Star Trek Terok Nor 01: Day of the Vipers Page 4

  Darrah threw up his hands. “Oh, this again? I was nine years old! Are you going to keep bringing up that story forever?”

  Finally, the act of being ignored by the two men was too much for Syjin’s attacker, and he turned on Darrah, still holding the pilot in place. “Hey!” he shouted. “I told you to get lost! Who the kosst do you think you are?”

  Without moving too fast, Darrah pushed back his coat to reveal the earth-toned uniform he was wearing underneath it, the duty fatigues of a law enforcement officer in the Bajoran Militia. “I’m the police, friend. And that man, sadly, is a Korto citizen, and so I have to reluctantly consider him under my protection.” He nodded at Syjin. “Why don’t you stop choking him there and we’ll try to settle this with some decorum?”

  The man in the dark jacket swore a particularly choice curse that suggested Darrah’s mother should take congress with farm animals, and what little of Darrah’s good mood remained instantly evaporated. He lunged, quick enough to take the man off guard, and caught him in a viselike grip, his hand pulling hard on the assailant’s right ear. Darrah twisted and pulled at the earring denoting the Bajoran’s D’jarra caste, putting savage pressure on the lobe. The man howled and stumbled away, releasing Syjin and flailing.

  “Something else Prylar Yilb used to say was, you could tell a lot about a man from the way his pagh flowed,” Darrah growled. “Let’s see what we can learn about you, huh?” He gave the ear a hard yank, and the man overbalanced and fell into a heap on the thermoconcrete landing pad. Darrah let him go and shot Syjin a look. “Hm. Not much. The ear of any good Bajoran is supposed to be the seat of their Prophet-given life force, but our friend here doesn’t seem to have anything there but wax.” He made a face and wiped his hand on his coat.

  “Bloody Mi’tino!” wheezed the pilot. “You think you can push me around because your D’jarra’s higher up the wheel than mine?” Syjin rocked back and forth on his heels, emboldened by Darrah’s presence. “I might just be Va’telo, but I still deserve respect!” He nodded to himself and attempted to straighten his clothing.

  “This isn’t about that!” snarled the man, getting to his feet with one hand pressed to his pain-reddened ear. “This is about you sleeping with my wife!”

  “I didn’t sleep with her!” Syjin blurted. “It’s your brother who’s doing that! I just flew her out to meet him on Jeraddo!”

  The redness unfolded across the man’s entire face as anger overwhelmed his reason. “You little maggot! I’ll kill you!” Out of nowhere a glitter of silver slid from a pocket in the sleeve of the man’s jacket, and suddenly he was holding a shimmerknife.

  Darrah felt a familiar, icy calm wash over him, and by reflex his hand dropped to the holster on his belt. “Don’t do this,” he said.

  “I’ll kill you both!” roared the husband, blind fury propelling him forward. The knife came up in a line of bright metal; then the phaser pistol was in Darrah’s hand and the short, sharp keening of an energy bolt crossed the distance between them. The man hit the deck for a second time, the small vibrating blade skittering away from his nerveless grip.

  With a heavy sigh, Darrah reached inside his coat and tapped the oval communicator brooch on the right breast of his uniform tunic. “Precinct, this is Darrah. I need a catch wagon down at the port, hangar nineteen. Got a sleeper here, aggravated assault.”

  “Confirmed, Senior Constable Darrah,” said the voice of the synthetic dispatcher. “Unit responding. Remain on-site. Precinct out.”

  “Wah,” said Syjin, “you shot him. Thanks, brother. He would have murdered us both.”

  “Don’t ‘brother’ me, you crafty son of a Ferengi. You’re not family, you’re my bloody penance.”

  Syjin pulled a hurt face and leaned down to examine the unconscious man. “Oh. Charming. Old Yilb used to say that all men are brothers in the Celestial Temple.” He reached for a pocket on the other man’s jacket, and Mace smacked his hand.

  “Yeah, well, if you ever find it, you can start calling me brother then, not before.” He blew out a breath, studying the man. “Poor idiot. His wife cuckolded him, no wonder he was furious.”

  “That’s why I steer clear of the ladies,” Syjin said sagely. “Never let myself get tied down.” He patted his ship. “This is the only mistress for me.”

