CHAPTER
        1

THIRTY YEARS AGO

THE BULLETIN-TEA in Legate Migar's headquarters
droned on and on, stretching into its fourth tedious
hour. Sister Winn and the other Bajoran ser-
vantsmShimpur Arian, who served Gul Feesat;
Lisea Nerys and Alahata-something, who were
brought down to the planet by Gul Dukat; and the
six servants of Legate Migar who cooked and
served the food (one was a true collaborator, Winn
was certain)--were at last allowed to eat their own
lunch in the kitchen... after they had waited
upon the high-ranking Cardassians, served,
fetched, and cleared away.
    Alone with themselves now, the Bajorans let
their bitterness erupt; like a baby spitting up,
thought Sister Winn, surprising herself with her
own cynicism. Alahata spoke of his anger at servi-
tude. He was nearly as young as Gul Ragat, but he
had grown up in a village not far from Winn's,
Riesentaka on the Heavenly Blue River. Winn tried
to calm him with homilies from the Prophets, but
the boy would not be placated. He'll learn, she
thought in sadness, noting the interest of two of
Legate Migar's valets, one of whom was probably
the snitch.
    The others spoke of domestic issues. Nerys was
worried about the rains, which had come too soon
for her father's farm. But even in the simplest
conversation, Sister Winn could practically cut the
tension with a knifetif Bajorans in service to a gul
had been allowed knives. They each knew who and
what they were, and how precarious was the thread
by which their world dangled.
    The Bajorans fell silent as Winn blessed the
food, and they ate; the food was too rich for the
priestess, not the simple, country fare she had
grown up with, but the elaborate, spicy meats the
Cardassians preferred among Bajoran foodsfood
from the Northern Islands, Winn said to herseld
Her mother had come from there, but her father
had forbidden spice in the family meals, as he had
a weak stomach.
    The kitchen was gigantic but cozy. Legate Migar
had not built his own house, but taken over the
house of the original governor of the subcontinent,
Riasha Lyas. Riasha had disappeared thirteen
years ago and was rumored to have been sent up to
Terok Nor,' but no one who returned from the
station orbiting Bajor had ever reported seeing
him. A stained-glass window facing northwest
allowed in much natural light in the afternoon, but
Winn could not see outside. A smaller, plain win-
dow set above the stained glass afforded an abbre-
viated view... assuming the priestess were to
stand on a chair. The men used the plain window
to look out for arriving VIPs.
    Red and blue shadows crossed the kitchen table
as Winn pushed her food from one side of the plate
to the other, hoping to fool the cook into thinking
she had enjoyed the meal. She answered automati-
cally whenever one of the other Bajorans would ask
her religious advice, or beg for a prayer or benedic-
tion for the weather, the crops, a sick cousin, the
soul of Bajor. But she smiled and turned her face
full on whoever was speaking, seeming to give
undivided attention; inside, Sister Winn was think-
ing dark thoughts and wondering how she could
pull off her mission without ending up the Head-
less Sister of Shakarri.
    At last, the table was cleared by the probable
collaborator, whose name she learned at last:
Revosa Anan. She filed away the information for
future use. Sister Winn rose, gave a final blessing
and thanks to the Prophets, and bowed her way out
of the kitchen, saying she had to return and see if
her master needed anything.
 She stepped lightly toward the conference room
but paused in the courtyard; no one appeared to be
watching; the house felt heavy, sleepy after the
midday meal. Bowing her head and walking with a
firm step, Sister Winn turned to the right and cut
across the short angle of the courtyard toward a
small, forbidden door she had observed from its
other side when she first arrived at Legate Migar's
palace. The door opened to her firm touch; she
entered, smiling and readying an obsequious apol-
ogy if she ran into an overly dutiful Cardassian
guard. Not that an apology would matter. If the
door turned out to lead where she prayed it did,
and she were caught inside, then the next stop
would surely be Terok Nor... and GUl Dukat's
tender ministry.
    Sister Winn entered the small antechamber that
led to the formal reception room, and in the other
direction, to the entrance hall. The walls were done
in bloodwood paneling, very dark, and the only
light came from two "electric candle" light fixtures
at opposite sides of the outer wall. Between the
fixtures was another door, this one soundproofed
and sealed with a push-button combination lock
popular among the erstwhile Bajoran military mis-
sions... like the house of Governor Riasha.
    Swallowing hard, the priestess approached the
lock. Her steps faltered. If she were caught in the
next few seconds, no amount of bowing and scrap-
ing could save her from interrogation, followed by
execution--and disgrace and exile for Gul Ragat;
but quite frankly, Sister Winn could not have cared
less what happened to her Cardassian "master."
His own conscience was in the hands of the Proph-
ets; either he would see and save himself, or he
would remain in ignorance and be forever barred
from their embrace.
    The strangest thing about Cardassians, Winn
pondered, is how thoroughly they believe their rules
of conquered and conquerer.t They had won the
battle; they had won the war. Simple honor among
soldiers required that the Bajorans accept their
status and work to achieve full recognition as
eventual citizens of the Cardassian Empire.
    It certainly never occurred to Legate Migar to
run around replacing all the locks in his house. It
never penetrated his bony Cardassian skull that
although poor Governor Riasha was probably in
the arms of the Prophets a decade since, and the
officers of the Bajoran Army were all executed or
imprisoned in penal colonies or mines around the
planet and even on Terok Nor, that many of the
governor's former civilian engineers had also
worked in the palace... and some had frequent
occasion to work in the communications room.
And the legate, who had never been any kind of an
engineer, civilian or military, was evidently un-
aware of the disdain with which such people treat
security precautions.
    In particular, Legate Migar had never heard of a
lock having a "back door," used by the engineers if
the military men changed the lock and neglected to
tell the civilian contractors. He had ordered the
combination altered, of course; but he never real-
ized that there was more than one combination.
    Licking her dry lips, Sister Winn took a deep
breath, stepped up to the lock, and punched in the
back-door code she had received from her cell
leader. The lock clicked twice, and the red lights on
the side turned green. Sister Winn pressed firmly
on the door, and it pushed noiselessly open, expos-
ing a dark room whose walls were lined with
communications equipment. In front of the six
chairs were lists of common frequencies, map
displays, and miracle of the Prophets, a current
codebooM
    Please protect me, she begged; then she stepped
into the room, pushing the door nearly shut, and
felt in the heel of her knee boot for the tiny, digital
holocam she had carried for four months, waiting
for just such an opportunity. The bright displays
beckoned, but Sister Winn knew her first goal; she
activated the codebook and began to click through
it, snapping pictures of every screen.
    When Sister Winn finally finished holocamming
the book, a wave of relief flooded her brain. She
wasn't "off the mountain," as her villagers used to
say; she still had to exit without losing the holocam
and get the images to her cell--or some cell, at
least. But at least, even if she got nothing else, her
mission was successful.
  But in a lapse of security that would be incredi-
ble to anyone who hadn't lived with the Cardassi-
ans for years and didn't know the depth of their
disdain for the "lesser races," the communications
room remained unattended for another ten min-
utes. During that time, Winn took holopictures of
every screen and all the frequency settings; she
even dared project different maps on the coder's
viewer and holocammed them as well; though her
mouth was so dry, she was having trouble breath-
ing. If there were a history file, somebody was going
to be awfully suspicious... and if there were secu-
rity viewers, she could be under fatal observation
as she brought up map after map, caught and
convicted by her own hand.
    Then Winn heard what she had expected to hear
minutes earlier: the bootsteps of the Cardassian
guard returning on his rounds. With a lot less
coolness than she would have liked, she rested her
boot on the console and rotated the heel outward
with trembling fingers. She replaced the holocam
and swung the heel shut, hearing it lock into place.
She exited the room just as the guard turned the
corner, but she didn't dare pull the door shut...
the guard would hear the click of the lock and be
alerted.
    He paused when he saw her standing with her
back to the communications room door, staring
with a vacant expression as if she were in a trance.
"Bajoran slave! What are you doing here?" he
demanded.
 Winn turned toward the guard, blinking as if she
had never seen a Cardassian before in her life and
wasn't quite sure whether it was alive or not. "Sir?"
she asked, striving for an intelligence level some-
where above imbecile but well below normal.
    The Cardassian was only too happy to oblige,
seeing her as a conquered "animal." He spoke very
slowly, enunciating every word in Bajoran (but
with a barbarous accent). "Whymare--you--
here?"
    Winn brightened. "Oh! Can you help me? My
master needs the activity reports on Resistance
action for the last month. He's very important."
    "Activity reports? I don't know anything about
that! I have received no word. Who is your master?"
He paused, and Winn stared at him uncomprehend-
ingly. "Who--ismyour--MASTER?" shouted the
impatient guard, raising his clenched fist.
    The priestess cringed away from the man, bury-
ing her face in her hands and falling heavily to her
knees. "Please don't hurt me! My master is Gul
Ragat, subgovernor of Shakarri and Belshakarri!
He is here to meet with their lordships Legate
Migar and Gul Dukat for the bulletin-tea."
    The guard, wearing the uniform of a sergeant
major and carrying only a hand disruptor at his
belt, paused to ponder the new information. He
was evidently aware of the bulletin-teas, but didn't
seem to know for sure which guls were on the
invitation list. "Well," he snarled, "where are you
supposed to find this report? You're not allowed to
be in this part of the building!"

 "Please, sir! My master told me to report to the
 duty officer of the communications room."
    The sergeant's gaze strayed immediately to the
door, still open a crack. His eyes widened.
"What--!" Rushing to the door, he threw it open,
seeing only the dark room with a few illuminated
controls and the main viewer showing the Cardas-
sian insignia, the neutral "background" image
when nothing else was displayed.
    A moment later, he returned to the hall, staring
down at Sister Winn with a new light of crafty
intelligence. "Did you enter this room, Bajoran?"
    "I wanted to," she blurted out, "but I was too
afraid! I don't know what the report looks like,
and--and I was afraid to go poking around where I
wasn't--I didn't know what to do, so I just waited
until..." Winn began to sniffle, making hemelf
cry real tears and sneeze; it was a talent she had
learned as a child, always good for eliciting sympa-
thy from sympathetic adults. It didn't work quite
as well against Cardassian conquerers; but still, it
was the only weapon she had. Her knees hurt,
which helped the deception.
    "Look, stop that sniveling! Did--youmenter--
this--roorn? Just answer the question!"
Winn shook her head vigorously. "No, sir, but
I . . 9,


 "Yes?"
 "I didn't, but I..."
    "You WHAT?" The sergeant major was rapidly
losing what tiny bit of patience he had.
    "I--I--I touched the door/Oh, Prophets pre-
serve me, I pushed it, and it swung a little, and I--I
looked inside for a minute/"
    The guard sighed and seemed to slump a little.
He looked away, starting to be embarassed by the
sight of a but still somewhat pretty, young woman
sobbing hysterically on the floor. The priestess
peeked through her fingers and saw the man chew-
ing his lip and staring at the door, probably wonder-
ing whether he's going to get in trouble over the open
door, she understood.
    "Stupid civilian com-techies," he muttered in
Cardassian. Then he looked back over his own
shoulder, reached out, and pulled the door shut
tightly. "Look, you couldn't get the report thing
you wanted because there wasn't anyone in the
room. You got that? Do--you--underSTAND?"
The sergeant major nodded his head affirmatively.
    "There wasn't... I couldn't get the report?"
Winn put on a look of bewilderment.
    "Therewwasn'tmanyone--here! Oh, for good-
ness sake, it's sommeasy!" He used an obscenity
Winn had heard before, but only from lower-class
Cardassian soldiers.
    "Oh! I couldn't get the report because... be-
cause..." Winn paused, tapping her forehead as if
thinking through the scheme. "... there was no-
body in the room!"
    "Yes!" he exclaimed, pushing her back against
the wall. "Open your foolish Bajoran ears next
time! And"--he leaned close to snarl directly in
the priestess's facem"don't you ever push open a
door like that again! Never/You understand me?"
For emphasis, he put his metal-shod boot on Sister
Winn's back; she made no move to push it away,
merely drawing back in terror, and the sergeant
major didn't put his weight on it, either.
"Yes, sir! I understand, sir! Thank you, sir!"
He let her up but made no move to help; Winn
rose shakily to her feet, bowed and cringed in the
most servile manner she could manage, and backed
awayinstill bowing and thanking him for correct-
ing her. As soon as she rounded the same corner
whence the guard had come, she turned and bus-
tied as fast as she could manage to the "allowed"
section of Legate Migar's house. She didn't meet
any more Cardassian guards along the way; this
deep inside the pale, the gul had no fear of Resist-
ance action, and he seemed to take an austere pride
in living virtually alone with his family and only a
skeleton force of soldiers. She had already returned
to the conference room, where her master was
desperately trying not to nod off during an intermi-
nable supply report by Gul Feesat before the reality
struck her full, starting her trembling all over
again: I did it/she screamed inside her mind; I
actually did it and got away/
    But another voice answered back, the voice she
usually used to correct her behavior when she
violated the word or spirit of the Prophets: You've
not gotten away yet, child; or haven't you noticed
whose house this still is?

    She couldn't help smiling, praying that the worst
was over. But her inner nag warned that the worst
had just begun. Sister Winn was now officially
"hangable."

