Part 10 (2/2)

”His name was Darin. Lafe Darin. He was very enthusiastic about fighting. He was...” Holem paused, tried to think of the easiest way to sum up their friends.h.i.+p. ”We were like brothers. I suppose I knew that it was possible that one of us could be killed...” Lenaris did not look at her.

”But it's still very abstract, isn't it? To think of a loved one dying. Or disappearing. Before it actually happens, that is.”

”Yes,” he agreed, relieved that she understood. He ducked beneath a low-slung vine as they carefully made their way down an especially steep path. The terrain evened out again, and he resumed speaking. ”As time pa.s.sed, so many years of fighting together, maybe we had begun to feel a little invincible. I know he must have, considering what he did.” He fell silent, lost for a moment to memory.

”What happened?” Taryl prodded gently.

”Our cell was one of the first to find out that the Valerians were supplying the Carda.s.sians with weapons-grade dolamide,” Lenaris said. The words were familiar, he'd thought them a million times, but had never spoken them aloud. ”We had the idea that if we terrorized the Valerians, they would stop trading with Carda.s.sia.”

”Cut them off at the source.”

”Yes. We found out where the Valerian freighters were docking, where they were unloading their product-at their processing camp, in the Karnoth mountains. It was heavily guarded, very difficult to get past the security there, but we believed we could do it. Well, some of us did. I admit, I was one of the skeptics. Darin, though-he was fearless.

”So, someone came up with the idea to put a bomb on one of the freighters. The trouble was, the security was set up so that you could get on one of those s.h.i.+ps easily enough, but you couldn't get back off. That was where they would detect you. We found that out the hard way-one of the people in our cell tried to get aboard to learn the schematics. We never saw him again.

”I thought the plan should be sc.r.a.pped until we figured out exactly how and where our man had been captured, but Darin was impatient. He and several of the others conspired-without me-to place the bomb on the s.h.i.+p anyway, even though whoever carried it would have to accept that he was almost certainly sacrificing himself. Death or capture.”

”How did you learn about the plan?”

”I knew Darin was hiding something from me.” Lenaris sighed. ”I could just tell-I knew him so well. I followed him to the camp, and I tried to stop him. Tried to talk him out of it, but of course he wouldn't listen.”

Lenaris shook his head, recalling the scene. ”We had ugly words. He accused me of being childish, said that I was just angry at being left out. I told him he was selfish to be depriving his mother of her only child, and he reminded me that he had been risking his life for Bajor since the day he joined the movement-that we both had. That taking that risk was part of joining the resistance. Of course I knew he was right, but a mission where capture-or more likely death-is a near certainty...I couldn't get behind it. I actually took a swing at him when I saw that he couldn't be persuaded, but he ducked, and I missed him. He didn't miss me, though. We parted ways on...unhappy terms.” He laughed bitterly at his own understatement.

”I watched the freighter take off from a point a few kellipate kellipates beyond the landing site. It almost came to nothing. The captain of the s.h.i.+p ejected the cargo less than a minute after taking off. He must have noticed that something wasn't right in the cargo bay, where Darin had planned to place the bomb. But the captain was too late; the bomb exploded just as he ejected it, and he lost control of the s.h.i.+p. I saw it come down.”

He slowed, remembered the feelings of horror and loss as he'd watched the s.h.i.+p fall from the sky. ”It seemed to take an eternity. It was hard to tell at first where it landed. I ran through the forest, following the smoke trail, just hoping that by some miracle of the Prophets, Darin would be alive.”

He didn't look at Taryl, who had fallen in step with him. ”But of course, that was impossible.”

Taryl's voice was quiet. ”You found it?”

”A few hours later, I suppose. It's hard to remember for sure. Several others from the cell got there about the same time. It was dead in the middle of the forest, far away from anything. It had sustained a lot of damage, took out a ma.s.sive swath of the forest where it landed-incinerated at once, with little fires still burning when we got there. The landing gear was completely obliterated, the entry hatch fused shut-I tried to get in anyway, but I burned both my hands...” He remembered the smell of his own flesh burning, and went on, pus.h.i.+ng it away. ”Halpas acknowledged that there weren't any survivors aboard. He scanned the area twice-not that he needed to. n.o.body could have walked away from that mess...and then everyone in the cell immediately started squabbling over the s.h.i.+p, before we'd even discussed what to do with the...bodies.

”I was outraged that they didn't even bother to acknowledge Darin's death, and I told them so. They said I was a coward, told me I'd been living in a delusion if I hadn't expected to lose a friend someday. They said that if I was so reluctant to sacrifice anything for Bajor, the cell was better off without me.”

”Was that when you left?”

”No. It was after-after the...” He trailed off, began again. ”They set up a guard, though I told them the Carda.s.sians would come for the s.h.i.+p, if the Valerians didn't. They told me to stop being an old woman, and they put three men in charge of watching her for the night-including one of Tiven's brothers. It wasn't three hours later the Carda.s.sians found the wreckage, and they didn't hesitate. They just dropped a bomb on her and didn't look back, making sure there was nothing we could salvage from her.

