Текст книги "Days of the Vipers"

Автор книги: James Swallow

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

“Starfleet will lose the opportunity for the intelligence coup of the decade,” said the Andorian. “Delavi is the key-stone for the Union’s surveillance operations in the Federation.”

Nechayev nodded slowly. “So we let Bajor get swamped by Cardassia so we don’t tip our hand, is that it?”

“Bajor isn’t a part of the Federation,” noted Gold. “I don’t think anyone here believes it’s a good situation, but we have to fight our own battles. Nobody in the Bajoran government has asked for our help. As much as I hate to say it, this is a matter of internal alien politics.”

“David’s right,” said Jameson. “Delavi is a threat to Federation stability, here and now. Bajor…” He sighed. “Bajor is a problem for another day. We’re spread too thin out here to do otherwise.”

“Captain—” began Nechayev.

Jameson shot her a look. “The matter is closed, Lieutenant. For better or worse, the Bajorans are on their own.”

“This way,” said Darrah, leading Syjin down the ornate corridors of the Naghai Keep. “Don’t lag behind.”

“I’m coming, don’t panic,” said the pilot. “I’m just admiring the sights, you know? People like me don’t usually get invited into the ancestral home of the Minister for Korto District.”

They reached the heavy nyawood door to the great library and Darrah shouldered it open. “Just don’t steal anything.” He strode inside, and Syjin followed him in.

The pilot tilted his head back to take in the multiple levels of the chamber. “Ooh. Look at that.” He clicked his teeth appreciatively. “All those books. I didn’t think there were that many in the world.”

Darrah beckoned him toward a console set in a six-sided stone table in the center of the chamber. “Stop acting like a tourist and get over here. It’s not like you’re a big reader anyway.”

Syjin walked over, his dusty boots tapping across the marble. “Well, if they have pictures…”

“Be quiet!” Darrah growled, removing the memory core from the bag.

“I still don’t understand why you brought us here,” Syjin frowned. “Seems like a lot of trouble to read some files.”

Darrah worked the crystalline keyboard. “This is a stand-alone library computer. No connections to anything outside the walls of the keep, which means there’s no path of entry for any data-mining software or surveillance programs. Right now, this console is the equivalent of a locked room.” He drew a fistful of glowing optical cables from the bag and connected them to the battered piece of hardware. “Plug these into the interface socket there, behind the wooden edging.”

Syjin flipped open the finely tooled panels and locked the connectors home. “Done.”

Darrah placed his hands flat on the panel. “All right. Let’s take a look. See what we have.”

“Take a look at what, Darrah?” Both men glanced up, startled. Two levels above their heads, in the racks of scrolls from the Second Republic era, Vedek Gar leaned over the handrail and watched them warily. The cleric moved to a wrought-iron spiral staircase and made his way down, talking as he descended. “What are you doing here? Haven’t you seen what’s going on out in the city?”

Darrah had automatically drawn his pistol, but he didn’t holster it again straightaway. “I’ve seen,” he replied. “Believe me, I’ve seen it.”

“Syjin?” Gar continued. “Is that you? Prophets, you haven’t changed a bit.”

“Uh, Vedek,” managed the pilot. “Hello.”

Gar exited at their level and approached. “You have a weapon there, Mace. Are you expecting trouble?”

“I’m always expecting trouble,” he said cautiously. “Part of my job.”

The priest glanced at the memory core. “So. I repeat my question. Take a look at what?” He reached for the device. “This?”

Darrah interposed himself between Gar and the memory core. “I’m going to use the library computer. It won’t take long.”

There was a moment of awkward silence. “Do you want me to leave?” Gar asked. “Oh. It’s private, is it? Something you don’t want to share with an old friend?”

Darrah’s tone cooled. “Didn’t you tell me you couldn’t afford to be that anymore, Vedek?”He put emphasis on the title. “You said you were too busy for that kind of thing.”

