Wrath of the Prophets Page 15

  "Can you flex your fingers?" asked the Maquis.

  Kira tentatively did so and then repeated the action with more confidence.

  "I don't think it did any serious muscle damage," Ro said. "You were lucky."

  "You have a very broad definition of luck," the major replied sarcastically. She sat up, stretching the arm. "I've had enough of this," she growled. "Let's go find our host and settle accounts."

  Her companions helped her to her feet and they took off down the corridor. Kira wobbled only once as she fought off a slight wave of dizziness. Mainly, she was all right.

  It was an indication of Manimoujak's supreme confidence—some would say overconfidence—that he had not tried to move his base of operations after Kira, Ro, and Varis had broken out of the Place. Clearly, he had been certain that he was invulnerable in his lair. He had not counted on Kira's thorough knowledge of the mountains, or their collective determination to both complete their mission and pay him back for what he had done to them.

  The women encountered several more guards along the way, but luck remained with them. They always managed to get the drop on them, and between Ro's consistently bad—but mysteriously effective—aim, and Kira's overall bad mood, they managed to make short work of them. Varis stayed back and watched her comrades with a mixture of awe and terror.

  Then they turned a corner and suddenly there was Manimoujak, leaning over the shoulder of one of his lieutenants who was, in turn, leaning over a communications system.

  "Then what the hell is going on?" Manimoujak was demanding.

  Making no attempt to choke back her fury, Kira said, "I'll tell you!"

  Manimoujak spun and faced them with alarm. "Wh—What—?" he stammered, and started to run.

  Kira practically vaulted the distance between them. Manimoujak had retreated no more than a few steps when the major took him down, her knees landing in the small of his back.

  His lieutenant was on his feet, but he obviously wasn't a fighter. This became evident when. Ro knocked him flat with one punch.

  Kira pressed the business end of a knife against the underside of Manimoujak's throat.

  "Now … now listen tome," he croaked.

  "No," Kira snapped, "you listen to me. Let me explain your problem here. You didn't take us seriously. You've gotten so used to thinking of women as hunks of meat to be bartered and traded, you didn't think we posed any sort of threat. Laren, would you say we're pretty threatening?"

  Ro nodded. "Yeah, Nerys, I'd say so. Sul?"

  Varis nodded, too.

  Kira pressed the knife against Manimoujak's flesh a little harder. "You're going to tell us what we want to know," she advised him. "You're going to tell us everything we want to know. Got that? Otherwise, by the Prophets, you'll have an ear-to-ear smile that's not on your face."

  Manimoujak's eyes opened wide. "You … you wouldn't …"

  "Actually," Ro said, "I think she would. And you have to remember something—she's the level-headed one. I'm the criminal type. So in case you were planning to appeal to me for mercy, you can pretty much forget that."

  "You … won't do anything to me," the Yridian said, clearly trying to build up his confidence. "Not as long as you think I'll tell you what you want to know …"

  And then he yelped as the knife dug deeper into his skin. A trickle of blood made its way down the side of his throat.

  "I'm just trying to save time," Kira hissed. "If we have to kill you and then check your computer records to find what we need, then that's what we'll do. You've got until the count of three to talk, and then I'm done with you and you're done with this life. And you can explain your actions to whatever gods the Yridians answer to. One … two … thr—"

  "All right!" Manimoujak rasped. "I'll tell you!"

  And he did. He described the entire distribution network through which the replicators and their virus-laden raw material had arrived on Bajor.

  The Orions were the ones who had procured the stuff. Through a series of Yridian middle men, they had gotten it to Manimoujak. And Manimoujak had gotten it to Gnome.

  "Everything obtained through layers upon layers," Kira noted.

  "Yes," Manimoujak confirmed. "But everyone benefited, don't you see? Do you have any idea how many lives were improved, how many lives were saved, through our activities? Perhaps we profiteered a bit, but show me the merchant who operates at a loss. There were no victims—"

  "No victims?" Kira resisted the impulse to press her blade a little deeper into his flesh. "You were ready to sell us on the auction block! How can you say there were no victims?"

