Текст книги "Days of the Vipers"

Автор книги: James Swallow

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

Lonnic was shoved away as the deck officer grabbed at the console next to her. He stabbed at the controls, getting nothing but negative responses. “Deflector shields are inoperative!”

She stumbled away, half-falling, half-running toward the far side of the bridge; but there was nowhere for her to go, no escape route open to her. “Why are they doing this?” she cried out. Lonnic’s stomach churned as she fought down the urge to vomit on the decking. On the sensor plots the dead hulls of the Tzenkethi marauder and the Glyhrondwere like specters, and she imagined them as charnel houses filled with the poisoned dead. The adjutant grabbed at the communications panel and pressed the transmitter key. “Stop this! I am Lonnic Tomo of the Korto District…Cease your attack, please!”

Behind her, Li was shouting at his men to seal the bridge’s environmental systems, even as an alert tone sounded over the intercom. Lonnic dropped into the chair in front of the console, ignoring the body of the unconscious operator lying next to her on the floor. She looked down at her hands and, with a physical effort, forced them to stop trembling. The woman marshaled all the resolve she could gather and steeled herself, drawing in the studied comportment that was her usual manner in the corridors of power. Lonnic took a deep breath, and a strange smell touched her senses, sweet and cloying like rotting flowers.

She spoke into the communicator pickup, an icy calm descending on her. “This is Lonnic Tomo aboard the Bajoran Space Guard warship Clarion.We are under attack by Cardassian vessels. They have already…killed the crew of the Glyhrondand a Tzenkethi marauder, and—” She felt wetness in her throat and coughed, bringing her hand to her mouth. Spots of dark blood dotted her palm. “I—”

The rotting stink was overpowering her, and she tried to speak but nothing came. Lonnic’s eyes stung and cramps spiked through her, knotting her muscles. From nowhere, an uncontrollable shuddering wracked the woman’s body and a wash of agony came with it. The pain knifed through her and she fell from the seat to the deck. Her vision blurred and darkened as the biogenic toxin burned into the optic jelly of her eyes. The last thing she saw was Colonel Li dropping to his knees, his face a ruin as he wept streams of crimson.

Prophets, please,Lonnic begged, I don’t want to die out here!

Her prayer was not answered.

The troop of black-armored figures stepped into the command compartment of the marauder, picking their way over the heap of alien corpses at the hatch. There were gouges in the metal where the Tzenkethi had clawed at the door as they tried to escape.

Dal Dukat studied them. As if they would have found somewhere to flee to,he mused. A Cardassian would have met his fate with stoic defiance, not the panic that these creatures had obviously displayed. He glanced at one of his squad. “Ensure you gather all the corpses and have them placed out of the way. We need to retain their biomass.”

“Yes, sir,” said the glinn. She paused, cocking her head and placing one hand to the temple of her environmental suit’s helmet. “The rest of the sweep teams are reporting in. Engine core and environmental controls are secure. Secondary tiers have been vented to space.”

Dukat walked forward into the streamlined oval space of the room. “Any stragglers?”

The glinn nodded, her suit making the gesture into a broad motion. “Some. A few made it to a decontamination pod before the dispersal reached them. They’ve been terminated.”

Dukat nodded back and studied the ramps that curved up from the lower level of the command deck and inverted to meet the roof of the chamber. The upper surface of the deck was almost a mirror of the lower one, with consoles and oddly shaped chairs distributed in a circular formation. He could feel the faint shift in gravity as he moved closer; to make more efficient use of space aboard their craft, the Tzenkethi used tailored gravitational fields so that walls and ceilings could become work areas. Dukat made a face. He preferred to have all his staff spread out across a single plane; but this operation called for flexibility, so he would tolerate the situation for the duration.

The glinn was examining the sensor readings from the tricorder built into her suit. “Toxin percentile is now within acceptable limits. The pathogen has burned itself out.”

Dukat glanced up and saw an identical hesitation in the faces of his boarding party. All of them accepted the glinn’s determination, but none of them wanted to be the first to test it. Dukat smiled coldly and reached up, detaching his visor with a single swift twist of his hands. He folded the helmet back over his shoulders and made a show of taking a lungful of air. All of them had injected heavy doses of a neutralizing agent before they transported aboard the marauder, but it would have done little to save them if a pocket of the deadly germs still lingered.