  “Right,” Darrah said dourly, “but you’re more than happy to take a woman’s money to fly her away for some offworld adultery. I’m sure if I looked hard enough I could find a law against that.”

  Syjin’s smile froze. “Ha,” he managed. “Oh, before I forget. I’ve got something for you and the children.”

  “Don’t try and change the subject!” Darrah snapped, but the pilot was already inside his ship.

  A moment later he returned with a hard-sided cargo container. “Here. This is for you and Karys and the little ones.”

  Darrah opened the box and inside he saw a few seal-packs of exotic alien foodstuffs. Agnam loaf and methrin eggs, a bottle of tranya and some hydronic mushies, the kind that Nell loved. “Where’d you get this? Is this a bribe?”

  “No!” Syjin said hotly. “Can’t a man give his old friend a gift? You’re so suspicious!”

  “Suspicion is what makes me a policeman. And, let’s be honest, you have always had a rather elastic relationship with the law.”

  The pilot folded his arms. “It is the Gratitude Festival this week, isn’t it? I thought I’d give you a small something to be grateful for. The Prophets smile on men who share their good fortune, right?”

  Darrah felt slightly chagrined by his initial reaction. “Oh. Thank you.” He looked up as a police flyer drifted in over the tops of the hangars and angled to land nearby. “As you’re on-planet, are you going to come to the house? The kids would love to see you.”

  “I shouldn’t,” said Syjin. “You know Karys thinks I’m a bad influence on them.” His expression turned more serious. “Besides, I think the little ones would rather spend the holiday with their mother and father than silly Uncle Syjin.”

  A frown crossed Darrah’s face. “Festivals don’t police themselves,” he said defensively. “I have to keep on top of it. Besides, a wife, a home, and two growing cubs…Constable’s pay can only go so far. I need the extra duties.” He nodded as Proka, one of the duty watchmen, climbed out of the flyer.

  “There are other ways to earn latinum,” said the pilot airily as Darrah walked away.

  “That’s true,” Darrah said over his shoulder, “and if I catch you doing one of them, I’ll put you in the blocks and grind up that tub of rust for spares.”

  “Thank you very little,” Syjin snorted, and went back into his vessel.

  The Kornaire’s hangar bay was one of the few areas on board the starship where the ceiling didn’t hang low over the crew’s heads. It was a peculiarity of this variety of vessel; unlike the newer Galor-class ships, the Selek-class heavy cruiser appeared to have been designed by a man of shorter stature. Dukat had heard the enlisted men making jokes when they thought he couldn’t hear them, that Gul Kell kept his flag on the Kornaire not because he’d commanded the ship for so many years, but because striding the vessel’s corridors made him feel taller. Dukat felt fairly indifferent about the ship himself; Kell’s vessel had too many memories attached to it for the dalin, too many recollections of incidents and tours of duty that didn’t sit well with him. Not for the first time, Dukat considered what kind of vessel he would take when his promotion to gul finally came. Something more impressive than this old hulk, he told himself.

  Crossing behind one of the Kornaire’s space-to-surface cutters, he found Kotan Pa’Dar waving a tricorder over the drum-shaped shuttle on the tertiary pad. The tan-colored ship was a sorry sight, most of the forward quarter a mess of compacted metal and broken fuselage. The drop-ramp hatch at the rear was open, and inside Dukat could see the bodies wrapped in thick white cloths, piled against the bulkhead like stacked firewood.

  Pa’Dar nodded to him. “Skrain,” he said, by w
ay of greeting. “Do you require something of me?”

  Dukat shook his head. “Just making my rounds,” he explained. The dalin gestured at the wreck. “All is well?”

  The scientist peered at the tricorder’s readout. “We made sure the drive cores were pulled before the craft was brought on board. There’s no residual radiation or isolytic leakage, but it never hurts to check.” He shrugged. “It is alien technology, after all. We can’t be certain we’ve accounted for everything.”

  The officer walked to the hull of the ship and placed a hand on it. “Bajorans breathe the same sort of air as us. They have the same sort of gravity, eat compatible foodstuffs…It’s no surprise their ships are not that different from ours.” His fingers found a fitting on the fuselage, a bolt and pinion connection that had been sheared off. Dukat frowned, unable to identify it.

