Текст книги "Days of the Vipers"

Автор книги: James Swallow

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

He heard the distant screech of disruptor fire, the crack-and-thump of chemical explosives. The ash was everywhere, thick in layers that coated the stone ruins, turning and wheeling in motes that clogged the air in his lungs. He made out toppled towers and shattered statues robbed of their majesty, cracked domes and piles of dead bricks. Hadlo struggled to make some sense of the murdered vista, searching to find some commonality, some indicator.

Is this Cardassia? Or Bajor? Which is it? Which one? Answer me!

From the wall of howling, windblown ashes came shapes that formed into figures of hooded men and women, the masks of Oralius tarnished and broken over their faces. Hadlo lurched forward and grasped the closest one, snatching the façade away. It disintegrated into powder in his fingers and beneath there was nothing but a bare skull, the grinning mask of the dead. He recoiled, feeling hot streaks of tears down his face.

Is this what will be? He shouted the words to the smoky air.Oralius, answer me! Is this what will come to pass if I turn back, or if I press on? I must know!

Glowing warm light fell on him once again, and Hadlo saw Orbs; not one, but many of them, emerging from the drifts of black ash, burning it away with their radiance. He reached for the closest one, sensing salvation within the turning helix of light; but as his fingers touched the surface, the object faded as hordes of snakes coiled in around it, dragging it away. He swung around, casting about, but each Orb did the same, diminishing and disappearing beneath a mass of serpents. They left him in the darkness, with no light to show him the path.

Hadlo’s hand went to his face. He touched the familiar bony ridges around his eyes and then there was nothing but whiteness.

Bennek watched his master take the cup of liquid with a trembling hand. The old cleric seemed to be barely aware of where he was. When the kai had emerged from the shrine with Hadlo at her side, the deathly pallor of his master made the priest gasp. Hadlo’s color was returning with each passing moment, but the hollow look in his eyes made Bennek wonder what sights he had seen inside the sealed chamber.

Meressa looked on with quiet concern. “The aftermath of an Orb encounter can be quite trying.”

Ranjen Arin produced a small sensor wand from a pocket in his robes and waved it discreetly over the old cleric. “If my readings are correct, he does not appear to be in any physical distress.”

“The tea contains extract of makararoot, a medicinal herb. It will serve as a calmative,” said the kai.

Bennek’s ridges tensed. “What did you do to him in there?” he demanded, but before he could say more he felt Hadlo’s hand on his arm.

“It’s all right.” The cleric glanced at the woman. “Kai Meressa, forgive my young friend. He is sometimes so impulsive…”

The other Bajoran priest, Gar, leaned in. “Are you well, Hadlo?”

The old man nodded. “Yes.” His words were quiet and muted. “I…I was unprepared for what I saw. I’m all right now. Just a little…bewildered.”

Meressa nodded sagely. “The pagh’tem’faris an intense experience. What the Prophets choose to show us can come as a shock, but we must be open to it. Only through study, through the careful consideration and interpretation of the vision, can we reach true understanding of it.”

Bennek eyed the cleric. “You…you didsee something?” He sat beside the old man. “What was it?”

When Hadlo spoke again it was like a voice from the grave, faint and sepulchral. “A future,” he husked. Then suddenly the priest stiffened, as if he had remembered where he was, and in what company. “A future,” he repeated, and this time he spoke with the same potency that Bennek knew of old. “I saw a road ahead, my friend.” He got to his feet and took Meressa warmly by the hand. “Thank you, Eminence, for this great honor. If there was but the slightest iota of doubt in my mind that our coming together here was right, it has been washed away. I am alight with a new determination, sister, and for that there are no words to express my gratitude.”

Meressa’s wary smile became relaxed. “I am so very pleased to hear that, brother.” Bennek saw the kai and Prylar Gar exchange a loaded glance.

Hadlo nodded. “With your permission, I should like to return to the Naghai Keep.” He let out a deep sigh. “I have much to think on.”

