Night Of The Wolves Part 19

She stepped into the sterile, warm blankness of Veja's room. Damar was, as Natima expected, asleep in a chair next to Veja's bed. There were no attendants present. Veja was still unconscious, or at least sleeping, and Natima decided she'd do better to come back later. But as she was backing out of the room, Damar opened his eyes.

"Miss Lang," he said formally. He had been noticeably more polite to her since the incident, though Natima didn't know if it was because his contempt of her had ebbed or if he was simply too sad to be bothered with his former opinion of her.

"Gil Damar. I apologize for disturbing you. I only came to check on her status."

"It is kind of you," he said, his voice distant. "She is the same."

"Has...has her family been notified?" Natima asked. "Because I was thinking that I could..."

"I spoke to her father. He has been...supportive, although he is understandably very...disappointed."

Natima remembered what Seefa had said about the Carda.s.sian propensity toward euphemism, and she laughed, entirely unexpectedly. Damar gave her an odd look, one that contained a bit of the old contempt that she remembered so well from her encounters with him on Terok Nor.

"Forgive me," she begged.

"I see nothing funny here," Damar said icily.

"Of course not, Gil Damar. Except-"

She hesitated. She knew it wasn't her place to suggest such things, but he obviously loved her so. Perhaps there was a way, after all.

"Don't you find it somewhat queer that on our world, where children are valued so highly, we would cast away those children who have no parents? Children who could have found a home with women like Veja, who cannot now carry her own child, but longs to be a mother above all else? Hasn't it occurred to you, after all this, that-"

Damar looked positively horrified, and Natima knew she had crossed the line. "Gil Damar, I fear my female gift for curiosity and observation has gotten the better of me. It is only that I am so grieved for my friend that I forget myself. Please...I will leave you."

She turned and quickly left the room, practically running to get away. Her own apartment was quite close to the settlement hospital, and she broke into the cool outside air between the buildings feeling as though she'd forgotten how to breathe.

She felt embarra.s.sed for herself, an unusual sensation, as she walked the short distance home. It had never been in her nature to avoid awkward topics just to preserve an air of comfortable formality. Still, she should have known better than to try and be philosophical with a man who was experiencing such suffering. And yet- And yet, their lives together need not be destroyed.

It was not for her to say. She came to the gray building that housed her quarters and let herself inside, suddenly desperate for a long, dreamless nap. She couldn't remember ever feeling so tired.

Before she'd even closed her door behind her, her console lit up with an incoming transmission from Information Service headquarters on Carda.s.sia Prime. Undoubtedly Dalak, and she'd have to speak with him eventually. She reluctantly took the call.

"Miss Lang, I have been trying to reach you for some time. On behalf of all your colleagues here-and myself, of course-may I express sincerest regards for your health, after your unfortunate incident. I understand you're to make a full recovery?"

His enthusiasm for her answer was markedly lacking, but she did her best to support the effort. He was her superior.

"Yes, Mister Dalak, although Miss Ketan was not so lucky. She has survived, but some of her injuries are permanent."

"Indeed, Miss Lang. We've received the medical report. It is most regrettable. Still, I hear the two of you acted with outstanding bravery. It would make a good story, don't you think?"

Natima was taken aback; this possibility had not occurred to her. "Oh! I suppose..."

"This is just the sort of thing that the people love to hear. Military heroes, clever reporters, a depraved rebel killed. I would like you to deliver the story by tomorrow evening, Carda.s.sia City time."

"Uh...certainly. I will get on it right away."

"Thank you, Miss Lang. Send Miss Ketan my goodwill."

"Yes, sir. I will do that-as soon as she wakes up."

"She isn't awake? Ah. Well then...anyway. Also, I understand Gul Dukat put several Bajorans to death the other day, going on a tip that you gave him-about balon? I think you should run a follow-up story to that. The weekend crew ran it, and the censor made a mess of it. I need you to handle it, if you're feeling up to it, of course."

Natima knew the story, and she knew that the censors had indeed made a mess of it-sometimes they were so overzealous that the stories barely made sense when they ran through. But she was feeling a bit harried right now, having just recovered from a very stressful ordeal. It wouldn't have troubled her a bit to have taken it easy for a few days. "I...uh, actually..." she murmured.

Dalak interrupted smoothly. "Good. I will expect that story to run tomorrow morning, at the latest. I must go. Deadlines don't rest for anyone, do they?" "Good. I will expect that story to run tomorrow morning, at the latest. I must go. Deadlines don't rest for anyone, do they?"

"No, they don't," Natima said. She had never particularly liked her boss, but she couldn't think of a time when she had liked him less than right now. She rubbed the short patch on her head again, tired, sick with worry, trying not to think about Seefa or her new, conflicting thoughts about the annexation, about Dukat, about her role in the Information Service.

