Vale edged toward Keru, who groaned in pain as he struggled to rise. It was clear she’d broken a couple of his ribs and perhaps even cracked his sternum.
Nearby, Troi continued to support Ra-Havreii, who, while in better shape than Keru, was not quite as hardy as Vale had at first thought. His tunic was torn across the chest where A’yujae’Tak had slashed him, and there was blood in his hair from a gash Vale hadn’t seen before. Troi was attempting to clear some of it off his face with her sleeve.
“You are a [possible meaning: pestilence],” said A’yujae’Tak. “You have murdered us.”
Looking around her at the destruction and death, at her missing, probably dead teammates, listening to the sounds of thunder and catastrophe outside, which were not nearly as distant as they had been, Vale had to wonder if there was some truth to the Mater’s accusation. How many of these events would not have occurred if Titanhad not come to this place?
She was still wondering a few moments later when the world around her began to sparkle and she was transported away.
The next sight she saw was so welcome that she at first thought she might be hallucinating. As the shimmer of transport dwindled and the world became solid around her again, she easily recognized the contours of the Ellington’s hold.
She could see through the nearby porthole that the little ship was high above the planet, just meters shy of the energy field that had set the sky on fire.
She rapped hard on the nearest bulkhead, assuring herself of its solidity. This wasn’t a dream or a hallucination. It was real. The shuttle had survived and, in doing so, confirmed that Jaza and Modan must be intact as well.
She cast around happily, checking on the other returnees. There was Keru, wheezing a bit from his injuries as Troi helped him into the medical cradle. There was A’yujae’Tak, still groggy from all the phaser hits, still fighting to get back to her feet and still failing. Ra-Havreii was not with them.
“Computer,” said Vale. “Erect a level-two containment field around alien intruder.”
“Acknowledged,”said the familiar female voice.
A thin sheet of impenetrable energy rose up around the corner where the Orishan Mater still continued her struggle to remain conscious, to continue the fight.
“Locate and contact Commander Ra-Havreii,” said Vale.
“Commander Ra-Havreii is aboard this vessel.”
The shuttle lurched a bit, causing A’yujae’Tak to stumble backward and to drop the little strip of cloth she had been clutching in her lower left talon. It was a piece of Ra-Havreii’s uniform, torn off no doubt during her ambush of the engineer.
When she heard a small clattering noise as the strip impacted with the deck, Vale looked and saw that Ra-Havreii’s combadge had come off in the Orishan’s fist as well.
Emergency auto-retrievals targeted badges, not life signs. The engineer was still on the planet, still in the Spire’s control center where they’d left him.
Vale hollered up to flight control for Jaza to get a bio-lock on Ra-Havreii and get him out of there. When neither Jaza nor Ra-Havreii appeared, she yelled up again.
“Jaza! What’s the problem?” she said. “Mr. Jaza, report!” Again there was no answer.
“What do you mean, he didn’t make it?” said Vale when Modan had climbed down from the upper deck to inform her of Jaza’s status. “Are you saying he’s dead?”
“Yes, Commander,” she said, and none of them, not even Troi, could read the emotion under the words. It was something new, perhaps unique to her experience. “For quite some time now, I expect.”
There was also something odd about Modan’s behavior. The pattern of her speech was different, chaotic in a way. It was as if she was randomly shifting between two completely separate idiomatic patterns without realizing it.
“What do you mean, Ensign?” said Troi, sensing Vale’s confusion and fury and needing to give her time to get it under control. “How did he die?”
“I don’t know,” said Modan. “I wasn’t there.”
“You weren’t there?” said Vale, her anger winning out over her grief for the moment. She grabbed Modan by the shoulders and slammed the younger woman against the bulkhead. “You left him somewhere and you don’t know if he’s dead?”
Modan’s body seemed to shift suddenly in Vale’s grip. Her face elongated, her shoulders grew what looked like armored plates, and her long ropelike braids began to writhe as if they were alive.
“Christine!” said Troi, putting a hand on her in an attempt to calm her. Vale shrugged her off.
“He is dead,” said Modan. “He’s certainly dead. I didn’t have to see it. I know.” She was, just as obviously as Vale, in great anguish over Jaza’s loss. Her placid metallic features made a better mask than Vale’s fleshy ones, but Jaza had left a hole inside Modan as well. Vale was too caught up in her own anger and grief to know it, but to Troi it was clear.
“Can you tell us what you mean, Ensign?” she said.
“There’s no time, Deanna,” said Modan. Deanna?“I’ll have to show you.”
“Show us what?” Vale asked, not relaxing her grip despite the fine golden spines that had begun to grow through Modan’s uniform to puncture Vale’s flesh.
In response two of the tentacles on Modan’s head whipped out at Troi and Vale, attaching themselves to the women’s temples.
“This,” said Modan, as Vale found the strength draining out of her arms and the world around her going dark. “I have to show you this.”
Chapter Eleven
Black.
The world was black and formless, made of something liquid that rolled over and beneath them like an ocean of molasses. They could hear voices, their own and each other’s certainly, but also in the distance, that of a man, a father they suddenly knew, talking to his young son.
“The Prophets express their will through us, Jem,” said the man. They could suddenly see him-deep brown flesh on a big, thick-limbed body, with kindly gray eyes, standing just outside a battered building of wood and clay. Their home? “They show us what they wish but do not tell us always how to get there. Our life is to learn their will and follow it as best we can. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Father,” said the other. They could suddenly see him too. Not older than ten years, not quite grown into his own large bones, yet he was a near-perfect copy of his father in miniature. “I think so.”
It’s him, thought Vale. It’s Najem as a boy.
She had never seen him this way, so innocent and small. She had never even pictured him as a child. As something pulled her awareness from the scene, she was sure she would have difficulty picturing him any other way from then on.
“We have to hit them back,” said another voice, this time female and intense. “Every day. We have to let them know they bit off more than they can ever chew by coming here.”
A smallish, almost elfin woman who looked as if she’d been carved out of sandalwood appeared, naked but for the sheet that covered her and half of a young, equally nude man who was also somehow Jaza.
Vale felt her body flush as she thought of her time with him and the things he’d taught her about the placement of Bajoran ridges. Despite their evolution into close friends, this too was an image of him she would never let go.
“They own the planet, Sumari,” he said, his voice low and very slightly slurred. He seemed a little drunk. “They can do anything they want.”
The woman, Sumari, rolled over onto his stomach and gazed at him. “You hate them,” she said. “I know you do. For what they let happen to your mother. For what they’ve done to all of us. For the way they spit on the Prophets.”