    The young Gul Ragat was still brooding over his
possible elevation, and annoyed that nobody men-
tioned anything at the bulletin-tea about it: Legate
Migar and Gul Dukat simply spoke to him as they
normally did, with no special winks or nods, noth-
ing to indicate it was other than ordinary that
Ragat be invited to such an unordinary meeting.
He complained--or hinted at his irritation, actu-
ally-to Sister Winn in a long soliloquy in the
garden that evening, while Winn did her best to
appear sympathetic and hopeful.
    Her own agenda was somewhat different. "My
Lord," she said soothingly, "I'm sure you were
right in your original thought, that you are being
groomed for the higher grant of honors. Surely you
see the hand of the Prophets in this?"
    "The Prophets?" Gul Ragat blinked at Winn. "I
don't quite follow. How do the Bajoran Prophets
figure into my elevation?"
    "They know what a compassionate man m'lord
is; they must know that of all the Cardassians, Gul
Ragat is most concerned about the physical and
spiritual ills of the Bajoran people! Surely they have
brought your qualities to the attention of Legate
Migar for a reason."
  Ragat paced agitatedly. "A reason? Because I
 will be a more compassionate master than, say, Gul
 Dukat, with his iron fist and heart of stone?"
    "Oh, you most certainly would be." She won-
dered whether he would catch the significance of
the reference to the spiritual ills; Winn had heard
that somewhere in the Cardassian Empire, scat-
tered and powerless but there, was a group of
Cardassians who argued bitterly against the occu-
pation of Bajor, and indeed all the other planets
forcibly "civilized" into the empire. She knew Gul
Ragat was not a member of that outlawed group--
he certainly wouldn't be given even a subgovernor-
ship if there were the slightest hint in his back-
ground check!--but if Winn had heard of them,
then Ragat had heard of them... and she would
not give up hope that the Prophets would in time
lead those Cardassians with even the slightest hint
of decency to the moral position.
    "Yes," he mused, "I suppose I could do much to
alleviate the needless suffering of your people, were
I to be granted a higher position in the administra-
tion of Bajor."
    "My Lord," said Sister Winn, bowing her head
and looking intently at her feet, "may I speak
frankly?"
    "Of course, of course! I allow all my servants the
freedom to say what is truly on their minds, in
private."
    "My Lord, if your people continue along this
path they have chosen, there will certainly be
bloody resistance against Cardassian rule. My Ba-
jorans are a proud people, and we do not take well
to the leash."
    "Winn, you are a priestess! A spiritual leader!
How can you threaten such a terrible thing?"
    You young fool.t "My Lord, I do not threaten; I
predict. I know my own. And I know that a few
hundred thousand Cardassian troops will not hold
against an entire planetful of bitter, determined
freedom fighters. I shudder at the images my mind
conjures, fantastic scenarios of mass destruction.
But I cannot turn my face from the inevitable."
    Gul Ragat turned his back to Sister Winn. "I
cannot listen to a prediction of such betrayal!
Sister, I'm surprised at you, giving credence to the
juvenile boasting of that Resistance rabble. You
know what would happen: those who revolted
would be wiped out, as well as their family and
probably their friends, even if innocent."
     The garden was dark and cool, but Winn saw it
 full of menace and unfriendly, grasping tree
 branches--though it was the same, friendly garden
 as in the days of Riasha Lyas. Evil had escaped
 from the Cardassian garrison inside the house and
 permeated the trimmed paths and hedgerows of
 the pastoral arboretum. "And it would be such a
 waste of resources," sighed the young subgovernor,
 almost to himself.
     Winn was glad the garden was dark, so Gul
 Ragat could not see her rolling her eyes in disgust.
 She quickly and silently apologized to Those who
 did see, because They saw all. Then her young
 "master" made one more offhand remark that
 electrified the priestess: "Perhaps it would secure
 my advancement and serve the true interests of
 your people both," he mused, "if I were to bring in
 a few of these rabble-rousers myself... the ones
 who incite peaceful Bajorans to bloody revolution
 and cause us no end of trouble."
    There was nothing, nothing that Sister Winn
wanted more desperately than to get away from
Legate Migar's palace and relocate somewhere she
could pass along the priceless content of her holo-
cam. But Bajoran servants--slaves, she corrected
herself unemotionally--simply did not travel
alone without travel documents issued by the Car-
dassian Planetary Authority... not even priest-
esses on a religious mission. There were only two
ways for Winn to remove herself from Migar's
estate without exciting attention: get her gul or
another, higher-ranking gul to send her on an
errand; or else, get Gul Ragat to travel with her.
    The first was virtually impossible; anything im-
portant enough to go get was by and large too
important for a Cardassian to leave to a Bajoran.
The invaders had skimmers; they had shuttles; they
had starships with beaming facilities. If Gul Ragat
really wanted something physical, an artisan's vase
or a barrel of sunberry wine, he would either
transport it to him or transport himself to it; he
would not send Sister Winn.
    But ff Ragat wanted to personally capture some
antiCardassian Resistance leaders--especially with-
out alerting other guls who might want to elbow
into the credit--he was pretty much restricted to
moving by skimmer, as he came... and moving
his entire entourage in the direction of home.
Anything less, or moving in any other direction,
and the Planetary Authority would demand his
travel documents! Since he didn't have enough
skimmers for everyone, he and his household
would ride, while everyone else, Cardassian honor
guard and Bajoran domestics, would go as they had
come, on foot, as befit their station as a subject
race.
    It's amazing how many opportunities a lengthy
walk presents, thought the priestess craftily. But
before she could plan an escape or rendezvous, she
first had to start the wheels in motion: Winn had to
persuade Gul Ragat to take the trip in the first
place.
    "My Lord, I..." Winn trailed off, then tried to
look as though she had said nothing.
    "Yes, Sister Winn?" Gul Ragat waited; Winn
could feel the tension in his body, and she realized
she had struck just the right tone: I've got a terrible
secret, but I don't know whether I can tell you!
    She fidgeted. She opened her mouth and sucked
in a breath, then let it out without saying anything.
"You can tell me anything when we're alone,"
soothed the gul, deliberately standing far enough
away from her that she wouldn't feel crowded.
Again, the priestess almost spoke and didn't.
  Finally, she pretended to come to a resolution.

 She sat slowly on the bench, despite the fact that
 her gul was standing... a terrible breach of proto-
 col! "My Lord, I know of a rise that's planned for a
 few days from now--but I cannot tell, I cannot!
 Not even to secure your advancement."
    Now, Gul Ragat couldn't contain himself. He
spun to face her and asked breathlessly, "You do?
You know? You have? You will?"
    "I cannot violate the trust of my people, even if
it means your grant of honors, Gul Ragat. I just
can't!" Come along, chiM. . . convince met
    The gul stepped back, seeming to stop himself by
brute force from grabbing Winn's shoulders and
shaking her vigorously. "But, Winn--Sister
Winn... you wouldn't be doing it for me; you'd
be doing it to help your own people!"
    "My own people? How do you mean?" She
allowed a note of hope to creep into her voice.
    "Your own people, whom you would save from
the brutal retaliation sure to be inflicted upon them
by the harsh and stern military leaders of the
Empire! Imagine what will happen to the Bajorans
living in that province or prefecture if you allow
this insane rebellion to proceed!"
Sister Winn gasped. "I never thought of that."
"You must! You must think on it, and you will
see that the only thing to do is to tell me now,
quickly, so I can stop the troubles from ever
starting by arresting the callous, uncaring leaders."
  "Must I?"
 Ragat shook his head sadly, sorrowing with her,
not at her. "There is no other honorable course for
you to take. You are a leader, the voice of the
Prophets. You must look after your--your flock;
yes, that's the word. They look to you for guidance!
Exercise your moral leadership to lead them to
acceptance of the inevitable, and think of how
much happier they will be."
    Sister Winn suddenly jumped to her feet, pre-
tending guilt at suddenly realizing she was sitting
while her "master" stood. "Forgive me, My Lord!"
she cried; Gul Ragat waved away the infraction,
intent upon the information she might give him.
Winn felt like a fisherman reeling in her catch.
    The problem, Winn realized nervously, was that
she actually had the information to give. In her
position as spiritual leader for all the Bajorans who
lived at Ragat's compound and many in the village
of Vir-Hakar, in the county of Belshakarri, she
always heard rumors of Resistance activity... of-
ten well-founded. She knew, for instance, that
there was a planned meeting in precious Riis, a
meeting that would probably lead to action against
the spaceport ten kilometers away--a facility now
used by the Cardassians to transport high-ranking
members of the military and important visitors to
and from the planet. A bombing was likely, and a
full-scale assault was not out of the question.
    It was the only such action that she knew of; if
she wanted to give Ragat something he could
substantiatemand it was clear he would check it
out through his own intelligence network--there
was nothing else for her to give. The attack could
probably be postponed without much danger, if she
got word to the Resistance in time! If not... then
Sister Winn would have just committed a real,
honest-to-Prophets act of collaboration which
would surely result in the violent deaths of many
Bajoran freedom fighters. It was a terrible choice!
    But really, she thought anxiously, I have no
choice. With the information digitized in her holo-
cam, such blows could be struck as to completely
eclipse the strike at the Riis Spaceport, called the
Palm of Bajor. If she could get the holocam to her
cell leader; as always, IF!
      "My Lord," she whispered, "I have heard that
there is to be a rising very near to here."  "Yes?"
"Between here and our own home, in fact."
"Yes?" Gul Ragat's excitement was palpable;
Winn fought hard to keep her expression neutral,
her eyes cast respectfully downward, and to sniffle
a bit.
 "It will be in--in Riis. That is what I heard."
 "Riis? On the Shakiristi River?"
 "That is what I heard, M'Lord."
    Now Ragat sat suddenly, wearing a goofy grin
and staring into space... staring at his grant of
honors, thought the priestess bitterly. After a mo-
ment, he remembered himself and grew solemn.
"You have done a noble and brave thing, Sister
Winn. You have saved many of your people from a
terrible fate. The Prophets would be proud of
you... I'm certain of it."
    Oh Prophets, she prayed, please grant me that
same certainty! But the Prophets, as was often the
case, remained as mute as the stones on the issue.

    Once more, Kai Winn woke in the night, the
tendrils of the past wrapped around her. Now, at
least, she knew there was some reason--that the
Prophets were sending her a message, something
that she must, must, be clever enough to grasp.

CHAPTER
        2

"LISTEN UP, away team," said Captain Sisko, stand-
ing before his away team on a dark red bluff
overlooking a shady, indigo valley; Worf came to
attention, awaiting the new orders. A hundred
meters below them, "Mayor-General" Asta-ha and
her commandos--the Terrors of Tiffnaki, the
name suggested by the hereditary mayor's daughter
Tivva-ma--ran the rest of the Tiffnakis through a
heavy set of drills, trying to beat into their posteco-
nomic heads some sense of the danger they were in.
Worf had designed the drills himself, and he was
pleased at how quickly the Natives were learning
how to fight as a unit.
    "All right," asked the captain, "what's it going to
be, then? We cannot reach the main planetary
power stations and destroy them on foot; they're
thousands of kilometers away. We need transpora-
tion, and the Deftant seems to have left orbit. So,
do we try to overwhelm a small patrol by force or
by stealth?"
    Days earlier, the away team had finally left the
natives of Sierra-Bravo to continue training them-
selves, for all the good that would do. Worf had few
doubts what he would find upon his return: ragged,
threadbare, unarmed, frightened, cowering, starv-
ing refugees crouching in the bushes like animals.
But what could he do, stay forever with Asta-ha
and her "Terrors" of Tiffnaki? The captain was
right: it was time the Starfleet team took direct
action against the Cardassians who had invaded
this world and routed themthe inhabitants.
    The handful of Cardassians and their Drek'la
footsoldiers had struck upon the perfect tactic...
The Natives, though not technological themselves,
somehow had access to bucketsful of technological
toys left over from a previous higher civilization.
But everything worked off of broadcast power from
central power plants relayed by local stations. The
Cardassian-led assault teams simply blew up the
relay stations, obliterating all power to a given
region; and all the deadly toys used by the Natives
instantly ceased operation, leaving them utterly
defenseless, stunned, confused, ready to be har-
vested like scything wheat.
    The captain's plan is bold, thought Worf; it is
Klingonlike. No other Starfleet officer would have
dared! Sisko had decided, after much agonizing, to
take his team to the central power plants and knock
them off-line himself, plunging the whole planet
into darkness. The Natives, forced to react to the
loss of power for weeks or months before the
invaders got to them, would be over the shock and
better able to resist conquest.
    The only problem, however, was that the power
plants were thousands of kilometers away... and
the away team was on foot. They would need to
find an enemy camp, somewhere, and liberate a
skimmer to have any chance at all.
    Worf, as usual, was first to express his opinion on
the purely military question of tactics once they
located the Cardassians. "I have nothing against
stealth, Captain; as you know, Kahless himself
often used stealth against a superior enemy--it is
entirely honorable."
    "For once," said Quark, "I totally agree with the
wise commander."
    "However," continued Woff, glaring at the Fer-
engi, "in this case, I do not think we can manage to
steal a skimmer without being detected. We do not
look anything like Cardassians or Drek'la."
    "Oh, I don't know, Worf." The Klingon turned
and immediately fell into a defensive posture: the
speaker was a very mean-looking Cardassian wear-
ing a face mask and the uniform of a gul. Worf
grabbed the Cardassian infiltrator with one hand
while he drew his d'k tahg knife with the other, but
his brain finally caught up with his warrior's body,
and he realized he was about to plunge a knife into
the absent heart of Security Chief Odo.
    "Odo!" he snarled. "You fool, I could have killed
you!"
    "Not unless your d'k tahg can penetrate a centi-
meter of titanium," replied the changeling laconi-
cally, tapping his breastplate.
    "Odo makes a pretty compelling argument, if
you ask me," said Chief O'Brien.
    Taking a deep breath and calming his violent
impulse, Worf decided it was honorable to admit
when one was in error, despite the merriment that
might give to the wretched Ferengi. A glare from
the Klingon following the admission silenced
Quark.
    The captain smiled. "Odo has given us the seeds
of an excellent plan. Now let's see if we can't make
them grow into something tactically usable."

    Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax quickly ran
through a pro forma departure checklist with Jul-
ian Bashif; most of her mind was busy living
anywhere but the present, crammed into a tight
and motion-constricting dry suit, an air tank back-
pack, mask, and flippers within easy reach. The
Nylex gloves made her palms itch, and the rolled
up hood pressed uncomfortably against the back of
her neck. I'll bet Julian is as comfortable in Nylex
as he is in a uniform, she griped inwardly.
    Her mind ranged ahead and behind, worrying
about everything in the quadrant. She worried
about Joson Wabak, the jaygee now in command of
the submerged Defiant; she had issued final orders
for him to follow another suggestion from the
strangely helpful Julian Bashir: the seventeen-
hundred-meter-tall antenna that would poke into
the air.
    Subspace communications between the ship and
the surface had been swallowed up as soon as the
planetary defenses spotted them; but perhaps they
could still transmit along the surface. If not, both
Julian and Jadzia had modified their combadges to
send and receive in the radio frequencies of the
electromagnetic spectrum... just in case. In ei-
ther event, she would probably need line-of-sight
with the raised antenna, unless they could bounce
the radio signal off the cloud cover.
    Jadzia fretted about the hull integrity of the ship,
even though she herself had supervised the con-
tainment field modifications; if the hull began to
buckle, Wabak would have to order them to up-
ship and face Cardassian pounding again. She
nervously wondered how long the runabout hull
would withstand the ocean pressure; she was terri-
fied of the possibility of having to scuba to the
surface, despite two run-throughs in the holodecks
with the good Dr. Bashir. And she still fumed
about her performance in the battle, poor enough
by her own standards that she had relieved herself
of command.
    Get a grip, girl, she commanded herself; your
mind is everywhere but here and now. Julian fin-
ished the departure checklist and segued immedi-
ately into the launch checklist; Jadzia absently
responded.
    She touched all the right touchplates, slooshing
with every flex of her dry suit, and got the engines
spun up to speed; then she said, "Off the checklist,
Julian; let's flood the launch bay."
    She glanced at the doctor--always too cute by
half to attract her; she liked her men rugged and
perhaps a little cruel 1ookingmand both of them
took deep breaths as Jadzia pressed the transmit
touchplate: "Amazon II to Defiant; open the flood-
gates, Joson."
    "Aye, aye, Commander," said the Bajoran jaygee.
Dax heard a loud bang, followed by a prolonged
clanking; she imagined an immense anchor chain
winding up somewhere, pulling open the locks to
let the seawater rush into the bay. Looking out the
front viewscreen, she rotated the fish-eye lens to
show the hastily improvised "floodgate"; a stream
of blue green water shot through the small holes,
kicking up a turquoise froth as it poured across the
deckplates and began to fill up the launch bay.
    "I guess around here," said Julian, tugging at his
own hood, rolled and circling his neck, "the Na-
tives go blue-water rafting." Jadzia debated making
a witty comeback, but decided the doctor's joke
was feeble enough not to warrant response. It's just
his way of warding off anxiety, she told herself.
  Soon, the water was crashing around the runa-
bout's legs, and in a few moments, climbing up
high enough to start filling the viewscreen. After
four minutes of flooding, Joson Wabak said,
"Flooding complete; you're clear to launch. Good
luck, Commander."
    "Don't forget about the giant antenna," said
Dax, "and don't hesitate to take off if you have to.
You can probably leave orbit before the Cardassi-
ans spot you."
    "Come on, Jadzia," said Bashir, "he knows what
to do."
    "And Joson. Listen on both subspace and radio
frequencies for our signal ... we might need you
in a hurry."
"Aye, aye, Commander," said the Bajoran.
"Goodbye, Lieutenant," shouted Dr. Bashit,
killing the corn-link. "Jadzia, are you going to
release the docking clamps? Or are we taking the
Defiant with us?"
    Jadzia Dax sighed and touched the release light.
The ship shuddered and immediately began drift-
ing towards the overhead; though she'd been some-
what expecting it--the ship was essentially an air
bubblerathe rapid movement still took her by
surprise. By the time Dax corrected for the drift
and brought the Amazon II under control, they
were dangerously close to the ceiling.
    "Dax to Wabak; open the launch bay doors." The
doors slid open with a grinding noise, much louder
than normal because the seawater conducted sound
so well. The commander piloted the Amazon H
perfectly through the dilated aperture and shot into
the open ocean. Behind her, she knew, the doors
were slowly contracting and the seawater being
pumped out of the bilge. For good or ill, they were
committed to their ocean adventure.

    Ensign Joson Wabak tried desperately not to
tremble under the crushing weight of sixteen hun-
dred meters of seawater above him and a crew of
seventy-eight below. In cornmand! He was twenty-
three years old, a newly minted ensign in Starfleet,
and in command of the U.$.S. Defiant. It was an
awesome and shuddersome thought. Command
might have been intoxicating were they in orbit,
instead of scuppered at the bottom of a purple sea.
    "Containment shields down to forty-six per-
cent," announced his erstwhile classmate, Ensign
N'Kduk-Thag, or Ensign Nick, as Commander
Dax had dubbed it, in its uninflected voice; un-
like Vulcans, who experienced emotions but
suppressed them (Joson had been told), the
Erd'k'teedak literally did not experience emotions
the way Bajorans like Ensign Wabak did. Under
extreme stress, their rational centers might shut
down, and they could begin acting what would be
called mad were it any other race: Joson had
personally seen N'Kduk-Thag marching naked in a
circle around the flagpole at the Academy, chanting
Starfleet general orders at the top of its lungs, in the
middle of finals week one year. Joson steered his
 friend inside before the other cadets could see and
 misunderstand.
    "Measurement of hull distortion up to one point
three percent water seepage detected on outer hull
behind containment shield alongside decks four
through nine suggest ship is in danger of collapse."
    Joson's mouth was dry. How wonderful... my
first command, and I to preside over the Defiant
being crushed like an egg in a clenched fist! 1,640
meters of seawater above them translated to about
a hundred and sixty atmospheres of pressure on a
hull never designed for more than one! Normally,
the Defiant drifted through mostly empty space,
bumping into only the tiniest wisps of hydrogen or
the occasional micrometeor. In a pinch, the ship
was also designed to plough its way into the atmos-
phere of a relatively Bajorlike planet, dealing with
air pressure of perhaps as much as two atmos-
pheres.
    But the water pressure outside was more,than
e'~hty times that maximum rating. The only reason
the ship wasn't already smashed to a mangled hulk
of metal was that Commander Dax had personally
modified the shields to strengthen the external
containment surrounding the hull.
    But not enough, thought Joson glumly. "Ensign
Weymouth," he said, catching the attention of the
third commissioned officer on the bridge; everyone
else was a chief petty officer or below, and refused
to make command decisions--though they often
were overeager with advice.
  "Yeah, Joss?"
    Joson waited, frowning down at her from the
command chair.
  "I mean,--yes, sir?"
    "Instrument check?" She was supposed to follow
with a readout of all the pertinent instruments as
soon as N'Kduk-Thag finished its readout of engi-
neering diagnostics.
    "Oh, sorry!" Stung from her contemplation of
the forward viewer, whose image of the seafloor
(color-corrected for water transparency) seemed to
mesmerize her, Tina fluttered her hands over the
combined navigation and science console. "Uh,
uh, cloak is holding fine; nobody's detected us, I
think--at least they haven't scanned us. Scanning
around the ship; no, nothing but a big..." Wey-
mouth's voice trailed off, and she stared bug-eyed
at the scanner display.
    "Ensign, what is it?" demanded Joson, feeling
tentacles of fear wrap around his own head. Just
what I need, more trouble! Now what? But Wey-
mouth merely sputtered. Blood of the Prophets, it's
just like at the Academy/Cadet Weymouth barely
graduated at the bottom of the class; in fact, she
had to repeat her first Academy cruise, because she
"downed" it--received a failing mark from the

instructor for freezing a several critical junctures.
"Tina, snap out of it! What the hell do you see?"
  "It's... it's huge! And it's coming this way!"
  "What's huge? What's coming this way?"
  Weymouth turned completely around in her seat
to stare at acting-Captain Wabak. "Joss... it's a
sea monster!"
    Both Wabak and N'Kduk-Thag stared at the girl.
"By a sea monster do you mean a large aquatic
creature?" asked Ensign N'Kduk-Thag.
    "By a sea monster," snarled Weymouth, "I mean
this/" She touched a light on her console and put
the short-range scanner image on the forward
viewer.
    Joson Wabak stared at the shadowy, fluctuating
image of a creature more than two kilometers in
length, with thousands of hundred-meter tentacles
waving about, and a gaping maw that was doubtless
the thing's mouth. The "aquatic creature" was
fifteen klicks away but moving fast enough to arrive
within the half hour.
    "N'Kduk-Thag," said Joson weakly, "could you
please do a computer search through the Starfleet
first-contact manual for any references to--ah--
sea monsters?" The ensign-in-command was only
half joking.



0

CHAPTER
        3

"READ ME OUT the hull pressure and containment
integrity, Julian; thirty second intervals."
    "Aye, aye, Jadzia." The doctor unbuckled from
his seat and slooshed to the midsection of the
runabout, reading the strain gauges directly rather
than trusting to the helm instruments; high pres-
sure and strange minerals in the water might mess
up the electronics, but the strain gauges themselves
were so simple as to be virtually foolproof. "One
hundred and sixty-two atmospheres on the outer
hull," he said, "containment field integrity is...
well, call it ninety-six percent. Looking good so far,
Dax."
    She checked her own instruments, and they
differed from the gauges by only three or four
percent, within expected tolerance at this depth.
For the first time, she breathed a sigh of relief; we
might just make this without having to put our
flippers on.
    With every ten meters they rose in the runabout-
submarine, they bled off another atmosphere of
pressure on the hull. Soon Julian was calling out "a
hundred and fifty... hundred forty-nine..."
Dax realized she was sweating; it~just the suit, she
told herself. But the suit wouldn't explain her
pounding heart and the fact that she caught herself
clenching and unclenching her fist so much, her
forearm started to ache.
    "Pressure one forty," said the doctor, "contain-
ment integrity is--"
    The suspense became unbearable. "Yes? Is
what?"
"Well, I don't like the looks of this, Jadzia."
"What? What don't you like?" Dax started to
breathe too quickly, to shallowly; she took a deep
breath, forcibly calmed herself down.
    "Well, it was holding nicely at ninety, ninety-one
percent, but it just dropped to eighty-five in the last
minute. Whoops, eighty; it's dropping fast, Jadzia.
Can we ascend any faster?"
    Dax pointed the Amazon II virtually nose-up
and increased the thrusters as much as she dared;
the ship was never intended to "fly" through water,
just a single atmosphere or the vacuum of space.
She couldn't push the engines any faster than the
fraction necessary to move at ten meters per
second.
    "Wait," shouted Bashit; "pull back, slow
down!"
    Shaking, Dax cut engine power to nearly zero;
vertical motion slowed to a crawl, one meter for
every three seconds... same speed a diver is sup-
posed to ascend, she remembered from the doctor's
scuba instructions. "Julian, talk to me. What's
going on?"
    "It's the speed. The water drag is sapping the
containment field; it's down to sixty percent...
but the drop-off has slowed. We might still make
it. Pressure one hundred atmospheres and fall-
ing."
    Briefly, Jadzia Dax wished she were a Bajoran, so
she could pray to the Prophets. Dry-mouthed, she
increased the rate of ascent to balance field collapse
with reduction of hull pressure.
    Julian continued to call the numbers: "Hull
ninety, field fifty-four percent; hull eighty, field
fifty; hull seventy, field forty-five... we're going to
make it, Dax."
    "Yes we are, yes we're going to make it," she
mumbled. Then she felt a drop of water on her
forehead. Her breath caught in her throat; it's just
sweat, she said, as it rolled down her face and into
her mouth. It tasted of saltwater... but of course,
sweat was saltwater. She spat it out, suddenly
remembering the high cyanide content in the local
flora.

