Devil in the sky, p.16
Devil in the Sky, page 16
She touched the first room’s handpad, and the door sprang aside. Its lights flickered on. It was a storage room—food concentrates, according to the boxes. She motioned the others forward.
“That’s what they feed us,” Lapyn said softly, looking over her shoulder. He made a face. “Awful stuff, but supposedly balanced for a Bajoran’s minimum nutritional needs.”
“I imagine the rest of the rooms along here are for storage too,” Kira said, “but check the others just in case.” She motioned Parks and Wilkens forward, and they began opening door after door with similar results.
Leaving them to that task, she advanced to where the next corridor intersected theirs. The guard station, according to Lapyn, lay just around the corner. She paused and listened intently for a moment, but didn’t hear anything, not a voice, not a footfall, not a sigh or a snore. She had no way of telling what lay around the corner.
She wished she could use a tricorder, but couldn’t risk it. There might be security monitors that would pick it up. It was down to old-fashioned tactics. She stuck her head out and took a quick glance up and down the corridor.
This corridor ended to her right in some kind of control room, with a series of two-meter-tall glass windows that looked out onto the corridor. Lapyn must have taken it for the guard station, she thought. Several Cardassians in gray uniforms sat inside watching monitors. At least one was speaking into an intercom.
Kira eased back out of sight. Luckily none of them had seen her. Motioning for Lapyn and the others to follow, she led the way back to one of the storage rooms, ushered everyone inside, and shut the door. Quickly she told them what she’d seen.
“I think we can take them,” she said, “but I wonder if we should. It wouldn’t gain us any more weapons. Any thoughts?” I started out trying to make this a team effort, Kira told herself, and I’m damned well going to finish it that way.
“They’ll know where the weapons are kept,” Lapyn said.
“We’ll need to keep at least one prisoner awake,” Muckerheide offered. “And persuade him to talk.”
“Or use their computer,” Aponte said. “There are bound to be complete maps for the complex.” Everyone else seemed to agree with that. Kira nodded; it seemed like a sensible plan.
“They might not be able to see us if we crawl there,” she said. “They’re all seated, and their attention seems occupied with whatever they’re monitoring. We’ll try it that way. Let’s move!”
She opened the storage room’s door cautiously, peered out, then led the way back to the intersection. Dropping to her hands and knees, she peered around the corner. In the control room, she could see the back of one Cardassian’s head, but the rest were out of sight.
We can do this, she thought. We can take them.
Cautiously, careful to make no more sounds than the barest shuffling noise on the floor tiles, she moved forward. The others followed. She reached the room’s door and crouched to its left, below the window. Aponte took the other side of the door, with Muckerheide behind her. Lapyn and Jonsson stationed themselves behind Kira.
Kira reached for the door’s handpad, but before she could touch it, the door whisked open on its own and a Cardassian in a gray uniform sauntered out.
Kira stunned him before he could react, then scrambled over his unconscious body and into the room. Her timing was off, but she had to make do, she knew. She couldn’t let an alarm go up.
The Cardassians gaped at her. “Hands up or I’ll shoot!” she cried. She motioned with her phaser. “Up. Now.”
The Cardassians stood slowly, raising their hands over their heads. There were five of them, Kira counted, plus the one in the doorway.
She let the others file in before speaking again. “What is this station?” she demanded.
“Tell the Bajoran slime nothing!” the tall Cardassian on the left snarled.
“Wrong answer.” Kira calmly stunned him. He collapsed, arms twitching.
None of them would talk, she knew, if they believed she wouldn’t do more than stun them. She had to put some real fear into them. She turned to Aponte.
“Take the bodies out,” she said, “and kill them.”
Ensign Aponte paled. “Major, you can’t mean—”
“That’s an order, Ensign. We’ll do it just like Sisko would do.”
When Aponte smiled and gave a quick nod, Kira knew she understood. Ensign Aponte dragged first one, then the other out. A second later Kira heard two phaser blasts—doubtless her firing harmlessly into the wall or floor, she thought.
