Part 31 (2/2)

”That's for the best,” Bis told her. ”We'll pick it up tomorrow, when I take you back to Jeraddo.”

Ro swallowed. Back to Jeraddo? ”Right,” she said, feeling her chest tighten.

Bis's friends Lino and Hintasi were both inside a little house with a dirt floor, one nearly identical to Bis's, but older and smaller. It was mostly dark inside, with dirty and mildewed fabric covering the open windows. A pile of blankets was heaped in a corner, making do for a bed. There were several bottles of spring wine on the floor where Lino and Hintasi were sitting, and they saluted with a bottle as Ro entered, shouting their congratulations and pus.h.i.+ng a bottle into her hands. She was only too happy to drink it, thinking her nerves deserved it.

She took a sip, wanting to make it last, but she found herself drinking deeply, thirsty for the effect. ”I hope it was worth it,” she said, coming up for air. She sat on the floor, took another drink.

”It's worth it,” Bis a.s.sured her. ”I can't think of a better reason to finish off the last of my father's spring wine. The last time we drank a bottle was-”

”No, I mean-all of it. I mean-what if the Carda.s.sians just send another prefect? What if they just build another station? What if it's all just-”

”Don't be ridiculous,” Lino interrupted.

”Why is it ridiculous?” Ro asked, and as she said it, she began to think, to really think, about what she'd done. To the Carda.s.sians, Bajor was just one little planet. Killing the prefect might not matter much to them at all. Certainly, the destruction of Terok Nor would mean a setback, but perhaps their resources were truly infinite. Perhaps there were exponentially more of them than there were Bajorans. Ro suddenly recognized that maybe Keeve Falor had been right, all those years ago when he'd sent her on the cautious reconnaissance mission; maybe gathering information about the Carda.s.sians before fighting them was the better approach, after all.

”Come on, Laren,” Bis said, starting to sound a little upset. ”Don't you remember what you said all those years ago? About just killing the Carda.s.sians on Valo VI? And then you did it! You shot them, all by yourself. Even though I would have been scared to death, I never would have been able to-”

”It was a stupid thing to do,” Ro interupted. ”I didn't have to kill them. I could have gotten out of there before they would have seen me, I could have called for Bram, but I compromised the mission, and I killed them anyway.” She took another deep drink from the bottle. ”I thought...I thought if I killed him...I'd never have another nightmare, I'd stop feeling so terrible about what happened to my father, but it made no difference. None!” She dropped the empty bottle on the dirt floor, fighting tears.

No one spoke for a moment. ”Laren,” Lino finally said. ”I think I understand how you feel. But those Bajorans on the station, they'll walk with the Prophets soon, can't you see that? And-”

”How comforting it must be for you!” Ro interrupted. ”To have something to believe in, to have something to justify what we just did. What I just did!” She tried to reach for another bottle, but thought better of it. The wine had hit her fast.

”I want to be alone for a while,” she announced, and pushed herself up off the floor. She stormed out of the little house, a strange, buried part of her almost wis.h.i.+ng that Bis would follow her, but he let her go.

21.

Kira fought down the panic that threatened to overtake her-for it appeared that something had gone very wrong. The Bajoran scientist who had briefed the Shakaar about this operation had neglected to mention anything about the burning wreckage that was currently at the base of the pit. He had indicated that the Bajorans would be corralled by the Carda.s.sian guards, but instead, Kira was confronted with a brace of panicking people, pus.h.i.+ng at the slowly moving queue that spread out across the entire perimeter of the pit, the line of Bajorans undulating in an upward direction. But Kira needed to bring them all in together, and she did not know how four people could possibly round up all these hysterical wretches in one central location. Hysterical and terrible in their weakness, their sickness, their injuries and too-thin bodies. There were no Carda.s.sians to be seen, but she heard phaser fire and screams coming from some of the upper tunnels. Gallitep was a nightmare, worse than she'd imagined.

She caught the eye of a man who seemed to have a recognizable degree of lucidity, and she moved closer to him. ”Don't worry,” she told him. ”Help is here. I need someone to help me gather everyone together in a central location. Can you do that?”

The man, who Nerys quickly realized could not be more than a few years older than she was, cleared his throat with difficulty. ”I can try,” he croaked. ”Someone needs to tell them to calm down, or people are going to start shoving each other off the paths and we'll all wind up down there.” He nodded toward the pit, where the flames from the crashed building were finally dying down, its three broken and twisted legs crookedly awry, but the smoke was thick, and many people were beginning to hack and cough.

Nerys began to shout, her eyes streaming from the chemical smoke below. ”People, people! Please, try to calm down!” Her voice was lost over the crying and shouting, and the man did his best to shout along with her, until the people nearest them began at last to still.

”We've come to help!” Kira shouted, though she didn't know if her voice could be heard. Above her, she could see Gantt, attempting to calm down another small group that surrounded him on an even narrower road than the one where she stood. She hoped Shakaar was with him. She couldn't see Lupaza anywhere.

”We need to get these people together in one place,” Kira told the man urgently. ”Is there any way-”

”One of the larger tunnels,” the man replied. ”The one I just came from goes back far enough to get everyone inside.”

”Let's do it,” Kira said. The smoke was getting even thicker now.

”They may be reluctant,” he warned her, beginning to cough. ”It was in one of the tunnels that the accident happened a few years ago-the one that caused so many to become sick.”

