The woman could speak to him only via voice transmission, but Odo still felt quite certain that it was really her. It had been the sound of Kira’s voice that had finally brought her identity back to him those few years ago.
“So, will you help me, Constable?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I still don’t understand why you’ve come to me.”
“Because I trusted you once before, Odo, and I want to trust you now. I believe that ultimately—despite your position, I mean—you are on our side.”
“I’m on nobody’s side,” Odo said firmly.
“If that’s true, then why did you help me before? Why not just arrest me?”
“Because,” he said, not immediately sure how to follow it up. “I…suppose I regarded you as an individual, in need of help. It wasn’t your cause that provoked my sympathy—it was just…it was just…”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” Odo said. He really didn’t know. It was true that he had helped her once, and it was therefore true that he had helped the Bajoran resistance movement once, too. But he’d been much less experienced then—he had been reacting to his immediate circumstances without thinking through the consequences.
“You’re lying,”the woman said. “You knew the Cardassians were wrong then, and you know it now.”
“Do I?” Odo said, trying to sound threatening, but it fell flat.
“Yes, you do. You’re not one of them, Odo. You’re one of us.”
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
™, ® and © 2008 by CBS Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved. STAR TREK and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc.
CBS, the CBS EYE logo, and related marks are trademarks of CBS Broadcasting Inc.
™ & © CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
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Cover art by John Picacio; cover design by Alan Dingman
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-9905-0
ISBN-10: 1-4165-9905-3
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For Britta, who works harder than me
—S. D. P.
For Lucy and Ruth
—B. D.
Acknowledgments
S. D. Perry would like to thank Paula Block and Marco Palmieri; James Swallow and all the Trekwriters, past and present; her marvelous husband, two perfect kids, and the lovely ladies at the School of Autism who keep the faith. And again, thanks to Britta.
Britta Dennison wants to thank anyone and everyone who contributed to the Star Trekwiki sites, along with Marco Palmieri, Paula Block, James Swallow, and everyone who has contributed to the Trekuniverse. Thanks to my family, especially Thad. Thanks to S. D. Perry, who prevents me from friendlessness and joblessness, and to every teacher I’ve ever had, with the exception of my ninth-grade algebra teacher.
OCCUPATION YEAR THIRTY-THREE
2360 (Terran Calendar)
Prologue
Opaka Sulan was silently watching the landscapers as they worked under the direction of Riszen Ketauna, an artist from a nearby village in the Kendra Valley. She stood at the edge of a covered porch, one of the more recent additions to the shrine, and looked out at the patch of land that had been cleared of brush, trying to envision the finished product as Ketauna had described it. She had no doubt that the gardens would be beautiful within a year or so. But while she appreciated Ketauna’s hard work in planning the aesthetic of the grounds, she was concerned about the use of resources. She couldn’t help but worry.
Ketauna called out orders and encouragement to those who surrounded him on the crumbly blackness of the newly tilled soil. Later, they would break for what amounted to a feast, soup made from porlifowl and kavaroot, fresh berries, iced dekatea. One of the workers had gifted the new shrine with a sizable coop, and there had been eggs and meat for weeks now. It was a sunny day, the land bright with it, and Opaka struggled with a sense of guilt that they should have so much when their world was so troubled. The Cardassians had only tightened their grip since the resistance had truly begun to fight; elsewhere, she knew, Bajorans were hungry, were suffering…
She closed her eyes for a moment, praying that she would not take her own blessings for granted, that she would always be grateful for what she had. Besides, as Fasil was often quick to point out, they had to eat, too. Feeling guilt over that would feed no one.
She found Ketauna on the field. He was dressed in shabby and rough clothing like the volunteers around him. He had his back to Opaka as he bent to assist a woman who was planting a large rubberwood sapling. After a moment under Opaka’s gaze, the artist cocked his head and then turned, as if he had felt Opaka looking at him. He shaded his eyes with his hands to block out the midday brilliance of B’hava’el.
“Your Eminence,” he called up to her, waving. He started toward her, his expression as bright as the day. “I am pleased with the way the gardens are beginning to come together.”
Opaka nodded to him, putting her hands together underneath her robes. “Yes, Ketauna, it’s going to be lovely.” She walked down the steps from the porch to speak to him, a friend of hers since long before she had been named kai—and one of those who had accompanied her when she had recovered the last Tear of the Prophets, that which was believed to be the lost Orb of Prophecy and Change, missing since the time of Kai Dava. The Orb was safely hidden now, looked after by the monks who presided over the shrine at Ashalla. Opaka visited Ashalla when she could, but she did not do as much traveling now as she might have liked; her health would not permit it. In the past six years, she had come to spend more and more time at this location, a place that remained hidden from the Cardassians’ attention, nestled as it was in a remote location between two provincial boundaries.
Opaka was reluctant to commit herself to a single place, but she had to admit that she was not getting any younger; her aging body would not sustain the nomadic lifestyle to which she had been committed when she had first begun to preach. But there was no small measure of selfishness in her acquiescence to allow this place to be constructed, for if she remained here, she would be closer to her son, Fasil, a resistance fighter who lived in nearby Kendra. It was generally understood that this place, in addition to being home to Opaka, was a place of sanctuary for the freedom fighters of Kendra, Opaka Fasil among them.
Ketauna bowed slightly as they met. “I would offer no less to the shrine that will become home to the kai.”