    But after several more seconds, she felt another
drop, then a steady trickle of them. "Julian," she
croaked, "we're leaking."
    "Yes, here too," he confirmed. Jadzia risked a
glance back; the thin, dapper doctor was actually
holding his hand against the skin of the runabout,
swiveling his head back and forth between the two
main gauges. "Fifty atmospheres, thirty percent.
Jadzia, pull your hood on and don mask and
backpack; I'm going to start a controlled flooding
of the cabin."
    "You said we were going to make it," she said,
trying to make light by clicking her tongue.
    "We will," said Julian, with equally false bon
homie; "but I didn't say the Amazon H would."
    Dax said nothing more, just pulled on the rest of
her scuba gear as quickly and efficiently as she
could. By the time she finished, water was spraying
into the cabin from every seam, and several of the
instruments on her panel were giving obviously
fractured readouts.
    She pulled up her regulator, blew a few experi-
mental blasts to clear it, and clamped her teeth
around it. By the time she was ready, the water was
above her waist. She looked at Bashir, and he gave
her the scuba diver's "okay" circle of thumb and
finger; Dax returned it, feeling nowhere near as
okay as she put on.
    Julian removed his regulator long enough to say,
"It's going to be colder than the holodeck. Don't
panic; just do it exactly as we practiced. I'll stay
with you every meter, and I'm an expert diver, so
don't worry."
    Dax could barely hear him, and she felt a sharp
pain in her ears. Of course, she realized; the air
pressure inside the Amazon II was climbing. She
held her nose and blew gently but firmly, clearing
first one ear, then the other with a sharp pop.
    The icy water touched her exposed chin; Julian
was right... it was freezing. The rest of her body
was comfortable in the insulated, electroheated
suit, but she gasped at the coldness on her face and
forgot to breathe for a moment. The water quickly
filled the rest of the air pocket, and the runabout
was entirely full of dark, turgid seawater.
    Without worrying about her buoyancy compen-
sator vest, she joined Julian at the emergency door
crank; he opened the door slowly. Dax felt her ears
plug up again; she checked her depth gauge, and
realized that they were actually sinking. Engines
must've died, she understood. Then Julian tugged
at her arm, and she followed him out the partially
opened door into the darkly luminescent, alien
ocean.
    The doctor reached across and pressed a button
on Jadzia's chest; she seemed to shoot away from
the runabout... but checking her gauge (which
she could barely see, though it was lit) it was the
other way around: she had come to a halt, while the
Amazon H sank rapidly back toward the oblivion
of the ocean floor. That's it, she thought; we're on
our own, for good or ill. After several seconds, the
lights from the runabout faded into the dark,
murky depths.
    She cleared her ears again, twisting her neck to
stretch the Eustachian tubes. Then Bashir caught
her attention and gave a thumbs-up--which in
scuba signalling, she remembered, meant "Let's go
up."
    Dax felt another wave of panic: they were fifty-
five meters deep. That was much deeper than even
expert divers usually went, and Jadzia Dax was
a rank amateur. She started to bolt for the surface,
but Julian anticipated her misstep, and he caught
her by the weight belt. She tried to kick him away,
but she was hampered by the dry suit and the
fluid water, and the doctor was a lithe and wily
wrestler in any event. After several moments, she
calmed down somewhat, though her pulse still
pounded so loud, it shook her entire body with
every beat.
    Julian held up three fingers: "Three," he seemed
to say, "three seconds per meter when ascend-
ing... no faster."
    He started off in a thoroughly improbable direc-
tion-he was going the wrong way. Then Jadzia
noticed the air bubbles expended from her regula-
tor with every strangled exhalation went the same
direction as Dr. Bashir. Well, I might be confused,
but I'm sure the damned bubbles know which way is
up. She followed the doctor, laboring to make each
flipper stroke slow and cautious.
 The darkness terrified her for some reason; she
had never been afraid of the dark before. But this
wasn't just the absence of light; it was palpable, it
reached out and enveloped her. She saw flashes of
bioluminescent fish (or plants; she couldn't quite
tell), but that only made the surrounding darkness
seem lonelier and more solid. Her buoyancy com-
pensator (BC) vented air automatically to maintain
neutral buoyancy.
    She continued to breathe, in and out. "If you
hold your breath when you ascend," the good
doctor had told her, "the compressed air can
expand inside your lungs and force bubbles
through your alveoli and capillaries into your
bloodstream." Additionally, ascending too quickly
caused the nitrogen gas in the diver's blood to come
out of solution and form more bubbles. He went
on to describe the symptoms of "the bends" (rather
gleefully, thought Dax), and pointed out that the
only known cure--putting the victim in a hy-
perbaric pressure tank and taking him "down" to
the point where the gas bubbles dissolve into the
bloodstream again, would be impossible on the
surface of Sierra-Bravo 112-1I (which did not, as
far as they could tell, have any local hospital
facilities).
    Dax watched both her chronometer and pressure
gauge. After a minute, they were still thirty-five
meters deep, but the light was growing steadily
stronger. Things were looking up. Then something
brushed her leg... something enormous.
  She didn't want to look down and see what it
was, but the image drew her eyes against her will.
She saw the dim outline of something vaguely
turtlelike, but at least twenty meters long: there was
a hard shell, and dozens of flipperlike legs sticking
out along the sides.
    The monster swam into the darkness, and Jadzia
gave a startled yelp into her regulator. She grabbed
Bashir, pointing the direction it had vanished, but
he evidently hadn't seen anything. He shook his
head, pointing up.
    They began to ascend again, but Jadzia Dax kept
looking in every direction, hoping to spot it before
it was too late. So big deal, what good is that going
to do? You don't want to be eaten without being
instantly aware of it, eh?
    The monster turtle loomed out of the gloomy
water directly in front of the pair, and this time
there was no mistaking it by either party. The head
suddenly filled Dax's entire field of view; or rather,
heads--there were four of them, each with its own
neck poking out from under the carapace.
    First one then another head pressed close,
opened its mouth, and unrolled a snakelike tongue
with its own eyeball and set of needle teeth at the
end. The tongue-mouths prodded at Dax and
Bashit, feeling them, probably tasting them. Nei-
ther officer dared move. A pair of tongues wrapped
around Jadzia and began pulling her closer to the
mouth.
    She reacted without thinking, reaching down to
draw her dive knife and slashing at the only
tongue she could reach. Julian saw what was
happening and joined her, hacking at the same
tongue as she; he grabbed it and began sawing
back and forth.
    Reacting sluggishly, the head the tongue was
connected to finally uncoiled and jerked back; the
head squirmed left and right, banging into the
heads on either side: they appeared to forget their
prey and turn on each other, and Dax immediately
guessed that rather than being one monster turtle
with four heads, she was looking at four turtles that
shared the same shell.
    As soon as it--they--let go, she almost bolted
toward the surface, but she maintained adaman-
tine control. They continued their slow ascent, and
the monster turtles swam away, still bickering
among themselves. By the time they faded from
view, Jadzia Dax was shaking like a Trill pacheepa
rat that had just escaped an owl.
    A minute and a half later, the light suddenly got
brighter and bluer; she saw the surface of the ocean
above her head like a shimmering, undulating glass
ceiling. Giant Sierra-Bravo kelp loomed in the
distance to one side, and Dax guessed that was the
direction of the ocean shelf they had mapped from
the Defiant; after all, the kelp had to attach to
something, and the trench into which the ship had
settled was much too deep for such large plant
life--not enough sunlight.
  It was harder than ever for Jadzia to restrain
herself and not drive for the surface, glittering just
fifteen meters above them; such a panicky dash
could easily kill her in the absence of effective
medical care. Gritting her teeth (and feeling phan-
tom tongues nipping at her flippers), Jadzia as-
cended, if anything, even more slowly for the glass
ceiling.
    Jadzia Dax spit out her regulator, letting it fall
back down by her side, but before she could get the
snorkel into her mouth, a swell washed over her
head, choking her. She bit down hard on the
snorkel and did all her coughing into the mouth-
piece; after a few moments, she was breathing
without obstruction... her heart pounded, and
she made a mental note for the doctor to examine
her for cyanide poisoning.
    Julian tapped her on the shoulder and removed
his own snorkel for a moment. "Are you all right?"
    She nodded, then shook her head, not wanting to
talk.
    "Ready to head for shore? It's that direction."
He pointed toward the kelp, now visible as thin
stalks that looked almost like celery rising two
meters out of the ocean. Dax nodded again.
    Julian unreeled a thin cord and connected them
together; then he rolled onto his back, making
sure Jadzia did the same, and activated the jets on
their backpacks. They began to chug toward the
shore at the stately pace of one kilometer per
hour.

    Jadzia just kept breathing in and out, with deep,
slow breaths, trying to dispel the last remnants of
her anxiety. Julian hooked his arm in hers to keep
them close enough not to snag the tether on the
alien kelp. By the time she began to see lots of
bright-blue, four-legged fish swirling around her
wake, she felt a bump against her feet; then
realized it was a rock near the shore. Within a few
more seconds, her heels were dragging in the silt,
and she cut her motor at the same time Julian cut
his.
    "Well, Jadzia," he said brightly, "we seem to
have arrived."
    She smiled weakly, stripping off the dry-suit and
submitting to a medical exam; the hard part was
over... now all they had to do was find Benjamin
and the away team somewhere in hundreds of
square kilometers of trackless wasteland.

    Julian Bashir hunched protectively over his
friend, his comrade, his--professionalism, profes-
sionalism. Jadzia Dax was curled into a fetal ball,
clenching her arms around her throbbing, aching
belly. She had evidently swallowed a mouthful of
the poisonous seawater at some point; probably
while on the surface, thought the doctor, The sea-
water contained relatively high traces of cyanogene
and radical cyanogens, which changed within the
human (and Trill) body to a substance uncomforta-
bly close to deadly cyanide. That she had only
partially recovered from the battle wound she had
 recieved only days ago wouldn't help her condi-
 tion.
    Dax had evaded Cardassian ships and the plan-
et's own automated defenses to plunge the Defiant
deep into the deadly ocean waters. Communica-
tions with the away team were impossible through
the electrolyte-laden water, and too dangerous to
boot: if either Cardassian attackers or electronic
planetary defenders intercepted the signal--well,
it would take only a single concussion bomb to tip
the balance, tear away the containment field, and
allow the ship to be crushed beneath hundreds of
atmospheres of pressure.
    It was Dax's idea to replicate a long wire and
send old-fashioned radio waves to communicate,
but of course, there was no way for the away team
to know what was required. So Dax, accompanied
by the obvious candidate, the dashingly brilliant
and resourceful chief medical officer, made a
break for the surface in a runabout. They barely
made it alive--one more alive than the other,
thought Dr. Bashir, looking sadly at his patient,
wondering whether she would make it. Now,
dressed in replicated clothing similar to that of the
native "Natives," they sat on the surface,
grounded, one struggling to live, the other strug-
gling against despair at his own helplessness to
help.
    From his emergency medikit, Bashir extracted
his hypospray and reloaded another dose of the
supposedly all-purpose antipoison supplied by the
Federation--and modified slightly by Dr. Bashir
back aboard Deep Space Nine. He injected the
antipoison and another muscle relaxant near her
lungs (biggest concern) and her stomach (where
most of the pain came from), and Jadzia relaxed as
her pain eased. She was still unconscious from the
sedative he had given her earlier; there was no
reason for her to be awake to fight this mild
poisoning.
    "Correction," said the doctor aloud; "it's not
Deep Space Nine any longer. It's..." What did
the Kai say she was going to call it? Oh yes,
Emissary's Sanctuary. Stupid name! But Bashir
shrugged, trying to make the best of a life that
always seemed balanced on one precipice or an-
other. If he wasn't dreading possible exposure as a
DNA-resequenced freak of unnature, he was being
uprooted and probably split from all his friends
and colleagues and sent to some forsaken
hellhole--possibly to serve as the doctor on a
Rigelian penal colony, perhaps, or worse, as per-
sonal physician to some pompous, overstuffed
admiral nearing retirement.
    What he really wanted, if he could no longer
have his home on DS9-- Yes.t Deep Space Nine, by
no other name.t--would be a berth on a Galaxy-
class starship, like the Enterprise that Miles had left
to join the station (and Worf, too, remembered
Bashir with a touch of a grimace, looking down at
Jadzia).

    "Modern medicine!" he derided; all he could do
was ease her pain a bit and help her own body fight
off the invasion of a toxic foreign substance. If she
were going to survive--and he was now sure she
would--it wouldn't be because of Dr. Julian
Bashir, dashing lieutenant of Starfleet in the
United Federation of Planets. Whether she lived or
died had actually been determined however many
years ago it was that Jadzia was conceived, when
egg and sperm combined with a set of chromo-
somes that decided Jadzia's future resistance to
infection, poison, and injury.
    Though come to think on it, the syrnbiont Dax
might also be helping against the poison. Not even
the Trill themselves knew everything about the
complex interactions between host body and sym-
biont.
    Julian sighed. Modern medicine! Now he had
much more precise and less invasive methods...
so he could monitor his patient's own body desper-
ately fighting off cyanide poisoning. Such progress!
With a full laboratory, he might actually have been
able to do something
    But sitting on the sands of an alien seashore,
staring at the deep, deadly ocean of violet waters
full of poisons and four-headed monster turtles,
lost on a planet already under invasion by
Cardassian-led forces, caught in the gaze of who-
knew-how-many dangerous native life-forms,
helpless in the shadow of technology so vast, it
practically dwarfed the Federation--but so frag-
ile, the Cardassians could turn it off like a light
panel on the Defiantre Julian Bashir felt like a
child lost in a zoo in blackest night, knowing that
all the cage doors were left open for the beasts to
feed.

CHAPTER
       4

JULIAN BASHIR jerked awake, groping wildly for his
medikit. He had been dreaming that Dax was
convulsing herself to death, dreaming he was
asleep and dreaming, but unable to rouse himself
from the dream (in the dream) to save her. He
finally shouted himself awake and grabbed his
kit... but Jadzia was nowhere about.
    He stumbled this- and that-a-way, performing
the "drunkard's walk" of a man just risen, thinking
he had a terribly important task to perform but not
remembering what. Gods, what I wouldn'tpay for a
coffee just now, he thought through a bleary cere-
brum.
    The first evidence of the missing lieutenant com-
mander that Dr. Bashir found was a pair of boots
that looked suspiciously like Dax's. Toiling up a
nearby hilltop in the direction pointed by the
shoes, dropped one then the other, he discovered
her hooded robe. Shirt, pantaloons, and undergar-
ments followed.
    "What now, O mighty one?" the doctor asked
Jadzia.
    She shook her head. "The only obvious course is
to head toward the original landing site. The away
team doesn't have a vehicle, so they can't have got
too far." She looked pensive. "Unless they com-
mandeered something."  "From the Natives?"
    "Natives? No, so far as we could tell, they'd
never even heard of vehicles."
    Bashir stared skeptically at the landscape, im-
possibly rich-blue mountains, brittle clouds, chill,
white sun struggling up a vermillion sky. "This
whole planet smacks of..."  "What?"
     The word wouldn't come for a moment, elusively
 dancing just out of reach of the doctor's cerebrum,
 like the sweet odor that enticed his nostrils, or the
 metallic taste of latinurn and other minerals and
 salts on his tongue. Suddenly, the word he sought
 ventured too close, and he reached out and snared
 it. "Artificiality. The way you described it, they
 have massive amounts of technology but no under-
 lying infrastructure, and no scientific understand-
 ing whatsoever. Does that strike you as likely?"
 Julian was thinking of the implausibility of stone-
 age humans with hyposprays and medical scanners
 but without even the germ theory of disease.
     "Well, I was thinking about that myself. If
 they're the degenerated descendants of an earlier,
 technological worldre"
    "Then there would be broken pieces of techno-
logical infrastructure all over the planet," finished
Julian. "Roadways or launching ports or massive
industrial structures. Not a bunch of high-tech
stone huts and a random scattering of useful tools
and weapons."
    Dax sat down, chin in hand; her neck spots were
dark, almost iridescentmpossibly a sign of intense
thought, figured Julian. "There would also be vehi-
cles," said Dax, "either operative or crashed, and
warp drivemyou knew that some of the toys we
found used elements of warp field technology,
didn't you?"
    "They did?" The doctor was surprised; he had
been too busy with casualties to read all the reports
the team sent up seemingly every few minutes.
"Well, that's all the more reason the whole situa-
tion seems artificial!"
    Dax looked up. "You're right, Julian. I think
these people were put here by someone... and the
entire planetary ecology was transplanted to feed
them. The keepers, whoever they were, sprinkled
the rock with enough toys that the Natives could
play whatever games they wanted, but not enough
for them to leave... or even travel around their
own planet much."
    "But there was never any struggle for survival,"
said Bashir quietly, finding the whole idea creepy
to the point of being frightening, "and without that
struggle..."
    "They never developed a culture, a civilization,
or any consciousness of groups larger than those
who lived in the villages."
  "The planned communities."
    Dax chuckled. "So does that mean the experi-
ment or whatever it was succeeded or failed?"
    Bashir felt a shiver slowly crawl along his spine
like a frozen centipede. "I wonder whether the
Tiffnakis--is that what the villagers you met called
themselves?--are even the same species as the rest
of the Natives? Could they interbreed? Or have
they been separated so long, they're no longer a
single people?" The question seemed a natural to
the doctor.
    She shrugged, dismissing the speculation before
Bashit could finish chewing on it. "Well, no matter.
That makes the case stronger: the only way the
away team could have a skimmer is if they bor-
rowed one from the Cardassians. And my friend,
dear Doctor Bashit, that is exactly what we are
going to have to do."
     Julian smirked--to hide his increasing nervous-
 ness, he realized. "You think they're going to be in
 a generous mood, our Cardassian friends? Or was
 one of your hosts a Drek'la and you remember the
 secret password?"
  "No, but I'm sure if we ask them correctly, they
won't even miss it. Come on, Julian, start a slow,
careful, long-range scan to find the nearest Cardas-
sian military unit. rll scan for ion trails left by the
skimmers. Let's see just how far we're going to have
to walk."