Kira smiled and turned back to the other prisoners. “I do so hate the sight of blood,” she said. Then she hardened her voice. “Now, you!” she demanded of the next Cardassian in line. “What is this station?”
“I—uh—can’t—” he whimpered.
“Wrong answer,” she said, and she calmly shot him, too.
Aponte appeared in the doorway. “Another one?”
“Yes. But he almost cooperated … just maim this one.”
“Yes, Major.”
Kira swept her gaze down the line of Cardassians to the one who looked the youngest and, therefore, most gullible. His face had turned a very pale green. “Well?” she demanded. “You know the question.”
“We’re just technicians. We’re in charge of the mining equipment on the twenty lowest levels. We don’t know anything, really—”
“Too bad,” she said. “I guess you’ve outlived your usefulness.” She raised her phaser.
“Wait!” he cried. “Please! I have a wife and child—”
“Traitor!” the Cardassian next to him hissed.
“I’m trying to save all our lives,” he snapped back. “Do you want to die here like the others?”
Kira stunned the fourth Cardassian, then the fifth one for good measure. The young technician backed up against a control panel, a look of fear on his face. Softly he began to whimper.
“Shut up!” Kira barked. “Pay attention, do what you’re told, and answer promptly. If you do, you’ll live through this to see your wife and child again. Understand?”
“Y-yes!”
She pushed him down into one of the seats. “Call up a schematic of this whole mining complex,” she said. “I want to see where we are in relation to Central.”
The technician turned and punched a few commands into his console. Kira leaned close to see the monitor. Rather than a detailed schematic, though, another Cardassian’s face filled the screen. Kira pulled back, startled and confused. She’d been tricked. She should have known no Cardassian soldier would betray his station so easily.
The Cardassian on the screen appeared to be an officer of some kind. “What’s going on there—” he began.
“We’re under attack!” the technician blurted out. “Help us!”
Kira shot the computer before he could say another word. Even as she did, she knew the damage was done; the Cardassians had been warned.
Sparks jumped as circuits shorted and couplings fried. She had to leap back and cover her face to avoid being burned. In the confusion, the technician tried to run for the door.
Aponte grabbed for him and missed, but Kira had been half expecting his break. She stepped forward and shot him in the back of the head. He slumped to the floor, unconscious.
Damn him, she thought. Feeling a helpless, frustrated rage, she kicked him in the ribs as hard as she could. It didn’t help.
So much for having surprise on their side.
A moment later, a loud, shrill alarm began to blare.
* * *
The runabout’s chronometer chimed softly, signaling Dax. The Trill rose from her meditations and hurried to the pilot’s seat. At last, she thought, it was time to call Kira.
When she opened the communication channel, however, a surge of white noise almost deafened her. She pounded the side of the console again.
The screen went black. Dead.
She stared for a second, horrified, then hit the control panel once more. So much for Major Kira’s technique, she thought grimly.
Quickly she called up a computer diagnostic. The program ran through a quick series of tests and, for once, came up with an immediate answer: the phase inverter crystal had burned out. No doubt the Van Luden radiation belt had overloaded it, Dax thought. She’d been lucky it hadn’t gone dead the first time she tried to use it.
A quick check of the Amazon’s onboard stores revealed a spare. All she had to do was install it and she’d be set. Now, where was the emergency tool kit? It wasn’t clipped in place on the rear bulkhead where it should have been.
Then she remembered that Julian had been using it to recalibrate his tricorder. She’d left him to clean up and put the tools away after she finished the job for him. Everything had been secured after the card game ended—where the hell had he put it?