The dal tasted the metallic tang of blood in the air. The ship stank of death; it would be another discomfiture to endure until they had completed the mission. One by one, his officers mirrored his actions as Dukat gave the command consoles a cursory examination. The displays showed streams of Tzenkethi script tumbling like waterfalls, lacking the obvious order of a Cardassian radial display. “Get a translation matrix uploaded into these systems,” he ordered. “I want this ship under power and ready to move as soon as possible.”

“Sir, the engineering team report that the drives are largely intact. Shields will take longer to repair.”

“Have them take whatever they need from the Kashaiand the Daikonto get the job done, men and hardware,” he replied, “but quickly. We have less than a day before the Bajorans are declared overdue.” Dukat turned away and tapped his comcuff. “Tunol, respond.”

The Kashai’s executive officer answered instantly. “Here, Dal. What are your orders?”

“You have command now, Tunol. Once we’re done here, I want you to set a course for Bajor, warp three. Make your route a lengthy one, do you understand? The timing of your return to Bajor is critical.”

“Confirmed, sir,”she replied. “I’ve taken the liberty of preprogramming target strike points into the weapons systems. TheDaikon will handle your exfiltration after the attack.”

He gave an approving nod. Tunol was an intelligent woman and she showed a methodical insight. Dukat had been quietly pleased with her utter lack of qualms when he outlined the scope of the operation to her. “Good. I’ll supervise the transfer of command from here.”

“Dal,”she added. “The Bajoran derelicts…Without power, they’ve been seized by the gravitational pull of one of the gas giant’s moons. Shall I take them under tow?”

“No.” He glanced at the glinn. “You. Weapons?”

“The plasma cannon will be operable in short order, sir.”

“See to it.” He turned back to the communicator.

“Tunol? Have the cruisers take some distance from those Bajoran scows. We’ll obliterate them before they impact the moon.”

“Confirmed, sir.Kashai out.”

Dukat found the station for the marauder’s commander and sat on the broad, cushioned disk. A cluster of circular screens and abstractly proportioned panels hung around him, suspended on the ends of metal armatures that rose from the floor or dangled from the ceiling. He toyed with them, turning and adjusting so he could sit in relative comfort and examine them. One screen showed a view beyond the blunt prow of the marauder, through the vapor of discharged breathing gases and wreckage fragments that were the remains of the skirmish between the Tzenkethi and the Bajorans. One of the assault ships was drifting past on a slow tumble, the nose turning, presenting itself to the dal.

Dukat considered the crews aboard those ships. Unlike the Tzenkethi, who were declared enemies of the Cardassian Union, the Bajorans were, under the letter of the Detapa Council’s law, an allied people—and yet he had ordered the murder of more than a hundred of them without a moment’s hesitation. And now, as a plan of his design gathered momentum, Skrain Dukat’s hand lay on the weapon that would cause the deaths of countless more Bajorans.

As his men worked quietly around him, he looked inward, searching for the moral balance that guided so much of his actions.

The morality of a Cardassian can only be understood by a Cardassian. The morality of a soldier of the Union is that which serves the Union best.His father had first said those words to him, repeating one of the great axioms of service. There had been moments in his life when Dukat had entertained doubts—and only a simpleton would be so foolish as to believe that no man could be without questions, soldier or not—but this was not one of them. Dukat considered the place where he found himself: isolated from Central Command because of the independent streak he had exhibited during the Talarian conflict… No matter that it had won him many battles!Reviled by Kell for daring to defy the jagul, for shining a light on the corpulent fool’s lack of progress with the Bajorans, and in an uneasy partnership with Ico and the Obsidian Order. More than anything, it was the latter that sat most poorly with him. The Obsidian Order represented everything that was cancerous about Cardassia; they were an institutionalized form of decay that preyed on the military and the people even as they pretended to serve the same ends as Central Command.

His gloved hands tightened into fists. The Order serves only the Order.That too was wisdom that his father had given him, and firsthand Skrain had learned the truth of it. It galled him to think that he was in partnership with them on this, but he was a pragmatist and he saw that no other choice was open to him. Ico and her kind may be a cancer on Cardassia, but there are other more pressing malignancies that must be excised first.The pitiable Oralians, with their sad weakness and their primitive beliefs. The recalcitrant Bajorans, refusing to come to heel like ill-trained riding hounds.

Warfare is always a matter of priorities.Another axiom from his training came to mind. The priority today is not my loathing of Ico’s nest of vipers, but to secure a future for Cardassia. For my people and my family.

“Sir,” said the glinn, interrupting his musings. “Plasma cannon is now operable.”

He gave the order without hesitation. “Destroy the Bajorans.”

