Star Trek: Deep Space Nine®: These Haunted Seas, page 25
In an unsystematic, even a chaotic, manner, the children gathered up the mats, blankets, and pillows, and carried them over to the open cabinet. There, they dumped their cargo into a pile. One of the adults—the human; the other was Bajoran—thanked them, picking up the material and placing it onto the empty shelves in the cabinet. Despite the lack of ceremony, the actions seemed ritualistic to Taran’atar, though he could not fathom their meaning.
After the children had completed their task, they returned to the center of the room, where they sat down on the floor. Near the middle of the three windows, the adult Bajoran thanked the children for cleaning up, then asked them if they wanted to look at some animals. The children sent up a clamor, some of their words indecipherable, but they identified the Bajoran man as Gavi. From the table by the window, Gavi picked up a group of placards, each a third of a meter by half a meter in dimension. Then he crouched down, setting the placards on his thighs.
“Okay,” he said, “what animal is—” He raised the top placard and displayed it for the children. “—this?” Taran’atar at once recognized the pictured beast, a brown-haired, four-legged pack animal native to Bajor called a pylchyk. The children all yelled their own responses, most of which were correct. Gavi said, “That’s right. This is a pylchyk,” apparently ignoring the children who had called out the wrong answer, or given no answer at all. “This animal lives on Bajor, and the people there use it to carry supplies and to tend their fields.” Gavi’s tone of voice, and the manner in which he pronounced his words, seemed very strange, almost as though he believed the children incapable of hearing or understanding him. Taran’atar wondered if these might be defective children. He knew that defective Jem’Hadar were occasionally bred; when that happened, they were simply destroyed.
Gavi looked over at one of the children, a small human girl, and said, “Can you tell me the name of this animal, Claudia?” The girl, who had not properly identified the animal the first time, stared back at him without saying anything. “This is a…” He waited for the girl to say the name of the animal, but she said nothing. “Come on, Claudia, I know you can do it. This is a pyl…a pyl…”
“Pylchyk,” the girl erupted, and all of the children cheered.
Taran’atar watched as Gavi went through all of the placards, showing them to the children and then asking questions and talking about the animals on them. Taran’atar found himself fascinated by the process, despite—or perhaps because of—his lack of understanding about the purpose of the exercise. And Gavi even presented pictures of a few animals—including treni cats and cotton-tailed jebrets, both supposedly native to Ferenginar—of which Taran’atar had absolutely no knowledge.
After Gavi had shown all of the placards, he asked the children who among them wanted to draw. The group made loud noises in response, several of the children putting their arms up in the air as though attempting to call attention to themselves. Gavi then asked what they should draw today, and again the children responded, although Taran’atar could not tell if all of the responses actually answered the question. Gavi held up his hands, palms out, and quieted the children by saying, “Wait, wait, one at a time.” Then he pointed to the child closest to him, a young girl who looked essentially human, but with some vague Bajoran characteristics. “What would you like to draw today, Mireh?” he asked her.
“I want to draw the wormhose,” she said.
Gavi smiled at the girl, leaned in, and poked her in her midsection. “Okay, Mireh. We can do that. But it’s not called a ‘wormhose.’”
The girl laughed—at least, Taran’atar thought it was laughter, though it could have been some other sort of spasm. “It’s not?” she said.
“No,” Gavi told her, and then he addressed all the children. “Who knows what it’s called?” he asked. A number of the children pushed their arms straight up into the air again, and two of them yelled, “The wormhole!”
“That’s right,” Gavi said. “The wormhole.” He leaned back in to the girl. “Can you say that, Mireh? Can you say wormhole?”
The girl looked at him, crossed her arms in front of her, and said, very definitively, “Yes.”
“Well, okay,” Gavi said, laughing. He stood up and said, “So let’s draw.” The children stood up and headed for the little chairs around the tables at the sides of the room. Gavi joined the human man, and the two moved across the room to the other cabinet, from which they extracted large pieces of white paper and what appeared to be colorful drawing implements.