Gar frowned. “I’m sorry if I offended you. That wasn’t my intention.” He reached out his hands and touched Darrah on one shoulder, and Syjin on the other. “Recent years have put a great distance between us, haven’t they? But on a day like today, we need to be close again.” He shook his head. “Bajor needs our strength.”

“Mace, let’s just do this,” said Syjin. “We’re wasting time.”

Darrah holstered his gun and activated the console. “All right.”

A data pane appeared as the ornate machine linked to the data storage device, a holographic screen shimmering into being above the stone table. The cleric gasped as he read the information presented there. “The Clarion?This is from the warship Clarion?”He shot a look at Syjin. “You found this in space? Where?”

“Ajir IX,” said the pilot. “There was wreckage all over the surface of a moon. It was pure accident that I happened to be there.” He grimaced. “Probably nothing left now, not after the Ferengi got to it.”

“Ferengi?”

He nodded. “A nasty little scumdrinker called Grek. But at least I got this away from him.”

Gar smiled. “We have the Prophets to thank for guiding you, Syjin. You’ve done their work by bringing this recording home.”

Darrah worked the console, filtering through layers of stored information. “There’s some corruption, but it’s still readable. I think I can play back the feed from the Clarion’s bridge monitors…”

The holographic sphere trembled and became a portal into events five years in the past. The display showed the command deck of the Space Guard warship, the crew moving on errands of duty. Beneath the main image, smaller data panels showed environmental information, sensor readings, power curves. Syjin leaned closer. “Systems all seem okay,” he noted. “When was this?”

“I spooled back to a few minutes before the recording stops,” explained Darrah.

Gar pointed at a figure who wasn’t sporting the same gray uniforms as the Clarion’s bridge crew. “That’s Lonnic Tomo.”

Her voice issued out of a hidden speaker, laced with static, but still clearly the woman they knew. “We have nothing but circumstantial evidence that the Tzenkethi were even involved!”

Darrah ignored the stab of emotion that came from seeing his friend alive and well once again. He steeled himself, knowing what would come next.

They listened in silence to the voices of the dead. “Sensor sweep complete. I can confirm the presence of volatile stocks aboard the alien vessel, sir. Refined triceron, military grade.”

“They found the Tzenkethi,” said the priest.

Syjin waved a hand at Darrah. “This part we know. They located the marauder and engaged it. But what happened then?”

Darrah moved the recording along in skips; they saw the engagement in fast-forward, the battle unfolding in blinks of motion. The destruction of the scouts, the fighting between the assault ships and the marauder.

Syjin’s hand stabbed out. “There! Stop it there!” He pointed at a time index. “Play that.”

Voices crackled through the halls of the library. “New contacts, bearing two-one-seven mark seven!”

“More Tzenkethi?”

“No. Cardassian. A pair of light cruisers. They’re closing…”

None of the men spoke as they watched the Cardassian ship commit murder; first the biogenic weapons were transported aboard the Tzenkethi craft, then the same horrific tactic employed on the Glyhrondand the Clarion.

Darrah’s blood rumbled in his ears, and for a moment he felt as if he was going to throw up.

They saw the deaths unfold. “Get the shields back up now!”

“Bioweapons…They’re beaming them in all over the ship! Deflector shields are inoperative!”

“What did they do?” Syjin gasped. “What did they do?”

“They killed them all,” Darrah said in a low voice, leaden with disgust and revulsion. Gar, his face a mask of static shock, reached out to stop the playback, but Darrah shook his head. “No. There’s more. We owe it to them to hear everything.” On the screen, among the dead and the dying, Lonnic threw herself over to the communications console and tried to speak.

Darrah saw a change come over her face, a terrible acceptance that her end was only moments away. She stiffened. “This is Lonnic Tomo aboard the Bajoran Space Guard warshipClarion,” she began. “We are under attack by Cardassian vessels. They have already…killed the crew of theGlyhrond and a Tzenkethi marauder, and—”

With that, she died and slumped to the decking. The replay went on, showing no movement, recording only silence.