The snarling chirp of Darrah’s communicator dragged him from the abyss of a deep and dreamless sleep. He rolled from the bed, ignoring Karys’s angry muttering, and padded barefoot across the floor to the chair where he had thrown off his uniform. He glanced out through the slats across the window, one hand reaching up to massage the back of his neck. Tension sat across his shoulders in a thick yoke of stiffened muscle. Light rain was drumming on the glass, and he blinked as a distant flash of lightning glittered in the distance. His fingers closed around the communicator brooch as the faint grumble of thunder reached the house.

“This had better be good,” he growled, raising the device to his lips.

He heard Myda’s ever-weary intonation. “Wait one moment, Inspector. I’m patching in a signal from the keep.”

“What?” His annoyance flared in unison with another lightning bolt. “Off duty means off duty—”

The very real fear he heard in the next voice made him stop dead. “Inspector Darrah? This is Tima, I’m a novitiate serving with Ranjen Gar…”

And suddenly Darrah was very much awake. “Is he all right? What’s wrong?”

The girl was on the verge of tears. “He’s gone! He was supposed to be back here hours ago, with Vedek Arin’s party from Derna…”

Darrah nodded. “Yeah, I saw him at the port. They didn’t arrive?” He shifted the slats and peered out at the encroaching storm front.

“The others did. Ranjen Gar stayed behind. They said he was with an Oralian, a cleric called Pasir…They took a flyer to Hathon…”

“Then he’s probably there. Try the Hathon city central comnet—”

“We did!”she insisted. “And Traffic Control as well. The flyer never went to Hathon, Inspector! No one knows where it is!”

“Osen…” Darrah’s throat tightened as he whispered his friend’s name. Abruptly, he found Gar’s last words to him echoing through his thoughts. I will admit I too have had some concerns of late.Darrah clamped down hard on the instinct to jump to a conclusion, but it was hard to hold back the notion that the priest could have been dragged into something dangerous.

“What’s wrong with Gar?” Karys called from the bed.

He waved her into silence. “Myda, are you still on the line?”

“Yes, boss,”said the law officer.

“What have you got from Traffic Control?”

He heard a heavy sigh. “Running a search right now, sir, but so far it seems that the flight plan filed by the Cardassian was a dud. I got a report from one of the precinct air units that a flyer matching the same description was seen heading west toward the Kendra mountains.”

Darrah instinctively looked in that direction, and straight into the teeth of the thunderstorm. “No crash beacons, no alert signals?”

“Not a one, sir. It’s like they vanished.”

“Not on my watch,” he growled, flinging off his night-shirt. “Tima?”

“Y-yes?”

“We’ll find Gar, don’t worry.”

“Thank you, Inspector.”He heard the click as Tima dropped off the network.

“Myda!” Darrah snapped. “Put together a search pattern and a rescue team, have them assemble at the port. Drag whoever you need to out of bed, and get a fast flyer routed to my house right now.”

“Boss,”came the wary reply, “the storm’s a real monster. Weather control has been trying to pull the teeth on this one, but it’s going to hit scale four before daybreak.”

“Just do what I said,” Darrah retorted. “If Gar’s lost out there, it’s not the Prophets who are going to rescue him, it’s us.” He tapped the communicator, ending the conversation, then grabbed at his clothes as another bass rumble of thunder swept across the city.

Karys stood, a sheet wrapped around her. “Mace, what are you doing?”

“My job,” he replied, pulling on his uniform.

The rain intensified, clattering against the window.

“Look at it out there,” she retorted. “You know how lethal the tempests can get this time of year.” His wife touched his shoulder. “I know the man is your friend, but you’re a ranking officer of the Watch. You could let someone else handle this.”

He nodded. “You’re right, Karys, I could.” Mace snatched up his gear belt. “But I won’t.” Above the sound of the rainfall, he heard the whine of antigravs. Myda had done as he’d ordered.

Her hand closed around his wrist. “You’re risking your life for him.”

“He’d do the same thing for me.” But as he looked into her eyes, Darrah knew that there was more to it than that, more than just the duty of his friendship with Osen. This isn’t any random misadventure taking place here. Something else is going on, something connected to Cemba.

The police flyer was settling into a low hover over the roadway outside the house. Grabbing his overcoat and his phaser holster, Darrah ran out into the rain without another word.

