Devil in the sky, p.14
Devil in the Sky, page 14
The world seemed to be slowing down. He scanned the crowds below for Cardassian overseers and spotted one gaping up at him, whip in hand. Julian fired and saw the Cardassian stumble. Around him other phaser shots rang out.
He scanned the crowds below. All the Bajoran workers had paused to stare in confusion. The remaining overseers were dropping their whips and grabbing at their stunguns. Someone began to scream.
Julian’s forward momentum only carried him so far. He started to fall toward the ground. He fired again, but the Cardassian he had targeted ducked behind an ore wagon just in time. Two more bright phaser beams hit the Cardassian where he cowered, and Julian was pleased to see the fellow collapse, arms and legs jerking spasmodically.
More Bajoran prisoners had begun screaming. Others ran frantically this way and that, adding to the confusion. More phasers fired. Another Cardassian fell. The last two Cardassians had their stunguns out and were firing back. A bright green bolt zipped past Julian’s nose and struck Ensign Aponte behind him. He turned as she tumbled from the tunnel mouth where she’d been standing. She probably wouldn’t be hurt in the low gravity, he thought in a moment of strange, almost clinical clarity.
He had almost reached the ground by then—and when he hit, tucking into a roll, he came up fast on his feet. The low gravity made him a natural acrobat here, he realized; he never could have done that on Earth.
He glimpsed movement to his left and saw a Cardassian with a stunner pushing through a clump of Bajorans. The Cardassian was firing blindly at anyone and everyone around him.
“Get down!” Julian shouted, then he gave another war-whoop and charged straight at the overseer. “He’s mine! Everyone down!”
Bajorans dove toward the floor, covering their heads. The Cardassian whirled, stunner ready, but before he could take fire, a phaser shot caught him from behind.
Julian looked up. Kira gave him a quick wave.
“Thanks!” he called.
But Kira had already turned and fired at another target. Julian followed her shot. The phaser beam struck an overseer in the foot. The Cardassian stumbled and fell, but limped through the cavern into a tunnel.
Julian fired, but his shot went wide. The Cardassian vanished from sight.
“Bashir!” he heard Kira shout. “Go after him!”
Julian didn’t hesitate. He plunged after the Cardassian, using his momentum to swing through the doorway and down the tunnel after him.
The Cardassian hadn’t gotten far. His right leg dragged, and he seemed to be struggling to stay conscious. Loping forward, Julian calmly aimed, fired, and brought him down with a shot to the center of the back. Which brought the attack to a successful close, exactly as planned, he thought a little proudly.
He caught up to the fallen Cardassian. When he bent to pick the fellow up, he found his hands were shaking. His heart was pounding and his head suddenly ached. Get a hold of yourself, Doctor, he thought. It had to be post-combat-induced stress fatigue; he recognized the signs, though he’d never experienced it before. But then he’d never been in an organized attack quite like this one, either—and that stun beam had almost hit him in the face back there.
There was only one thing to do—wait it out. He folded his legs under him and sat, his phaser in his lap in case any more Cardassians wandered past.
Five minutes later, feeling drained but strangely exhilarated, he rose, slung the overseer over one shoulder, and headed back for the cavern. His legs felt weak and only the low gravity kept him going—that and the fact that he had work to do. From the glimpse he’d had, he knew many of those Bajoran prisoners needed of medical treatment.
He entered the cavern with his burden and stopped in surprise. The Bajoran prisoners seemed to have found new life. They had already queued up to have their shackles removed. Parks, Wilkens, Aponte, and Muckerheide were burning through the rhodinium chains with their phasers.
“Over here, Doctor!” Kira called. “Hurry!”
Her voice came from a knot of Bajorans. A lump came to Julian’s throat. Unceremoniously, he dumped his prisoner on the floor and hurried over. If the Cardies had shot her—
The crowd parted for him. He was strangely relieved to find Kira kneeling on the floor cradling a Bajoran woman’s head in her lap. The woman had a nasty gash across her cheek, nose, and forehead, and blood streamed from her lips.
