Part 19 (2/2)
She nodded, feeling certain that she had just guaranteed her own death sentence. She had now made a deliberate attempt to conceal her true ident.i.ty to a soldier of Central Command. She might as well sign a confession.
”Astraea,” the soldier said, blinking. ”This name...is known to me.”
What did he mean? She began to feel frantic. Was her alias already being a.s.sociated with her true persona? In a panic, she corrected herself. ”I mean to say, my name is Miras. Miras Vara. And...and I am from the Ministry of Science, and-”
”Where did you hear that name?” he said, his voice brittle and harsh again. ”Astraea. Where did you hear it?”
”I...I...” Miras did not know how to answer, so she answered truthfully. ”I heard it in a dream.”
The soldier's expression changed, the hardness in his beady eyes quickly and fluidly transforming into earnest curiosity. There was a long pause before he spoke again, appearing to choose his words carefully. ”I have another question for you,” he said. ”You said that you are looking for something. Are you looking for something...that is in plain sight, but...hidden?”
Miras felt her panic turn into something else. Was this a trick? How could this man-how could anyone-have known the very words spoken by the woman in her dream? She stared at the soldier for a moment before finally collecting her thoughts enough to speak. ”Who are you?” she said.
His eyes seemed to bore straight into hers, scrutinizing, prying. ”I am Glinn Sa'kat.”
”Glinn Sa'kat-but I mean to say-”
Without breaking his gaze, he interrupted her. ”You are...looking for the book,” he said. It seemed to be a statement rather than a question. His voice was somewhat steadier now.
Miras answered without quite thinking about her answer, much in the same way as she had told him her a.s.sumed name. ”Where everything is written.”
The soldier stared at her for a long moment, his breathing seeming especially labored. ”You had better come with me,” he said, his voice possessing again a trace of the earlier gruffness with which he had ordered her to halt. But there was something else in it now. Something like disbelief, or possibly even fear.
Gar Osen woke at just past dawn and could not seem to get back to sleep. Beams of mild light, clouded through with a haze of ashy dust kicked up from the cold fireplace, were penetrating through the high window in the back of the cottage. One persistent finger of suns.h.i.+ne had landed directly on Gar's left eyelid. He pushed his face underneath the straw-filled bag that served as a pillow, but it was no use. He rose from his bed. He put his head down to stretch out his spine-the surgical alterations to his body had always made him feel so much more vulnerable, though in some ways, he could scarcely remember what it felt like to be in a Carda.s.sian body. The stiffness in his current form might very well be a simple manifestation of his age.
As he lifted his head, he started and then gasped audibly. He was not alone in the room, though the other person was so utterly silent and still that he could have been there all night, as much as Gar would have noticed. ”Who are you?”
The Carda.s.sian rose noiselessly, an odd smile playing about his mouth. ”h.e.l.lo, Pasir,” he said. ”Did you get a good night's sleep?”
Gar was so taken aback at hearing his old name-it had been so many years since anyone had uttered it-that he could not immediately speak. He felt a combination of things, but mostly relief. Was he finally going to get some answers?
The man looked around the cottage. ”How can you live like this, Pasir? It's so...primitive! Not to mention the cold.” The man s.h.i.+vered to ill.u.s.trate, and then laughed.
Gar was incensed. The other man acted very inappropriately for an agent of the Obsidian Order. ”Why are you here?” He didn't really need to ask, for the use of his real name was enough to make it quite plain. ”Where is Rhan Ico? She is supposed to be my contact-I've not heard from her in twenty years, at least!”
”I don't know where she is, I've never heard of her,” the man answered, his voice reflecting disinterest. ”Most likely, she is dead. Enabran Tain saw fit to clean house when he took over the Order.”
Enabran Tain? The name was only vaguely familiar, and Pasir realized that things must have changed drastically since he'd lost contact with the Order. It was finally becoming plain to him now, why he'd been left to dangle alone in the dark all this time. ”What do you want?” The name was only vaguely familiar, and Pasir realized that things must have changed drastically since he'd lost contact with the Order. It was finally becoming plain to him now, why he'd been left to dangle alone in the dark all this time. ”What do you want?”
”Well,” the man said. ”You probably haven't heard that the military sometimes tries to make use of the Order, since they've had so little luck with their own clumsy interrogations. They requested my a.s.sistance for what turned out to be a fool's errand, an absolute mockery of an interview in Dahkur.” The man rolled his eyes for emphasis. ”The military is frightened of its own shadow these days. But so long as I was here anyway, Enabran Tain had an idea of a means by which I might take care of a problem for him.”
”A...problem?”