15

The rain across the roof of the enclave blockhouse was a constant rattle now, a sound like handfuls of gravel being thrown against the thermoconcrete construction. Outside, the pavilions snapped and cracked as they flexed on their supports, the cables holding them in place humming with vibration. Bajor’s sky was dark and heavy with menace, the night gloom mirroring Bennek’s soured mood. Aside from the sporadic flashes of lightning, the only illumination cast over the cleric’s room was the sullen glow of the communications screen.

The connection was thick with static; it was coming to Bajor on a side channel outside the normal frequencies open to Cardassian civilians. There was an illegal circuit concealed in the back of the communicator that, if it were discovered, would have meant instant arrest for the cleric. The fact that Hadlo was using it now to contact him filled Bennek with dread.

A flicker of lightning cast quick bars of white light through the room behind him, and on the screen Hadlo’s pale face reacted. “Bennek! By the Fates, are they already there? Are they firing? I can’t hear any shots—”

“It’s just a storm,” said the priest.

Hadlo nodded rapidly. “Oh, indeed, my friend, the storm is breaking upon us. This is the moment of our greatest testing, Bennek! The hammer falling…The clouds of ashes and the serpents rising…Do you see it as clearly?”

“What do you want?” Bennek almost shouted at his old mentor, afraid and angry all at once. Over and over he was forced to endure the priest’s directionless, unfathomable ramblings, and each time he spoke with the elderly man it seemed worse. Hadlo had never been the same since that day at the Kendra Shrine, and as much as Bennek was loath to give voice to it, he was deathly afraid that the priest had lost all sense of reason.

His sharp words seemed to make some impact on Hadlo, and the old man stiffened, regaining his poise for a brief moment. “This is the time. This is the moment I warned you of when we spoke in the library of the Naghai Keep. The purge has begun. All our churches are burning, Bennek. Burning.”

“Purge?” The word almost choked him.

Hadlo nodded, the image jerking and fracturing. “Kell’s promises to us have been finally broken, open to the world. The military are rounding up everyone who follows the Way. Shattering the masks and setting the scrolls to the torch.”

“No!” Bennek gasped. He glanced at the leather bag on a nearby shelf that contained his copy of the Recitations and his recital mask, suddenly needing to reassure himself they were still there.

“Listen to me, boy!”said the cleric, his eyes wide. “I have gathered as many of the faithful as I can, and we are fleeing the homeworld.”

“You…you’re on a starship?”

“Yes.”Interference turned his words into a buzzing rattle. “I cannot say much more. They are searching for us, and they may track this signal. It is scrambled, but I do not know how long that will remain secure. Listen!”His face came forward, filling the screen, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “We make for the space beyond Quinor, where the plasma storms will keep us hidden.”

“The Badlands,” said Bennek. He had heard the Bajorans use the name for the area; it was a dangerous place to seek sanctuary, rife with furious plasmatic clouds. Many ships had been lost there, so the stories went, some swept away leaving nothing behind, not even wreckage.

Hadlo was nodding. “In time we will be reunited, but for the moment you must stay in sanctuary on Bajor. Oralius will keep you safe there.”

“No,” Bennek replied. “Master, it is notsafe here! We are isolated and unprotected, and the enclaves are no longer places of shelter for us. We must come together and—”

“No!”Hadlo shouted, the feedback from his sudden outburst crackling over the static-filled transmission. “I forbid it! In Oralius’s name, you shall not leave that place! Sanctuary, Bennek, sanctuary! You will ensure the Way remains, I have foreseen it in my vision…That is your path, boy! You will do it! You will do it!”Without warning the image vanished, becoming a seething wash of gray static.

Benneck snapped off the console and crossed the room, every footfall leaden and heavy. “I can’t do this,” he said to the air. “I…I am not strong enough to do this!” He savagely grabbed the leather bag and ripped the recital mask from it, gripping it in his fingers. “What do you want from me?” he demanded of the wooden face. “Have you forsaken us? Have you?” The cleric let the mask clatter across the table and he sat heavily. His eyes fell across a bottle of kanarthat was discreetly hidden in the lee of a support brace, and he reached for it. The bottle was a quarter empty; it had already served him as a panacea in moments when his weakness had overcome him. The cleric twisted off the cap and filled a glass, draining it and letting the mellow fire of the liqueur race through him, steadying his nerves.

There was a knock at his door, and Bennek’s hand cracked the glass with a jerk of fright. “They’ve come,” he whispered to the discarded mask. “Come with guns to kill us all.” He swallowed another measure as the knocking became more strident. “It’s open,” he said loudly. “Enter and do as you will.”

