Star Trek: Terok Nor 02: Night of the Wolves (35 page)

“But we do often defer to Keeve when a decision is to be made,” Juk cut in.

Laren mentally nodded to herself; the
D’jarra
s
did
still have some pull here, just as she had imagined. Keeve’s
D’jarra
must have designated him to the class of politicians and civilian leaders.

The adults commenced to talking about what to do with this and that, where could Laren and Bram make their camp, how could they return to Bajor, the specifics of which did not particularly interest Laren—at least not while Bis was standing so near. She imagined that Bis had probably lived on this windy, dusty rock his entire life. He had never even seen a proper tree before. The foliage here was scraggly, with sparse leaves and dry, crackling branches, nothing at all like the grand forests in Jo’kala. She pitied him, a little.

Laren wondered many things about Bis. Had he ever seen a Cardassian, here on this world? Had he ever flown in a shuttle? Was he impressed that she had been in a raider all by herself?

“So, if you and your daughter would like, we could set up a tent for you, just outside of—”

“I’m
not
his daughter,” Laren interrupted Keeve fiercely. She’d have expected Bram to have told him at least that much.

Keeve looked surprised, and a little amused. “Begging your pardon, my dear. So how is it that you came to be in a ship all alone, in Cardassian-controlled space?”

Bram answered for her. “I look after her,” he said. “She’s something of an orphan. My resistance cell has taken her in. We’re teaching her how to fly—”

“I already
know
how to fly.”

Keeve continued to look surprised, and Bram spoke quickly.

“Laren, please. My apologies—I’ve not done a very good job teaching her any manners. She lived on the streets, when I found her, running with a crowd of beggars…”

“I’m no beggar,” Laren interrupted. “I stole things from the Cardassians. That’s why Bram wanted me along, because I can break into their stockades better than any of the grown-ups in the resistance cell. He needs me to disable the security feeds before anyone approaches.”

Keeve looked a bit unsettled as he turned to Bram. “She can’t be more than twelve,” he said.

“I’m fourteen!” Laren shouted.

“
Laren!
It’s true, Keeve, the girl does have talent. She can hack into a security system like nobody’s business, and I can’t even begin to figure how she does it.” He shot her a pointed look. “I’d never tolerate her impertinence if she wasn’t good for something.”

Keeve’s expression reset itself to one of thoughtfulness. “Is that right?” he said, and he turned to look at Laren. “So, you fight in the resistance, do you?”

Laren decided she didn’t like his tone. “Yes,” she said sulkily. “And what do
you
do, here on Valo II, to try and drive out the spoonheads?”

Keeve’s eyebrows shot up and he addressed Bram. “I see what you mean, about the manners,” he said, one corner of his mouth twisted into a forced-seeming smile. He turned away for a moment to speak quietly with Juk and Mace, arguing good-naturedly in hushed tones. Laren could barely catch the gist of what they were discussing, but she was fairly certain it had something to do with her. Juk’s voice rose above the others more than once, saying, “She’s only a child!”

“You’ll have to help me set up our tent, Laren,” Bram said, apparently trying to draw her away from the conversation, but Laren did not answer, straining to hear what the other men were talking about. She caught Bis’s eye as he shifted his attention from his father’s conversation back to her, and she quickly looked away again, forgetting the men for the moment.

Keeve stepped away from the tight circle he’d made with the other two, and he turned back to Laren. “Well, Laren. If you can hack into Cardassian computer systems, then we might just have a little job for you. You ask what we are doing to fight against the Cardassians, and I’ll tell you. We observe. We gather information. And we have a little reconnaissance mission that I think might benefit rather well from a little girl who knows how to bypass a Cardassian security system. A simple download at a hidden facility. Does this interest you at all?”

Laren lost her attitude in no time at all. “Yes!” she said. She stole a glance at Bis to see if he was watching, and sure enough, he was staring right at her. Her eyes met his for a moment, but she was too excited to be embarrassed. This was the perfect opportunity to impress him, and maybe she’d even get to kill a spoonhead or two.