Something bumped into Taran’atar’s leg. He looked down, just in time to see himself finish shimmering back into visibility. A human boy stood beside him, apparently having wandered while making his way to one of the tables. A sense of shock filled Taran’atar at even having been approached without realizing it. And for this boy, this little human, to have penetrated his concentration and concealment…he felt humiliated.
“Look at the alligator,” the boy said, staring up into Taran’atar’s face. Unlike the Ferengi aboard Defiant, this being displayed no fear of him. He gazed up at Taran’atar with a smile, then raised his arms. “Up,” the boy said.
The human man yelled—“Hey, get away from him!”—and then Gavi gasped. Taran’atar looked up to see the two men glaring at him. Gavi walked slowly forward, his arms outstretched, palms out, as though trying somehow to ward off Taran’atar. “Don’t do anything,” he said, and Taran’atar wondered what he thought Taran’atar might do. “They’re only children,” he added.
As Gavi neared, Taran’atar looked past him at the other man, and saw an expression of fear and anger on his face. It occurred to him that perhaps these men had also encountered Jem’Hadar in the past, as the Ferengi had, and perhaps they had been wounded by them as well. The children, though—Taran’atar saw that most of the children were peering at him and smiling; some looked surprised, and some looked curious, but none of them appeared scared. Interesting, Taran’atar thought, though he was unsure of the import of what he had noticed.
Gavi stopped two paces from Taran’atar. Still moving slowly, he bent down and reached out for the boy. His fingers closed around a sleeve of the boy’s shirt, but the boy pulled his arm away, his eyes never leaving Taran’atar. Gavi, with an obvious sense of desperation, lunged forward, snatched the boy by the shoulder, and reeled him into his arms. The boy said, “No,” loudly, but Gavi told him to be quiet in a very stern tone of voice, and the boy quieted.
“Take him, Joshua,” Gavi said, staring at Taran’atar’s face, but clearly not speaking to him. The other man stepped forward and gathered the boy up, then moved back toward the windows again. Gavi asked, “What do you want?”
Taran’atar held Gavi’s gaze for several seconds before he said anything. The Bajoran stood slightly crouched, his muscles tensed, his attention focused, and Taran’atar perceived that he would stand his ground if Taran’atar charged. After three months on the space station, this was perhaps the most interesting thing Taran’atar had learned.
“Only to observe,” he said at last.
Gavi’s expression did not change, although Taran’atar sensed an alteration in his stance. A moment ago, he had been poised to fight, but now he had relaxed somewhat, evidently trusting Taran’atar’s words.
A fool, Taran’atar thought. He could be on the man before he had a chance to scream, snapping his neck where he stood. This time, Taran’atar did not correct himself about judging the beings here; this was simple truth.
“I think,” Gavi said, “I think you should leave.”
Taran’atar nodded. “Yes.” He took two quick paces to the doors, which opened before him. He stopped for a moment, still curious about all that had gone on here, not so much with respect to the two men, but with the children. Taran’atar turned and looked back into the room, at the boy who had bumped into him.
The boy looked back at him for a moment, then held out his arms in Taran’atar’s direction, and said, “Alligator.”
Taran’atar whirled and left, more confused now than ever about life in the Alpha Quadrant.
23
Vaughn was angry.
Clad in full dress uniform, he stood in an area that the Vahni called the Remembrance Garden. The word remembrance induced just that for Vaughn right now, bringing to mind the lovely picture of the city that Ventu had thoughtfully presented to him. Both the gift and the giver had been lost in the collapse of the tower, and as Vaughn stood amid the enormous congregation of Vahni assembled in the garden, he craved vengeance: for Ventu, for the more than three thousand Vahni who had died in the quakes and aboard their interplanetary ships, and for Ensign Roness. But vengeance, Vaughn knew, always carried with it a steep price, and in the end it paid for nothing. Short of that, the need for justice beckoned, though like so many things—beauty, truth, duty—the notion of what constituted just actions varied with perspective.
