Chapter 9

Kira spent what felt like an eternity on her cot. Every once in a while she was able to sit up, but never for very long.

As time went on, news from the front lines, and from the capital, came in the form of messengers. Admiral Inna led a convoy of ships to the Kendra Valley River in an attempt to cut off the Bajora’s supply lines. Natlar also sent an envoy to the Bajora, asking them to cease their support of Lerrit.

It turned out that the battle at Barlin Field had been more decisive than Kira and Torrna had realized, busy as they were being captured. It had been a major victory, and led to the complete reclamation of not only Makar Province, but also most of the Lonnat Valley.

By the time Kira was well enough to travel, a ship was coming down the coast—the fort was located near the Korvale Ocean—to bring injured troops home. Being, in essence, an injured troop as well, Kira went along.

The captain of the ship was a very short, no-nonsense woman named Tunhal Din. Kira noticed that she wore an earring in her right ear. “Who the hell’re you?” was her way of introducing herself.

“Kira Nerys. I’m General Torrna’s adjutant.”

“Didn’t know he had one. Well, find yourself somewhere to sleep. If you get sick, do it over the edge or clean it up yourself.”

“How’s the fighting going?” Tunhal shrugged. “We haven’t surrendered yet.”

Kira had never traveled much by sea. Her initial assumption that it would be much like flying in an atmospheric craft turned out to be optimistic. She managed not to throw up, but that only through a supreme effort of will.

When they came around the bend into sight of Natlar Port, she had other reasons for being ill.

The port was on fire.

She stood at the fore of the ship, next to the wheel, watching in shock. Tunhal was next to her. “Well, that was damn stupid o’ them Lerrits.”

Kira looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“Port’s what makes this land so damn desirable. Why’d they cannon it to smithereens like that? If they’re trying to win back the land, why screw up the most valuable part of it?”

“It depends on your goal,” Kira, who had spent her formative years as a terrorist, said after a moment’s thought. “If you’re trying to take land from the enemy, you’re right, it is stupid. But if you’re trying to do damage to your enemy where it hurts the most, that’s the thing to do.”

Tanhul looked at her like she had grown a second head. “That’s insane.”

Kira had to bite back her instinctive response: You say that because the tactics of terrorism haven’t really been invented here yet. They haven’t needed to be. And you should thank the Prophets for that every night before you go to bed.

Instead, she said, “It’s actually a good sign, believe it or not.”

“How’s that, exactly?”

“They wouldn’t have attacked the port directly if they had any intention of taking it. This was the final defiant act of a navy that knows it’s lost. A kind of ‘if I can’t have it, no one can’ gesture. This probably means the war’s going well for our side.”

“Your definition of ‘well’ differs from mine,” Tanhul said dryly.

There were no obvious piers available for docking—half of them were damaged beyond usefulness, and the rest were occupied. The marina itself was a mass of chaotic activity, with small fires being put out and people coughing from the smoke.

Someone noticed them eventually, though, as a small rowboat approached the spot where Tanhul had dropped anchor. Kira recognized its occupant as the assistant dockmaster, Hiran. As he pulled up alongside the ship, Tanhul ordered a ladder lowered for him.

“Good to have you back, ma’am,” he said upon sighting Kira as he arrived on deck. Then he turned to Tanhul. “I’m sorry, Captain, but as you can see, we’re a bit shorthanded.”

“I’ve got wounded here.”

Hiran frowned. “Let me see what I can do. I might be able to get a few skiffs over to offload the worst of them.” He turned to Kira.

“Ma’am, you should know that General Torrna’s in his office. You might want to see him.”

Kira didn’t like the tone in Hiran’s voice. “Is he all right?”

“I really think you should see him, ma’am.” Hiran’s tone was more urgent. Kira also knew him well enough to know that he was unlikely to say anything else.

She accompanied him back on the rowboat to the marina. As Hiran stroked the oars, Kira asked, “What happened here?”

“Lerrit’s last stand, you could say, ma’am,” Hiran said, almost bitterly. “General Torrna pretty much beat them on the land. See, on his way back from Fort Tendro, he came across General Takmor’s regiment—but Takmor’d been killed.”

Damn, Kira thought. She was one of the good ones. “I’d heard that she was the one who reclaimed Sempa Province.”