    The sea monster--we're all calling it that now,
thought Joson Wabak with a gulp--continued to
approach the Defiant directly. There was now no
question, as N'Kduk-Thag unemotionally in-
formed him, that the monster had detected them
somehow and was coming to investigate... or
feed.
    Heedless of how it would look to his "troops,"
who after all, were barely less-senior ensigns than
he himself, Joson paced in front of the command
chair, feeling anxiety creep on kitty feet around his
stomach. He hadn't fought in the Resistance; he
was too young when the Cardassians pulled out,
and his mother wouldn't even entertain the idea of
him trucking with the freedom fighters before then.
Joson was uncomfortably aware that he had never
been tested; the swordsmith had never struck him
against the anvil to see which broke.
    Well, neither has any other officer herat he
thought defiantly--a thought that didn't comfort
him, the more he considered it. "Ten minutes to
contact do you have any orders," reported and
asked N'Kduk-Thag, "Ensign Nick," as the beauti-
ful but hard Commander Dax had nicknamed the
sexless Erd'k'teedak, only the fourth of its species
to graduate from the Academy (and only barely; its
academics were not exactly stellar).
    Well, Wabak, you'd better say something!"How's
the containment shielding, Tina?"
    Her own voice was nearly as uninflected as
Ensign Nick's, but in her case, it was probably
because she had resigned herself to death, thought
the Bajoran. "Shields down to thirty-four percent
and not holding."
"You diverted power from the enginesw"
"From everything not necessary for life sup-
port," she reported gloomily. "We've got maybe
thirty more minutes before we're crushed to death.
So maybe we'll have time to be eaten alive by the
sea monster first."
     "That will be enough of that talk, Ensign Wey-
 mouth." Joson was pleased that he sounded more
 confident than he felt. "Prepare to launch from the
 ocean floor and head for the surface."
     Weymouth turned to stare at him. "Joson! The
 structural stress of movement will crush the ship
 immediately!"
     He stared back. "Better to die trying, Ensign
 Weymouth, than huddle here and wait for death to
 hunt us. "As he said the words, Joson Wabak felt an
 amazing sensation flood his senses: fear was
 stamped out like an old campfire; he felt the surge
 of excitement that his brother must have felt when
 he undertook his first mission for the Resist-
 ance... the one that got him captured by the
 Cardassians.

    But Jaras SURVIVED! shouted a triumphant
voice in Joson's head, and the mission was a
success, the entire Occupation Ministry of Justice
was destroyed by three packed-photon bombs smug-
gled inside, and Jaras was one of the smugglers/The
thrill of being a Bajoran who had lived under the
Occupation and seen it thrown off by his own
people, the passion of knowing what he was doing
was right, the certainty of command flooded the
veins and arteries of Ensign Joson Wabak, and he
knew then why he, not Tina and not N'Kduk-Thag,
was chosen to command in Dax's absence.
    "Launch the Defiant, Ensign," he commanded
calmly. "Let's meet our giant friend face to face. If
we're going to die, we'll die like Starfleet officers,
not like a shellclaw being cracked open by a sivass
worm!"
    The command tone shocked Weymouth out of
her torpor; shaking, she jumped to touch the lit
squares on her panel and ramp the engines up to a
hundred and four percent. The Defiant began to
shudder as the landing pods shook loose from the
silt into which they had sunk.
    "May I suggest dropping cloak and powering up
the shields? Better to take the chance of being
detected by the Cardassian ships and defend our-
selves in case the sea monster launches an attack."
    "Excellent suggestion, Mr. N'Kduk-Thag."
Joson waited, but the ensign didn't object to being
called "mister," evidently not truly caring what
gender was arbitrarily assigned. N'Kduk-Thag took
the praise as authorization to proceed; the shields
wouldn't protect against the horrendous pressure
from the water, of course, but if the sea monster
used electromagnetic or other means of attack, or
even tried to ram them, it might save their hides.
Sure hope the spoon-heads have stopped looking for
us, thought Joson; strangely, he felt more nervous
about the Cardassians than about the more imme-
diate dangers of sea pressure and the monster. He
shrugged; tradition, I suppose.
    The Defiant rolled peculiarly as they cruised
forward, and Ensign Weymouth expressed re-
peated frustration at her lack of full helm control.
"We are in the water one should expect a certain
loss of attitude control," remarked Nick; Tina
didn't seem pleased at the unasked for lecture.
    "Can you search ahead with the sensors,
N'Kduk-Thag?" asked Joson; "look for strong cur-
rents that might push us into an underwater moun-
tain."
  "Aye, aye sir."
    "Tina, tie your helm viewer into Nick's sensors;
set it up so the currents are color-coded by intensi-
ty." When the junior ensigns carried out their task,
the ship's motion smoothed out; Weymouth was
able to dodge the strongest currents as if navigating
down a bickett warren. Still, Joson Wabak felt a
peculiar, hollow feeling in his stomach, and his
mouth grew dry; it took him several moments to
diagnose himself: Seasickness! I'm getting seasida
How wonderful. He had known he was subject to
the nausea and dizziness ever since he and his
brother went out fishing in choppy waters one day,
but it had never occurred to him that he would
suffer from motion sickness in a modern-day star-
ship. The inertial dampers were doing their job...
Joson was being nauseated by the visuals through
the forward viewer.
    "Creature constant bearing decreasing distance
contact in three minutes," reported N'Kduk-Thag.
The ensign helpfully called out every thirty sec-
onds, then counted down the final thirty.  "Is it stopping, Nick?"
  "No, sir. Should we halt engines?"
  "Not until it does?
    Tina gritted her teeth. "Oh m'God," she
breathed, "we're playing chicken with a sea mon-
ster?"
    The Bajoran ensign had no idea why Weymouth
was talking about chickens, so he ignored the
question. "Hold your course and speed."
  "Thirty seconds twenty-nine eight seven six..."
  "Sir!"
  "Hold course."
 "Twenty nineteen eighteen--"
  "Joson, for God's sake.t"
    "Eleven ten nine..." Ensign Nick suddenly
stopped speaking. "The creature has stopped con-
tact in twenty-two seconds beep at current rate of
closure."
    Twenty-two seconds aqorn the beep, I suppose.
"Weymouth, wait ten seconds, then all stop." YES!
Wabak grinned, pleased to have won the first
round. But only the first round, warned a little voice
in his head.
    The Defiant pulled to a stop, much more quickly
than it would have in empty space, of course,
because of water friction. The two entities faced
each other: the Federation starship, fully armed but
crippled under the pressure of more than a thou-
sand meters of water still above them--and the
amoeboid sea monster two kilometers long with
thousands of vicious-looking tentacles just waiting
to scoop up the bite-sized morsel and shove it into
the creature's mouth.
    "Let's get a good look at the thing, shall we?"
said Joson, without the shakiness he actually felt.
"N'Kduk-Thag, launch a probe across the mon-
ster's bow, have it circle around and get a good
holo from every angle."
    "Aye aye sir." Nick reached across to the empty
science officer's console and touched a few lit
squares; in the main viewer, Wabak watched the
tiny probe streak away from the ship. The hun-
dreds of tentacles nearby rippled with the probe's
bow wave, and the ripple passed along the crea-
ture's body as the probe circumnavigated it, but
there was no other reaction from the monster,
which continued to regard the Defiant motion-
lessly. The ripples created a gentle, pink current,
which the viewer still obligingly displayed. "I don't
think it can see something as small as the probe,"
ventured Ensign Wabak.

    Just as he finished the observation, and the probe
rounded the back of the sea monster and headed
back toward the ship, a pair of the tentacles un-
coiled and lashed out, grabbing the probe as it
streaked past. The force of the probe's momentum
actually tore off one tentacle, but the other held
fast, dragging the probe, despite its impulse en-
gines, into the maw of the monster.
    Fascinated, the three officers and two security
petty officers on the bridge stared at the probe's
visual transmission: they watched in awe as the
probe was caught by hundreds of thousands of
headless serpents or worms; Joson realized with a
shock that they were tongues, each the size of a tree
trunk! The tongues acted like teeth, pulling the
probe apart and forcing the pieces down the gullet.
After three minutes of wormy mastication, one of
the tongues got hold of some vital piece of electron-
ics, and the probe ceased to transmit.
    "Tell me about the biology of the monster," said
the ensign-in-command, trying to wrench every-
one's attention back to the crisis. "Oh, and Wey-
mouth--how's the hull integrity holding out?"
    "Hull integrity not dropping as fast," said Tina,
cutting off N'Kduk-Thag. "It's down to thirty
percent, dropping one point every minute and a
half, now that we're not so deep."
 Silence. "Defiant to Nick, hello?" asked Joson.
 "If you are ready to hear my report."
    "Yes, N'Kduk-Thag; we are ready to hear your
report." For all that Erd'k'teedak insisted they
experienced no emotions whatsoever, they were
well known to get miffed now and then... in a
distant, intellectual sort of way. Weymouth's re-
port had been the more important, but Nick was
still irritated that she had cut him off.
    "The probe sensors detected meter-thick muscle
striations coiled with veins filled with latinurn--"
"Latinum!"
    "--that would doubtless impede photon torpedo
penetration and of course the heavy mineral and
electrolyte concentration in the seawater would
interfere with the phasers in my judgment we have
little chance of damaging the sea monster in
combat."
    "Thank you, Nick," said Tiny angrily, "that was
worth waiting for."
    Joson abruptly stood again, but stopped himself
from pacing. Think, think, think/What would Sisko
do? "I need options, people. How about a tractor
beam? Can we push it away? Or push ourselves
away from it?"
    Nick played with his console. "No, sir. The
seawater disrupts the beam as it would a phaser."
    "Joson--I mean, sir, why don't we start ascend-
ing very slowly? Maybe we can at least reduce the
pressure on the ship so we don't drown while this
thing is making up its mind whether to eat us."
    Damn/ I shouM have thought of that/ "Do it,
Weymouth."
    The internal com-system chirped. "Engineering
to bridge," said a disembodied voice that Joson
vaguely recognized from the watches he had stood
down there.
  "Wabak," he said absently.
    "Sir, Lieutenant Abdaba here. We finished repli-
cating that floatable antenna the commander or-
dered. Deploy?"
    And may the Prophets ensure that neither the
planetary sensors nor the spoon-heads will think to
check the electromagnetic spectrum for low-tech
radio broadcasts, breathed Joson Wabak silently.
The ionized salts and heavy metals suspended in
the deadly ocean waters would prevent sensors
from picking up the Defiant, especially at such a
depth, but the tip of the antenna would necessarily
have to be "hot," and in a radio-source scan, would
stand out like a magnesium flare in a midnight
marsh.
    Licking his lips, the Bajoran ensign continued.
"Nick, as soon as the antenna clears the shields, I
want you to start transmitting on the radio fre-
quencies of the EM spectrum--get me in contact
with Commander Dax!" "Aye, aye, sir."
    "Sir, we're ascending at one meter per second;
I'm hoping that's so slow we won't attract the
monster's attention."
    "Excellent, Tina. Keep a weather eye peeled." It
was one of the few human expressions he had
learned, but he couldn't tell whether Weymouth
understood it. Maybe she's from a different village
on Earth, he thought.
    Three tense minutes ticked slowly by on the
ship's chronometer; the Defiant had risen slightly
less than two hundred meters, and now they were
even with the center of the sea monster's squirming
mass of tongues. Several flicked out to touchm
taste?mthe ship, but didn't get through the shields.
Then suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, more
than thirty tentacles lashed out and wrapped them-
selves around the ship, wrenching it to a halt and
hurling Wabak to his hands and knees before the
gravitic stabilizers could adjust.
    "Damn it!" he blurted, then caught hold of
himself and stood, lowering himself with dignity
back into his command chair. "Damage report,
Nick?"
    "There is no damage. We have been brought to a
halt. All upward motion terminated. The impulse
engines are unable to break us free of the creature's
grip. I am still transmitting but there has been no
response from the secondary away team."
    "Okay, this is it," said Joson, feeling a horrible
sense of peace and calm permeate his body. "If that
thing pulls us toward its mouth, we open fire with
everything, and to hell with latinum muscles and
electrolytes in the barbarous water."
      Just then, Tina gasped. She half stood, staring
down at her sensor display. "Joson!"  "Ensign, what is it?"
    She stared wildly back and forth from Wabak to
N'Kduk-Thag. "Nick's wrong, sir; there is a re-
sponse to our transmission."
"Dax? You have Commander Dax? Patch her
through!"
    "No sir," said Ensign Weymouth, turning dis-
tinctly pale, "the response isn't from the com-
mander."
    "Then who's responding?" asked Joson, feeling
his preternatural calm vanish in a rush of adrena-
line. He knew what her answer would be a fraction
of a second before she said it.
    "She is," said Tina, pointing at the cavernous,
serpent-toothed mouth that filled the entire for-
ward viewer. "She wants to know where our moth-
er is."
    I wouldn't mind knowing that myself, thought
Joson at first; his next thought was, by the Prophets,
I wonder how they're going to write THIS one up in
my fitness report?