“That’s not what was broadcast,” Syjin grated. “The last message from the fleet they played on the newsfeeds, after they went missing, it was different…They changed it!”

Darrah nodded. “To hide the Cardassian involvement. To stop us from knowing who really used that marauder to attack us five years ago.”

Gar blinked. “What are you suggesting?”

The lawman glared at the priest. “I’m not suggesting anything! You saw the same thing we did, Osen! There never was a Tzenkethi threat! The Cardassians engineered a lie for us to fall for, and we did….” He shook his head. “Prophets save us, but we did.”

“Clearly, this is a most serious revelation,” Gar spoke carefully, moderating his words. “But we can’t afford to act emotionally. We must be rational.”

“Rational?”Syjin bleated. “How can you be so cold-blooded?”

“I am not!” Gar retorted hotly. “But what do you propose to do with this information? Where will you take it? What if itis the lie, something created by the Tzenkethi or the Federation to discredit—”

Darrah silenced him with a gesture, ripping the cables out of the connector sockets and stuffing the memory core into the bag again. “You’re right. He’s right. We can’t do anything with this. We have to give it to someone who canuse it, keep it safe.”

“There are deep reliquaries beneath the Kendra Monastery,” Gar said quickly. “Many places where it could be concealed.”

Syjin shook his head. “We can’t hide this! We have to use it!”

“The Chamber of Ministers in Ashalla,” said Darrah.

“We take it to them. Show them all what we have seen. They won’t be able to deny it, Lale and Kubus and all the other Union sympathizers.”

“How will you get in?” demanded Gar.

Darrah gathered up the bag. “Jas Holza is there. I can get to him.”

Gar called after them. “Jas? He’s nothing! He won’t lift a finger to go against the majority!”

“He will hear me out,” Darrah replied. “For Lonnic’s sake, I know he will listen.”

24

Syjin angled the police flyer into the sky and pushed the throttle to maximum. A thin rain was starting to fall, and it streamed off the canopy as the pilot guided them upward. “I’ll get over the clouds, get some altitude.”

Darrah watched Korto fade away as the thin white haze enveloped them. In a way, he was willing it to happen, for the city to be covered so that he wouldn’t have to see the blemishes of fires and rolling chaos in the streets. There was a riot of garbled communications overlapping across the Militia bandwidths. Darrah skipped down the channels and found nothing conclusive; only one fractured, static-laced report stood out. “Did you hear that?” he asked.

Syjin shook his head. “Something about Cardassians.” Sunlight flooded the cockpit as they burst out of the cloud layer.

“Troops. I thought I heard him say ‘Cardassian troops.’” The inspector rubbed his face with his hand. “It’s starting.”

“We’ll make it to Ashalla,” Syjin assured him. “We’ve got just enough fuel for the trip.”

Both men fell silent. Minutes passed and neither uttered a word, the two friends looking inward, trying to take stock of the terrible things they had learned. Finally, Syjin let out a sigh. “Mace?” When Darrah didn’t answer, the other man gave him a sideways look. “Mace? Look…I have to say this, because it’s eating me up inside.”

“Say what?”

“Those logs…I just can’t help thinking about what Gar said.”

The priest had decided to remain in Korto; he had promised to get to Vedek Arin and pass on the revelation from the Clarion’s data core to the senior cleric. Darrah eyed the pilot. “What are you talking about? You saw Lonnic, you saw the bioweapons! You saw it, for fire’s sake! With your own eyes.”

“Did I?” Syjin replied. “I mean, I just can’t help thinking, what if that was a fake? Something engineered by the Circle or the Federation or the Tzenkethi, who knows? What if it was left there and I was meant to find it? Maybe…maybe Grek led me there deliberately! He could be in on it.”

“No,” Darrah insisted. “Those log recorders are tamper-proof. A subspace signal, that can be manipulated, but that memory core is unalterable. That playback, that was what happened.”

“Can you be sure of that?” Syjin insisted. “Do you really believe that I found that unit because the Prophets wanted me to?” He snorted. “I haven’t seen the inside of a temple since I was a boy! I’m hardly the best choice!”