The kai bowed and turned to speak to Gar. Bennek drew close to the elder. “Hadlo?” he asked, doubt clouding his face.

The old man looked at him, and his eyes were alight with certainty. “Come. We have much to do.”

Lonnic stared at the strings of characters on the padd but did not really read them. Her eyes were unfocused, the text turning into a string of meaningless blobs against the digital screen. The glass of amber copalbefore her was barely touched; she had taken one or two sips in the hour she’d been sitting on the taphouse’s veranda, but done little else. She’d left the keep and come out into the city proper to put distance between her and her concerns—but the conceit that her worries could be walled up inside the old castle and she could walk away from them was foolish. Every word of the conversation between Jas Holza and Kubus Oak was trapped there behind her eyes, and she was going back to it over and over, worrying the issue like a haracat getting the last licks of meat off a bone.

The whole Golana problem; it hung around her, dragging on her thoughts. On one level she felt betrayed by Jas for cutting her out of the crisis, while on another she understood the choice he had made. Kubus had been correct when he suggested that Jas had done it to protect her. But I am his chief adjutant,she fumed. I should have known.And then there was the matter of the fate of the Eleda.

A shadow fell across her table, blotting out the afternoon sun, and Lonnic looked up to see two men in uniform.

“Hey,” said Darrah, and indicated the empty chairs across from her. “Did some foolish man break a date with you? How rude.”

She gave him a wry smile. “Constable Darrah, and Watchman Proka. What brings you to this part of Korto?”

Darrah sat. “Oh, you know. Law officer stuff.” He threw a glance at the chronometer on his cuff. “Actually, we’re on break for a moment, isn’t that right, Migdal?” He shot Proka a look.

“We are?” said the watchman. “Oh,” he continued, “I mean, we are.”

Darrah nodded. “Catch a server, will you? Get us a couple more of those.” He tapped Lonnic’s copalglass, and Proka stepped away to summon a waitress.

Lonnic raised an eyebrow. “Drinking on duty is not permitted,”

Darrah shrugged. “One glass doesn’t count as drinking. At least, not where I come from.” He settled himself in the chair. “Besides, me and you talking? That counts as a business meeting.”

“A taphouse is hardly businesslike.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I beg to differ. I’ve done some of my best police work in taverns like this.” He paused, watching her. “You know, I only ever see you here when something’s bothering you. Want to talk about it?”

Lonnic was thinking about what to tell him when a group of noisy children ran past, laughing and shouting. A couple of them were wearing crude masks made of gray paper that mimicked the shape and form of a Cardassian face. “Will you look at that?” she said.

“They’re just kids,” Darrah said easily. “They’re fascinated by anything that’s unusual.”

Lonnic’s expression darkened. “And they aren’t the only ones.” She looked around, taking in the people at the other tables on the veranda. “I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard the word ‘Cardassian’ float over from someone else’s conversation since I got here.”

“Better than ‘spoonhead,’” said Darrah quietly. “What did you expect, Tomo? Offworlders are always a crowd-pleaser. We get so few of them, and even then they tend to stick to the spaceport quarters in Ashalla or Dahkur.”

Proka returned with two glasses of copaland sat, taking a slow sip of the Bajoran cider.

“Sometimes I think that’s better for all of us,” Lonnic replied, tapping her own glass. “You haven’t seen things at the keep. All the attendant D’jarras, when they think they’re out of earshot, I hear them talking about the Cardassians.” She grimaced. “The women are fascinatedby them all right.”

“Oh,” Proka said with a blink. “It’s like that, is it? Huh.”

“Well, I have heard that talk as well,” noted Darrah, reaching for his drink. “You know how people wonder.” He tapped his shoulders. “All those ropey muscles on their neck, folks start thinking that maybe they have them in other places as—”

Lonnic thumped her glass on the tabletop. “Stop right there. It’s bad enough I’m hearing it from giggling servant girls, now I have to get it from you?”

Darrah’s wan smile faded. “C’mon, Tomo, don’t take this so seriously. I’m sure the aliens are probably thinking the same things about us.”