”Indeed, for it would appear that your purpose here has-shall we say-expired?”
”What do you mean? I still have a great deal of influence here! I-have a plan, you see. It was I who disposed of the old kai. And I have swung the general opinion of Bajor around to the abandonment of the castes. I will soon be the kai, and then-”
The other man sighed as he interrupted. ”I must tell you that Tain was never entirely sure how he meant to use you, Pasir. You were simply a holdover from the days of his predecessor. And yet, he felt that having an operative in the field might prove useful to him in some small way. But if it's true what they are saying about Dukat's new edicts-and it is true-then what good could you possibly be to the Order when you are sent to a work camp with the rest of these Bajoran wretches? No, it is my understanding that although Tain had initially hoped for you to become the next religious leader here, this outcome is rather unlikely to occur, considering the current circ.u.mstances. And then there is the matter of the girl at the Ministry of Science...”
”What girl? What do you mean?”
”Your cover, Pasir. It has been blown, I'm afraid.”
”Impossible!”
”It's true. Tain has considered the situation carefully, and decided that you have become more of a risk than an a.s.set. Your mission is officially over.”
”But...Dukat! He knows I am here, you must speak to him regarding these new policies of his. I know he does not mean to put me in harm's way-”
The agent laughed. ”Dukat! Tain has no business with that fool they call the prefect. Oh, Pasir. You have been alone here for too long. It's a shame I don't have time to explain it all to you. It's rather a good story, actually.”
Pasir began to feel desperate, taking a step toward the man. ”Have you come to take me home, then?”
The man smiled. ”I'm afraid not, my friend.”
”Friend?” Pasir spat. ”You are no friend of mine. If this isn't an extraction...”
It was quite before Pasir knew what was happening that the other man had moved so near to him, so near that a Carda.s.sian phaser-those used by the Order, set to disintegrate-could effectively do its job. He had time to register disbelief, but that was all.
The agent stepped away and holstered his weapon. Pity, to destroy such a miracle of medicine. He'd heard that the process was considered something of an art. He let himself out of the cottage and headed back toward his skimmer without another thought, making so little noise as he moved that he might as well have been floating.
13.
Lenaris woke up early the next morning, his body protesting against the effects of the night spent sleeping on the ground. Even after all the years spent in the resistance, he had never gottten especially used to sleeping out in the open.
He rolled up his things and observed the sky in the not-quite dawn, the stars still visible in the pale sky. Terok Nor winked as if it were chiding him, and he looked back down at the ground, feeling the impact of all that had happened.
He had been right about the Valerian freighter, but he had been wrong about this. The Pullock V raid had been a disaster, and now the cell had broken apart. Lenaris didn't know when he'd felt so thoroughly despondent; it had been bad after he'd left the Halpas cell, but this was different. This was worse.
The others were waking as well, but as he wandered the vicinity of the mostly empty field in front of him, he realized that Taryl was nowhere to be found. After circling the area in a panic and questioning the others, he ran back toward the village, calling her name the whole time.
The village was deserted. It had always been rough, but without any people in it-chattering, eating, working, or even sleeping-it looked positively eerie. ”Taryl?” Lenaris called. ”Are you here? Please, answer me!” He thought he saw a light on in her cottage, but maybe it was just wishful thinking. He headed for the little house, and drew back the door.
She was there, sitting at the corner worktable with a single light burning above her, her shoulders hunched. Lenaris thought she was crying, and took an uncertain step toward her. But when she turned, he saw with momentary shock that she was not crying at all-in fact, she was smiling.
”Holem!” she exclaimed, leaping to her feet. ”I have to show you what I found!”
She gestured to the table, where a rudimentary com-link was set up on a tiny viewscreen. Taryl had been sifting through Carda.s.sian comm traffic. Lenaris sat down and perused the small screen with the improvised keypad, using a clumsy translation program so that he could read the Carda.s.sian characters. It was difficult to make out, but from what he could gather, the Carda.s.sian comnet had run a story about Pullock V-but this was no ordinary Carda.s.sian newsfeed, churning out propaganda about manufactured Carda.s.sian victories. The casualties, the damage to the facility-it was all here, in plain language-at least as plain as could be interpreted by Taryl's translation software.
”Why...would they do this?” he wondered.
”I don't know!” Taryl said, delighted. ”But I've already copied it and posted it on a buried channel of the Bajoran 'net where the Cardies can't delete it! Do you see, Holem? We'll be heroes!” She giggled, and then sniffed. Through her jubilance, she had still been crying intermittently, that much was plain by the pink blotches underneath her eyes.
”This is great!” Lenaris said. ”If other Bajorans know that we staged an attack offworld-”
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