  The Yridian groaned softly. "We sold off trouble makers, dissidents, the dregs of the Bajoran populace. The ones no one in authority wanted around anymore. Do you seriously think we could have continued our operations if someone in the government hadn't turned a blind eye to it all? Documents had to be signed, investigations squelched …"

  The enormity of what he was saying slowly began to sink in on Kira. She turned to Ro as if looking for confirmation of it. The Maquis nodded.

  "What you're telling us," Ro said slowly, "is that anyone who had opinions contrary to the government might be branded as a troublemaker … and just disappear one night into the Orion slave system?"

  Manimoujak nodded.

  "I don't believe it," Kira whispered. "I don't believe it."

  "It certainly explains why those old cronies of yours were happy to play along with the system," Ro observed. "People who might actually have been of help to us … were already long gone."

  "It was a mutually useful system," Manimoujak said. "And it would have kept on going perfectly fine … a nice little under-the-table situation … if it hadn't been for this disease."

  Varis Sul stepped forward. "Was it intentional?" she demanded.

  "I don't think so," the Yridian told her. "Certainly not on my end, I can tell you that. Bajor is my base of operations. It's an old saying for those in my line of work that you don't befoul your own sandbox. If I'd known, I'd never have let it go through. So if it was a plan, it originated outside of my circle."

  "And the government official," Varis said. "The one who you said was helping matters along …"

  "I don't know," Manimoujak grated.

  "Oh, come on!" Kira urged. "You expect us to believe that?"

  "I don't!" he pleaded. "All I ever knew was a code name—Black Hole. How's that for melodrama? One of my men acted as ago-between. He was the only one who ever saw Black Hole in person."

  "Which of your men?" Ro demanded.

  The Yridian swallowed. "Halkarm."

  Kira exchanged looks with the Maquis.

  "That guard who fell to his death," Ro said. "Didn't I hear him say his name was—?"

  Kira nodded. "Halkarm."

  She slid off Manimoujak and sat glaring at him. "I don't care what kind of face you try to put on it," she said to him tightly. "You made your money from other people's misery. You're slime."

  With an effort, the Yridian got to his feet. "I'll try not to be too hurt by your criticism," he replied.

  Kira looked around the control room. She stopped when she noticed the comm equipment.

  "Ro," she said, "do you think you can raise Deep Space Nine using that?"

  "Not a problem," her comrade told her.

  Moments later, the major was staring at the concerned face of her friend Dax. "My God, Kira, you look like you've been through a war."

  "Only a small one," the major assured her. "Any luck with a—?"

  "A cure?" The Trill shook her head. "We're still working on it."

  Refusing to dwell on that news, Kira laid out, in broad strokes, what they'd been through and what they'd learned. "Unfortunately," she said in conclusion, "we still don't know the name of the Bajoran official who was directly involved in all this."

  And then Odo stepped into view. "Actally … we do," he said. "Quark managed to obtain the information from a rather unsavory individual named Calculanthra."

 
"Quark did that?" Kira said skeptically. "How?"

  "Gamesmanship," Odo explained—though it wasn't really much of an explanation at all. "The man's name is Ompar Tenzil. He operates out of the capital city."

  Ompar Tenzil …

  "You know him?" Ro asked Kira.

  But it was Varis Sul who answered her. "I do. He's the main liaison between the government and the religious caste. He has a fairly impressive reputation."

  "It'll be even more impressive when we're done with him," Kira vowed. "Dax, you've got the coordinates of this place. Send a runabout down with a security team to round up these … gentlemen … and have them placed in isolation. And since we're feeling a bit winded, we would appreciate a lift to the capital city. We and Ompar Tenzil are going to have a little … chat."

  CHAPTER

  14

  O'BRIEN STOOD AT his usual place in Ops and tried for the third time to get through to Keiko's expedition. The communications situation on Bajor was worse than ever, but he had to talk to his wife. He had to find out what was going on down there.