”We'll have to convince them,” Kira said, and began to beckon to those closest to her, while the young man led them back in the direction of the tunnel. Kira saw the signs of protest, but she was firm. ”Please!” she insisted. ”You have to listen to me! We're going to get you out of here, but you have to trust me, just follow him-” She pointed to her nameless a.s.sistant, and wormed her way through the people to get to Gantt, to tell him what was happening.

”Gantt!” she screamed, and after a few more shouts he finally saw her through the smoke, and looked down in her direction. She could not get to him without walking the full rotation of the circular road, at least a kellipate kellipate. ”Get them down here! This way! If you see any of the others, tell them-there's a big tunnel down here where we can herd them all together and transport them out!”

”Transport us out?” someone cried, and many more people began to talk at once, shouting back and forth in an excited, squabbling rumble, through the coughing and choking from the smoke. ”Are we being transported out?” ”Where are we going?” ”Who is taking us there?” ”Where are the Carda.s.sians?”

”We're taking you someplace safe!” Kira shouted, and repeated the words again and again until they began to spread throughout the crowd, hopefully to those on the other side of the pit. Kira could no longer see them through the haze, though it seemed to be clearing-either that, or she was getting used to it.

The process of herding everyone into the tunnel was slow and painstaking, and many people continued to resist, trying to move in the opposite direction and holding up progress, but Kira had help from others who apparently felt that the chance to get out, no matter how slim, trumped their fear of some kind of trick. By the time Kira entered the black, sweltering tunnel behind the enormous crowd of people, she began to have second thoughts. Not only was it hot and dark in here, but the smoke had made it almost impossible to breathe. By the time everyone could get to the tunnel, many of them might suffocate.

But there was no time to reformulate the plan; there were a hundred things or more that could go wrong. Kira still had no idea what had happened to Shakaar and Lupaza, nor any of the others who had been transported after her, although she thought she could hear phaser fire above her. She saw no guards, and feared they might have all been transported into the offices above, only to come back at any moment-or worse, bring in reinforcements to put a stop to the escape. Worse yet, there was the possibility that Mobara and Furel, who were back at the Inst.i.tute of Science, had been caught at the industrial transporter. Then they would all be trapped here with no other means of getting out.

People in the back of the tunnel were coughing and crying. ”I can't breathe!” shouted a woman. ”Get us out of here, please!”

Standing at the mouth of the tunnel, Kira recognized Lupaza coming closer with more people. ”Lupaza!” Kira cried out. ”We have to get these people out of here, quickly! It's going to take too much time to get everyone together, we'll have to begin transporting them now!”

Lupaza turned to regard the long rope of people still advancing toward the tunnel through the thinning smoke, listened to those at the back of the cavern who cried out in the claustrophobic darkness, and gave a quick nod. She pressed her comm device.

”Mobara, it's Lupaza! I'm here with Nerys-we have to start transporting people out right away.”

”How many would you estimate are with you?”

”I have no idea,” she said. ”Can't you just lock on to our signals and get as many out as you can?”

”I think so,” he said. he said. ”I hope so,” ”I hope so,” he added. he added. ”I don't know the first thing about what this transporter beam is capable of, but I'll widen it to its full distance capacity and see where that gets us.” ”I don't know the first thing about what this transporter beam is capable of, but I'll widen it to its full distance capacity and see where that gets us.”

Kira shut her eyes tightly and felt a distinctive pins-and-needles sensation in her limbs and torso. When she opened her eyes, she was somewhere else; somewhere in the Dahkur woods-and she was surrounded by dozens of bewildered-looking people, malnourished, injured, coughing, and crying-and then muttering and exclaiming their amazement over what had just happened.

”Wait!” someone standing near Kira cried out. ”Where's Tynara?”

”Tynara will be here!” Kira shouted. ”Please, remain calm, everyone. Just stay here with me, the rest will be here soon.” She hoped it was true.

Many people had now fallen to their knees, shouting with joy, others were crying, though Kira couldn't tell if it was from fear or jubilation. Some still appeared to be in a daze, rubbing their faces in confusion or simply staring up at the trees as if they'd forgotten what trees looked like. Many were calling out for missing family and friends, searching for people who were not here yet-and who might not ever come, Kira thought, for even if Shakaar and the others made it with the rest of the survivors, plenty of Bajorans must have died today, either as a result of the accident that had caused the fire, or from having been too close to fleeing Carda.s.sian guards who haunted the upper reaches of the mine.

After what seemed like a very long time, Gantt and Shakaar arrived with a smaller group of people.

”Did we get everyone out?” Kira pressed Shakaar.

”As many as we could see,” he told her, his tone hasty and dismissive, looking among the faces for the rest of his cell. Kira recognized others from the Shakaar cell in the growing, noisy crowd, Dakahna and Ornak and the young couple from outside Tamulna who had just joined the cell, but two were still missing, and Shakaar was trying to get clear word from Mobara regarding what had happened to them.

”Edon,” Lupaza prompted him, ”we need to get these people to safety.”

Kira interrupted. ”The scientist,” she said. ”What about him? Mobara is supposed to...”

”Nerys,” Lupaza said gently, ”the scientist is gone. He was in the structure when it fell from the suspension bridge above us.”

Kira shook her head. ”But...” she said, ”you can't be sure...”

Gantt put his hand on her shoulder. ”He's gone,” he told her. ”Now, we've got to get these people out of here. We'd better let Mobara know to get him and Furel back to the camp, and we've got to get these people somewhere safe.”

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