The Brave And The Bold Book One Read online

  Bajor was still helpless. Orta had been helpless twice in his life. He saw no good reason to repeat the experience.

  So he had resisted all attempts to bring him “home.” The caves of Valo IX were more of a home than Bajor ever would be, as long as Bajorans remained weak and foolish.

  But his followers grew restless. The Cardassians had gone, and they were left with nothing. Without the Cardassians to rally against, they lost their fire, their motivation. In truth, so had Orta. True, he would always desire vengeance against the people who had destroyed his homeworld, destroyed his family, destroyed him—but that could only go so far with the others.

  Then he found the prophecy.

  Orta’s gift had always been the ability to form plans in an instant. He had not been in Valo five minutes after being rescued from weeks of torture before he had come up with the scheme to destroy the base at Chin’toka. Likewise, as soon as he came across the prophecy in a derelict civilian vessel that his people had salvaged after it drifted into Valo, a new plan formed. He just needed to wait for the right moment—a moment that came when the provisional government came to him with an offer to go to Bajor’s second moon.

  “Ready to go through with it?”

  Orta looked up to see Tova Syed, his most loyal lieutenant. They had first met as children on the refugee camp at Valo II. They had grown up together, suffered together, fought together. She had been the one to spearhead his rescue from the Cardassians, and she was one of the other three who survived the mission. However, in the last two years, she had also been the one urging him most strongly to return to Bajor. Like Orta, she did not trust Bajor’s provisional government, nor the Federation—but she did believe that the time for violence was over. When the enemy was Cardassia, they had to fight. This war, though, needed to be fought in other, more peaceful ways.

  But she also always deferred to Orta in the end.

  After affixing the vocoder to his neck, Orta said, “No, I’m not ready. I don’t think I’ll ever truly be ready to become a farmer.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said with a smirk that made the scar over her nose ridge curve in an odd manner. “I think after twenty years of destruction, working to create something will be a nice change. In any case, the Odyssey’s here to take us to the moon.”

  “How wonderful.” Orta had been disappointed in Starfleet’s choice of escort. He had no love for the Federation, but he had liked Jean-Luc Picard—mainly because the Enterprise captain had made his Federation superiors look like the fools they were for falling for the Cardassians’ frame of Orta—and had been looking forward to seeing him again.

  “Turns out that the Odyssey is of the same class as the Enterprise.”

  Orta made what would have been a snort when his larynx worked. “As if that mattered. It was Picard I wanted, not a ship that happens to look like his.” He sighed, the one sound he could still make on his own. “Is everything in readiness?”

  Tova nodded.

  “Then let us prepare to depart.”

  He got up and headed toward the entryway to the alcove that Orta had taken over as his “bedroom.” As he passed Tova, she put a hand on his shoulder. Orta stopped and looked down at her battle-scarred face—and battle-weary eyes. Orta wondered if his own eyes would ever look like that, and was not at all disappointed to realize that they wouldn’t. Full of battle, yes, but never weary of it.

  “This is the right thing to do,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t have agreed to it if I did not think so, Syed.”

  “You would if you had some other plan in mind. And you always have a plan. You have ever since we salvaged that derelict.”

  “My plan is to bring about peace, Syed. That has always been the plan.”

  Tova regarded Orta for several seconds before finally taking the hand off his shoulder. “I hope so,” she finally said.

  Then they went together to the beam-out sight.

  It was time to leave Valo behind.

  It was time to go home.

  Chapter Nine

  “ENTERING BAJORAN SYSTEM.”

  Declan Keogh nodded at his first officer after that report from the conn. Shabalala returned the nod and said, “Go to impulse and set course for the second moon.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The pickup had gone well enough, Keogh mused. He had been worried that Orta and his people would cause a scene, but—though they could hardly have been described as docile—they came on board with a minimum of fuss. They had spent their time in their quarters, with some of them venturing to Ten-Forward. The latter group—which did not include Orta—took to sitting in a corner, not mixing in with the rest of the crew. Hardly an auspicious omen for a group that’s supposed to be involved in a cooperative effort, Keogh thought disdainfully. He knew this mission was going to end badly.