  Abruptly he got a response. It was one of the Bajorans—though not anyone he recognized.

  "This is Chief O'Brien on Deep Space Nine," he explained. "I need to speak with my—"

  Before he could complete the sentence, the Bajoran vanished from the screen. And a moment later, Keiko appeared in his place.

  "Oh, Miles!" she said.

  She looked ragged and worried. O'Brien swallowed back his dismay.

  "Is everything all right?" he asked, fearing the worst.

  Keiko shook her head from side to side, a tear running down her cheek. And by that, even before she could say it, he knew.

  Molly had the Wrath.

  "Is there a cure yet?" his wife asked hopefully.

  "No," O'Brien told her, his voice little more than a rasp, hollowed out with pain for his little girl. "There's nothing. But Julian is working on it." He licked his lips. "How is she?"

  Keiko shrugged and brushed away a strand of hair that had fallen across her face. "She's sleeping. As far as she knows, she's just under the weather."

  "But she's been diagnosed?" he pressed.

  His wife nodded. "Just this morning. I tried to get through to you, but …" She shrugged again.

  O'Brien took a deep breath, let it out. He felt scoured out, entirely without strength, without a clue as to what to say.

  "Miles?"

  "I'm here," he replied.

  "How are things on the station?"

  The chief wished he could have given her a happier answer. But he had to tell her the truth, no matter what.

  "That's why I called," he said. "Morn came down with the Wrath a little while ago." He paused. "What about you, hon? How are you holding up?"

  "I'm tired," she confessed. "And scared. But I'm managing."

  "Of course you are," O'Brien told her. "You've always been the strongest among the three of us."

  Keiko chuckled sadly. "You've never tried to get Molly to eat fresh kevas," she told him. "You should see who's stronger then."

  Her smile looked crooked and ill-fitting. The chief missed her more at that moment than at any time he could remember.

  "Keiko," he told her gently, "we'll get through this. Somehow."

  "I hope so," she replied.

  She turned, as if distracted by something off-screen. When she turned back to him, it was with a sense of urgency.

  "We need to clear the channel, Miles. I … love you." Then the screen went dark.

  O'Brien cursed beneath his breath. He felt so helpless … so terribly, terribly helpless. He wanted to help his wife and daughter, to be the savior they desperately needed.

  But what could he do? He wasn't a physician. He couldn't find a cure for the Wrath. He sighed deeply. Maybe no one could, not even Julian.

  And if that was the case, he told himself—if they were all going to die, and it was just a matter of when—he wanted to be with his family at the end. The more he thought about it, the more that seemed like the best course of action.

  Certainly, he had his duty to perform, and he took it as seriously as anyone. But even duty paled beside his devotion to his wife and daughter.

  Turning to Hagen, who was standing at the next console, he said, "Keep an eye on things, all right?"

  The other man looked at him. "Er … sure, Chief."

  Hagen didn't ask him where he was going. After all, O'Brien was his superior officer. But the man seemed to have a sense that something was amiss—that O'Brien wasn't just taking a moment to check some circuit junction somewhere.

  Setting his jaw, the chief headed for Sisko's office, which Dax had lately commandeered. He could see her sitting inside, elbows on the desktop, holding her face between her hands. That expression was back, too—the one that told him she was a million light-years away.

  O'Brien hated to leave her in such a state—in fact, he hated to leave the station in the care of someone who clearly wasn't up to it at the moment. But he'd made his decision, and he would stick to it.

  As he approached, the doors to the office opened for him. Disturbed from her reverie, the Trill looked up.

  "What is it?" she asked him, as if emerging from a short and unsatisfying sleep. He could see the strain on her face, in her eyes.

  The chief cleared his throat. "I need an immediate leave of absence," he told her.

  Dax eyed him, no doubt searching his face for a clue. "I see," she said. "May I ask why?"