That was when an idea occurred to her. The kind of idea that demands a decision, that one cannot easily turn away from once it enters the realm of possibility. It meant risking her job, her all-important work...But not so all-important in the way she'd always believed.

She felt her heart pounding as she began to type up her report for the homeworld comnet, the image of Seefa's face finally coming clear into her mind as she crafted her words, polished her turns of phrase. The image of his face the moment that it had dawned on her that he was nothing like what she expected him to be.

The comnet would get its story about the Pullock V prisoners tomorrow, but maybe it wouldn't be exactly the one that her boss had in mind.

Astraea kept her head down as she left the city. Her hair was loose, and she tried to use the long black tresses to s.h.i.+eld her face. She'd debated using her shawl to cover her head, to guard her profile, but had finally decided that it might look suspicious. Even after she'd pa.s.sed the last homes and buildings of the city's outskirts, she'd felt herself almost trembling with fear that someone she knew would see her, or worse, that her image had been uploaded to the military's facial-recognition system, and her brief ride on the city's shuttle had doomed her. Were her crimes serious enough that people would be actively looking for her? It seemed unlikely, although she'd surely been entered into the system by now, marked as a criminal. She had checked into a boardinghouse under her new a.s.sumed name, and n.o.body had come rus.h.i.+ng to put her under arrest. Yet.

I can always turn myself in, if I have to. The thought was strangely rea.s.suring; it allowed her to continue with her madness, knowing that there was sanity and reality, no matter how unpleasant, that she could return to.

She wandered beyond the edge of the city, where she finally found herself alone. She walked past the old manufacturing facilities, dating to hundreds of years before the annexation, sitting empty and ominous in the hot, dry, evening winds-a grim reminder to those who pa.s.sed that Carda.s.sia had once very nearly fallen into ruin. The thought of it gave Astraea a warped flash of the horror she had experienced when she saw those images of Carda.s.sia destroyed, blackened, smoking, crushed perhaps beyond repair. A shudder ran through her entire body, and she pulled her shawl tightly around her.

Past the wide band of shadow-haunted industrial zone, she reached the open desert, only a few thin vehicle ruts marking the expanse of cracked soil. Although she was looking at nothing, a field of blowing dust ringed with distant mountains so far away that she could easily block them with her hands, she thought she detected something here, something she had seen before. Was it wishful thinking that made it seem so? Or was this really the place where, centuries before, a small house had once stood? Meadows, a tiny stream, trees with birds in them? Was it simply the fantasy of a scientist who daydreamed about agriculture from things past?

She had walked a great distance, and her feet were sore. Though she had worn her walking shoes, she was not used to traveling as much as she had been doing in these past weeks; her movements were usually limited to the daily commute from her tiny apartment to her office in the science ministry. She had taken a public shuttle for part of her journey here, but, fearful of being seen, she had walked much farther than was probably wise. It pained her to think of the distance she was going to have to travel to return to the boardinghouse.

Examining the soles of her shoes, she thought she heard someone behind her and she stiffened, until she saw that a couple of stray hounds were fighting over something not far behind her, back near where the buildings began again. Her tension took on a different timbre, for she had always had a childish fear of the animals. Before the annexation, when Miras was a small child, her older brother used to scare her with tales of the giant wild dogs that fed solely on corpses, the remains of those who died of starvation, or during one of several poverty-borne disease epidemics. She had a vague idea that there were those who blamed the Oralians for many of the deaths from that time period; there had been great dissent, rioting, the overtures of civil war. She backed quietly away from where the animals were tussling, hoping they had not spotted or scented her.

A moment pa.s.sed. The brief fight had reestablished whatever dominance existed between the two scruffy animals. One of the hounds turned its ugly, squarish head in her general direction, but did not seem interested in her. It padded away, followed by the other.

Astraea relaxed, turned to start walking again.

"Halt!" It was a man's voice, behind her, and Astraea froze. A Carda.s.sian soldier stepped into view, a man with a broad forehead and a deeply scrutinizing expression. He had his weapon trained on her, though he lowered it upon reaching her. She imagined she looked quite harmless.

"I...I'm doing nothing wrong," she said faintly. "Only looking." She was not breaking any laws, but it was generally understood that people did not travel on foot outside the city. She knew that her very presence here was suspicious.

"Looking? For what? Trouble?" The soldier laughed haughtily at his own joke.

"No," Astraea said quietly. "I'm looking for...something that I lost." She instantly regretted saying it, for now she would have to follow it up with a legitimate story. "I mean to say...I'm just...looking at the view."

The soldier continued to regard her coldly. "What is your name, Miss?"