0

CHAPTER
        5

WITH GREAT MISGIVINGS, Captain Benjamin Sisko
had left the Tiffnakis four days behind. I want to
stay and train them, train them some more, keep
training them until they can overwhelm the invaders
like fire ants pulling down a sunbathing lizard/But
he knew it would be an unconscionable waste of his
time: Asta-ha--the hereditary mayor who had
misunderstood the military ranks that Worf had
taught her and had dubbed herself "Mayor-
General"mwas capable all on her own of turning
the remaining two hundred Tiffnakis into soldiers;
she had the help of her commando squad, the
"Terrors of Tiffnaki," whom Sisko and his away
team had finally shocked into recognizing real-
ity... and into recovering their lost legacy of
intelligence, creativity, and tactical thinking.
    She wouldn't do as good a job as the captain and
Worf could, and it would take longer. But there was
a more urgent task for the away team: they had to
knock every power generator on the planet off-line.
Only in this way could the rest of the Natives on
Sierra-Bravo be forced to confront real life... life
without the toys that had been their source for
everything they needed. Otherwise, the invaders
would continue moving from village to village,
cutting the local power and overwhelming the
Natives while they were still in shock from the loss
of their entire, "new tech"-driven world.
    With one stroke, we can shatter their dream,
thought the captain; they will wake up--because
they HAVE TO wake up. By the time the Cardassi-
ans meet them, weeks will have passed for them to
get used to life without the Power. Visions of bow-
and spear-armed Natives ambushing Cardassians,
who shot back with disruptors and concussion
bombs, polluted Sisko's thoughts; it was a horrible,
ugly sight... but not as ugly as the vision he had
seen in reality: Cardassians mowing down abruptly
un-armed Tiffnakis like a farmer scything wheat.
    Sisko closed his eyes against the burning, orange
sun: Please, he prayedmperhaps to the Prophets,
since he was still the Emissary--please, this time,
let me be right.t The other possibility, as Chief
O'Brien had cheerfully pointed out, was that
knocking all the power off-line would result in
mass starvation, death by exposure, and a quick
and craven surrender to the Cardassians by the few
remaining survivors. Well, somebody has to find the
dark lining, I suppose, and it always seemed to be
the chief, for some reason.
    For four days, the away team had made excellent
time. The toys that Sisko had forbidden to the
Tiffnaki commandos and confiscated off their per-
sons came in handy to smooth out the trail the
Federation crew followed: the force beam flattened
a path through scrub; the antigravs got them up
and down cliffs; and the death rays worked won-
ders in cutting down small blue trees for bridges
across rushing, metal-sparkling rivers whose waters
were deadly to anybody but the Natives.
    But in four days, despite the advantages, the
team had made only sixty kilometers, a remarkable
showing but not enough, not nearly fast enough! At
the moment, they sat atop a bluff overlooking a
deathly hot valley of bright, latinum-laced sand
they would have to cross--all sixty klicks of it--
and they were already running lower in com-rats
than Sisko had estimated.
    O'Brien sat on the edge of the cliff, dangling his
legs over and staring bleakly at the wasteland
below. Quark paced round and round a circle,
mumbling to himself something that sounded sus-
piciously like "latinum, latinurn everywhere, nor
any strip to spend." If Coleridge were alive today,
he'd be spinning in his grave, thought the captain
mirthlessly.
    Odo was a puddle, far away and secluded from
the rest of the team; they had stopped ostensibly
because the changeling had stayed too long in a
solid state and was desperate to collapse and liqui-
fy. But Sisko knew the rest of the away team,
himself included, were grateful for the chance to
rest a complete day, sleeping as they could in the
bright sunlight, readying themselves for the three-
night trek across the desert.
    The captain himself sat cross-legged on the bluff,
by choice too far from the edge to see the sands
below, squinting against the sun as it crawled in the
direction they had arbitrarily labeled west. "Worf,"
he said, his first word in an hour.
    The sleeping Klingon rose grunting, looking
about to see who had called him from dreams of
siege and liege. Sisko repeated the soft command,
and Commander Worf struggled to his feet, joining
the captain. "Yes, sir?"
    "Worf, we are still a hundred and forty kilome-
ters from the Cardassian landing spot, and sixty of
those kilometers are across that." Sisko nodded
past O'Brien toward the cliff and the sands below.
"Yes, I am aware of that fact, sir."
    "You are quartermaster. How many days rations
do we have left?"
    Wolf worked his face, reluctant to answer. "Four
days if we stretch it, Captain."
"And how long would you estimate it will take us
to reach the launch facility?"
    Worf said nothing; Sisko continued the narrative
himself, wishing he had another answer. "Three
days across the desert, if we're lucky; then Kahless
knows how long to cross that mountain range. At
this rate, Commander, we're not going to make it,
are we?"
  Worf stopped figiting. "No. We are not."
    "And the damned invaders are going to win."
Worf didn't speak; Sisko waited a beat, then turned
to his real purpose. "Worf, you know all the
legends and histories of the ancient Klingon wars,
don't you?"
    "I would not say all, sir; I do know a great
many."
    "We need that expertise now, Worf. Think,
think! How would Kahless have gotten us to the
enemy before our food ran out?"
    Lieutenant Commander Worf stood, folding his
arms sternly, staring at the horizon, the distant
mountains they eventually would have to cross.
"Even the Emperor Kahless had mechanized ar-
mor," mumbled the Klingon petulantly.
    "Then think back farther! Think of the age of
heroes, before any of the technology we take so
much for granted. How the hell did they move
armies around in those days?"
     Worf turned back to Captain Sisko. "We used
 pack animals, of course. Riding beasts, and beasts
 to carry the gear."

    Sisko nodded; it was the germ of a thought that
had been scratching at his own forebrain for
days... Worf had pulled it into the open so Sisko
could finally examine it. "Yes... yes! That's it,
that's what we're missing. If we were a cavalry unit,
we might actually be able to make a hundred and
twenty kilometers in four days... especially since
we could feed and water the horses on native grass
and native water!"
    O'Brien had turned around during the conversa-
tion; now he said in excitement, "Captain! I think
I've seen creatures here that might make almost
adequate horses!"
"Which animals are you talking about?"
O'Brien stretched his arms to indicate great size.
"They're huge beasties, they've got six legs and I
think some kind of fur, unless it's needles. Their
heads are kind of split down the middle, so they
look like a double-barreled phaser?"
    "Those giant six-leggers?" asked the captain,
picturing the terrifying beasts in his mind. "Can
they be domesticated?"
    "Beggin' your pardon, sir, but do we have any
choice?"
    The Ferengi abruptly ceased his pacing and
stared back and forth among the other participants
in the conversation. "Have you people lost your
minds? You expect me to ride on top of some
hideous, two-headed, six-legged monster for hun-
dreds and hundreds of kilometers? You're insane!
Forget it!" His fear was so palpable that Sisko
almost felt sorry for the little fellow.
    Almost. But there really was no other option.
"Quark, you're just going to have to deal with it!"
snapped O'Brien, saying essentially what the cap-
tain had been about to say--but a lot less diplo-
matically.
    Worf grinned wolfishly. "I am sure the captain
would allow you to stay behind--and leave your
combat rations to the rest of us." Quark snorted
indignantly and turned his back on the Kling-
on... something he never would have done had
the two of them been alone in a dark corner of the
station.
      "Gentlemen," said Captain Sisko, "I believe we
have a plan: Chief, you'd better get busy."
  "Me? Doing what?"
    "You've got a couple more hours before Odo
rejoins us... and I want you to become an expert
in lassoing wild monsters."
    The explosion from the chief was enough to keep
the captain amused for more than half an hour, by
the end of which O'Brien was furiously hurling a
loop of rope from the survival packs the Defiant
beamed down; he hurled the loop at a tree trunk
that Worf held aloft with the antigravity device--
the method the pair had settled upon for lassoing
the local "horses." Next couple hours of training is
going to be absolutely RIVETING, decided Benja-
min Sisko.
qc ~

    Kai Winn woke suddenly in the night. She
sat bolt upright in bed, listening for the noise that
had shaken her from her memories; but it was
elusively absent. Her heart raced... at first, it
was all she could concentrate upon, for the doc-
tors had warned her that she very much needed to
keep herself calm if she didn't want another "cor-
onary incident," as they euphemistically put it.
No, no~ she warned herself; that's not the way to do
it!
    Instead, the Kai commenced a prayer to the
Prophets, a child's exercise, actually; she recited
the first syllable, then the first two, then the first
three, and so forth, finally reciting the prayer song
in its entirety on the thirty-third repetition...
then repeated. It worked to slow her heart, but her
nerves still jangled like an iron bell suspended in a
stiff breeze.
"Kai Winn to Major Kira," she said.
"Kira--Kai, either come take command or leave
me alone! We're in the middle of a fire fight here!"
In the background, Winn heard the shout of orders,
damage reports, too indistinct to make out over the
com-link. She briefly considered rising, but she was
dead tired... and if the station were in imminent
danger of being lost, Kira would have awakened
her.
 "Are we holding our own, child?"
    "Yes, damn it! I sent out the militia in pressure
suits and it's hand to hand, Well, phaser to disrup-
tor between DS-Nine--I mean, Emissary ~ Sanctu-
ary and the alien ships. We still don't know who
they are. Now please, my Kai, clear the line so I can
direct the fight!"
    "I trust you, child. Awaken me in two hours or
immediately if there is a breach."
    "Aye, aye, Kai. Kira out." The major rudely cut
the link herself, but Winn forgave her young pro-
tege; Nerys had much to learn... and she was
learning even now. Calm patience was the priceless
gift of the Prophets.
    The Kai rose, pushing her pudgy feet firmly into
the slippers she had owned since--well, since she
was a sister in service to her "master," Gul Ragat.
She walked to the shelf that used to contain a stack
of Starfleet manuals on data clips when the Kai's
quarters used to be the Emissary's office. Now the
shelf had an infinitely higher purpose: it supported
a large, nondescript box with a split front, a front
the Kai touched reverently.
    I must never turn to Them for trivial or personal
matters, she thought to herself, as if once again
lecturing in a religious school, a task she had not
performed for many, many years. This is not a
personal matter, she told herself firmly, and this is
no trivial question. The survival of Bajor may be at
stake!
    Nervously, fearing that she may have everything
all wrong and could be offending the Prophets, Kai
Winn took a deep breath and opened the doors
wide. The Orb was so brilliant, it burned right
through her eyes, searing the back of her skull. She
grimaced; she was, after all, a middle-aged wom-
an-no longer in her physical prime, and not the
Emissary. But she was the Kai; and the Prophets,
though they burned and battered, had never failed
their people.
    "Show me," she whispered against the light,
"show me Your will. Show me what I must know!"
    Shocked, Winn found herself not looking into
the minds or hearts of the enemies still attacking
the station, not at the Federation or the Domin-
ion, not even in her own time; she found herself
back in the selfsame dream from which she had
lately escaped by a panicked leap into conscious-
ness. The Prophets wanted her to remember; the
Prophets wanted her past. I will give it to Them,
she yielded.
    It made no sense to Kai Winn. But then, did it
need to?


CHAPTER
        6

THIRTY YEARS AGO

THE CARAVN of Gul Ragat assembled in the court-
yard outside the keep of the palace that once
belonged to the town of Shiistir and served as the
home of ex-Governor Riasha Lyas; now, the same
building of light and color sheltered the conscience
and the ears of Legate Migar from the lamentations
of Sister Winn's people. What a shock, thought the
priestess, that the stone walls of this bloody place
don't tumble to the earth in horror at what they've
seen! They looked as solid as ever, ready to stand
for centuries of tyranny or freedom, uncaring, pink
and cold as stone.
    The outer wall was retained, but it was largely
ceremonial; the protective function was taken by a
force shield the Cardassians had erected, since they
(unlike poor Lyas) had much to fear from assassins
and saboteurs. The interior wall was shaped like a
pair of octagons connected by a wide, rectangular
circus maximus used for the bloody sports of the
current masters--blood games that remained bar-
baric, no matter how refined and decadent the
rules. I cannot understand why the Prophets have
not crushed this place/she screamed to herselfi
    Sister Winn was the only cleric among the Bajor-
an mass of Gul Ragat's household; she had no idea
whether she had a religious counterpart among the
Cardassians... in fact, she wasn't even sure
whether they even had a religion beyond worship
of the state. If there were a Cardassian holy man or
woman, he had not seen fit to knock elbows with
the Bajorans. Among the gul's Cardassian retinue
were two majors and his captain of the guard (one
Colonel Baek); sixteen sergeants and soldiers
astride individual skimmers; Neemak Counselor,
the gul's personal secretary and attorney; a brutish
Cardassian valet, Gavak-Gavak Das, who oversaw
the Bajoran servants (Sister Winn's immediate
boss, except that Gul Ragat had taken a liking to
her, and she generally reported directly to the gul
himself); Ragat's skimmer pilot; and a pair of
mechanics/secretaries operating under the com-
mand of Neemak Counselor.
    Gul Ragat also traveled with his household staff
of Bajorans, numbering forty-two, including Sister
Winn... who should have been considered the
"slave overseer," since she was the nearest thing to
an authority figure; but she eschewed the job,
claiming a complete lack of "command presence,"
and Hersaaka Toos, a luckless impulse engine
repair-crew foreman was given the task.
    No command presence! The reality was that
Sister Winn was already looking ahead to the days
when Cardassia would be expelled from Bajor; she
had seen the vision in her dreams, the coming of
the Emissary, the intervention of the Prophets--
and very frankly, she wanted a place guiding the
destiny of her people when they were free. Politi-
cally, Sister Winn could never allow even a hint
that she might have collaborated with the Cardassi-
ans; it would spell the death of her personal ambi-
tions.
    Winn was supposed to report with the others at
zero-eight hundred (Cardassians were enamored of
military time), but she had a guess how long it
would take old Gavak-Gavak and Hersaaka Toos to
muster sixty-five people in some semblance of
order to satisfy the farewell inspection by Legate
Migar and Gul Dukat; she wandered onto the scene
a half hour late and stepped into her place, and she
was not the last.
    The contrast between the twenty-five Cardassi-
ans and the forty-two Bajorans was remarkable,
though hardly worth remarking: Cardassians mus-
tered at attention because they were a proud race of
lordly conquerers who had yet to suffer any signifi-
cant defeat in their drive to expand the Empire to
Hell and back; the Bajorans stood glumly still in
the cold wind because they didn't want to be lashed
by Gavak-Gavak Das, who enjoyed his work all too
thoroughly.
    Still, even when squat Gavak-Gavak expertly
flicked his whip end to graze the priestess's cheek,
stinging but not drawing blood this time, she found
herself hating him far less than she hated and
despised the kindly, thoughtful Gul Ragat! "At
least Das is an honest racist," she had told a
divinity student three years earlier, when he passed
briefly through Ragat's household. "Das is a brutal
beast and he expects us to hate him for it. But the
gul wants not just our obedience but our love."
  "That's worse?"
    "He oppresses us, child, but he bears false wit-
ness against himself, absolving himself of the
charge of slavery by being a nice old slavemaster!
His is infinitely the greater evil in the eyes of the
Prophets." The student never quite got it; Sister
Winn was saddened to hear that he was caught
raiding the next year and was hanged.
    When Gul Ragat and sixty-five lesser mortals
were finally mustered under the chilly, gray sky,
Old Migar and cold-eyed Dukat inspected them.
Migar cared only for the ritual; it was power-
hungry Dukat, the master of Terok Nor, orbiting
Bajor like the grim hand of contagion (for wherever
its shadow fell was death), who pulled Cardassians
and Bajorans alike out of line and set them to
perform brutal physical exercise in the frozen,
muddy courtyard for such heinous crimes as un-
polished boots, misaligned buttons, or "a surly
attitude." The gul had one eye on the prefecture of
all Bajor and the other on the advancing age and
retirement (or sudden death) of Legate Migar,
which still left him the eyes in the back of his head
to spot treacherous malingerers and slackers. Even
Gul Dukat, however, passed lightly over Sister
Winn; he knew her to be her "master's" favorite,
and as the saying went, Rank Hath Its Privileges.
    Eventually, even Dukat was satisfied with the
shininess of the glittering, silver filligree across
the doublets of deepest military purple, with the
velvet-red uniforms of the servants, and with the
polish on the personal skimmers and armaments of
the soldiery, little though they could shine on such
a gloom day; and he passed in quick review one
more time before vanishing back inside the
house--to the banquet and open bar that Winn
knew awaited him there. Migar sighed and fol-
lowed Dukat, who technically outranked the gover-
nor, and at last, Gul Ragat could breathe in relief
again and order Gavak-Gavak to get the splendid
column moving--theoretically toward the village
of Vir-Hakar in Belshakarri, their home... but in
reality, on the road to Riis--where all threads of
this tapestry shall join, thought Sister Winn.