But the figure that came in from the storm was not a soldier with a phaser rifle. “Bennek,” said Tima, shrugging off a rain-soaked cloak. “I didn’t know who else to turn to…”

In spite of his own concerns, the emotion in the woman’s voice made him push everything else to one side. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Ranjen Gar. He’s lost…He was in a flyer with Pasir and they never arrived at their destination.” She blinked back tears. “Oh, Bennek, I think something terrible could have happened to them.”

“Pasir? No, I can’t lose him as well…” It was too much for him. Suddenly, as if a wave of despair had dragged him under, the Oralian cradled his head in his hands. “Tima…Tima, everything is disintegrating around us. I’ve been forsaken…”

She came to him, putting her arm around his shoulders. “Bennek, no.” The Bajoran woman took a shuddering breath. “You must tell me what troubles you.”

“But your friend—”

Tima held him, and he found himself wanting only to do the same to her. “His friends are helping him. Let me…Let me help you.”

With a trembling voice, every fear and every hope poured out of Bennek as the storm battered the walls around them.

The rain lashed across the blackened disks of the flyer pads in hard, windblown waves that made the Watch officers curse and pull their jackets and caps down tight. Darrah glared at the cloud-wreathed sky, daring it to do its worst. And it will,he thought to himself. This is only the leading edge of the storm cell. There’s more to come.

He faced his men. “You’ve all got the pattern, you all know your assigned sectors. Coordinate through Constable Proka and Myda back at the precinct. The instant you find anything, you radio it in. Clear?” There was a chorus of assent, and he threw a sharp gesture at the parked flyers. “Then get going. But no heroics. I don’t want to lose anyone else out there.”

As the crews ran to their craft, Proka tugged on Darrah’s arm. “Boss? Got a problem. We’re a man short. You need a copilot and we haven’t got one.”

Darrah grimaced, making for his flyer. “I don’t give a damn about regulations,” he shot back. “I’ll search my pattern on my own.”

“Can’t let you, boss,” Proka insisted. “It’s filthy sky up there. You take a lightning strike or something—” He snorted. “No heroics, that’s what you just said.”

“I’m going,” growled the inspector, “and that’s an end to it.”

Proka nodded. “Thought you’d see it that way. So I got you a civvie volunteer instead.”

Darrah threw open the gull-wing hatch of the flyer and his gaze fell on the Cardassian sitting in the copilot’s chair.

“Inspector,” said Pa’Dar. “I was stranded at the port when the weather grounded my shuttle to Dahkur. I overheard the constable, and—”

Darrah looked at Proka. “That’s a very creative solution, Mig.”

The Watch officer stared back at him. “Needs must. He’s a scientist, isn’t he? He’ll know how to handle the scanners.”

Darrah waved the other man off and climbed inside the flyer, dropping smartly into the pilot’s couch.

Pa’Dar cleared his throat. “I realize it might be unusual for you to work directly with a Cardassian,” he began.

“Why are you doing this?” Darrah cut him off. “The missing Cardassian, Pasir. He’s an Oralian and you’re not. I get the impression that most of your people wouldn’t miss one of them lost in a storm.” Applying power to the thrusters, Darrah guided the flyer shakily into the turbulent sky.

After a long moment, the alien replied. “There are times when things are not as they seem, Inspector. I would think that as an officer of the law, you would be aware of that.”

“I suppose so,” Darrah admitted. “You know what? Right now, I really don’t care. I just want to find my friend, so work those sensors and help me do that.” He steered the flyer on a westerly course, and the ungainly police craft shot into the storm.

It was hard to reckon the passage of time in the flyer’s enclosed cockpit. Pa’Dar’s flight became a single round of chaotic rises and falls as the Bajoran forced the complaining ship through churning air. Outside he could see nothing but the sluice of hard rain streaking the canopy, and every few minutes there was a brilliant glare of blue-white as lightning surged. Pa’Dar glimpsed what could have been towering anvils of cloud or possibly mountain canyons; the image burned a purple blur into his retinas.

Hours. If felt like they had been up there for hours, and his eyes were becoming tired from staring at the relentless sweep of the blank bio-scanner screen. When he glanced over at Darrah, he saw the man’s fixed expression of concentration, watching him fight the flyer’s controls every second of the flight. The inspector gripped the steering yoke with a dogged resolve that was almost Cardassian in nature. The man is driven,Pa’Dar told himself; and on the heels of that came the question that had been plaguing him since the moment he had volunteered. What drives me?