At one end of the garden—an area in the city’s largest park that could easily have accommodated Defiant for landing—a group of Vahni marched solemnly up onto a proscenium. The lack of ordered sounds, disturbing to Vaughn even before the tragedy, he now found almost unbearable. The shifting mass of bodies in the garden made a noise like a collective death rattle. For comfort, he clung to the sounds of the crew, sad though they were; more than half of the ship’s complement had accompanied him to the ceremony, and all had wanted to attend. The memorial had lasted nearly two hours now, and as the crew had listened via their translators to the sentiments of the several Vahni officiating, tears had flowed. Sam Bowers had been particularly hard hit by the loss of Gerda Roness, though Nog, T’rb, Kaitlin Merimark, and Jeanette Chao had also been close friends of the young ensign. Dr. Bashir had also seemed very moved during the Vahni tributes, though Vaughn suspected that the doctor’s emotions were further beset by his concern for Dax; besides her own harrowing experience in the shuttle, she now faced dealing for the first time with losing a person under her command.
The Vahni on the stage had arranged themselves in rows atop a tiered platform, and one of them stepped forward from the center of the lowest row. Two large displays, one on either side of the stage, ensured that all in the crowd could view the proceedings. “My [untranslatable] Vahni Vahltupali, and our honored friends from the United Group of Planets,” the woman conveyed, “as we conclude our observance, we would like to share our grief through a rite of [untranslatable].” Low tones stood in for the missing words.
Around the garden, the Vahni all bowed, and Vaughn saw the ocular organs ringing the heads of those nearest him squint closed. Then a change passed through the many-hued assemblage, the flesh of all the Vahni drifting from their natural colors to an indigo so dark that it was almost black. No sounds came through the translators. Vaughn bowed his head and closed his eyes, wondering what human analogue there might be for this communal experience. Were the Vahni crying? Chanting? Was this a moment of silence—a moment of darkness?
Right now, darkness suited Vaughn. The irony of what had happened here, with respect to his own life, had not eluded him. He had recently climbed from a life of secrecy, struggle, and death, into one of openness, cooperation, and exploration. And here, less than two weeks into his first mission of discovery, the darkness had risen up behind and overtaken him. But Vaughn would not lament his own fate at a time when the futures of so many had been ripped away, and the futures of those left behind had been irrevocably damaged. What he would do was what he had done for decades: he would fight.
Already, the easiest battle had been won. In the three days since the destruction of the Vahni moon and the quakes on their world, the crew of Defiant had obliterated the potentially deadly fragments of a planet in the Vahni system that had also been destroyed. While Sagan’s extensive damages would require a week to ten days more to repair, Chaffee’s plasma leak had quickly been patched. The mended shuttle and Defiant had tracked down those planetary fragments that might have, in time, headed toward the Vahni world and caused great devastation.
The tougher battle, though, still needed to be fought.
This time, the enemy would likely not be as easy to detect or vanquish as rocks floating through space. Since the Vahni moon had shattered, Ensign ch’Thane and his team of scientists had been able to determine that a strange, unidentifiable energy pulse had passed through the system at warp speed. The velocity implied an artificial cause, but although the crew had been unable to ascertain the exact nature of the pulse, all observable indications actually indicated a natural source.
Vaughn heard a rustling sound, and he raised his head and opened his eyes to find that all of the Vahni had reverted back to their regular colors. The Vahni at the front of the stage stood up fully and again addressed the crowd. “Now, please join us as we [untranslatable].” Without turning—what need did they have to turn, Vaughn realized, when their eyes encircled their heads?—she raised her tentacles high, paused, and then brought them down dramatically. The flesh of the group on the stage erupted in a panoply of colors and forms, the individuals synchronized for the first few seconds, and then diverging in an amazing visual display. The translators captured the initial seconds—“We look to the sky and see”—and then delivered only the low tone that signaled uninterpretable communication. All around the crew, Vaughn saw, the Vahni in the crowd began changing the colors and shapes on their flesh in time with the changes occurring on the Vahni onstage.