L
enaris could not resist flicking out his hands to steady the flight yoke. His little brother turned to him, burning with annoyance, to judge from his expression. “I know how to do this, Holem.”

“I know you do, Jau. But I keep thinking that you might want to wait until
after
we exit the atmosphere before you—”

“Leave him alone, Lenaris.” Ornathia Sten spoke from where he crouched in the back of the raider. It was a tight fit with the three of them in the little ship, but since most of the cell’s raiders had been taken to the Lunar V base, they generally had to commute in cramped quarters.

“I’m going to be flying on my own for this raid,” Jau said firmly.

“Of course,” Lenaris said, meaning to be reassuring, aware that he probably sounded condescending. As always, according to Jau.

Jau shook his head, and Lenaris decided it would be best to keep silent. Jau was sixteen, and though it was true he was as good a pilot as any of the grown men, Lenaris still couldn’t help but regard him as a baby. The age gap was enough that Lenaris wasn’t entirely sure how it was that Jau had come to be the gawky near-adult he was now; Lenaris had already left home to join the resistance before Jau had even learned his first words. But this mission called for every available pilot, and he could not argue that Jau was capable. It was only…Lenaris wasn’t sure what his mother would do if anything happened to Jau. He wasn’t sure what
he
would do.

It was a long way to Jeraddo in a sub-impulse raider, the moon where the Ornathia cell had managed to store most of their raiders, since Pullock V. They couldn’t keep all of their ships in Relliketh, where the cell was currently headquartered—as quickly as Taryl came up with new fuels, new ways to mask them, the Cardassians found ways to detect them, and the fleet was too large now to keep together.

The Ornathia fleet had regrown in recent years, as more people joined the cell. Some of Taryl’s cousins who had originally fled back to their families’ farms had returned to the cell after the Pullock V report had gained notoriety. Some of the raiders could still be stored in the Berain mountains, where the natural kelbonite in the rock shielded them from overhead scans, but the constant lifting off from the same location was risky, and Lenaris had suggested moving some of the shuttles to Derna, but Taryl had insisted that it would not be wise to keep the communications links and the shuttles in the same place. Halpas had been the first to suggest Jeraddo; the sparsely populated moon was of little interest to the Cardassians, their presence there minimal. It was the perfect place to hide their ships.

Lenaris tried to make conversation to pass the time. It never hurt to remind everyone of the basics, either. “So, we’ll go in with a typical
kienda
fan formation, with me and Sten in the lead. Jau, you and Nerissa will flank, and—”

“I
know,
” Jau said wearily. “And the Legans will be at the tail. We pull down until we’re just about fifty
linnipate
s above the base, and then we drop our ordnance in the center of four parked skimmers, and pull up. The blast should take out at least sixteen skimmers, if we position our explosives in the correct place, so make each hit count.”

“Yeah,” Lenaris said lamely. From the back, Sten chuckled.

Lenearis said little else until they reached the site, where they cruised over the forests of Jeraddo and quickly found the cave they had dubbed Lunar V. There were twelve raiders in all here, many of them engineered entirely from scrap, mostly by Taryl. These improvised ships lacked the comprehensive sensors that some of the older raiders were equipped with, though Taryl hoped to change that eventually.

It was one of these “newer” birds that Jau would be flying, since he was considered an apt enough pilot to compensate for the lack of equipment. The Legan brothers were barely competent fliers, and Lenaris would have been happy to have left them behind entirely, but they were short on pilots just now. Taryl was pregnant, and Lenaris wouldn’t have dreamed of putting her in harm’s way. She was safely back at Tilar, working on the communications upgrades. Halpas and a few of the others were on Derna right now, calibrating new relay towers to keep the cells on Bajor connected. And there had been an accident recently. The warp carrier had been taken out to try and make contact with some of the Bajorans outside the B’hava’el system, and it had never returned. Seven people were on that freighter, seven members of the extended cell, seven friends, brothers, sisters, parents, children—seven pilots. Lenaris had to make do with what was left.

