Chapter 5

“Look, Torrna’s not going to bite your head off if you take this complaint to him.”

“Are you sure?” The merchant looked dubious. More than that, he looked scared to death. “I’ve heard about how he drove off the Lerrit Army by breathing fire into their camp and setting them alight!”

Kira tried not to laugh, but she did at least keep an encouraging smile on her face. “I can assure you that his days of breathing fire are long in the past. Just go to him and tell him that you object to the inspections. I can’t guarantee that he’ll do what you ask, but he will listen. Just give him a chance.”

The dubiousness did not leave the merchant’s face. “If you say so.”

“I say so. He should be back in the next day or two, and I’ll make sure you get to see him, all right?”

“Fine. Thank you, ma’am.”

Nodding, Kira excused herself from the merchant, leaving his quarters and going out onto the deck of the docked merchant trawler. It never failed to amuse her, this fear that people had of Torrna. Mainly because she knew that his bluster was worse than his bite.

She also had to wonder, though, if this was what people thought of her after the Cardassian withdrawal. Did people fear that she would breathe fire? Was that why she had been sent to Deep Space 9? After all, she’d been assigned as first officer and Bajoran liaison before the discovery of the wormhole turned the station into a major port of call. She’d never had any illusions that it had been done to get her out of the way of the provisional government, who found her intemperate ways to be too much for them to handle—at least nearby. So they sent her into orbit.

Natlar had all but done the same to Torrna. The disruptive influence he could have in the council chambers—as evidenced by the way he all but took over the meeting shortly after the Lerrit Army’s final retreat—was probably seen by the prefect as an impediment to actually getting anything done.

Kira walked down the gangplank of the merchant’s ship to the marina and took a deep breath of the sea air. She’d lost track of how long she’d been serving as Torrna’s adjutant at the Natlar Port, but she’d been enjoying it immensely—particularly now that the weather was warmer, the sun was shining, the Korvale Ocean was a clear green, and a lovely breeze was pretty much her constant companion every time she walked outside. She hadn’t spent much time near the sea prior to this, and when she did, it was during her days in the resistance. She had other things on her mind, then.

She nodded to the assorted dockworkers who passed her by, then whirled around when someone cried, “Look!”

The Perikian Peninsula jutted out into the Korvale Ocean along the southern end of the coast of the continent. Any ship that came down the coastline from the west would have to, in essence, come around a corner and therefore would not come into sight from the marina until it was almost ready to dock.

Right now, one of the largest and most impressive ships that could be found on the planet was coming into view around that bend. It stood at ten meters above the surface of the ocean, with the green-and-black flag of Endtree whipping in the breeze from the mast.

Kira peered more closely and noticed that there was a second flag under it: the flag of the Perikian Republic. Interesting, Kira thought. That wasn’t there when they left.

The ship was Admiral Inna’s flagship, the Haeys, returning a day early from their investigation of the reports of pirate activity.

Several people on the marina stopped what they were doing to see the flagship approach the dock. As it settled into port, a cheer started to break out, which spread all the way across the marina. Kira found herself joining in the cheer—and she wondered how much of it was general goodwill toward Admiral Inna’s fleet and how much was the new presence of the Perikian flag.

Within half an hour, Inna and Torrna had extricated themselves from the admiring crowd. Kira noted that they had been chatting amiably as they approached the gangplank before they were set upon by the admirers. Quite a switch, she thought, from all the sniping they’ve been doing. The admiral went off to consult with the captains of the other fleet ships in dock, and Torrna walked with Kira back toward their office in the rear of the marina.

“So what happened?” Kira asked.

“We found the pirates and took care of them in fairly short order. They didn’t have anything to match Murent’s cannon.”

Smiling, Kira said, “’Murent’? That’s new.”

“I beg your pardon,” Torrna said, a little indignantly.

As they approached the office, nodding to the sergeant at the desk, Kira said, “It wasn’t that long ago that the only way you referred to her was as ‘the admiral’ or ‘that damned woman.’ ”

To Kira’s surprise, Torrna actually blushed, his skin turning the color of his hair and beard. “I suppose so. But she showed me something on this trip that I didn’t expect. She was efficient yet merciful with the pirates, she was very effective in questioning the pirate leader without being unnecessarily brutal, and she agreed to fly the Perikian flag.”

“I was going to ask you about that.”

They entered Torrna’s tiny office. The general sat behind his rickety wooden desk, which was cluttered with assorted pieces of paper that required his attention. Torrna ignored them and instead poured himself a drink from the small bar that sat under the window looking out onto the mainland. Torrna had specifically requested a north-facing office so he could look out on, in his words, “the republic that I fought for, not the ocean that is controlled by someone else.”

He offered Kira a drink, which she declined. They liked their drinks a little less smooth in the old days, she had thought after the first drink she had shared with Torrna, and she made it a point to avoid the stuff when possible.

“It took surprisingly little argument,” he said as he sat down. “I pointed out that her fleet was there at the invitation of the Perikian government and was there to protect Perikian interests, so it made sense that they should fly our colors. Not that she gave in completely, of course….”

“Let me guess, you wanted the Perikian flag on top?”

Kira had spoken with a modicum of facetiousness, but Torrna leaned forward and said gravely, “These are our waters, Ashla. We must never forget that.”

“I haven’t,” she said with equal seriousness.

She also noted that she’d said “the Perikian flag,” not “our flag.” Perhaps a minor point, but, even though she had fought for the republic’s independence, even though she now worked for Torrna, she still couldn’t bring herself to think of this as home. She knew this was the right place for her to be, but in the back of her mind was the constant feeling that this was not her new home, that she was only visiting. It made no sense to Kira on the face of it, and she wasn’t sure what to think of these feelings.