CHAPTER
        7

WINN THOUGHT she knew the route that Gul Ragat
would follow; there was one obvious road from the
palace to the river and Riis: along Surface 92, as
the Cardassians called it. The Bajorans had a more
colorful name: the Way of Wallows, because of the
soft, marshy ground surrounding the road that in
ancient times had been used to wallow tiraks being
driven to the slaughter pens in Riis; there were
slaughter pens no longer in peaceful Riis, but the
road to the city founded three millennia ago by the
holy man Kilikarri remained. Sister Winn had
followed the road many times, though usually at
many kilometers per hour skimming two or twenty
meters above the ground, and she visualized the
entire road in her mind, trying to figure the best
place to desert.
    She knew her holos were much more important
than a single action in Riis, a few cell leaders who
could not betray the Resistance even if they
wanted--and the Cardassians could, of course,
make them want--because of the elaborate organi-
zation ofcutouts and false fronts; for all that, Winn
found herself unable to condemn her fellow free-
dom fighters to capture, torture, and death, no
matter what the cause. There were others, even
other priests--Vedek Opaka sprang to mind--who
were much more ruthless than she, and she knew,
intellectually, it was a failing. But I just can't do it!
she railed. She had to find a way to warn the Riis
cell to call off the raid.
    Her best chance would come during the second
half of the march; Surface 92, which the Cardassi-
ans had straightened, now ran directly over the
wallows across a series of high, arched bridges,
some rising fifty meters above the surface. But
there were places where the drop was only ten
meters into soft mud, and Sister Winn decided that
even she, not the most athletic of women, could
survive that.
    But then what? she pondered; getting off the road
without being spotted was the easy part; traversing
kilometers of slick, deep mud and swampy, stag-
nant lakes on foot would be the real test. She knew
of a swamper, Velda Reeks, who was friendly to the
Resistance; the woman had hidden fugitives be-
fore. But she lived four kilometers from the
road... and those would be four kilometers of
ghastly effort and terrible risk: if Gul Ragat missed
her and thought to scan the surrounding swamp
before she made it to Velda's shielded cabin, he
would spot her in an instant and send soldiers to
pick her up. She would be searched, the holos
found... and not only would she be executed, but
the cell at Riis would be thoroughly compromised,
and perhaps even �elda Reeks to boot!
    Sister Winn would have to be over the wall, into
the mud, and away for several hours before anyone
noticed she was missing; that meant a night escape,
of course... but where would the gul decide to
camp? He was restricted to the foot speed of the
Bajorans, since no Cardassian in his right mind
would leave his servants behind and rush on ahead;
thus, it would take three days to get to Riis, which
waited like an open hand upon the Shakiristi and
its tributaries. But would they camp near enough to
Velda's cabin that Winn could make it, assuming
everything else went well?
    She thought of one more stratagem: if she some-
how could get into a skimmer, she might be able to
program it to head out over the swamp in some
other direction; then, when she turned up absent,
the Cardassians would assume she had stolen the
vehicle and would waste time following it. That
might confuse them enough that they would never
institute a thorough search that might uncover
Velda's cabin.
    The road to Riis was painful; there was no grassy
median, as had been the case when it was a small
Bajoran road, because Cardassians never traveled
by foot; Surface 92 was constructed of a specially
hardened plastic that could withstand the wheeled
and tracked vehicles the Cardassians used for
trucking heavy military equipment where antigrays
were unavailable or not powerful enough. Winn
wore only household shoes, and her feet were
rubbed raw within the first few kilometers.
    She had never walked so far without a rest. The
gul was anxious to get to Riis before the uprising
that only he knew about, and he drove his house-
hold mercilessly. Coming to the bulletin-tea was
much easier; there was no rush, and they made
only eight or nine kilometers per day, with plenty
of time to sit and eat, sip refreshments, and other-
wise "bathe their toes," as the saying went. Now,
Gul Ragat pushed for twice that pace, and Sister
Winn grimaced with every step.
    Others were hardened to the pace, having lived
rougher lives than the priestess; she didn't allow
herself to complain, since she only suffered because
she hadn't suffered as much as the others! But the
blisters were real, and her pain was hard to bear.
Only Winn's incessant prayers to the Prophets
allowed her to endure that first day.
    In the first of the two nights they would spend on
the road, she showed her feet to Hersaaka Toos,
and he sucked in a breath through clenched teeth;
they did look ghastly. He sent her to the healer,
Daana, who prescribed balms and a foot wrap that
soothed much of the pain and allowed the priestess
to walk relatively normally again. Already, howev-
er, the whole "survival-evasion-resistance-escape"
scenario was smelling less exciting and more im-
plausible.
    While the Bajorans set up the gul's camp, Sister
Winn cased the field in the guise of hearing confes-
sions and administering prayer and penance. Car-
dassian camps were uniform, and it was a matter of
pride within Gul Ragat that his camp would break
not the slightest letter of the law or breath of
tradition. The night's camp centered around the
manor of an unfortunate Bajoran farmer, who had
stupidly chosen to live alongside a trade route and
foolishly built up a successful farm: Mr. Farmer
and his family were temporarily exiled to a small
inn thirty kilometers away, driven in the gul's
personal skimmer, while the entourage of Gul
Ragat began pitching tents on one of the farmer's
fields.
    In an effort to be nice about it, the gul ignorantly
picked a field that looked empty, but in reality, it
was newly planted, a fact not brought to Gul
Ragat's attention for half an hour and the signifi-
cance of which took him another half hour to
understand. By the time he moved the camp, the
newly planted seeds were trampled and scattered;
if they grew at all, they would grow haphazardly,
not in rows, and be almost impossible to weed and
water properly. Winn spent the time wincing and
desperately praying to the Prophets that the farmer
wouldn't be completely ruined, as so many others
had been.
    Gul Ragat situated himself in the main house, of
course, and his soldiers pitched tents in orderly
rows upon a field that had been ploughed but not
yet planted; it would have to be reploughed, but
that was only a matter of a few extra days work for
the owner. The Bajoran servants were a special
concern of Gul Ragat's; he worried constantly that
they, too, were well weeded and watered. In conse-
quence, he ordered Gavak-Gavak Das to house the
Bajorans in the livestock barns... which the over-
seer promptly did by turning out all the stock and
chasing it away.
    "Ah, they'll come back, you whining priestess!"
snarled Gavak-Gavak to Sister Winn when she
protested. Winn stared after the departing rumps
and hooves; true, the farmer would probably be
able to get most of his dairy herd back again, but at
what cost? It would probably take weeks to round
them all up and truck them back to the farm!
    The farmer's land--Winn never did find out the
man's name--was at the edge of the mud flats, the
Wallows; for the next two days, Surface 92 trav-
ersed a causeway... and the cabin of Velda Reeks
was just about halfway between the farmer's hold
and Riis. Please, please, prayed the priestess fer-
vently, let us stop tomorrow night near enough that
I can at least try!

    Winn slept fitfully that night. Not only was she
unused to camping out--she hadn't slept well on
the road to Legate Migar's palace either--and not
only could she not tolerate the dirty smell of
animals, which permeated every cranny and crev-
ice of the barn like a miasma, along with much
animal by-product; but worst of all, she felt more
strongly than usual the restless ghosts of Bajorans
slain by evil Cardassians, by faceless bureaucracy,
and especially by well-meaning apologists like Gul
Ragat. She felt surrounded by the indifferent effi-
ciency of the Cardassian soldiers, who joked about
the inhumanity of the Bajorans without the least
concern for the Bajorans at their backs, who out-
numbered them almost three to one! And of
course, no Bajoran servant dared even raise an
angry glance at a Cardassian, lest he be made an
example for the rest.
    Hersaaka Toos, the Bajoran foreman, seemed the
most oppressed by the burden of serving his plan-
et's tyrants, and Sister Winn felt a terrible twinge
of guilt that she had refused the job herself, thus
forcing Hersaaka to be the hated emissary between
Bajor and Cardassia, in the person of Gavak-
Gavak. The stink of collaboration was already
starting to follow Hersaaka about as the odor of
animals now adhered to the priestess... and it
was entirely unjustified, since Hersaaka had no real
choice in the matter. Winn prayed for guidance:
ShouM I have accepted the stain upon myself and to
blazes with the consequences for Bajor when we're
finally free of the Cardassian blot? The Prophets
enigmatically remained silent.
    Sister Winn had heard of the Orbs, of course;
every priest knew of them. Perhaps someday, I'll
look into one and let the light of the Prophets shine
fully on me... and then I'll know, once and for all.
"For all" was right: if the Prophets found the
gazing eye wanting, they were rumored to burn it
out, along with the brain of the unworthy owner.
    She shook her head, sweeping out the cobwebs of
guilt and self-doubt; she couldn't afford those now!
Sister Winn had a job, a job that would have been
impossible were she as closely monitored as was
poor Hersaaka Toos. On her peregrination, she
paid especial attention to the movements of the
sentries. Like virtually everything else Cardassian,
the sentries had ritualized their task to the point of
predictability: she watched for only a few minutes
and was able to predict where every guard would
be at any moment.
    In any task that became routine to that extent,
there were gaps where nobody was looking in a
particular direction at a precise moment; there
were several, in fact. Winn knew the pattern would
be repeated exactly at the next camp--they were
Cardassians, after allmsubject only to the limita-
tions of the terrain (no farmhouses in that section
of Surface 92, for example; Gul Ragat would be in
his own pavillion, which was still carefully stowed
at the moment).