They’re singing, Vaughn thought in wonder. His sense of appreciation for this extraordinary species only served to redouble his resolve to prevent the destructive force of the pulse from ever being visited upon them again. According to the Vahni, such events had been taking place on their world for more than two centuries. They had always occurred without warning and in no discernible pattern, except that the length of the intervals between them had decreased each time, while the level of destructive power had increased. Two hundred years ago, the quakes had happened decades apart, causing little damage; the latest event had followed the previous one by less than a year, and obviously had been the most powerful they had ever experienced. Worse than that, Ensign ch’Thane’s simulations revealed that, had the Vahni moon not been in the path of the pulse, effectively eclipsing it and preventing most of it from ever reaching the planet—and Defiant—the surface of the Vahni world would have been devastated, and many of its inhabitants lost. Vaughn knew that if another pulse passed through the system, with no moon to provide even the possibility of escaping its full force, the Vahni civilization would likely be wiped out.
And Vaughn would not allow that to happen.
24
The door chime signaled, and Kira looked up from a padd to see Admiral Akaar outside her office. “Come in,” she said flatly. Although pleased that the meeting she had requested three days ago would at last take place, she did not feel particularly happy about having to deal again with the laconic and disobliging admiral. This time, though, she vowed that she would wrest some answers from him.
The doors parted, momentarily allowing the bustle of ops to enter along with Akaar, then shut behind him with a click, isolating her office once more. She put the padd down and opened a hand in the direction of the chairs in front of her desk. “Please, Admiral,” she said. “Have a seat.” She walked out from behind her desk and over to the replicator. “Can I get you something to eat or drink?”
As he sat, Kira noticed a padd in his left hand, its display dark. “No, thank you,” he said, and she thought she detected a tinge of annoyance in his voice.
Of course, Kira thought. This is my office, my territory, and I’m in control. Even something as simple as offering food demonstrated that, she knew. It had not escaped her notice that for her first meeting with Akaar, he had insisted that they use a conference room aboard Mjolnir. Since then, he had been to her office one other time, to bid farewell to Commander Vaughn. Her only other contact with him had been via companel, when she had attempted to learn more about his—and Councillor zh’Thane’s—continued presence on the station, which was when she had requested this meeting.
Kira had not intended to get anything for herself from the replicator, but now she decided otherwise, wanting to maintain every small measure of control over this meeting that she could. She turned away from the admiral and ordered a raktajino. The replicator brightened and hummed, a mug materializing on the shelf in a haze of illumination. The hearty scent of the steaming liquid immediately floated through the room. Kira wrapped an index finger through the handle of the mug and lifted it to her lips. She imagined Akaar seething behind her at her deliberate movements, but when she turned and walked back to her desk, his face remained impassive. He had put his padd on the edge of her desk, she saw.
“So—” Kira said as she set the mug down and sat in her chair, but the admiral interrupted almost before the word had even left her mouth.
“Colonel,” he said, “it has come to my attention that, in the past two years, the Federation has provided Bajor with a number of large-and mid-scale industrial replicators. Would you please detail for me the uses to which they have been put?” As had happened during their first meeting, Kira found the admiral’s inquiry more like an order.
“Well,” she finally said, “I’m aware that two of the large replicators are in use at the Bajoran shipyards.” And as quickly as that, she realized, Akaar had seized control of the meeting. She peered down at the cool, reflective surface of her desk, at the inverted image of the admiral between her padd and the mug of raktajino, and she thought it fortunate that no weapon happened to be lying within arm’s reach at the moment, or she might not have been able to resist the temptation to use it.
“Two?” he asked. “Do you believe that is a sufficient number to support military readiness for Bajor?”
Kira felt as though a warning shot had been fired across her bow. These questions followed in the same vein as those Akaar had asked when he had first arrived at the station, implicitly impugning the Bajoran government, and perhaps even the Bajoran people. “Forgive me, Admiral,” she said, striving to retain some measure of diplomacy, “but isn’t this information available to you from sources other than me?” She resisted her inclination to further suggest that Akaar had already acquired the data he now purported to seek from her.