Darrah turned in his seat. “It doesn’t matter how or why! Why can’t you accept the evidence of your own eyes?”

“Why can’t you deny it?” came the reply. “You’re the lawman, you’re the one who distrusts everything. It could be fake! How is that idea any less likely than yours, that the Cardassians have been fomenting a conspiracy with men in our own government?”

“Because I’m certain!” Darrah roared. “More certain than I have been about anything in my life!” He glared at the pilot. “I’ve seen more lies than any man should…and I know the truth when I find it.”

Syjin sagged against his flight restraints. “I hope you’re right. Because if you’re wrong, we’ve both thrown our lives away.”

Darrah shook his head and rested his hand on the pack. “We get this to Jas, and he’ll make sure that Coldri and the others see the recording.”

“Jas Holza,” said Syjin coldly. “Everyone knows he’s weak. What makes you think you can trust him not to fold and give it to Kubus or the spoonheads?”

Darrah felt the shape of the device beneath his fingertips. “He won’t, he needs this. He needs what it represents. A chance to redeem himself.”

An alert signal blared, lighting a proximity warning glyph on the console. Syjin jerked as if he had been struck. “We’ve got company. An orbital cutter, dropping down from the ionosphere.”

Darrah looked out the window. He could make out a shape above, a dark dart with a thin white contrail. “Cardassian?”

“What do you think?” the pilot said snidely.

“How did they find us?” Darrah demanded.

“Right now, that doesn’t matter—” Syjin’s words turned into a yelp of pain as a searing white bar of light crossed the nose of the police flyer. The aircraft bucked and groaned as a string of emergency lights flashed on. “Warning shot?”

“No.” Darrah was grim. “His aim was off. He’s too eager. If he’d waited a second longer, we’d be atoms.”

Syjin gripped the control yoke and wrenched it back and forth. The blue sky beyond the canopy spun lazily, gravity tugging at them. “They cooked off the steering canards on the nose,” he reported through gritted teeth. “We’re losing height.” Another beam flashed through the portside windows, and the flyer resonated as if it had been struck by a huge hammer. Syjin’s console became a field of red warnings. “Ah,” he muttered. “My mistake. We’re not losing height. We’re crashing.” The nose of the aircraft began an inexorable drop, falling below the horizon.

“Can you put us down safely?” Darrah called.

The pilot released his straps, tossing them aside. “Not a chance. He’s coming back for another pass. We’ll be scrap iron before we hit the cloud layer.”

“What are we going to do?”

Syjin reached out and grabbed the pack from him.

“Well, I’m going to do this.” The pilot’s hand ducked into his jacket, and Darrah heard an answering beep; then with a glitter of light he dematerialized, leaving the lawman alone in the plummeting flyer.

He exploded with rage and shouted at the sky. “Syjin, you son of a whore, don’t leave me to die!” Darrah struggled out of his straps, ignoring the sun-flash off the Cardassian cutter as it turned to bring its guns to bear. He threw himself toward the hatch. “I’ll haunt you the rest of your living days, you cowardly little—”

Syjin’s face split with a grin as the column of golden radiance grew dense and formed into the shape of a man. Darrah stumbled forward out of the transporter alcove, saw him, and yelled. “Bastard!”

The punch came wild and hit the pilot in the jaw, throwing him to the deck. His head rang like a struck gong and he spat. “That’s a fine way to thank a man who just saved your life!”

Darrah shook off his moment of disorientation, glancing around the cramped interior space. “Where are we?”

“My ship,” said Syjin, gingerly probing the side of his jaw. “In orbit. Sorry about giving you a fright back there, but my transporter’s a basic model. It can’t manage more than one person at a time. If I’d brought us both up at once, there’s no telling what might have happened.” He sighed. “Honestly, I’m surprised the damn thing worked. Every time I use it I think I’m going to end up scattered to the solar winds.”