“She’s not breathing!” Kira said. She looked up. “Come on, Doctor! Do something!”
“My bag—” he began, looking around frantically. He’d had it just before the attack.
“Here.” Ensign Jonsson pressed it into his hand.
Julian tore it open and pulled out a portable medical scanner. He ran the scanner over the woman’s head and torso, then checked the readings. All her vital signs were at zero. The body had already begun to cool; she’d been dead for ten, perhaps fifteen minutes. He might have been able to revive her aboard a starship, but even there her chances wouldn’t have been good. She probably would have suffered irreversible brain damage.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a half-choked voice. “There’s nothing I can do.” When he looked up, to his amazement he saw tears in Major Kira’s eyes.
Kira let the woman go. “Thanks anyway,” she said. Turning, she strode off toward the overseers’ curtain.
Something’s wrong, Julian thought. He took a few quick steps and caught up with her. “Major,” he said, “did you know her?”
“No,” Kira said bitterly, not looking at him. “I didn’t know her. She’s one more statistic in the Cardassians’ record of butchery.”
“Then why …?” He left the sentence unfinished.
“Why am I so upset?” She glared at him. He could see tears glistening in her eyes. “Why? Because it’s my fault she’s dead! I should have been faster. I shouldn’t have waited. If I’d followed my instincts and taken the cavern with Aponte and Wilkens—”
“Major,” Julian said softly. “One casualty—not even caused by our attack—is not a bad statistic.”
“You don’t understand, do you, Doctor?” Kira’s voice had a razor’s edge. “If I hadn’t waited to bring everyone in on the plan, if I hadn’t tried to play team leader by your damn Federation rules, that woman wouldn’t be dead now.”
“But you might be,” Julian said.
“I’m a soldier—”
“So are they!” he pointed out. She couldn’t blame herself for this woman’s death. He couldn’t let her do that.
“Well—” she finally said. “That’s not the point!”
“Come on, Major,” he said softly. “You know better than that.”
“You’re not a soldier. You can’t understand.”
“I may not be a soldier, but I’ve trained as a psychotherapist. I know you can’t allow yourself to get lost in what-ifs. These people are depending on us now. They’re alive, they’re free, and if we don’t get moving soon, all that could change.”
Kira didn’t meet his gaze. “Give Parks and the others a hand with the shackles,” she said.
He grinned. “You don’t have to say thanks. That’s what doctors are for.”
“Hey!” Kira’s eyes suddenly widened, focusing on something over Julian’s shoulder. “Stop right there!” she shouted.
Julian whirled. A Bajoran woman sat astride the chest of the Cardassian he’d stunned in the tunnel outside. She held a large rock high over her head, ready to bring it down on his skull.
Kira pushed around him and walked slowly toward the woman, her inner conflict seemingly forgotten. “Put that rock down!” Kira said again.
Julian followed, adding, “Please, I know what you’ve gone through, but violence isn’t—”
With all her strength, the woman slammed the rock onto the Cardassian’s forehead. Bone shattered. Blood and a gray-green glop that had once been brains sprayed out in all directions.
“It’s down,” the woman said.
Julian ran forward, seized the woman by the arms, and shook her. “What in the name of heaven is the matter with you?” he demanded.
“He liked to rape me,” she said, staring up into his face. “I can’t tell you how long I’ve waited for this day.”
“Leave her alone,” Kira said. She touched Julian on the arm. “I’ll take care of this.”
“But—” Julian began. He still couldn’t believe what he’d seen the woman do.
“I said I’d take care of it!” Kira insisted.
Julian took a deep, calming breath. They don’t view it as murder, he thought. They view it as war. All they’ve known is combat and suffering. It’s going to take years for them to learn compassion again.
Against his will, he forced himself to say, “Yes, Major,” and watched Kira lead the woman toward the curtained area.
* * *
Aboard the Amazon, Dax monitored the rapidly increasing number of coded communications beamed back toward Cardassia from the moon. Suddenly voices came in on a low-band subspace frequency … two Cardassians talking privately.