  “Commander, take a look at this,” said the second officer, Maritza Gonzalez, from the ops position.

  In reply, Shabalala went over to the ops console and peered at the readouts therein. “What am I looking at?” he asked.

  “Bajor’s moons,” Gonzalez said. “I just compared their orbital paths—in a few days, almost all of them will be perfectly aligned for about half an hour. The funny thing is, the only one that won’t be is the second one.”

  “Put it on screen, Lieutenant.”

  Keogh looked at the display—to the naked eye, the moons seemed scattered in various orbits as usual, but when Gonzalez overlaid indications of their orbital pathways, he saw that all but the second would indeed line up soon. “Fascinating,” Keogh said with a nod. Then he frowned as he looked at the fifth moon. “Lieutenant Gonzalez, the fifth moon—that is Jeraddo, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As displayed now, Jeraddo was a fiery red, looking about as uninhabitable as a ball of flame, when Keogh was sure that it was supposed to be Class-M. “So what in blazes happened to it?”

  Gonzalez turned, gazing upon her captain with almond eyes. “Sir, Jeraddo’s core is being tapped as part of an energy-retrieval project begun by the Bajoran government a year and a half ago.”

  Keogh nodded. “Very well. Thank you, Lieutenant.” Silently, the captain chastised himself. He had tried to familiarize himself with all aspects of this mission, but that particular fact had eluded him.

  “Sir,” Shabalala said, “another ship is coming into orbit of the second moon.”

  “It’s a Danube-class runabout,” Gonzalez added. “Registry reads as the Rio Grande.”

  From behind him at the tactical station, Lieutenant Talltree said, “We’re being hailed by a Major Kira Nerys on the runabout.”

  Shabalala moved back to the command section and took his seat next to Keogh while saying, “On screen, Mr. Talltree.”

  The display of Bajoran moons was replaced with the image of a Bajoran woman in a red uniform of that planet’s Militia. Next to her was a Trill in a blue Starfleet uniform.

  “This is Captain Keogh of the Odyssey,” he said. “You must be Major Kira.”

  “Yes,” she said simply. “Welcome back, Captain. This is DS9’s science officer, Lieutenant Dax.”

  Keogh blinked. It had been one thing to be told that Curzon Dax was now a woman named Jadzia, but being confronted with the rather attractive reality was still jarring. He recovered quickly, however, and said, “A pleasure, Lieutenant. It’s been a long time.”

  Dax frowned. “Excuse me?”

  “We, ah, met on the Lexington about twenty-five years ago.”

  “I’m sorry, Captain, I’m afraid—oh, wait,” she added, her face brightening. “Deco Keogh?”

  Shifting uncomfortably in his chair, Keogh said in a hard voice, “It’s been quite some time since anyone called me that, Lieutenant.”

  “Of course, Captain. I just didn’t recognize you with so much less hair. My apologies. It’s good to see you again, too.”

  Damn the woman, he thought angrily, she has that same smile Curzon had whenever he said something guar
anteed to embarrass you.

  To Keogh’s relief, neither Shabalala nor Gonzalez nor Talltree visibly reacted to Dax’s comment. He did notice Ensign Doyle at conn was trying to hide a snicker, and he was quite sure that the other junior personnel at the aft stations were doing likewise. I’ll deal with that later, he thought angrily. “We’re preparing the required modifications to our phasers, and we have a full team standing by to help set the colony up on the surface, along with your farmers from the Valo system.”

  “So Orta did come,” Kira said with a nod. “I wasn’t sure he would.”

  “Honestly, Major, neither was I. I still doubt his intentions. But he’s here, as are his followers.”

  “Good.” Next to her, the Trill started manipulating controls. “Lieutenant Dax is transmitting beam-down coordinates for both Orta’s people and your team.”

  “Excellent. We’ll meet you there, Major. Odyssey out.” As the screen went blank, Keogh stood up, Shabalala doing likewise next to him. “Mr. Talltree, have Orta and his people gather in Transporter Room 3 and have them beamed to the major’s first set of coordinates. Have the scientific team meet Mr. Shabalala and myself in Transporter Room 1.”