  “A servo-mast for the solar sails,” said Pa’Dar, seeing the question before Dukat asked it. “Some of their smaller vessels appear to carry them as a redundant emergency propulsion system, in case impulse engines fail.”

  Dukat looked at his fingers and found a patina of grime there. He brushed the dust from his hands with quick, economical motions. “Quite primitive, really.” He moved around to study the damaged section.

  “That’s one way to consider it,” Pa’Dar conceded. “It does strike me as strange that the ship’s systems are less advanced than our own.”

  “How so?”

  “Their warp drive, their sensors, and other mechanisms, all of them are at least a century behind Cardassian technologies. I doubt this scout was even capable of making transluminal velocities beyond factor two, three at best. When one considers that the Bajorans are such an old culture, one would assume they would possess at least comparable if not superior technology.”

  Dukat gave a dry chuckle. “The age of the Bajoran civilization is a matter for debate, so I have been led to understand. After all, we have only their word that they are such an ancient and venerable species…” He glanced at the scientist. “And even if it is true, then what does this tell us?” He tap-tapped on the hull of the Bajoran ship. “They may be hundreds of thousands of years old, but they lag behind the rest of the galaxy, behind younger and more vital cultures like ours. Do you know what that tells me, Kotan?” Pa’Dar shook his head, and Dukat stepped on to the drop-ramp, peering inside. “They’re stagnant. They lack the drive that Cardassia has in ample supply.” He grinned to himself. “By the time the Union’s a hundred thousand years old, we’ll be the lords of the galaxy.”

  “Perhaps so,” said the other man, although Dukat could tell he didn’t share his confidence. “The ship’s interior is off-limits,” added Pa’Dar, as Dukat balanced on the edge of the ramp. “On Professor Ico’s orders.”

  “I’m only taking an interest,” Dukat replied. Inside, beyond the compartment where the corpses lay, he could see part of the command deck and the mess of shattered consoles up there. There was nothing recognizable as a helm or a navigation station; the impact that had killed the crew had ruined the vessel’s internals completely.

  “Do you know how the ship was damaged?” said Pa’Dar. “The data templates I was provided with are rather sparse. It looks like the result of a ground collision, or perhaps a partial failure of structural integrity fields…”

  Dukat’s smile thinned. “It’s my understanding it was…an unlucky accident. Fortunate this craft was so near to a Union shipping channel. If not, these poor fools might have drifted about in the void for millennia. Their world would never have known their fate.”

  “The lost dead are never truly at rest,” said a new voice, and the two men turned to see a robed figure approaching across the deck. He rolled back his hood, and Dukat found himself looking into an earnest, intense face. “It is a thing of great sadness.”

  “Bennek, isn’t it?” Dukat said. “We have not met. I am Dalin Skrain Dukat, first officer of the Kornaire. This is Kotan Pa’Dar, of the Ministry of Science.”

  The priest gave them a shallow bow. “If you will pardon me, I have a duty to perform here.”

  Pa’Dar pocketed his tricorder, his expression taking on an irritable cast. “Duty? What duty?”

  From a large drawstring pouch at his hip the young cleric removed an intricately carved mask of green wood studded with chips of white mica and flat blue stones. “A recitation.” He nodded at the wreck and the corpses aboard it. “For the dead.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Dukat. “There are only Bajorans aboard that scoutship. No Cardassians.”

  “I know,” Bennek replied, taking the mask and balancing it in his hands before raising it up to his chest in a gesture of benediction. “You may remain if you wish, gentlemen. I would ask only that you stay silent until the rite is concluded.”

  Pa’Dar’s stout face quirked in the beginning of a sneer. “I have more important things to do, I believe.” He made no attempt to hide a derisive snort and walked away, leaving Dukat and the priest at the foot of the drop-ramp.

  Bennek whispered something under his breath and raised the mask slowly to his face, taking loops of metal from inside it to hook over his ears. Dukat found himself fascinated by the odd ritualistic motions of the young man. It was like some strange form of theater, a dance or a mime. It was quite unreal. “Why do you do this?” he demanded, ignoring the priest’s request for silence. “Why do you care about the bodies of aliens? They don’t follow your creed.”