    By the time she finished her circuit of the camp,
talking to each Bajoran, as was her primary duty,
Resistance or no Resistance, Sister Winn had con-
structed what she hoped was a good escape plan.
Because Ragat was so "benevolent" a master by
Cardassian standards, escapes from his plantation
were quite rare; Bajorans knew the penalty for
running away from Gul Ragat's honor farm was
either execution, or if the slave escaped that fate,
transportation up to Terok Nor... which might
actually be worse: Gul Dukat's cruelty was legen-
dary across all five points of the globe. But the
consequence had lulled Gul Ragat's sentries to the
point of somnambulation, and she hoped any slop
in her plan would fall unnoticed.
    When she returned to her own tent, which she
shared with two other women, she collapsed sud-
denly onto her sleeping mat, so exhausted she
surprised even herself. As she lay on her back
feeling her legs and especially feet throb with every
beat of her pulse, she tried to understand her
fatigue: she was always tired after a long march, but
not this tired! And she had been fine a few mo-
ments before, circumnavigating the camp. It~fear,
she realized at last; my body is starting to under-
stand just how deadly a game I'm planning. But
there was nothing she could do about that; a
priestess could not allow fear of physical death to
interfere with a duty of the soul--as she was
convinced the fight for Bajor's independence truly
was. I think I know how the holy martyrs felt,
thought Winn bitterly, and she knew the thought
was not even blasphemous.
    Sister Winn had one more duty that evening, to
lead the Bajorans in their prayers over supper. She
roused herself at the proper time and led the
prayer, then forced her eyes to remain open long
enough to eat some food and engage, somewhat
incoherently, in a little light banter. She always
believed in the necessity of keeping up appear-
ances; appearances were more important than a lot
of people admitted: morale was based almost en-
tirely upon the most superficial aspects of one's
spiritual leaders, for example. Then as soon as she
could reasonably excuse herself, she stumbled back
to her tent and fell instantly into a deep sleep, at
least two hours before the others.
    She woke with a start, heart racing and breath
coming quick and heavy, an hour before dawn--a
time she rarely saw on a normal day. She could
hear only the Bajoran cooks stirring, banging pots,
and of course the ever present, clockwork plodding
of the Cardassian sentries. She rose too quickly and
had to wait for a wash of dizziness to depart as her
blood pressure increased. Then, for decency's sake,
she wrapped a morning cloak about her already too
warm body and walked into the middle of the
camp to begin the morning prayers... rather ear-
lier than was usual for her.
    One of the Cardassian sentries noticed; he was
new, and his shift always ended before Sister Winn
normally bestirred herself, so he had never seen
her move through her rituals. He approached,
scowling.
  "What d'you think you're doing?"
  "I think I'm praying, most gracious sir."
  "Why?"
    Winn looked up at the boy, no more than twenty,
his face stamped with the permanent, ugly sneer of
the bully. I'll bet you tried to join the Obsidian
Order and were rejected because of a low IQ, she
thought--then instantly apologized to the Proph-
ets for the uncharity. "Sir, I am praying because I
am the sister, the priestess you would say, to all
these Bajorans. It is my duty to pray to the Proph-
ets at certain times of the day, morning being one
of those times. Overseer Gavak-Gavak Das will
vouch for my duties, most benevolent corporal."
    She waited politely a moment or two for re-
sponse, but the boy was still thinking; she returned
to her prayers, but he interrupted her once more.
"All right, then... but get to it! Stop 1ollygagging,
or I'll have you reassigned to hauling luggage." He
could do no such thing, of course; Gul Ragat would
never allow it. But Winn knew how to handle such
bullies as this young corporal: she bowed deeply to
the boy and thanked him profusely, promising to
speed up the prayers if he so commanded. Then she
took exactly as long as she always did, of course;
how was he to know? The corporal of the guard
stalked off, seemingly pleased that he had pushed
around another Bajoran.
 Winn started to worry; if the same guard were on
duty tomorrow night when she was to make her
escape, he might be especially alert; he was young
and only recently transferred to the service of Gul
Ragat from... from where? Sister Winn remem-
bered with a sinking heart: the corporal was just
transferred from the orbital station, Terok Nor; he
had received his training in the security forces of
Gul Dukat! Yes, this angry chiM is definitely one to
avoid, she told herself.
    The second day's march was so much easier than
the first that Sister Winn almost considered com-
mencing an exercise program at the gymnasium at
Gul Ragat's; I must be terribly out of shape! She had
noticed a lot of her clothes getting rather tight in
recent months, but she had assumed they were
shrinking for some reason.
    Healer Daana's footwraps worked wonders.
Winn's feet stopped hurting entirely after the first
few kilometers, when the circulation really started
reaching her toes; Daana had added pads to strate-
gic points in the priestess's shoes as well as wraps
to prevent her toes from sliding against each other.
By the time Gul Ragat called a halt for the midday
meal, Winn felt her excitement growing: I'm really
going to do it/she nearly said aloud. The horizon
seemed so close in the still, chilly air, she thought
she might be able to reach out and touch its line.
    Surface 92 was so straight and level, it was
virtually impossible not to become hypnotized by
the steady tramping. The air was too cold for heat
mirages, so Winn was denied even that slight solace
of illusory motion. But she kept track of their
progress by the distance markers. She spent some
time mentally calculating where was the closest
point to the cabin of Velda Reeks... she wasn't
sure of the numbers--math was never the priest-
ess's highest subjectrebut it didn't appear as
though they would get quite that far before camp-
ing for the night.
    Sister Winn felt an expletive without even quite
vocalizing it to herself, so well-trained was her
mind. It meant quite a bit of extra travel through
the thigh-deep mud, and more of a chance of
misjudging the direction and missing the cabin
entirely. It was shielded against Cardassian sen-
sors, after all, so the best she could do was head in
approximately the right direction while beaming a
tight, low-amplitude message saying who she was,
hoping that Velda Reeks found her.
    IF, she thought, I can steal a sensor-
communicator from the Cardassians, that is. That
made two overt acts before she could escape: break
into a skimmer and send it along a false trail and
liberate some communications gear. But with her
feet feeling so good, Sister Winn was convinced she
could do anything!
    An idea occurred to her; she increased her pace,
passing several ranks of Bajorans and then the gul's
Cardassian honor guard. No one moved to stop
her; she was well-known among all the gul's inti-
mates.
  "My Lord," she said, hurrying to catch up with
Ragat's open-top skimmer limousine, "M'Lord, I
must speak to you! It is urgent."
    Gul Ragat looked about in surprise; seeing Sister
Winn walking beside his car, he automatically
tapped the code to open the bird wing door. His
bodyguard and Neemak Counselor each grabbed
an arm and hoisted the priestess into the car with
them.
    The guard was just another Cardassian soldier,
one of the commissioned officers selected for the
honor that day. But Neemak always made Winn's
flesh creep: his face was too smooth for a Cardassi-
an, for one point, and he had the faintest sugges-
tion of nose ridges, giving Winn the disturbing
impression that he might actually be a cross be-
tween Cardassian and Bajoran. His eyes were set
too far apart, and his mouth a slight bit too wide;
Neemak Counselor had a tendency to look to the
left of the person he was addressing, and when he
wet his lips, which was frequently, his tongue
darted in and out like a reptile.
    He didn't dress like a Cardassian, either; he wore
a simple red smock with no markings, nothing even
to indicate planet of origin. Winn had no idea how
good an attorney he was, but he was reputed to
"know everyone," which in Cardassian courts
probably made him very successful indeed.
Neemak stared to the left of Sister Winn while she
addressed the gul... she knew he was watching
her.
 "Now, now," said Gul Ragat, making calming
gestures as though she were a frightened child.
"What is so important, Sister Winn? Come now,
speak up!"
    "My Lord, I--" Well, smart-shoes, what IS so
important? At once, Winn's mind went totally
blank. She had thought of something, and it was
such a good idea!
    "My Lord Gul," said Neemak, his mouth twitch-
ing as he stared out the window of the skimmer,
"surely your benevolence toward these servants
knows no bounds. For I am unaware of any other
personage of your exalted rank who would take one
of them into his own skimmer. Perhaps we should
inquire whether another Bajoran's feet hurt?"
    "Yes, ah, yes," mumbled Gul Ragat, tugging at
his collar, "I'm sure there's no need to discuss this
with anyone... is there?" The sudden revelation
that the gul was afraid of his counselor startled
Sister Winn's memory back. "Winn!" snapped
Ragat, "what is the urgent news you need to deliver
to me? Quick, now! Then you must alight and
continue on foot, as is proper."
    "My Lord, I have had a most disturbing vision
regarding... ah, the matter we discussed earlier."
She pointedly did not look at Neemak Counselor;
Gul Ragat stiflened and licked his lips nervously.
So he didn't even tell his personal secretary! That
clinched the matter; Neemak was connected. De-
spite the hideous possibility that he was a cross-
breed between Cardassian and Bajoran, somebody
in the high command--probably either Legate
Migar or Gul Dukat--was using Neemak as eyes
and ears upon Gul Ragat... and Ragat knew it
well.
  "What about the matter, Winn?"
    "I had infor... I mean, I had a vision that
things might happen sooner than we thought; as
soon as tomorrow morning."
  "Morning? You said morning?"
    "Yes, My Lord. Late morning. Or so said my--
my vision."
    "Heh heh her heh," chuckled the gul, quite
unconvincingly, "these superstitious, simple peo-
ple and their visions!" He leaned close to Neemak
and stage-whispered, "She seems to think my pal-
ace is going to burn down."
    Neemak raised his brows and stared to the left of
Gul Ragat. "Indeed, My Lord? Does she not know
of the sprinkler system and the fire suppressors?"
He turned his head to almost look at Winn. "I pity
the poor Bajoran terrorist who might plot arson
against a gul of the Cardassian Empire. So treason-
ous; so pathetically ineffective."
    "Actually," muttered Winn, "my vision was of a
lightning strike, Lord Counselor."
    Neemak gazed placidly out the window at the
bright blue sky; a single, small cumulus cloud
drifted lazily across the dome like a seed pod blown
from a Prophet's Breath flower. "I recommend,"
he said, "in my official capacity as my 1ord's
counselor that we consider long and hard before
replacing Cardassian meteorology with Bajoran
visions of the supernatural, My Lord Gul."
    "Yes, quite. Quite so. Yes, quite so." Ragat
nodded vigorously. He gestured at the door; with-
out waiting to be ordered, Sister Winn opened it
and stepped out, having to jog a bit as the gul's
driver sped up slightly... probably on purpose,
thought the priestess in annoyance; again, she
quickly apologized to the Prophets for her unchari-
table thought. She slowed to a walk and dropped
back to her proper place in the processional, won-
dering whether the seed she had planted would
germinate. I'll know soon enough, she thought; the
sun was starting to sink, and ordinarily, the "kind-
hearted" Gul Ragat would call a halt early to give
his servants on foot more time to rest. But this day,
they continued on into the bone-chilly night.
    Four hours later, deep into a black-dark, moon-
less night, Gavak-Gavak Das finally stopped the
column. The grumbling, footsore Bajorans sank in
their tracks, massaging calves and wetting their
aching, throbbing feet. Beneath the starry canopy
of brilliant, pinprick jewels, most yellow white, but
a few red giants or blue dwarfs among them, Sister
Winn rubbed her own sore feet and tried not to feel
guilty for putting her flock to such extra tramping.
Sometimes it is necessary, she remembered, to
sacrifice a finger to save the hand,' it was a saying
attributed to the greatest of all the Prophets...
but in reality, it could have been said by any
 doctor, freedom fighter, or tyrant on any planet in
 the galaxy.
    The gul had bought her ruse; he was pushing to
reach Riis by early to midmorning, rather than
afternoon. In reality, Sister Winn was taking a
terrible gamble: arriving earlier, the Cardassians
had a greater chance to catch the Resistance cell
unaware, if Winn weren't able to warn them in
time. But the extra four hours put the night's camp
much closer to the sensor-shielded shack of Velda
Reeks, and actually gave Winn a fighting chance of
finding the woman and alerting her, so she could
communicate with the cell and call off the strike on
the spaceport.
    It felt like a fifty-fifty proposition to Sister Winn,
but it was the best she could do. All that remained
were three impossible feats: liberating a communi-
cator from the Cardassians, reprogramming one of
the guard's skimmers, and escaping across four
kilometers of foot-sucking mud to find an invisible
cabin in a trackless wasteland.
    Sister Winn felt a great peace settle upon her; it's
all in the hands of the Prophets now, she
thought... but my faith wouM certainly be
strengthened by a personal cloaking device.

0

CHAPTER
        8

SISTER WINN'S greatest fear, she was ashamed to
admit to anyone but Those she served, was that she
would fall asleep for real and sleep right through
her own escape. She had to feign sleep--closed
eyes, rhythmic breath, inert body, sneaking not
even a scratch of the side of her nose or wiping the
thin trail of drool that trickled down her chin.
    Her roommates were several girls from the vil-
lage and one, Mali, from the palace itself; and
Winn suspected that at least one of the girls was a
Cardassian informant: her cell leader, whose name
she never heard, told her it was "SOP"--standard
operating procedure--for the Cardassians to con-
stantly monitor all Bajoran leaders... even down
to the village mayor level. Surely a full, ordained
 sister priestess, one of the youngest ever invested,
 would qualify for such surveillance!
    She kept awake by running through all seventy-
seven prayers of the Book of Amakira, a test she
had passed as a young girl while studying for holy
orders; each prayer comprised sixteen syllables, so
it took quite some time to pass through the entire
book, especially while fully comprehending the
meaning of each verse: Sister Winn had great need
for the heart-comforting revelations of Amakira.
When she finished, the camp was silent, save for
the omnipresent tramp of the guards; same rhythm
as last night, thank the Prophets.
    Winn had made sure she took the sleeping mat
closest to the tent flap. She rose so excruciatingly
slowly and quietly, she was actually startled when
her elbow joint cracked. Winn rolled to her knees,
then pressed back to the balls of her feet. Techni-
cally, it was forbidden for a Bajoran to leave his
tent during the night; but Gul Ragat, though terri-
bly youngreno more than twenty-one years old!m
was aware that many older folk had only half-a-
night bladders, and he never strictly enforced the
rule, so long as the trek was straight to the relief
station and straight back to the tent. If challenged,
or even if spotted, Winn was prepared to abort her
plans and head straight for the privy.
    She gingerly plucked her shoes from beneath the
pile of other girls' footgear and ghosted through the
tent flap before putting them on. Outside, she
stepped into the shadow of the tent and surveyed
the scene.
    She had picked a good night for an escape. The
moon was new, and they were far enough along
Surface 92 that no city lights illuminated the clear,
star-spattered sky. The road itself occupied the
central strip of the causeway; there was a parade
ground or picnic area (Winn wasn't SUre why the
Cardassians had built it) extending like an apron
on either side of the actual road, widening every so
often, and it was on the eastern side of the apron
that GUl Ragat's entourage was encamped. The
parade ground was paved with a plastic-polymer
that was somewhat springy to the foot, and it was
colored green... a creepy, Cardassian imitation
of a grassy sward, Winn supposed. In any event,
her soft shoes made no noise as she slid from one
end of the tent to the other, peeking around the
edges at the guards.
    Her heart pounded so hard, her chest actually
hurt. She stared hungrily at the parked skimmer
cycles of the guards; probably have a communica-
tions wand on one of the skimmers, she told her-
self... though it was really just a guess. If the
Prophets were with her, it was an educated one.
     Timing her movements to the disappearance of
 all three guards behind various tents, Winn
 hunched over and ran as quickly as she could
 manage to the cycles. She was already huffing and
 blowing by the time she covered the short distance,
 wishing she had paid more attention to such fleshy
 matters as her weight and physical conditioning.
 There's such a thing as being too spiritual, I guess,
 she decided.
    The cycles loomed much larger up close than
they had when they hummed past her on the
march; Cardassians tended to be larger than Bajor-
ans--or taller, anywaymand Sister Winn was
somewhat on the short side even for her sex and
species. She stole in between the first two: If I'm
caught now, she realized, there is no possible way to
explain... nobody ~ going to believe I got lost on
the way to the privy! The machines hulked black
and menacing in the moonless dark, but the metal
was actually shiny enough that if she raised her
head and looked at the top of the stabilizer wings,
she saw the constellations dimly reflected. She
smelled ozone as the fuel cells recharged the batter-
ies in preparation for another day of travel.
    She heard the tramp of boots; a sentry ap-
proached along his normal route. Winn couldn't
move; it would only attract his attention. She
wasn't fully in shadow, but she stilled her body and
held her breath.
    The sentry strode into view; he was close enough
that she could have hit him with a stone. If he
turned his head just slightly to the right, he
couldn't help seeing her!
    Winn looked down, superstitiously worrying
about "catching his eye" by staring at him herself.
She envisioned herself shrinking inside herself, like
a snake swallowing its own tail until there was
nothing left but a faint puff of displaced air.
    The measured crunching of boot steps continued
unwavering past the priestess and into the night.
The sentry had passed her by unnoticed. She had
several minutes before he returned, and Sister
Winn had every intention of taking full advantage.
    She had seen the Cardassians using their com-
munication wands, and it was an article of faith for
the priestess that anything a Cardassian could learn
to operate would be child's play for a Bajoran. But
would they leave them on the cycles or take them
inside their own tents?
    She found no wand on the first two cycles,
though she was somewhat hampered in her search
by not being able to rise up and lean over to look at
the other side of the first skimmer; taking a deep
breath and gritting her teeth, as if she were diving
into the ocean, she slipped around cycle number
two and explored its left side and the right side of
cycle three.
     At last, the priestess struck a vein of pure ore: she
 found not one but two communication wands
 stuck into the left saddlebag of cycle number seven.
 But then she heard the tramp of the sentry, now
 coming in the opposite direction. Again, she didn't
 move, didn't breathe, and visualized herself
 shrinking to a dust mote, smaller and smaller to the
 vanishing point. Evidently, the sentry was either
 asleep on his feet or else he simply had no reason to
 look at the parked skimmer cycles; once again, he
walked past her, almost close enough for Winn to
reach out and untie his bootlaces (were he wearing
any).
    When her heart returned to only a moderately
fast beat, she slipped one of the com-wands into
her voluminous sleeve pocket. Then, licking her
dry lips, she commenced the second part of her
adventure.
    The program controls on the cycles were easy to
comprehend... assuming one understood Car-
dassian. Winn had made a point of it when she
studied for her holy orders; all official communica-
tions to the Cardassian High Command for any-
thing or about anything had to be written in High
Cardassianmand the only alternative to learning
the language herself was to hire someone to trans-
late every time she had some important request to
make, which was not only