“Actually, that was General Torrna, ma’am. The general, see—well, he just plowed on in and led them to victory. They were ready to call it quits, but he rallied ’em, and they took Sempa back. Meantime, Admiral Inna came back here when she found out that the Lerrit Navy was gonna throw their whole armada at us.”

Kira looked at the smoky, ruined port. “Looks like they did.”

“Oh, the admiral, she threw back pretty good, too. Cost her her life, mind, but—”

“Inna’s dead?”

Hiran nodded. “Just what we needed after everything else.”

“What everything else? Hiran, I’ve been laid up at Tendro, and obviously I haven’t been getting all the news.”

“Oh, ma’am, I’m sorry,” Hiran said in a sedate tone. “I guess you didn’t hear that Prefect Natlar was killed, too. See, same time the Lerrit Navy did their last stand here, the Lerrit Army did likewise in the capital. Didn’t work, of course—thanks to the blockade, they were underfed, understaffed, and underarmed. We beat ’em back mighty good, truth be told, but—” He sighed. “Not without a cost, if you know what I mean.”

Kira shook her head. “So we won?”

“Yes, ma’am, if you can call this a victory.”

They arrived at the marina. Kira disembarked from the rowboat, and couldn’t help contrasting this with the last time she set foot on the dock. Then, the sun was shining, a stiff breeze was blowing, carrying the smell of fish and seawater, with the Korvale Ocean a sparkling green in contrast to the dull-but-solid brown of the dock’s wood. Now, the sun was obscured by billowing smoke, and the wind carried only the smell of that smoke, occasionally broken by the stench of blood and death.

Then she saw the bodies.

They were arranged in a row just past the marina in a ditch that hadn’t been there before. Many wore Perikian uniforms; many more wore Lerrit uniforms. A few—though even a few were too many— wore civilian clothing.

Nerys walked into the other chamber, Furel right behind her. Kira Taban’s body was laid out on the pallet. She had seen far too many dead bodies not to know one now.

Her father was dead.

“He died calling your name.”

It took an effort for Kira to pry her horrified eyes away from the array of corpses and continue her journey to the office where she and Torrna had spent so much time together.

The small wooden structure had held up remarkably well during the attack—only a few scorch marks differentiated it from Kira’s memory of the building. Several familiar faces greeted her hastily; others ignored her completely. One person, a merchant who had set up a shop specializing in merchandise from Endtree, muttered, “Thank the Prophets she’s here. Maybe she can talk some sense into him.”

Nobody sat at the sergeant’s desk.

She entered Torrna’s tiny office. The general sat behind his rickety wooden desk, which was piled top to bottom with enough refuse and detritus to be a serious fire hazard, given the conditions outside. The small bar that sat under the window was full of empty, overturned, and broken bottles. Kira was therefore not surprised that the smoky stench that had filled her nostrils since Tunhal’s ship came around the bend was now being overpowered by several different types of alcoholic beverage. At least three more bottles were visible on the desk, not to mention the large glass that Torrna Antosso clutched in his right hand.

The smoke obscured the view of the mainland, as it obscured everything right now.

The general looked like a zombie. His eyes stared unblinking, straight ahead. If not for the smell of alcohol—not to mention Torrna’s atheism— Kira would have thought he was in the midst of a pagh’tem’far vision.

“They’re dead,” Torrna said without preamble, his voice barely more than a monotone. “Dead dead dead dead.”

“I know, Hiran told me about the prefect and Admiral Inna. But—”

Torrna made a sweeping gesture, knocking over one of the empty bottles. “No! Not them. I mean, they’re dead, too, but tha’s not who I mean.”

“Who’s—”

“Lyyra! She’s dead!”

Kira found herself unable to reply at first. She had been prepared to console Torrna on the deaths of Natlar and Inna even as she herself struggled with the fact that the serene prefect and the no-nonsense admiral were gone.

“What about the kids, are they—”

“They’re dead, too. All of ’em, dead dead dead dead dead. An’ they didn’ know.”

Frowning, Kira prompted, “Didn’t know what?”

“Th’I was alive! B’fore I could get home I found Takmor’s regimen’.”

“I heard.”

“By time I got home, they were dead—an’ I never got to tell ’em I was alive!”