  “Oralius asks us to find paths for all the life we encounter on our journeys.” Bennek’s words had an odd hushed quality to them as they came from behind the mask. “Even if that life is not born of the same earth and sun as we are.” He bowed and began to speak in a slow, rhythmic chant.

  “The power that moves through me, animates my life, animates the mask of Oralius. To speak her words with my voice, to think her thoughts with my mind, to feel her love with my heart. It is the song of morning, opening up to life, bringing the truth of her wisdom to those who live in the shadow of the night.” The phrases that fell from the mask’s unmoving lips had the steady pace of a reading performed hundreds of times, words known so well to the priest that he could speak them with perfect recall.

  “It is this selfsame power, turned against creation, turned against my friend, that can destroy his body with my hand, reduce his spirit with my hate, separate his presence from my home.” The static aspect bobbed as Bennek nodded to himself. “To live without Oralius, lighting our way to the source, connecting us to the mystery, is to live without the tendrils of love.” He made a gesture across his face. “Let the Way guide these souls to the place of their birth, and know her touch and her friendship.” After a long moment, Bennek bowed to the ship and let the mask fall into his waiting hands.

  And this is the Oralian Way? Dukat asked himself. Is this all that they are, speakers of chants and rituals? He studied Bennek and could not help but wonder why Central Command was so set against these religious throwbacks. If this boy was an example of them, then they were nothing to be concerned about. Dukat found it hard to reconcile the man who stood before him with the stories he had been taught in the academy, of Cardassia’s harsh prehistory beneath the twin hammers of religious oppression and savage climate change. Was this open-faced cleric really the last remnant of a creed that had pushed his people to the brink of extinction? Dukat was almost amused by the idea. He studied the youth’s skinny neck and the ridges of cartilage there, far thinner than Dukat’s, without the muscles and ropelike strength born from hard training in the officer corps. He knew with utter certainty he could crush Bennek’s life from him in a heartbeat.

  The priest returned his precious mask to its bag, utterly unaware of Dukat’s train of thought. “You have never seen a recitation before?”

  “It was quite…diverting.”

  For the first time, Dukat saw something like intelligence behind the cleric’s eyes. “I fear you may be patronizing me, Dalin.”

  “A fool is condescending to som
ething he does not understand. I belittle only those whom I know to deserve it.”

  “And what do you know of the Oralian Way?”

  Dukat folded his arms, countering the question with one of his own. “What was the purpose of that ritual? Do you think the Bajorans will thank you for it? Perhaps they may even be angered by your actions, if their dogma calls for some other pattern of behavior.” He nodded to the bodies. “If this were a Bajoran ship and those were Cardassian dead, you would be dishonoring the deceased by speaking over their remains.”

  “Oralius sees only life,” Bennek insisted. “Where it came from has no bearing on that fact. Oralius exists above us all. Those who find the path are welcome to walk it, regardless of their origin.”

  “That’s no answer,” Dukat replied. “Come, Bennek, I ask you. What value is there to what you have just done? What good are your words, your ‘Way,’ to these alien dead?” He was goading the youth now, interested in seeing what kind of reaction he would engender.

  And there in Bennek’s gaze was a flash of anger, a hardening of the jaw. “They are a doorway to the truth, Dalin Dukat. A manner in which we may all better ourselves and seek the common good. The words of Oralius, of the Way, they are a catalyst for the evolution of the living soul!”

  At once Dukat saw the passion behind the words. Such a bearing he had often seen before, on the faces of his own men as they went into battle, in the eyes of the heartless tools of the Obsidian Order as they went about their grisly business; and there, in Bennek, was his answer. That’s why Central Command wants these people eradicated. It is their belief that makes them strong. And belief in anything other than the supremacy of the Cardassian Union was not something the masters of Dukat’s world would tolerate.

  “I see,” he said carefully.

  “Do you?” Bennek said tightly. “I wonder.”

  Dukat raised an eyebrow at the temerity in the priest’s tone; but any rejoinder he might have given was forgotten as Kornaire’s shipboard communications channel chimed into life.