

*   *   *

Five days ago, Taran’atar had been discharged from the infirmary by Dr. Tarses, and he had come immediately to Kira’s office. She looked across her desk at him and saw that, remarkably, the massive bruising on his face had already faded completely. Sustained by a Bajoran, such damage would have taken weeks to heal—if a Bajoran could have survived at all. According to Simon, Taran’atar’s other, more serious injuries had mended, or continued to mend, at a similarly accelerated rate. The Founders sure know how to build their soldiers,she thought.

Standing before her desk in his usual black coverall, Taran’atar thanked her for expediting his release from “medical captivity,” and informed her that he would be returning to “duty.” Of course, beyond the few times he had participated in specific missions—the trip to Sindorin to apprehend Locken, the operation to evacuate Europa Nova—his self-determined duty of late consisted primarily of standing, unmoving and silent, beside the sensor maintenance station in ops. To experience living among different life-forms,she supposed, as Odo had bade him, though she also guessed that Taran’atar standing at attention and observing people move about him had not been exactly what Odo had intended.

For their part, the crew had not yet grown entirely accustomed to the Jem’Hadar’s presence, but they had at least become less suspicious of him, perhaps because he did little more than set himself in their midst, without generating any threat. Even now, as he talked with Kira, he simply stood across the desk from her, rigid and still. Kira had to admit, though, that even if she did not find him threatening, she did perceive that he was never distracted; he existed like an exposed nerve, she thought, ever prepared to react to the slightest stimulus. She would have offered him a chair, but she knew that he preferred to remain on his feet.

When Taran’atar finished speaking, which did not take long—the Founders had clearly not provided the Jem’Hadar with a prerogative for small talk—Kira inquired about any plans he might have beyond his return to duty. A precondition of the doctor releasing Taran’atar had been Kira’s agreement that he would see no physically strenuous activity for another ten days. She hadn’t expected any problem in fulfilling that promise, but beside his time in ops, Taran’atar also made occasional visits to the holosuites for the purpose of honing his already formidable combat skills. And after being bedridden for the longest period in his life, he wanted to do precisely that; he told Kira that he felt listless and unfit, and angry as well.

“Angry?” she asked.

“This isn’t our way,” he said. He gave no indication of what he meant by this,but it was obvious to her that he was speaking of the medical attention he had been paid during the past few days.

Kira pushed back in her chair and rose, her fingertips resting on the edge of her desk. “Surely the Jem’Hadar care for their own health,” she said, actually curious about whether or not that happened to be true.

“We do,” Taran’atar said, “but our health doesn’t come from lying in a bed.” His voice had declined to a deeper, harsher tone.

“Sometimes—” Kira started, and then stopped. She looked down, and the reflection of the computer display in the polished surface of her desk caught her eye. She stared at a green ellipse tracing its way through bright pinpoints—Commander Vaughn’s proposed course for Defiant’s exploration of the Gamma Quadrant—and grasped her way through her thoughts. Her first reaction had been to argue Taran’atar’s point, but she also wanted to understand his perspective. During the past few months, since she had taken charge of the station, Kira had attempted to be more receptive to points of view contrary to her own—first with the people under her command, and then with just about everybody with whom she came into contact. She still failed as often as she succeeded, she knew, but with Taran’atar, understanding sometimes came easily. He had been sent to Deep Space 9—exiled here was how she suspected he thought of it—and forced to live among people he did not comprehend, for a purpose he did not comprehend; for Kira, such circumstances were not entirely unrecognizable. And yet, if Taran’atar was going to live here, Kira hoped he would come to some greater understanding of the Bajoran people and the other inhabitants of the Alpha Quadrant; that had been Odo’s hope as well.