At first it had been difficult to frame an answer. Kotan Pa’Dar was a rational thinker, a scientist with a reductionist mind-set. He was used to problems where the parameters were clearly deduced, where he could apply his knowledge and come to an empirical conclusion; but what was happening around him on Bajor did not lend itself to the same process.

There are connections.He was certain of it. Part of Pa’Dar knew that to be Cardassian was to live in a world where there were always machinations beneath the surface, but he was so close to this, so enmeshed in it that his inquisitive mind could not easily let it go. Rhan Ico’s shadowy behavior. The bombing of the Lhemor.The wall of silence thrown up around the aftermath of the incident at Cemba Station. Skrain Dukat’s manner, the chasm that had opened up in their friendship. All these elements preyed on Pa’Dar’s mind, wheeling and turning like the pieces in a child’s logic puzzle, never quite fitting into place.

And now this: two priests, one Cardassian, one Bajoran, lost in the tempest. Another fragment to be woven into the whole?He wondered what the puzzle would look like when– if—it was complete. Was it even something that he wanted to know? Was it better for him to step away and remain ignorant of it all?

A stutter of contact on the sensor panel illuminated for a brief moment, then vanished. Pa’Dar peered at the display, frowning. “Inspector?” he ventured. “There’s a lake…” He pointed. “In that direction.”

“Yeah.” Fatigue underlined the pilot’s voice. “It’s on the edge of the search pattern.”

“Can you circle over it?”

Darrah did as he asked, turning the flyer. “You have something?”

The contact returned. “I do,” he replied, the lines on his face deepening. “Metal fragments. A single life sign. But the signal is confused. I can’t get a clear reading.”

“Which one of them is it?” demanded the Bajoran. “Gar or Pasir?”

“I don’t know.”

Darrah programmed a quick and dirty macro into the police flyer’s autopilot and jumped from his chair as the aircraft fell into a wallowing hover over the storm-tossed surface of the water. Darrah knew where they were; the lake was a deep one, a natural formation that fed the Yolja River. He’d gone fishing there in his youth, and he still remembered the stories about it. If Gar’s craft had gone down here, it was beyond recovery. The sheer size of the inland sea and the kelbonite in the local rock would mean that tracking the flyer would be next to impossible. It was probably dumb luck that the Cardassian had managed to pick up a reading.

The hatch opened and a fist of wind punched Darrah back into the compartment. He pushed back, securing a rescue vest and descent tether around him. On the hull of the flyer a spotlight snapped on, turning to aim where the sensors told it the life sign was. Mace glimpsed a shape, the arch of a back covered in robes, facedown in the lake.

“Inspector?” said Pa’Dar.

Without a transporter on board, they were going to have to do this the hard way. “Get a medkit ready!” Darrah didn’t bother to explain himself. He took a breath of damp air and dropped feetfirst from the open hatch, the tether singing out behind him.

He struck the lake, and a heavy darkness enveloped him. The shock of the icy water threatened to press the air from his lungs, but he resisted, pushing hard back toward the surface and the halo of white light.

Heavy wrappings of cloth swaddled the floating body, water soaking them, making it difficult to handle. Darrah spat out a mouthful of fluid and looped his tether over the drifting shape, pulling hard to bind them together. His hand found the control unit on the rescue vest and he slapped it hard. With a jerk, the duranium-carbide cable pulled taut and the two men were dragged out of the lake, reeled in to the waiting hatch.

Pa’Dar was there, gray hands grabbing at Darrah’s shoulders, pulling him inside. In turn, Darrah held firmly on to his charge, dragging the waterlogged form onto the deck of the police flyer. “Medkit!” he shouted.

He tore at the robes, yanking them back to get at the man inside the folds of the priest’s vestments. A face was revealed, heavy with scratches and contusions.

“Osen!” Darrah grabbed the Bajoran’s head. “Can you hear me?”

Pa’Dar handed him a stimulant hypospray, and Darrah shot the contents into cleric’s neck. Gar coughed hard and spat out a stream of blood-laced liquid.

“Where’s Pasir?” Darrah shouted over the rumble of the wind through the open hatch. “Where’s the Cardassian?”

Gar coughed again and shook his head. “Nuh.” He tried to speak. “Dead. Dead!”His eyes widened with shock as a flash of lightning illuminated the interior of the flyer and he saw Pa’Dar looming over him. “No! No! Get away!”

“Osen!” Darrah grabbed him. “It’s okay. He’s here to help.”

Gar pushed himself back to the bulkhead. “No,” he said weakly.