She thought fast. Now would be the time to turn herself in, and she supposed it would be wisest to just do so.

"My name is Astraea," she said, in spite of her best intentions. It seemed she wasn't ready to give up quite yet.

The soldier appeared taken aback. His mouth hung open for a moment before he spoke. "Astraea?" he repeated. It was his turn to sound faint.

She nodded, feeling certain that she had just guaranteed her own death sentence. She had now made a deliberate attempt to conceal her true ident.i.ty to a soldier of Central Command. She might as well sign a confession.

"Astraea," the soldier said, blinking. "This name...is known to me."

What did he mean? She began to feel frantic. Was her alias already being a.s.sociated with her true persona? In a panic, she corrected herself. "I mean to say, my name is Miras. Miras Vara. And...and I am from the Ministry of Science, and-"

"Where did you hear that name?" he said, his voice brittle and harsh again. "Astraea. Where did you hear it?"

"I...I..." Miras did not know how to answer, so she answered truthfully. "I heard it in a dream."

The soldier's expression changed, the hardness in his beady eyes quickly and fluidly transforming into earnest curiosity. There was a long pause before he spoke again, appearing to choose his words carefully. "I have another question for you," he said. "You said that you are looking for something. Are you looking for something...that is in plain sight, but...hidden?"

Miras felt her panic turn into something else. Was this a trick? How could this man-how could anyone-have known the very words spoken by the woman in her dream? She stared at the soldier for a moment before finally collecting her thoughts enough to speak. "Who are you?" she said.

His eyes seemed to bore straight into hers, scrutinizing, prying. "I am Glinn Sa'kat."

"Glinn Sa'kat-but I mean to say-"

Without breaking his gaze, he interrupted her. "You are...looking for the book," he said. It seemed to be a statement rather than a question. His voice was somewhat steadier now.

Miras answered without quite thinking about her answer, much in the same way as she had told him her a.s.sumed name. "Where everything is written."

The soldier stared at her for a long moment, his breathing seeming especially labored. "You had better come with me," he said, his voice possessing again a trace of the earlier gruffness with which he had ordered her to halt. But there was something else in it now. Something like disbelief, or possibly even fear.

Gar Osen woke at just past dawn and could not seem to get back to sleep. Beams of mild light, clouded through with a haze of ashy dust kicked up from the cold fireplace, were penetrating through the high window in the back of the cottage. One persistent finger of suns.h.i.+ne had landed directly on Gar's left eyelid. He pushed his face underneath the straw-filled bag that served as a pillow, but it was no use. He rose from his bed. He put his head down to stretch out his spine-the surgical alterations to his body had always made him feel so much more vulnerable, though in some ways, he could scarcely remember what it felt like to be in a Carda.s.sian body. The stiffness in his current form might very well be a simple manifestation of his age.

As he lifted his head, he started and then gasped audibly. He was not alone in the room, though the other person was so utterly silent and still that he could have been there all night, as much as Gar would have noticed. "Who are you?"

The Carda.s.sian rose noiselessly, an odd smile playing about his mouth. "h.e.l.lo, Pasir," he said. "Did you get a good night's sleep?"

Gar was so taken aback at hearing his old name-it had been so many years since anyone had uttered it-that he could not immediately speak. He felt a combination of things, but mostly relief. Was he finally going to get some answers?

The man looked around the cottage. "How can you live like this, Pasir? It's so...primitive! Not to mention the cold." The man s.h.i.+vered to ill.u.s.trate, and then laughed.

Gar was incensed. The other man acted very inappropriately for an agent of the Obsidian Order. "Why are you here?" He didn't really need to ask, for the use of his real name was enough to make it quite plain. "Where is Rhan Ico? She is supposed to be my contact-I've not heard from her in twenty years, at least!"

"I don't know where she is, I've never heard of her," the man answered, his voice reflecting disinterest. "Most likely, she is dead. Enabran Tain saw fit to clean house when he took over the Order."

Enabran Tain? The name was only vaguely familiar, and Pasir realized that things must have changed drastically since he'd lost contact with the Order. It was finally becoming plain to him now, why he'd been left to dangle alone in the dark all this time. "What do you want?" The name was only vaguely familiar, and Pasir realized that things must have changed drastically since he'd lost contact with the Order. It was finally becoming plain to him now, why he'd been left to dangle alone in the dark all this time. "What do you want?"

"Well," the man said. "You probably haven't heard that the military sometimes tries to make use of the Order, since they've had so little luck with their own clumsy interrogations. They requested my a.s.sistance for what turned out to be a fool's errand, an absolute mockery of an interview in Dahkur." The man rolled his eyes for emphasis. "The military is frightened of its own shadow these days. But so long as I was here anyway, Enabran Tain had an idea of a means by which I might take care of a problem for him."