Darrah grabbed the strap of the pack and Syjin caught the other end; they engaged in a brief tug-of-war. “Let go,” snapped the lawman. “Reset the coordinates for Ashalla and beam me down.”

The pilot couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He sighed. Police officers. They gave new meaning to the word “dogged.” “Did you miss all the shooting, exploding, crashing stuff just now?” Syjin pulled at the pack. “Think, Mace, think! They knew where to find us! They must be tracking you, or me, or this thing! If they were waiting for us in the air, don’t you think they might be waiting for you in Ashalla as well? You won’t get within a hecapate of the Chamber of Ministers.” He saw the comprehension on the other man’s face, and Darrah let go of the bag.

“If we can’t get to Jas, then we’re stymied.” Darrah crossed to the command deck and sat in the copilot’s chair.

“I’m willing to bet there’s an alert going out for us right this minute.” He snorted. “Not that there’s anyone paying attention.”

Syjin nodded. “In this chaos they’ll be able to disappear us, and no one will ever know.” He took his chair, commencing the ship’s warm-up sequence. “We show our faces on Bajor, we’re dead men. We have to get away.” The pilot blew out a breath. “There’s that free ride to Valo I promised you. Offer’s still valid.”

But Darrah shook his head, drawing his tricorder from his belt. “No. I’ve got a better idea.”

It took all of Dukat’s self-control not to throw the padd in the face of Glinn Orloc, right there on the bridge of the Vandir.His carefully directed plans to seek out and capture the Starfleet spies had disintegrated around him at the final moment, and now there was nothing. No leads, not a single direction to take that might turn him back on their trail. After beaming back from Korto empty-handed, he ignored Kell’s increasingly strident communiqués from Derna and took the Vandirout beyond Bajor’s orbit, opening up the sensors to search for the cloaked ship; but the zone around the planet was dirty with energy signatures from the large, slow troopships moving down from the lunar base, and the other cruisers that were taking up positions over the major cities, in case a punitive bombardment was needed to push along the collapse. Any ion trail or energy residue would be lost in the clutter, like one single voice subsumed inside the rattle of a hurricane.

Bajor was falling, graceless and slow, and Skrain Dukat should have been there to see it. Instead, he was sifting through empty space searching for a ship that had already escaped.

“Nothing,” he growled, referring to the contents of Orloc’s report. “The finest vessel the Union has to offer, and we can find nothing?” He glared at Tunol, demanding an answer when he knew there was none she could give; but the officer had a wary look on her face, as if she had something to tell him that would irritate him further.

“Speak, Dal!” He barked. “If you have something to say, spit it out!”

She licked her lips. “Incoming signal, sir. Source is, ah, encrypted.”

“Ico,”he spat, his ire rising a notch. “Put the witch on.” The woman’s face shimmered into being on the viewscreen. Her ever-present, insufferable smile was in place. Dukat wondered how much it would take to dislodge that infuriating mien, and privately hoped that one day he would have the chance to find out. He spoke before she had a chance to open her mouth. “What do you want?” demanded the gul. “I’m still trying to clean up your mess.”

Ico took the barb in good humor and dismissed it. “This is becoming a very interesting day, Dukat,”she said conversationally. “Opportunities, some taken, some missed. And now something unusual.”The woman smiled, as if in reference to some private joke. “Acts of the past return to haunt us. Like Ajir.”

He stiffened at the mention of the star system. “Get to the point, if you can. Or is there something in the Obsidian Order’s training that makes all its lackeys pedantic and verbose?”

Ico’s pallid lips thinned. “Such effrontery. And after I contacted you with a gift. How rude you are.”

Dukat turned away. “This is another waste of my time. Tunol, cut the channel.”

“That would be a grave mistake,”Ico grated, and for the first time there was annoyance in her tone.

Dukat halted his first officer with a wave of the hand, and inclined his head, waiting.

When Ico spoke again, all the usual artifice in her tone was gone. “It seems you were not as thorough at Ajir as you reported, Dukat. Materials from the Bajoran ships survived their destruction, including a memory core. I don’t believe I need to express the concern that will result if the data on that device is broadcast.”