  “Yes, sir,” the large security chief said from the tactical station.

  “You have the conn, Lieutenant,” he said to Gonzalez, who nodded and moved to the command chair.

  Shabalala let Keogh enter the turbolift first, then followed him in and said, “Transporter Room 1.”

  Keogh nodded to his first officer. He liked Shabalala. After the string of incompetents that Starfleet had saddled him with over the years, he was grateful to have someone who properly served as an interface between him and his crew, and who kept his ship operating at peak efficiency—in other words, what a first officer was supposed to do.

  As soon as the doors closed, Shabalala said, “‘Deco,’ sir?”

  “Commander, let me be perfectly clear: I don’t ever expect hear that word again.”

  “Of course, Captain,” Shabalala said with an emphatic nod.

  “And I want Ensign Doyle reprimanded for her behavior.”

  “Naturally, sir.”

  Keogh nodded, confident that this would truly be the end of it. Shabalala had served under Captain Simon on the Fearless—a good commander whom Keogh had been sorry to see lost, especially under such horrendous circumstances. Simon and Shabalala both were the kind who understood the need to run a tight ship.

  Within minutes, they had beamed down to the moon, along with a team of both science and engineering personnel led by Keogh’s chief engineer, Commander Rodzinski.

  Keogh was not encouraged by what he saw. The moon was a dark, desolate place. Long stretches of barren ground to his left were broken only by small markers. In the distance was a single mountain—which, he recalled from his reading of Kira’s proposal, was an inactive volcano, one of several on the moon

  The moon also had an underground network of rivers. One of the teams from the Odyssey had been assigned to set up the irrigation system that would tap those rivers. Meantime, those markers were placeholders for the Starfleet-issue prefabricated housing structures that would serve as the farmers’ homes.

  To Keogh’s right was a large expanse of equally barren land, but without the markers. Most of this would be the actual farmland, once the Odyssey’s soon-to-be-modified phasers did their work to turn the rock into arable soil.

  Worse, it was cold. Part of that was because the sun had set. For approximately six months of the year—a period that would end in a month’s time—the sun was “up” only four of every fourteen hours. That was why this was the optimum time to start this project—by the time the seeds they planted were ready to sprout in a month’s time, the moon’s rotation would take it out of the shadow of the third moon, and the sun would be up for twelve of those fourteen hours.

  The sound of a Starfleet transporter beam heralded the arrival of Kira and Dax.

  Kira smiled as she looked at Keogh. “Doesn’t look like much, does it?”

  Keogh actually returned the smile. “I was just thinking that, Major. But then, that’s what you need me and my ship for. So, let’s get to work, shall we? I looked over your proposal while we went to pick up Orta and his people, and I put together a plan of attack, as it were. We should start—”

  “Uh, Captain?” Dax said in a voice that sounded like she was talking to a child, a tone Keogh rather resented. “We already have a plan.”

  “Lieutenant, you’re using my staff, my equipment, my ship—I think, therefore, that I’ve earned the right to implement their deployment.”

  “Captain—”

  “Why don’t you two talk this out,” Kira said quickly, stepping between the two of them. “I’m willing to bet that there’s a common ground the two of you can find.”

  “Major,” Keogh said, “I see no reason—”

  Kira now stood right in front of Keogh. She was shorter than Keogh by half a head, but no less impressive for that. “Captain, this is my project. I’m the one who conceived it, I’m the one who practically shoved it down the chamber of ministers’ throats. The Bajoran government has also put me in charge of the project.”

  “Are you giving me an order, Major?” Keogh had to admit that he liked this woman’s aggressiveness, but there were chain-of-command issues to be settled here. Kira was subordinate to Deep Space 9’s commander—whom Keogh outranked. He wanted there to be no question of who gave orders to whom on this mission.

  Kira’s smile grew wider—and it was the smile of a predator swooping down on prey. “Starfleet is a guest of Bajor, Captain. As your host, I’m asking you to work with Lieutenant Dax. She helped me write the proposal, including developing all the technical aspects of it. Her presentation of those aspects is a lot of what sold this to the provisional government. You’ve only known about this project for a day. I would think you’d want the input of someone with more experience.”