“I don’t trust them,” she said flatly. “I don’t trust the Cardassians, and I don’t trust Kubus Oak or the First Minister or anyone involved in this.” She took a gulp from the copal.“There. I said it.”

“Verin’s a sour old coot,” opined Proka.

“Well, Kubus. Yeah, I don’t like him either, but…” The constable watched her expression. “You didn’t seem this angry about it when we talked in the precinct.”

“That was official business,” she retorted, and had another sip of the cider. “Now I’m on a break.” Lonnic glanced around to be certain that no one was listening in on their conversation. She was on the verge of telling him about Golana, but she reeled back. Instead, she revealed something else. “You know the Eleda?”

“The scoutship,” said Proka. “The one the spoonheads brought back.” Darrah shot his subordinate a terse look at the casual epithet, but the watchman pretended he hadn’t noticed.

Lonnic nodded. “Just how was that vessel wrecked? I knew the captain by reputation, and he was good at what he did. I find it hard to imagine he nose-dived into an asteroid.”

“Is that what the sensor logs say happened?”

She sighed. “The Militia isn’t saying much. They’ve only released the most basic of information about the fatalities. It’s all very sketchy, at best.”

Darrah’s eyes narrowed. “What are you getting at? You think this wasn’t death by misadventure?”

“The Eledacrew perished under dubious conditions, that’s a given,” she insisted. “I’ve pulled in favors with my contacts at the Space Guard division, and from what I’ve learned they haven’t been able to make an accurate postmortem on the wreckage.”

“The aliens rigged it?” Proka hesitated with his glass at his lips.

“That’s a bit of a leap,” added Darrah. “Just because you’re wary of the offworlders, that doesn’t make them murderers.”

She eyed him over the lip of her drink. “You’re the lawman, Mace. Aren’t you supposed to be the one who is suspicious of everybody and everything?”

“I am,” replied the constable. “I’m a trained, professional skeptic, so you ought to leave this sort of thing to me.” He gave a crooked smile. “Honestly, you’ve been with Jas too long. You see conspiracies everywhere.”

Lonnic sipped the copal.“I work in politics, Mace. There areconspiracies everywhere.”

“Huh,” added Proka. “Makes me glad I’m just a watchman. I’ll stick to kicking in doors and cuffing felons. Simpler.”

“I spoke to one of them, you know,” Darrah volunteered. “His name was Dukat, one of the officers, I think.” The meeting with the alien had been preying on his mind since that evening, and something about it made Darrah want to get it out in the open. He felt as if he were doing something wrong keeping it to himself.

“When did that happen?” asked Proka.

“In the keep, on the ramparts. I was taking a walk around the perimeter, checking the security arrangements. The Cardassian was there. I think he came out to get some air.”

Lonnic was listening carefully. “What did he say to you?”

“He asked me about the Gratitude Festival. I don’t think he really understood what it was for.”

“What did you make of him, then?” Proka asked. “They seem like a stiff-backed lot from what I can figure out.”

Darrah shrugged, recalling Dukat’s words, the look of sad distance on the alien’s face. I have a son. He has yet to be named.“He seemed…like anybody else. We talked about our kids for a bit, then another one, one of the scientists, came and got him.” He chewed his lip, reviewing his impressions of the Cardassian. “They seem like us. There’s good and bad in everyone, right? Aliens included? Anyone who cares about his family can’t be a million light-years different.”

Lonnic grunted. “For all you know, they might eat their young.”

“Yeah,” added Proka, warming to the subject, “or maybe the females are like palukoospiders and they chew off the heads of the men once they’re done mating.”

“Speaking of that, how are things with Karys?”

Darrah glared at the dark-skinned woman. “Fine. She’s fine.”

“She seemed to enjoy herself at the festival.”

“We all had a good time.” He frowned. “I…I don’t get to take her out as much as I would like.”