”Everyone was devastated. They could see I had been right, but of course they weren't about to admit it...especially Tiven, who was crazy with grief after the loss of his brother. I think they expected to hear 'I told you so' from me-which they wouldn't have-but they continued to shout at me just as they had done before. They...wouldn't let up on me, and...I lost my senses, a little bit.”

He felt shamed, remembering the words he had spoken. ”I...told them it was their fault, for not listening to me.... Tiven didn't take that very well, he called me a coward again, and I told him...I said that he shouldn't be so reluctant to sacrifice a mere brother for the greater good...”

He took a shaky breath.

Taryl spoke carefully. ”It sounds like the incident produced bitter memories for a lot of people.”

Lenaris nodded, silent for a moment before he spoke again. ”You know what the worst part of it is?”

Taryl stopped walking, and Lenaris stopped with her. She turned to face him. ”Tell me.” Her voice was very soft.

”Taking down that s.h.i.+p interrupted the flow of dolamide to Bajor for exactly one month. One month, and then traffic went right back to the way it had been before.”

Taryl met his gaze, and he saw a great sadness in her own. After a few beats, they started walking again.

The two hiked for several hours, moved down the deep forests of the foothills, still mostly untouched by the Carda.s.sians. The Union had a mining operation north and east of these woods, partway up a ridge that bordered the Berain mountain range, but it was barely maintained, now that almost everything of value had been stripped from the soil and stone.

The threshold to Berain City seemed to be eluding them, but every time Lenaris started to worry that they were going in the wrong direction, he would see a familiar landmark, an a.s.surance that he had not lost his way. Berain City held less than a third of its pre-occupation populace, but at least a few thousand people still called it home; there were signs of civilization among the trees this close to it, even coming from the mountains. Finally, he found the creek he'd been looking for, and the bridge-several old logs that had been lashed together to form a crude but functional crossing. Taryl looked down at the rain-swollen stream, hampered along the sides by bright green leaves that had fallen from the dense trees overhead.

She shook the string of gourds. ”Not much left. Should we refill here?”

”No. The water looks clean, but it isn't. We're a ways downstream of a Carda.s.sian tailings pond. I would drink it if I had to, but given the choice-”

Taryl nodded as she worked to keep her footing on the slippery old bridge. Lenaris took her hand, and she squeezed his briefly before they came to the other side.

It was just a short distance beyond the creek that they came to the edge of a clearing, one that had apparently been man-made, for there were several cleanly cut stumps dotting the yellow-green meadow. ”This is the very outskirt,” Lenaris told her, ”where timber used to be harvested. In the old days, we picked and chose among the trees to maintain the forest, but after the Carda.s.sians came, people started getting more desperate.”

The two pa.s.sed through the rest of the forest, which bore evidence of the sustainable timber practices Lenaris had described. The first houses began to appear where the trees were still thick, and then the forest opened and they came to the lowest point of the valley, panning out with a spread of homes, businesses, shrines, and factories, a crooked river twisting through the center of town.

”How will we find him?” Taryl wondered, looking out at the city from the edge of the forest where they stood.

”Simple,” Lenaris said. ”We go to the nearest tavern, and we ask.”

Miras was sick.

She had been struggling for some time now just to avoid falling asleep altogether, working until late into the night for days on end, reading in her bed instead of sleeping in it, fighting her exhaustion to the point of weakening her immune system. Now she had fallen victim to a viral infection of some kind, and was confined to her bedroom where she knew that the most sensible thing to do was succ.u.mb. Her aching joints screamed out for rest. She did not want to dream, but she also did not want to prolong her illness. She wanted to get better and get back to work as quickly as possible.

It was late before she finally fell asleep, and despite her exhaustion she still tossed and turned, agonizing over every detail of her past nocturnal experiences-and the one that had not happened in the night. The one that had happened in those lost hours when she had been in the laboratory with the Orb. She was sorry now that she'd ever pursued the artifact. It had affected her mind, somehow, and her only real hope was that time would make the instability fade, would return her peace of mind.

Miras, the serene voice of the Hebitian woman beckoned her into sleep. the serene voice of the Hebitian woman beckoned her into sleep. Miras, I have something to show you. Miras, I have something to show you.

”Please, I don't want to put the mask on again,” she said, and the blackness of sleep melted into the temperate little room in the black-bricked cottage. The Hebitian woman's face read tender amus.e.m.e.nt.

”No, Miras. You will not evoke the spirit of Oralius this time.” She was holding the mask in her hands.

”Why do I keep seeing you? Why is this happening to me? Is it the Orb?”

The woman smiled. ”This corporeal being to whom you now speak. Her name is Astraea.”

Miras swallowed. ”Do you mean...that your your name is Astraea?” name is Astraea?”

The woman hesitated. ”Astraea is a guide.”

”A...guide?”

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