  Nodding, Keogh said, “An excellent point. Very well, Lieutenant, let’s see what you have in mind.”

  Smiling much more sweetly than Kira was, Dax said, “Happy to, Deco.”

  Keogh winced.

  As Joe Shabalala led Kira to where Orta and his people had beamed down, she asked, “How, exactly, do you put up with him?”

  Smiling, Shabalala said, “I grind my teeth a great deal.”

  Kira laughed. “That’s usually how I deal with the chamber of ministers. It’s the main reason why they sent me up to DS9. I’m far enough away that they can only hear me shouting when I contact them on subspace, and even then, they can always cut me off. They like…” She trailed off. Her eye was caught by something on the horizon. Shabalala followed her gaze.

  Bajor was starting to rise.

  Shabalala had seen an Earthrise from Luna once—the sight of the huge blue ball slowly coming into view over Armstrong City had left him in openmouthed amazement for a good fifteen minutes. His wife had told him he was going to catch flies if he wasn’t careful. He pointed out that there were no flies on the moon, but that sort of logic never deterred Aleta.

  As glorious as that sight had been, Bajor’s rise was even more spectacular. Whether it was because the green-tinged planet took up more room in the moon’s sky than Earth did in Luna’s, Shabalala couldn’t say—and right now, he didn’t care that much.

  “When I was younger,” Kira said, “I came up to the fifth moon with my resistance cell. Prylar Istani used to make me stop and watch every time there was a Bajor-rise. I used to think it was a waste of time, but she was a prylar, so I watched, waited for it to be over, and got back to work. After a while, though, I started to appreciate it. Once I started watching them without her, she said she was glad. ‘That’s what we’re fighting for, Nerys,’ she used to say. ‘Don’t ever forget that.’”

  “Wise woman,” Shabalala said.

  Kira nodded. “I haven’t forgotten, I can tell you that.” She smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, Commander.”

  “That’s
quite all right,” Shabalala said. “This project obviously means a lot to you.”

  “Bajor means a lot to me,” Kira said with a quiet vehemence that impressed Shabalala, and frightened him a bit. “This project will help Bajor, so yeah, you could say it’s important. And I don’t want it messed up because a Starfleet captain’s ego is larger than the quadrant.”

  Shabalala laughed. “Don’t worry, Major. Part of my job description is to keep Captain Keogh’s ego at least planet-sized. We’ll get this done.”

  “So there’s Bajor.”

  Starting in surprise, Shabalala whirled around to see a Bajoran wearing a scarf around his head. The scarf obscured most of his face. The voice with which he had spoken so suddenly was mechanical and cold.

  Orta.

  The odd voice continued. “It’s good to see you again, Nerys—though I’m surprised to see you in that uniform.”

  “I’m doing what I can to help our home, Orta. Now, so are you. And if you ask me, it’s about damn time.”

  “Are you questioning my loyalty, Nerys?” Despite his computerized voice, Orta managed to imbue his question with a fair amount of menace. Shabalala suddenly wished he’d thought to bring a phaser.

  Kira smiled sweetly—a smile that scared Shabalala even more than her earlier vehemence—and looked Orta right in the eye. Though Orta was not as tall as Keogh, he was still taller than the major, but she managed to look bigger even as she gazed up at him. “I’m not questioning anything, Orta—except for what took you so long to come home.”

  “I’m here now. And I’m eager to serve. So tell us what we are to do, and we shall do it.” He pointed at the rising planet. “For the greater glory of Bajor.”

  Kira pointed to a security detail about a quarter-kilometer away. Lieutenant Talltree had sent most of his staff down to aid in the preparations. Shabalala also noticed some Bajoran Militia security amongst them, no doubt lent by Deep Space 9.

  “Good,” Kira said. “You can start by helping those Starfleet people set up the processors. The ground needs to be properly prepared before the Odyssey can start the operation. It’ll go faster if you help them out.”