Deciding not to dwell on it, she leaned back in her chair. “So what did the pirate leader say when Inna questioned her so efficiently?”

Taking a sip of his drink, Torrna said, “Actually, the most interesting intelligence we received wasn’t from the pirates, but from their slaves. The most recent conscriptions they picked up were refugees from a disaster in the fire caves.”

Kira blinked. “What?”

“Apparently the entrance to the fire caves collapsed—and completely destroyed Yvrig.” Yvrig was a city on another peninsula west of Perikia but on the same continent; it, too, had a thriving port.

Torrna snorted as he continued. “Some of the slaves claimed there was some kind of blue fire when the caves collapsed, but I don’t put much stock in that.”

Kosst Amojan imprisoned…. the Pah-wraiths banished to the fire caves…. Shabren’s Fifth Prophecy … the Emissary going to the fire caves to stop the Pah-wraiths from being freed….

Kira knew exactly what had happened, remembering her experience channeling the Prophets during the Reckoning, and now knew precisely when she was. Some thirty thousand years before she was born, the Prophets banished the Pah-wraiths to the caves, sealing them in there forever. Only their leader, Kosst Amojan, was imprisoned elsewhere, on a site that would one day be the city of B’hala. The others remained in the fire caves, until Winn Adami and Skrain Dukat attempted to free them only a few months ago, subjective time. Only the sacrifice of the Emissary—Benjamin Sisko—had thwarted the scheme.

Or, rather, will thwart it. I hate time travel. We need new tenses….

Until now, though, it never occurred to Kira that the Prophets’ actions at the caves might have had harmful consequences for the people near the site.

“We’ve got to help those people. There may be—”

“Sit down, Ashla,” Torrna said, which was when Kira realized that she’d stood up. As she sat back down, Torrna continued. “This happened over two weeks ago. There’s very little we can do.”

Right. Of course. There is no instant communication here. Kira nodded in acknowledgment.

“However, this does mean that we’re going to see a significant increase in traffic in the port. Without Yvrig, we’re the only viable port on the southern part of the continent.”

Kira nodded. “Traffic’s going to increase.”

“That’s an understatement.” Torrna broke into a grin.

Yet another parallel, she thought. The discovery of the wormhole transformed Deep Space 9 from a minor outpost to a major port of call. This wasn’t quite on the same scale as that, but Kira did remember one important thing from those early days on DS9.

Torrna continued speaking. “We’ll need to work on expanding the marina to be able to accommodate more ships. Maybe now Marta won’t close her tavern down the way she’s been threatening to. For that matter, we’ll probably need a new inn. Plus—”

“We’ll need more ships from Endtree—or we’ll have to start building some of our own.”

Frowning, Torrna said, “What for? I mean, we’ll need more people for the Dock Patrol, obviously—the number of drunken louts on the docks will increase dramatically—but I don’t think we’ll need—” “We’re going to need more ships to hold off the pirates—and the Lerrit Navy.”

Torrna snorted again. “The Lerrit Navy is barely worth giving the title.”

“Don’t be so sure of that. We just got another report from Moloki.” Moloki was one of the spies that the Perikian Free Army had observing the goings-on in Lerrit. In fact, the PFA had many such operatives, more than even Torrna or Kira knew definitively about. “He says that they’ve employed shipbuilders from Jerad Province to completely rebuild their navy from scratch. Within the year, they may well be a legitimate naval power—or at least legitimate enough for us to worry about. And with this change in the geography, they’re going to be more interested in taking us back, not less.”

Torrna frowned. “Isn’t Jerad part of the Bajora?”

Kira nodded.

He shook his head. “Wonderful. We don’t join their little theocracy, so they help Lerrit take us back.”

“You can’t blame them for taking on a lucrative contract like that,” Kira said, trying not to examine how much that sounded like Quark.

“I can damn well blame them for anything I want!” Torrna stood up and drained his drink. “Damn it all, I was actually enjoying the good news.”

“I’m sorry, but—”

Torrna waved her off. “No, that’s all right. That’s why I keep you around, Ashla. You have the knack for dragging me back to reality when I need it most.” He turned to stare at the view from his window.

“There is a great deal of work that will need to be done.”

Kira got up and walked to Torrna. “Then we’d better get up off our butts and do it, shouldn’t we?”

“Definitely.” Torrna smiled. “What else did Moloki have to report?”

“Nothing different from his last few. The official word is that the Queen is dying, but she keeps showing up at official functions. She hardly ever says anything, but she’s there and smiling a lot. Moloki seems to think that Prince Avtra is doing all the real work.”

Shaking his head, Torrna said, “That woman will never die. You know, she swore that she would live long enough to see the peninsula brought back under her rule. She’s probably the one who contracted the Jeradians to build her a navy so she could fulfill that promise. I daresay she’s clinging to life solely for that reason.”

“Maybe.” She hesitated. “I’m glad you and the admiral are getting along better.”

“Yes, well, her tiresome insistence on giving those silly Prophets of hers all the credit for her work aside, she’s quite a brilliant tactician.” They both sat back down in their seats after Torrna poured himself another drink. “She was able to deal with those pirates with a minimum of fuss. You should have seen….”

He went on at some length, describing how she stopped the pirates, and her ideas for curtailing some of their activities in the future. Kira smiled and nodded, but naval battles were not an area of great interest to her—her tactical instincts for vehicular combat of that sort tended to be more three-dimensional.

She was just glad that Torrna and Inna were getting along. She had a feeling that that would be vital in the long run….