"A...problem?"

"Indeed, for it would appear that your purpose here has-shall we say-expired?"

"What do you mean? I still have a great deal of influence here! I-have a plan, you see. It was I who disposed of the old kai. And I have swung the general opinion of Bajor around to the abandonment of the castes. I will soon be the kai, and then-"

The other man sighed as he interrupted. "I must tell you that Tain was never entirely sure how he meant to use you, Pasir. You were simply a holdover from the days of his predecessor. And yet, he felt that having an operative in the field might prove useful to him in some small way. But if it's true what they are saying about Dukat's new edicts-and it is true-then what good could you possibly be to the Order when you are sent to a work camp with the rest of these Bajoran wretches? No, it is my understanding that although Tain had initially hoped for you to become the next religious leader here, this outcome is rather unlikely to occur, considering the current circ.u.mstances. And then there is the matter of the girl at the Ministry of Science..."

"What girl? What do you mean?"

"Your cover, Pasir. It has been blown, I'm afraid."

"Impossible!"

"It's true. Tain has considered the situation carefully, and decided that you have become more of a risk than an a.s.set. Your mission is officially over."

"But...Dukat! He knows I am here, you must speak to him regarding these new policies of his. I know he does not mean to put me in harm's way-"

The agent laughed. "Dukat! Tain has no business with that fool they call the prefect. Oh, Pasir. You have been alone here for too long. It's a shame I don't have time to explain it all to you. It's rather a good story, actually."

Pasir began to feel desperate, taking a step toward the man. "Have you come to take me home, then?"

The man smiled. "I'm afraid not, my friend."

"Friend?" Pasir spat. "You are no friend of mine. If this isn't an extraction..."

It was quite before Pasir knew what was happening that the other man had moved so near to him, so near that a Carda.s.sian phaser-those used by the Order, set to disintegrate-could effectively do its job. He had time to register disbelief, but that was all.

The agent stepped away and holstered his weapon. Pity, to destroy such a miracle of medicine. He'd heard that the process was considered something of an art. He let himself out of the cottage and headed back toward his skimmer without another thought, making so little noise as he moved that he might as well have been floating.

13.

Lenaris woke up early the next morning, his body protesting against the effects of the night spent sleeping on the ground. Even after all the years spent in the resistance, he had never gottten especially used to sleeping out in the open.

He rolled up his things and observed the sky in the not-quite dawn, the stars still visible in the pale sky. Terok Nor winked as if it were chiding him, and he looked back down at the ground, feeling the impact of all that had happened.

He had been right about the Valerian freighter, but he had been wrong about this. The Pullock V raid had been a disaster, and now the cell had broken apart. Lenaris didn't know when he'd felt so thoroughly despondent; it had been bad after he'd left the Halpas cell, but this was different. This was worse.

The others were waking as well, but as he wandered the vicinity of the mostly empty field in front of him, he realized that Taryl was nowhere to be found. After circling the area in a panic and questioning the others, he ran back toward the village, calling her name the whole time.

The village was deserted. It had always been rough, but without any people in it-chattering, eating, working, or even sleeping-it looked positively eerie. "Taryl?" Lenaris called. "Are you here? Please, answer me!" He thought he saw a light on in her cottage, but maybe it was just wishful thinking. He headed for the little house, and drew back the door.

She was there, sitting at the corner worktable with a single light burning above her, her shoulders hunched. Lenaris thought she was crying, and took an uncertain step toward her. But when she turned, he saw with momentary shock that she was not crying at all-in fact, she was smiling.

"Holem!" she exclaimed, leaping to her feet. "I have to show you what I found!"

She gestured to the table, where a rudimentary com-link was set up on a tiny viewscreen. Taryl had been sifting through Carda.s.sian comm traffic. Lenaris sat down and perused the small screen with the improvised keypad, using a clumsy translation program so that he could read the Carda.s.sian characters. It was difficult to make out, but from what he could gather, the Carda.s.sian comnet had run a story about Pullock V-but this was no ordinary Carda.s.sian newsfeed, churning out propaganda about manufactured Carda.s.sian victories. The casualties, the damage to the facility-it was all here, in plain language-at least as plain as could be interpreted by Taryl's translation software.

"Why...would they do this?" he wondered.

"I don't know!" Taryl said, delighted. "But I've already copied it and posted it on a buried channel of the Bajoran 'net where the Cardies can't delete it! Do you see, Holem? We'll be heroes!" She giggled, and then sniffed. Through her jubilance, she had still been crying intermittently, that much was plain by the pink blotches underneath her eyes.

"This is great!" Lenaris said. "If other Bajorans know that we staged an attack offworld-"