The Legan brothers were coming in with Ornathia Nerissa, and Lenaris didn’t trust them to take one of the scrap raiders. No, it was better to put them in the idiot-proof ships, though he didn’t feel especially confident they wouldn’t find some way of getting themselves lost—or, more likely, killed.

Lenaris quickly claimed his own shuttle, and they set to work. The little vessels had to be pushed manually from the cave, and the three men worked to move their vessels out into a more reasonable takeoff position, stomping through the heavy foliage and sidestepping the unusually large insects that patrolled the moon. The second of their transport shuttles docked while they were struggling, and Nerissa and the Legans emerged to help them. They managed to get each ship into position, each one loaded with appropriate ammunition, each double-checked according to Taryl’s extensive list.

There were a few backslaps and encouraging words, and it was time. Each man or woman climbed into his or her vessel, all looking deferentially to Lenaris. It had never been said—at least, not within his earshot—but he knew they considered him the leader. It wasn’t a job he’d lobbied for, but he couldn’t deny the responsibility.

“Good fighting, everyone,” Lenaris said, and pulled the glacis plate of his raider closed. He tapped in a few commands and lifted his shuttle into Jeraddo’s mild sky, pushing through the sound barrier and out of the atmosphere in almost no time at all. There was little in the way of shock absorption. The inertial dampers did their best to keep up, but Lenaris was still rocked crazily about his cockpit before the shuttle broke into the openness of space.

He immediately tested the new sensor array that Taryl had come up with. He could see where the others were, and he tapped a command to each of them in code. Jau was the first to respond, and Lenaris felt a tightening pride in his chest, surpassed only by the residual traces of fear for his little brother’s safety that still lingered.

Prophets, keep him safe.

Dukat’s duties on this day had not permitted him to visit Meru as soon as he would have liked. For Dukat, there was no love that would ever transcend that which he shared with his wife, but between his few and far-between visits to Cardassia Prime, he grew lonely for female companionship. Most of his Bajoran dalliances had failed to hold his attention for long, but Meru was different. It could truthfully be said that he loved her. He may have been distracted lately by the birth of his new daughter, but his consideration of Meru had not faltered, only been put aside while he enjoyed the heady experience of having such close access to the newborn in his life. His children on Cardassia Prime had mostly been born while he was away on assignment, and he had been permitted to spend only brief stints of time with each of them while they were infants. His new half-Bajoran daughter represented a risky situation for him, but the cautious nature of the experience was easily displaced by the intense joy at her beautiful presence.

But today, he must not be thinking of Naprem and the little one; he must do what he could to make things right with Meru. For if what Basso was saying had any truth to it, she might have taken it into her head to do him harm. He was only too aware of the Bajoran propensity toward revenge—numerous attempts on his very life were ample proof. He considered a handful of Bajorans to be among the people closest to him, but he could not forget that they were a naturally mistrustful, jealous race. No matter how much he loved Meru, no matter what he did to placate her, he could never be entirely sure that she would not someday turn on him. And he feared that the day might have come.

He entered her quarters without knocking, as he always did, for she knew to always be prepared for him, at every moment. It was one of the things he loved about her, that most often she was able to drop whatever she had been doing to come to him. Of course, there were those times when Dukat had been forced to exercise patience with her; she was only humanoid—only
Bajoran,
after all. She
was
remarkably cool-headed for a Bajoran, but she was still prone to occasional bouts of sulkiness. Dukat didn’t always care for the effort of maintaining her, but she wasn’t generally overly needy. He hoped that this latest rash of irritable behavior would pass, as the others had passed—usually easy enough to smooth over with a gift, or sometimes just a little extra time to herself—though lately, perhaps she’d had a bit too much of the latter. Dukat knew he’d better come up with a promise of a vacation of some sort, just the two of them, even if he couldn’t immediately deliver it. He was a busy man.