Proka kept talking, missing the undercurrent of tension in his superior’s words. “You know, we used to have a betting pool running at the precinct about how long your marriage would last. What with her being Ih’vallaand you being Ke’lora,I mean.” He took a draught of cider.

“Really?” Darrah replied, ice forming on the word. The watchman didn’t appear to notice; it baffled Darrah how a man who brought such attention to detail as a police officer was so oblivious to his unintentional rudeness in social situations.

“Yeah,” Proka went on, “I mean, we all know it’s been rocky for you.”

“You all know?” Darrah repeated, shooting a glare at Lonnic, who maintained a passive expression.

Proka nodded to himself. “Women of that caliber are very high-maintenance,” he said sagely. “They expect a man to improve his lot in life. Otherwise, they can walk right out the door—”

“Thank you, Watchman.”Darrah ground out the words, putting acid emphasis on Proka’s rank. “Perhaps you ought to consider a career as a counselor instead of a law officer?” He reached over and took Proka’s glass from his hand.

“Break’s over. Take a walk.”

And finally, realization of what he’d been saying caught up with the man, and Proka smiled weakly. “Uh. Yes, boss.” He got up and left.

Grimacing, Darrah glared into the depths of his own drink. “How can that man still be walking around with his foot stuck in his mouth?”

“You know,” said Lonnic, after a long moment, “he does have a point.”

“Oh, not you as well?” Darrah growled. “Does everyone have an opinion on my marriage?”

“I’m just saying…” she began, gathering her things together to leave. “People from the Ih’vallacaste are always flighty. It might help if you took a little time off from the precinct. Remind Karys why it was she married you.”

“I will,” he told her, without looking up. “Once this situation is put to bed, I will. Once the Cardassians have gone home.”

Dukat stood and watched as the Kornaire’s space-to-surface cutter returned to the exact spot inside the Naghai Keep where it had arrived, dropping to the ground in a gust of exhaust. He considered it for a moment, smiling thinly at the Cardassian precision of the gesture. The inner cordon of the castle was bare now, the temporary pavilion that had been erected for their arrival now gone. He understood from Pa’Dar that there would be no official farewell ceremony beyond a couple of handshakes from some of the local ministers and the granting of some Bajoran gifts.

Dukat’s smile faded. Not for the first time, he found himself questioning the entire purpose of the mission. He would never have ventured to voice those thoughts within earshot of other members of the Kornairecrew, even though he knew most of them—up to and including Gul Kell—felt much the same way. We should have come here with a flotilla of warships and then offered them our friendship. One hand outstretched, the other with a gun in it.There were plenty of “client systems” inside the Cardassian Union who had been induced to make agreements with Central Command in just such a fashion—Celtris, Rondac, and Ingav, among others—and Bajor would have made a fine addition to them.

But Cardassia cannot afford to waste valuable combat vessels on a diplomatic mission when they are needed at the frontier. Our warships are thin on the ground.How many times had he heard that? Too many officers, too few ships. That explanation had been passed to him by Kell, by other senior officers, when he pressed for a command of his own, for a long overdue promotion. I hear the words but I do not believe them.There were ships out there all right, but they were being granted to men and women whose elevation through the ranks owed more to politics and nepotism than to their individual merit. Kell’s own daughter lacked the experience and skill of Dukat, and yet she was in command of a fighter squadron in the disputed regions. Kell himself owed his position to a parent in the Legate congress.

After the feast, Dukat’s thoughts about Bajor had crystallized. He was convinced now that the planet could—it should—come under Cardassian aegis. All it would take would be a few vessels and the willingness to understand these aliens. After only a few days, he felt a new awareness forming in him. The Bajorans were wayward, insular children, with dogmatic habits and a limited perspective on the greater universe around them. What they required was clear: the guiding hand of a stern parent to turn them toward a more productive life. All the luxuries they squander, heedless of how other worlds suffer. If Cardassia had such riches, my people…myfamily would be safe and secure. These aliens need our supervision.