Dukat’s muscles bunched under the sleeves of his armored tunic. A dozen questions immediately assailed him, but the most important pushed through to the front of his thoughts. “Where?”

“I believe it is aboard a Bajoran light freighter running under this transponder ident.”A code string bloomed in the corner of the screen, and Tunol set to work on it. “They’re doubtless going to make an attempt to flee the system. Perhaps, Gul, you might be able to redeem yourself by catching this one.”

“How did you come across this information?” he demanded. “What’s your source, Ico?”

She didn’t answer him. “It would be unwise for you to fail twice in one day, Dukat.”The viewscreen went dark.

He grimaced and looked away. None of the junior officers would meet his gaze.

“Sir?” Tunol beckoned him from the sensor console.

“The transponder code checks out. A ship with that ident is registered at Korto starport. Traffic Control logs it as entering Bajoran space several hours ago.”

“Where is it now?”

She worked the panel, bringing up a tactical plot of the B’hava’el system. A white square flashed, moving slowly out from the orbit of Bajor along the plane of the ecliptic.

“Here. At full impulse, we can be on them in ten metrics.”

“I grow tired of being at her beck and call,” Dukat said in a low voice. “She’s trying to diminish me in the eyes of my crew.”

Tunol inclined her head. “With respect, sir, the only order valued by the crew of the Vandiris that which comes from you.”

Dukat allowed a small smile. “Then my order is given. Obliterate that ship.”

Darrah Mace was careful to double-and then triple-check the data as he input the code string into the communications grid. He glanced at the tricorder again, selecting the correct subspace frequency.

“If you’re thinking about wide-banding that recording, you can forget it,” Syjin informed him. “This old bird doesn’t have that kind of capability.”

“I’m not doing that,” he replied. “I’m…I’m calling in a debt.”

“That’s a Federation code,” said the pilot, with alarm. “Is there something you’re not telling me, Mace?”

“Plenty,” Darrah replied, “so just concentrate on the flying. When can we go to warp?”

“Soon,” came the answer. “Just after we clear the belt.” The words were barely out of his mouth when an alert chimed on Syjin’s panel. He groaned. “Didn’t we just do this once already?”

“Cardassians!” Darrah saw the sensor screen react. “A Galor-class cruiser, closing fast. We’re no match for a ship of that tonnage.”

“No, really?” Syjin mocked. “Do you think?”

“It’s the Vandir,”noted the lawman. “Huh. That’s Gul Dukat’s command.”

“A friend of yours?”

Darrah shook his head. “Not even close.”

Syjin sneered. “Well, I make it a rule never to have more than one ship blown out from under me on a given day.” He poured more power to the impulse drive, and the ship surged forward. “Let’s play a game.”

Out beyond the canopy, Darrah saw a wall of glittering dust racing toward them: the Denorios Belt, a ring of charged energetic plasma that existed out beyond the orbit of Bajor. “What are you doing?” he asked, in the most reasonable tone he could manage. “I know I’m not a starship pilot like you, but isn’t the belt, to put it mildly, extremely dangerous?”

“That’s one way of thinking of it, yes,” Syjin replied. His fingers danced over the helm controls as disruptor blasts arced past them. “But less dangerous than a Galor-class starship.”

“You’re sure about that?”

Syjin shrugged. “Not really.”

They plunged into the belt at maximum speed, with the Vandirclose behind. The cruiser was surprisingly nimble, vectoring hard to dodge around pockets of rippling gaseous energy that Syjin avoided with ease. Darrah kept silent, watching his friend do what he did best—fly by pure instinct. Syjin’s face was oddly placid, except for the occasional smile. He was actually enjoyingthis; without the fetters of gravity and atmosphere, ship and pilot moved in perfect step, dancing rather than flying.

Behind them, Vandircame on, the deflectors of Dukat’s warship flaring as it forced its way through clusters of energized neutrinos that would have sent the smaller Bajoran ship tumbling.