This could be important, Dax thought. She activated the runabout’s Universal Translator as she called the transmission up on a split screen on her monitor. For a second, bursts of white noise obliterated the images, but when she hit the side of the control panel with her fist as she’d seen Kira do with equipment on many occasions, the image jumped, then steadied. Possibly some feedback left over from the Van Luden radiation belt, she thought. Hopefully it hadn’t done any permanent damage to any of the runabout’s systems.
A Cardassian man and a Cardassian woman, each dressed in standard issue gray uniforms, were talking in quiet voices. She could see them, but they couldn’t see her.
“—ready when you arrive,” the man was saying from the moon. “I’ve been waiting for our duty shifts to overlap for days!”
“Oh, Yakkan,” the woman said. “I’ve brought some body oils. I’m looking forward to rubbing them into your scales this evening.” She leaned forward and gave him a seductive smile. “They’re extracted from arboreal slugs on Malvestia IV.”
“That sounds wonderful!” Yakkan said.
Dax tried not to gag. She considered herself open-minded and certainly experienced, but the thought of slug oils hit a nerve somehow.
“Better news, lover,” the Cardassian woman went on with a seductive smile. “Our convoy has fifty new guards for permanent assignment at your base. You’ll be able to take your leave this cycle after all.”
As the conversation degenerated into sickening Cardassian verbal foreplay, Dax—feeling partly ill and partly embarrassed—muted the sound. It didn’t look as though she’d learn much more from these Cardassian lovebirds anyway. But she had learned all she needed to know: a convoy of Cardassian starships was due to arrive any time now.
She had to warn Kira and the others. Dax calculated the orbits of the two moons and realized they would be in communication range again in less than an hour. She’d have to risk a transmission.
* * *
During the occupation of Bajor, Kira thought she’d seen everything bad that a Cardassian could do. They had murdered not just individuals, but whole families. They had raped countless thousands of Bajoran women. They had elevated physical and psychological torture to a perverse form of art.
The woman, who said her name was Corporal Naka Tormak, managed to add a few new vices to the list. The stories she told of the murdered overseer’s “lovemaking” made Kira’s skin crawl.
If she hadn’t killed him, Kira would have done it herself. She felt violated—as a woman, as a soldier, as a Bajoran—just from hearing about what he’d done.
Corporal Naka had been tough, though. She’d endured, and her chance for revenge finally came. Kira hoped she would be able to sleep at night now that this particular demon had been exorcised.
“Rest for now,” Kira told her. The overseers had a couple of cots set up, and she helped Tormak lie down on one. In seconds the woman was asleep, the corners of her mouth tucked ever so slightly upward as though satisfied in a job well done.
“Nerys,” a man’s voice said. “I thought it was you.”
Major Kira glanced up to find Anten Lapyn standing by the edge of the curtain. Her old friend smiled, the weathered lines of his face breaking into unexpected planes and angles beneath a week’s growth of beard and dozens of blue-black bruises. It was still a pleasant smile, but sad, marred only a little by two missing front teeth.
“Lapyn.” She gave him a brief hug. “I was about to call you over.”
Lapyn emptied out a tankard of pale green ale and refilled it with cool water from a jug; it seemed the Cardassians hadn’t provided replicators for the overseers, let alone the prisoners. He drank long and deep, and she took the chance to study him. He looked forty pounds lighter and twenty years older than when she last saw him—how long had it been, perhaps six years before?
“You have no idea how good it is to see you,” he said slowly. “I thought we’d spend the rest of our lives on this godforsaken rock.”
“We don’t have time for that now,” Kira said. “This rescue has taken too long as it is. I need information fast. How many more prisoners are there?”
“You mean the whole moon isn’t being liberated even while we speak?”
“No. We’re it.”
He paled. “By the prophets, Kira! Are you insane?”
“This was supposed to be a quick raid,” she said. “We had no idea what we were getting into. How many others are here?”
“As far as I know,” he said, “we’re it.”