But he was in no position to make that happen. Perhaps, if he were in command of the Kornaire,Dukat could change the course of this operation; but with a man as stolid and unimaginative as Kell at the helm, the mission would end before it could truly begin.

His hand went to his wrist pocket, to the holograph rod. At least it means I will be home soon. Back to Athra and my son.If he could do nothing on Bajor to help his world, perhaps back on his world he could do something to help his wife and child.

The shuttle’s hatch hissed open and released one of the noncommissioned gils assigned to the craft’s duty crew; but from behind the junior rating came Kotan Pa’Dar, his face darkened with effort. The scientist’s eyes locked on Dukat and he came running to him, puffing. “Skrain! I’m glad I found you!”

Dukat frowned at the other man’s near-frantic manner. “Kotan, what are you doing?” The scientist had transported to the ship hours ago. “You’re supposed to be up there.”

“I had to speak to you!” Pa’Dar said between panting gasps. “I didn’t want…to go through channels. I knew Kell would…would never let me contact you for a personal reason, so I had the glinn take me on the cutter.”

Dukat waved a hand at the scientist as if he were dismissing a nagging insect. “Explain yourself. What personal reasons?”

Pa’Dar looked him in the eyes, and the officer saw pity in the other man’s gaze. “I knew it,” Pa’Dar said quietly. “I knew Kell would keep it from you. He infuriates me.”

“Watch what you say!” Dukat barked. Despite the fact that he agreed with Pa’Dar, it was wrong to allow a civilian to openly denigrate a member of the military. “I ordered you to explain yourself!”

Pa’Dar swallowed hard and made an effort to calm himself. He drew Dukat to one side, into the lee of the parked shuttle. “There’s word from Cardassia Prime. I heard Professor Ico speaking with Kell. There has been rioting, the Oralians have come into conflict with the military.” He grabbed Dukat’s arm. “There’s fighting on the roads outside Lakat, Skrain! The city has been cut off!”

“Athra.” The name fell from his lips. With a sudden burst of motion, Dukat pushed away from the scientist and strode into the shuttle.

The glinn at the flight controls looked up with a start as Dukat dropped into the command chair next to hers. “Dalin? Is there a problem?”

“I want communications,” he snapped. “Give me a direct feed via the Kornaire’s subspace array, immediately!”

The glinn blanched at his tone. “Sir, that will require an authorization code.”

He bent forward and punched a set of numbers into a control console. “There! Get it done. I want a real-time link to Cardassia Prime, now!”

The pilot hesitated as the console emitted a negative chime. “Dalin, that code…It is not cleared for direct comm protocols. Only Gul Kell can authorize that.”

Dukat teetered on the verge of shouting at the glinn; but he knew she was right, and if Kell knew about the reports from home and he hadn’t bothered to bring them to Dukat’s attention, he wasn’t likely to simply let his first officer place a priority message. Dukat’s face burned with fury, at the Oralians, at Kell, at himself for acting in such an emotional manner.

“I can help you.” Dukat’s head snapped around to see Bennek standing next to Pa’Dar in the cutter’s entry bay.

Anger propelled Dukat out of the cockpit and to the young cleric, their faces only a hand’s span apart. “You’ll help me?” he rumbled. “After your people put the lives of my wife and child in danger, you will help me?” Dukat’s words became a snarl.

“I know nothing about that,” Bennek replied. “I have a communications code that was provided to the Oralian Way by the Detapa Council. It will only open a channel via the civilian network, but you are welcome to use it.” He nodded at the control console. “Will you permit me?”

His fists contracting into tight hammers, Dukat could only nod stiffly. He watched the priest fold back his hood and bend over the panel, fingers sweeping over the keypad. The glinn examined the display and her eyes widened. “Dalin, the connection is being made. I have a tie-in with the Kornaire’s hyperchannel array.”

Bennek looked back at him. “Who do you wish to speak to?”

There was a pressure in his chest as Dukat formed the words of his reply. “Contact the Ministry of Justice. The office of military legality. I will speak to Procal Dukat…my father.”