She turned slowly. The tool kit wasn’t anywhere in sight. With a sinking feeling inside, she realized she’d have to tear the runabout apart to find it. She started with the sleeping mats, then the table—
* * *
Julian had studied battle injuries in school and treated hundreds of patients during his tenure on DS9, but had never run into anything on the scale of what these Bajorans had suffered on Davonia. He mentally compared it to the first doctors rushing into the Nazi death camps on Earth or the dilithium mines on Konnoria V. There was so much to do, you scarcely knew where to begin. Between malnutrition, broken bones, bruises, cuts, gouges, scrapes, and general ill health and their mental state, he was amazed so many of them seemed capable of functioning at any level at all.
While Ensign Wilkens, under Kira’s orders, posted lookouts in the tunnels and organized the two dozen able-bodied Bajorans into fighting teams, Julian worked on the injured. He set half a dozen broken bones, dispensed vitamin shots until his limited supplies ran out, and sealed literally dozens of cuts, gouges, scrapes, and sores. None of the Bajoran men and women were in a life-threatening state, but none were fit for any sort of strenuous activity, either. To a great degree each of them suffered from years of malnutrition, neglect, and in a number of cases, outright abuse.
He finished treating a woman with severe whip-scars across her back as Wilkens ran in from the tunnel.
“Sir,” Wilkens gasped, “there’s an alarm being raised outside.”
Julian paused and strained to hear. “I can’t hear anything—” he began.
Wilkens shook his head. “It’s very faint and coming from the upper levels.”
Julian wondered briefly whether they should wait where they were or try to find a safer place. That was the sort of decision Kira made best. Still, he was in charge now, and he couldn’t very well waffle until Cardassians found him. And this would be the first place they looked.
“We’d better move,” he said. “Get the squads together. They can help the sick or injured. We’ll retreat into the tunnels.”
“No,” said one of the Bajorans whom Julian had just treated. He stood, flexing his arm. The patch of synthetic skin Julian had applied to a bone-deep cut seemed to be holding. “We’ll fight,” the man said. “I won’t hide in this hole another day!”
“You’re not in any shape—” Julian began.
“Hah!” He seized a pick that had been lying on the floor. “Just show me a Cardassian! We’ll see who’s in shape!”
The others around him echoed his words. In seconds the whole cavern was stirring. Julian looked from one determined face to another. Six Bajorans held the guards’ stunners over their heads. The others took up sledgehammers, picks, shovels—everything at hand that could serve as a weapon.
Perhaps we can help Kira, Julian thought. If there were alarms ringing, they must have been detected, but not caught. If they’d been caught, there wouldn’t be any need for alarms.
“Very well,” he said. “We fight. Get the carts. We’re moving out of here right now.”
The six-wheeled carts might prove invaluable if they ran into Cardassians, he thought. And they’d provide transport for the wounded.
He just hoped he wasn’t making an awful mistake.
* * *
“So much for secrecy,” Kira said, glancing around at the various control panels. “Everyone out of here. Move!”
When everyone had cleared the room, she turned her phaser up to maximum power and raked its beam across the equipment. Flames leaped and more sparks flew as delicate machinery melted. She hesitated a moment, looking at the six stunned Cardassians, but decided she didn’t have the will to kill them where they lay—she wasn’t a Cardassian. Besides, she thought, the Cardassians would stop to rescue their own kind, gaining more time for her and her team.
The others were waiting in the corridor. “This way,” she called, darting straight ahead. She passed the first corridor, turned left at a second, and right at a third. The alarm continued to blare. Finally she came to a lift of some kind. She pushed the call button.
“Get ready!” she called, lowering the setting on the phaser to stun once more. “As soon as you see them, start firing!”
The others spread out in a semicircle, weapons raised. Kira kept one eye on the lift’s readout. Almost here, she thought, tensing.
Even before the lift’s huge double doors had whisked open, she started firing. Five blue phaser beams strafed across the lift’s occupants. The uniformed Cardassian soldiers inside didn’t have a chance to move, let alone fire back. They fell in a tangle of limbs, assault phasers, and drab gray uniforms.
Kira braced the door open with her shoulder. “Get their weapons,” she said, “and their communicators.”