“Do you know the layout of the mining complex?”
“Just from here to the slave pens and back again. The Cardassians did not reward curiosity.”
“What about the Horta—Ttan? Have you seen her?”
“A Horta? Here?” He gave a quick bark of a laugh. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You’re not here to rescue us at all.”
“If we’d known you were here—” she began.
“I know, I know.” He made a reassuring gesture. “We weren’t expecting rescue. Davonia is a death camp. The Cardassians took great pleasure in telling us they’d listed us as dead when they sent us here, and that we’d spend the rest of our lives breaking rocks for their amusement.”
“Davonia? Is that what they call this place?”
“Yes,” he said. “One of the worst hellholes in space. There’s pergium, latinum, nickel, iron, cadmium, uranium—you name it, it’s buried here somewhere. They let heavy equipment dig for the good stuff and use us to break rocks into gravel.” He laughed bitterly. “That’s the price of being a troublemaker in a prisoner-of-war camp. I escaped one time too many.”
Kira leaned forward. “How many Cardassians are on Davonia?” Much as his story interested her, she had to get back to the problem at hand.
“I’ve counted seventeen overseers,” he said, “on rotating shifts. We have another four or five hours before this lot will be relieved. I’ve also seen a handful of real Cardassian soldiers, right down to the battle armor and heavy-duty assault weapons, and several officers.” He shrugged. “And there’s probably a small support staff. I’d say no more than fifty or sixty total. Now, what’s this about a Horta?”
“They kidnapped her from a cruiser en route to Deep Space Nine. We trailed their ship here.”
“What’s Deep Space Nine?” the prisoner asked, looking puzzled.
Kira blinked in surprise. “Don’t you know?” she said. “The war’s over. The Cardassians withdrew from Bajor. DS9 is what we now call the old Cardassian space station. It’s run by Bajorans … with a little assistance from the Federation.”
He stared at her; then a huge grin split his face. “Well, I’ll be damned. The bastards never bothered to let us know.” He stood, cupped his hands to his mouth, and shouted, “The war is over! The Cardassians have withdrawn from Bajor!”
Cheers rang out from all sides of the cavern. Naka Tormak stirred happily on her cot.
Kira sprang to her feet and ripped the curtain aside. “Quiet!” she cried. “Yes, they withdrew—but that doesn’t mean a thing here! Davonia isn’t secured! They’ll kill us all if they catch us! Now keep quiet!”
A hush fell over the crowd, but nothing could hide the jubilant expression on every Bajoran’s face. The news seemed to give them new life, new hope. Perhaps, Kira thought, it would be enough to carry them even further beyond their normal breaking point. Most looked on the verge of collapse.
“What sort of transport do you have for us?” Lapyn asked. “How soon can we beam up?”
“You don’t want to know.”
He pursed his lips, then nodded. “I should have figured. Since you weren’t looking for us, you didn’t come equipped to carry us away. There isn’t enough room on your ship, is there?”
“We’ll make do somehow.”
“Don’t be foolish. We’ll have to take Cardassian transport.”
Kira paused. “You know, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“It won’t be easy,” Lapyn said, a far-off look in his eyes. “We’re going to need real weapons, and a lot of them, plus twice as much luck as you’ve already had.”
“You said there were sixty of them.”
“There’s that many of us, now, too.”
Kira tried not to laugh, though she didn’t think he’d be insulted. “I hardly think you’re up to it. And we only have seven phasers.”
“Plus the guards’ stunners,” he said. “Plus picks, sledgehammers, and our bare fists, if it comes down to that.”
“It won’t,” Kira promised.
“We’re already dead,” he told her. “We’ll be fighting for a chance to live again. We will fight with whatever we have. Just like the old days.”
“Just like the old days,” she agreed. Perhaps they really could do it, she thought. Perhaps they really could take the whole damn moon. Wouldn’t that put the Cardassians in their place. “What about guard stations?” she asked.
“I know of one,” he said. “They marched us past it once to show us off to some visiting officials.”