“He’s still on us,” Darrah said as the shuddering, spinning turns became more forceful. His throat was dry.

“I know,” Syjin replied calmly. “Careful, now. This is going to get rough.” He smiled. “Well, rougher.”

They took a hit, and then another. A panel behind them crashed and broke apart. Over their heads, a conduit ruptured and a puff of hot gas emerged, spitting and dying away as automatic sealants activated. They were rolling and bouncing, up and down, back and forth. It was all Darrah could do to cling to the restraints of his chair. “This isn’t like before,” he managed, between gritted teeth. “This is worse.”

“Just hold on,” Syjin told him.

Gul Dukat appeared to have other ideas; the disruptor barrage was finding their range, zeroing in.

“I’m looking for something,” continued the pilot.

“What, the Celestial Temple?” As boys, Prylar Yilb had taught them that the belt, visible from Bajor with the naked eye during the solstice, was fabled in myth as the place where the Prophets made their home. Darrah had never really believed that, not in a literal manner, but suddenly he was wondering. Were his gods going to reach out and smite the Cardassian ship snapping at their heels?

Syjin read his mind. “The Prophets help those who help themselves.” He grinned as a telltale flashed on his console. The pilot turned the ship and aimed it like an arrow. “My father was a pilot, my grandfather, and his before him…And the tricks get lost sometimes, but other times they get passed on.” A rumble echoed through the ship, and a sudden acceleration took them. “Hold on,” Syjin called, straining to say the words. “I found us a boost!”

With a blink of energy discharge, the Bajoran ship skipped out of the Denorios Belt, cast like a stone thrown out over a lake. The Vandirwas still chasing them, but it fell behind, slipping off the close-range proximity scope.

Eventually the speed bled away and the velocity-distorted stars became more regular as they settled into normal warp flight. Darrah gingerly got out of his chair. “What was that, the hand of god?”

“You could call it that,” Syjin said, wiping a film of sweat from his brow. “Actually, that was a tachyon eddy. The old Republic solar sailors used to use them to propel themselves to other star systems, back before we had light-speed drives.” He mimed a sail with the blade of his hand.

“Like a coastal wind pushing a yacht.”

“I thought that was a spacer myth,” Darrah replied. “A bar-stool story for the elderly crocks who can’t see to fly anymore.”

Syjin shot him a grin. “Now you know different. In the old eras, they used to make a sacrament to the Prophets before they crossed the belt, so maybe you were right. About the ‘hand of god’ thing.”

Something caught Darrah’s eye and he bent to examine the engineering panel. “I don’t think so. Not unless they want to call us back to the Celestial Temple pretty soon.”

“What’s wrong?” Syjin vaulted out of his seat.

There, on the console, the system status display showed a rupture running the entire length of the ship’s port drive nacelle. “We’re bleeding plasma.” Darrah frowned. “Must be from one of those disruptor hits.”

Syjin grimaced. “Speed’s dropping. We’ll be bounced out of warp and stuck on impulse, light-years from anywhere,” he spat. “It’ll take years on sublight to reach the nearest planet! We’ll starve first!”

Darrah shook his head and tapped the long-range sensor display. “No, we won’t.” The Vandirwas still following them. “Dukat’s going to solve that problem for us.”

“Give me that again,” said Jameson, turning in his chair to look across the bridge at Ensign Muhle.

The Gettysburg’s Tiburonian communications officer nodded, one hand pressing a transceiver to his large ear. “Confirming, sir. Signal prefix identified as mission code for Lieutenant Alynna Nechayev.”

The captain glanced at the woman in question. “You have an explanation, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir,” she replied, aware that all eyes on the bridge were on her. “Before we escaped Bajor, I managed to…cultivate a new intelligence asset. The man who aided our flight, a local law enforcement officer named Darrah Mace.”

“You coerced a Bajoran into becoming a Federation operative without consulting your operational commander?” T’Vel said coldly. “A very risky action.”