One communicator in particular was already squawking, its tinny little voice all but lost beneath the mass of bodies. Aponte and Lapyn dragged the Cardassians out one at a time while the others stripped them of weapons. The ambush yielded a surprising number of knives, stun grenades, paralysis darts, and small energy weapons. In all, they now held ten Cardassian prisoners with full battle gear.
Lapyn used one of their shirts to tie up most of the weapons. Kira kept the twenty stun grenades for her own use.
“Get these back to Bashir and the other Bajorans,” she said. “They’re going to need them soon, I expect.”
“Right,” Lapyn said, and he headed back at a trot the way they’d come.
Kira picked up the communicator that was still squawking. She activated it. “Hello,” she said.
“Who is this?” the Cardassian on the other end demanded.
“Major Bata Huri of the Bajoran Liberation Front. Do I have the pleasure of addressing the base commander?”
“This is Gul Mavek, yes,” he snarled.
“Listen to me very carefully, Gul Mavek,” Kira said. “My assault team is currently sweeping through the lower levels of your base, placing dilithium bombs with timers for later detonation. We will be beaming our fellow freedom-fighters back to our fleet very shortly. I strongly recommend your immediate evacuation of this base, unless you want a bad case of radiation poisoning. Bata out.”
Kira smashed the communicator, then tossed the bits into the lift. Its doors were trying to close; Muckerheide and Aponte had to brace themselves to hold them open.
“A second more …” Kira said, examining two of the stun grenades. They had timers, exactly as she’d hoped. She adjusted them for thirty-second delays, activated them, and set them in the front corners of the lift. Now they couldn’t be seen until you were actually inside.
Dancing back, she motioned for the two ensigns to release the doors. They did so, and the lift closed with an almost audible snap. It headed up.
“They’ll send more soldiers down,” Aponte said.
“I know,” Kira said, her thoughts racing, “but I think they’re going to be moving very, very slowly, especially if they think we’ve been booby-trapping the tunnels. It should buy us more time.”
* * *
Ttan felt herself go rigid. That high-pitched vibrating noise that made her cilia tremble and set her silicon blood surging—she’d only heard similar sounds twice before.
Once had been on Janus VI, when a reactor had overloaded, flooding a sector of the mines with human-killing radiation. The humans had used that sound as an alarm.
The second time had been aboard the Puyallup, when the Cardassian ship had attacked. It had sent all of the Federation officers scrambling to their stations.
Ttan guessed this sound—so similar in many respects—also meant something had gone wrong. Had the Cardassians lost their reactor, too? Were they even now dying at their stations as they tried to stop radiation from flooding through their little underground complex?
For a half-second Ttan began to tunnel deeper into the rock, but then one of the Cardassian guards appeared in front of her cell.
“Creature,” he called.
“What do you want of me?” Ttan answered.
“Gul Mavek orders you to remain here, in your cell. There is a minor security problem on another level. Do not let the alarms concern you. He reminds you that your children will suffer if you fail to obey his commands. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Ttan said bitterly. “I understand.”
* * *
A beam of crimson energy blasted the wall above Julian’s head, showering him with jagged bits of stone. One stung his cheek, and he jerked back. Raising a hand to his face, he felt blood.
“Just a small cut, Doctor,” Wilkens assured him.
“Get those carts up here!” Julian called. He stuck his hand around the corner and fired a quick salvo from his phaser, trying to keep the Cardassians back a little longer. Six Cardassian soldiers in battle armor had been advancing steadily up the tunnel for the last five minutes. Their superior weapons coupled with armor gave them a decided edge, Julian thought. He’d already retreated half a dozen times. He didn’t know how much longer his men would be able to hold them off.
Five of the six-wheeled carts rolled up. Bajorans with control boxes arrived right behind them. The carts were his last hope.
“I want you to line them up across the tunnel,” he said. A blockade might well slow down the Cardassians, he thought.