“They probably found out from the dispatches,” Kira said, not sure if, in the chaos of the end of the war, anyone would have the wherewithal to contact Lyyra about so trivial a matter as the fact that her reported-dead husband was still alive. Especially if she and the kids were close enough to the fighting to be killed. Hell, knowing Lyyra, she was right in the midst of it. She was always a healer at heart.

“Doesn’ matter. Nothin’ matters. They want me to take over now’t war’s over. Ain’t gonna do it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Gonna drink m’self to death. If that doesn’ work, I’m gonna cut m’throat. Don’t wanna live in this world without ’er.”

… Odo “putting on” the tuxedo for the last time before descending into the Great Link….

“Listen to me, Antosso, you can’t just give up.”

“Why not?” He pounded his fist on the desk, rattling the bottles and knocking several papers off. “Haven’ I done enough?”

… Bareil, his brain barely functioning, slowly fading away on the infirmary biobed….

“No, you haven’t! You’ve spent all this time fighting, you can’t give up now! Perikia needs you! They couldn’t have fought this war without you, and they certainly wouldn’t have won it without you.”

“Doesn’ matter. Without Lyyra—”

… Captain Sisko—the Emissary—traveling to the fire caves, never to be seen again….

“There are still hundreds of people out there who fought and died for Perikia—including Lyyra. Without Natlar, without Takmor, without Inna—they’re going to need your strength. They need the man who beat back the Lerrit Army. They need the man who trudged through the swamp and the mountains to get home. They need you.”

… her father lying dead in the caves of Dakhur Hills….

Torrna shook his head. “Can’t do it. Jus’ can’t.”

Snarling, Kira got up and went to the other side of the desk. She grabbed Torrna by the shirt, and tried to haul him to his feet. Unfortunately, while they were the same height, he was quite a bit larger—and, in his drunken state, so much dead weight.

… Opaka lying dead after a shuttle crash on some moon in the Gamma Quadrant….

“Get up!”

“Wha’ for?”

“I said get up!” . . . Furel and Lupaza, only on the station to protect her, being blown into space by an embittered, vengeance-seeking Cardassian….

Torrna stumbled to his feet. Then he fell back into the chair. Kira yanked on his arm, which seemed to be enough to get him to clamber out of the chair again.

She led him outside. She propped him up on one of the wooden railings that separated the small office building area from the main marina and pointed. “You see that?”

“I don’t see anythin’ but—”

Losing all patience, Kira screamed. “The bodies! Look at the bodies! Those people died fighting for Perikia! So did Natlar, so did Inna—and so did Lyyra. You have no right to give up now—because if you do, Lerrit has won. There’s no one else who can unite these people the way you can now—you’re a hero! Without you, they’ll fall apart, and either Prince Avtra or the Bajora wil be able to come right in and take over.”

Torrna stared straight ahead for several minutes. Then he turned back to Kira.

When she first entered his office, Torrna’s eyes were glazed over. Now, they were filled with sadness.

In as small a voice as he’d used when they were traveling through the mountains, Torrna said, “I’m sorry.”

Kira remembered that the ground-based gateways tended to do one of two things: jump randomly from vista to vista every couple of seconds, or, like the one at Costa Rocosa, stay fixed on one location. This one, however, was different: it jumped back and forth between only two destinations.

The first was ops on Deep Space 9.

The other was the comforting light that Kira Nerys knew in her heart belonged to the Prophets.

As she stared at the pathetic, drunken figure of Torrna Antosso standing in the midst of the wreckage of Natlar Port, Kira at once realized that she made the right and the wrong choice in stepping through the gateway when she did.

This, she thought, is me. And whether or not Torrna decides to drink himself into oblivion or takes charge of the Perikian government— doesn’t matter. Kira walked away, then. Away from Torrna Antosso, away from Natlar Port, away from the Korvale Ocean, away from the Perikian Peninsula.

Or, more accurately, under it.

She’d been in these caves before. The last time was when the Circle had kidnapped and tortured her thirty thousand years from now. She had no idea why she came down here, and yet she was never more sure of anything in her life.

Despite the fact that the Denorios Belt’s tachyon eddies prevented any gateways from being constructed within ten light-years of Bajor, Kira was not surprised by the fact that an active gateway was present in the caves. She didn’t know where it would lead her, but she felt supremely confident as she stepped through it, ready to face what lay beyond….