  He screwed up his resolve. "I'm needed on Bajor."

  Dax seemed surprised by his answer. "Did Kira send for you?" she asked.

  He shook his head. "No. Keiko needs me. Molly's come down with the Wrath."

  The Trill swallowed. She seemed to search for words, but none came.

  "You have to understand," he said, "this isn't easy for me. I've never walked away from an assignment in my life. But this is different. According to Julian, we're no closer to a cure than we were before. And if Molly's going to—to—"

  He couldn't say it. He couldn't say the words.

  "If that's going to happen," he went on, "I want to be there. I need to be there."

  Dax looked away from him. She seemed to be struggling with something—struggling just as much as he was.

  "You can't know what this is like," he rasped, his voice losing its strength in the face of his misery. "You can't imagine what it's like to love someone the way I love Molly, and to think that she might—"

  Suddenly Dax turned to him, her eyes wide, her mouth agape. She seemed to be looking not at him, but through him. And before he could ask her what was going on, she screamed.

  It was a single word. The word was no, and she screamed it long and loud from the depths of her heart, until the office echoed with it.

  For a moment, O'Brien didn't know what to do. The Trill had always been so sane, so rational. To hear her start to shriek that way and without warning … it just didn't seem possible.

  Then, as he was still pondering, still off-balance, Dax stopped and looked away from him. But he could still see part of her face. There was an expression on it that he had never seen there before—an expression of anguish, of horror and pain.

  He came around the captain's desk and knelt before her. "Dax?" he said gently. "Are you all right?"

  "My baby," she muttered. "My little girl." The Trill turned to him. "She was my little girl."

  "Your little girl?" he said, reaching for understanding. What was she talking about? Molly was his daughter.

  "Milayn," she whispered softly—and a bit sadly, he thought. And then a second time: "Milayn."

  "Dax?" he repeated. "What's wrong?"

  Then came the strangest and most unexpected thing of all. Abruptly the look in Dax's eyes changed again. Whereas a moment ago, she'd been lost in some private torment, she seemed now to be in control—perhaps more so than at anytime since the captain's departure.

  "Chief," she said, her voice strong and steady, "I know this disease.
"

  Dax took a deep breath and leaned back in her chair. Across the table from her, both Bashir and O'Brien were waiting patiently for her to explain herself. The ward room was silent, except for the subtle hum of the station's power generators.

  "It was about three hundred years ago," she began. "Lela—"

  "One of your earlier hosts," the doctor interjected.

  "Lela was my first host," she said. "She was a legislator, one of the first women to be named to the Trill Council. Later in her career, she was invited to a world called Andevian Two, to spend a year teaching. In those days, of course, the Trill didn't have warpspeed travel, so Lela couldn't go back and forth to visit her family. She ended uptaking them along with her.

  "At first, everything went well. The children liked Andevian Two. So did Lela's husband, Nareeya. They were treated well by the Andevians, who valued what Lela had to teach them. And in contrast to her experiences on Trill, Lela had lots of free time—which she spent with her family." She paused, remembering. "They were happy.

  "Then a disease broke out on one of the smaller continents—a disease that seemed to defy the conventional cures. No one thought that much of it at the time, but as a representative of a learned culture, Lela was asked to visit the site of the outbreak. What's more, she wanted to go. She was curious. She wanted to see this disease close up, with her own eyes.

  "Unfortunately, she'd hardly arrived when the disease began to pop up in other population centers. Before anyone knew it, it was all over Andevian Two—and no one was able to stop it. People began dying—by the hundreds, by the thousands—and all the Andevians could do was watch.

  "Before long, Lela realized she was in over her head. She tried to rejoin her family, but transportation was at a standstill. Then word reached her that her eldest daughter had the disease."

  Dax swallowed—with difficulty. But she had already steeled herself for this. She went on.

  "The girl's name was Milayn. She was twelve … tall, dark, beautiful. She had wanted to be a legislator, like her mother. But the disease—"