“Hello, Skrain,” she said, the same breathless way she always said it. Dukat had once found it to be interminably exciting, but it had lost much of its appeal these days. There was a part of him that now considered his relationship with Meru to be a bit superficial—even tawdry, compared to what he shared with Naprem. Naprem, so beautiful as she nursed their child, a nimbus of sunlight highlighting her hair, her cheeks…the backdrop of the elegant old estate he had chosen for her and the child, isolated, surrounded by carefully tended gardens and trickling fountains…The purity of the atmosphere did little to recommend those indistinguishable dalliances with Meru here on the station, in her artificially lit quarters, surrounded by the dozens of paintings she was always churning out—wooden-faced old priests from millennia ago. Dukat was sick of the sight of them.

He took her by the hands. “Meru. It has come to my attention that you’ve not been happy lately. I apologize that my business has taken me away so frequently. I propose that you and I plan a retreat for the near future—the two of us, for a week, perhaps. Anywhere you would like to go in the B’hava’el system—or farther, if you want. I can think of numerous places we’ve not seen yet.”

Meru was quiet, appearing to be struggling with her response. “It’s very kind of you, Skrain. You know how I’ve enjoyed the traveling we’ve done in the past. But I feel…that your mind, your heart, they lie elsewhere these days. I…I know about the child, Skrain, and I understand. And I was hoping that perhaps it would help you to understand my position, as well.”

Dukat’s breathing became tight. He did not want to lie to her, but he did not care to discuss Naprem, either. “Meru, whatever it is that has you so upset, I assure you it has no bearing on my feelings for you. Please, let’s discuss happier topics. What can I provide you with that will ease you from this pall?”

Meru shook her head, appearing frustrated, and Dukat squeezed her hands. He began to speak again, but she cut him off in a rush of words. “Let me go,” she said, her voice strangled. She began to cry. “I want to go home, Skrain, can’t you understand that? I want to see my family again—my
husband!
” Her face crumpled and stretched unpleasantly, and Dukat let her hands slip away from his.

“I…see,” he said faintly. He felt an unfamiliar writhing inside. He could not quite place the emotion he was experiencing. It was a combination of things, things he was not sure he could identify. Anger? Sadness? Embarrassment? Whatever it was, it was perhaps the most unpleasant sensation he could ever remember, and before he quite knew what he was doing, he had flung out his arm and knocked over Meru’s easel, its contents of paint and canvas splattering and crashing to the floor. Meru let out a sharp cry.

“Skrain! Please—can’t you see? I love you, but—”

“But it’s not enough!” he roared. “It’s not enough, all I’ve done for you, for your family—you would still choose your cowardly vole of a husband over a man like me, is that it?” He lunged for her, and he felt the back of his hand make contact with the hard surface of one of her well-sculpted cheekbones.

“No!”

Dukat abruptly stopped. Meru hid behind her hands, shoulders hunched in fear. A livid mark spread quickly across her face. Dukat turned slightly to see his reflection in the mirror above her dressing table, and he did not like what he saw—a panting man, his slick hair flung loose around his ears, an expression of dirty, dying rage still spread across his face. He straightened up, caught his breath, and smoothed his hair back, though Meru still crouched and sobbed.

Dukat did not care to think of himself as an abuser of women. He spoke coolly. “I have to go now, my dear,” he said. “I will send Basso to see if you need anything, as always. Perhaps we will continue this conversation later, when we’ve both had time to clear our heads.”

Meru continued to whimper and cry piteously as he left the room, and the sound of it made him sick to his very core. He was immensely bothered by the awareness that he could not erase the scene he had just created. He could pretend it had not transpired, but he knew that every time he laid eyes on Meru, it would return to him in all its shameful detail. Once out in the hallway, he quickly pressed his comcuff. “Dukat to Basso. Please meet me in my office immediately.”

He did not like what he was going to have to do, but he could see no other reasonable alternative. As prefect, he was forced to make difficult decisions every day; some took their toll on his conscience, to be sure, but he never let that dissuade him from his duty.