Epilogue

In his office, housed in the business sector of Cardassia Prime, Dost Abor was putting his papers in order as he did every day before he went home. He was a ritualistic person, and though the task was almost entirely meaningless, to neglect it without just cause would have been unthinkable.

When the chime on his comm sounded, he answered it with eagerness, for he was a man whose particular line of work dictated that he had to be ready for anything, at all times. He was anticipating a call, but then there were always those calls that he wasn’t anticipating, and it was important to be just as prepared for the unexpected as for the expected. Abor was nothing if not flexible.

“Mister Abor,”said the woman whose face appeared before him. It was the turnkey in charge of the storeroom at the Ministry of Science, the very person Abor had been expecting to contact him this evening. “We received your request for the item, and it appears that your credentials are all in order. But…we have unfortunate news.”

“And what might that be?” Dost asked, annoyed but unsurprised. The ministry was an inefficient body, even compared to the idiots in Central Command. He already knew the object was lost, he only needed to gather a little more information regarding its disappearance.

“I’m…sorry to have to inform you of this, but the object in question seems to be…missing.”

“Missing!” Abor repeated, with mock surprise. “Tell me, Madam, with an organization as tightly run as yours, how could that possibly be the case?” He did not bother to conceal the sarcasm in his tone.

“Mister Abor, I do apologize, and I can tell you that I don’t know how a thing like this could have happened—nobody has looked at that artifact in years.”

“Who was the last person to see it?” Abor asked her. “Surely there must be an information trail.”

“Well, going by memory alone, I do seem to recall that a former student looked at it, a very long time ago…There was some kind of a to-do about the security system, and the object was classified, but since then—”

“I don’t want you to go by your memory,” Abor told her coolly. “I want you to go by the records. Find out who accessed that object last, and then contact me.”

“Without the container in hand, that may be difficult to ascertain.”

Abor smiled coolly. “Well then,” he told the woman, “I imagine you’ll want to begin looking for the container right away.”

“May I ask why this is so important?”the woman asked him, plainly annoyed at the manner in which she was being spoken to.

“No, you may not,” Abor told her. “It does not concern you.”

A knowing expression came across the woman’s eyes, and Abor punched the disconnect button. If she thought she knew what was going on, she probably couldn’t guess the half of it. But she almost certainly suspected the Order was involved. No matter, Abor decided. If she became a problem, the Order could get rid of her. Tain might be reluctant to arrange it himself, but Abor supposed he had enough influence to make that call on his own.

Of course, it would be ideal to do it before he was sent back to the Valo system. Abor had no intention of allowing another agent to take credit for a breakthrough that was deservedly his to claim. It had been Abor who had uncovered the long-overlooked transmission that he believed might lead the Order to the heart of the risen Oralian Way.

Enabran Tain may have been far less interested in the Bajoran artifacts than his predecessor, but that didn’t mean that Dost Abor had lost interest in them. Abor had recently learned that the artifact from the Ministry of Science was the only one that had ever gone on record as causing anyone to have any kind of so-called “mystical” experience since it had been removed from Bajor.

Abor was not certain, but he believed that the artifact in question had been removed from Bajor under the authority of Rhan Ico, one of many agents who had disappeared during the upheaval that followed Tain’s assumption of office. There was a short interim during which the vast and untraceable contents of the Order’s storage facility had been ransacked by several agents who protested Tain’s impending status; those agents had all disappeared shortly following the incident—and so had at least one of the Orbs of Bajor.

Tain was unconcerned about the breach; the old man was convinced that there was no weight to the stories surrounding the artifacts, the suggestion that whoever possessed them might be privy to a kind of second sight, an indefinable source of knowledge and power. But Abor, who had been in the Order at the time of the first artifact’s retrieval from Bajor, remembered a few details about that original group of Oralians, those the Order and Central Command had conspired to exterminate. The Oralians had developed a particular fascination with Bajoran religion, and the artifacts that came with it. Now that the Oralians were said to be growing in numbers once again, Tain was sure that it was only a matter of time before Central Command began to tolerate them, and possibly even to condone their foolish, imaginary ideologies. Enabran Tain made no secret of his disdain for many of Central Command’s “softer” policies, believing that the military was weakening due at least in part to the sudden influx of wealth from Bajor, turning soldiers who had once been hard and ruthless into soft, complacent politicians—most notably, Gul Dukat.

Reviewing old transmissions when he was last stationed on Valo VI, Abor had discovered an archived communiqué between Yannik Reyar, the military’s liaison with the Order, and his daughter, who apparently worked at the Ministry of Science several years before. Their conversation referenced a Bajoran artifact, one that Dost Abor was certain had been taken from the Obsidian Order, somehow finding its way to the ministry. Tain had shown little interest when Abor sent word that he might have located an item that had been missing from the Order’s catalogued inventory. But, Abor hoped, when he assembled his case, Tain would take notice—for Abor had done a bit of digging since he first came across the transmission, and he intended to find not only the Orb, but the woman who had handled it last—the woman who had apparently attempted to hide it—the woman he believed to be the Guide for the Oralian Way.

THE TEROK NOR SAGA

CONTINUES IN

DAWN OF THE EAGLES

Appendices

The following is a guide to many of the specific characters, places, and related material in Night of the Wolves. Where such an item was mentioned or appeared previously in a movie, episode, or other work of Star Trekfiction, its first appearance is cited.

APPENDIX I: BAJOR

Characters

Akhere Bis(male) resident of Valo II

Akhere Juk(male) resident of Valo II, father of Akhere Bis

Arin(male) kai of the Bajoran faith ( Terok Nor: Day of the Vipers)

Aro Seefa(male) resistance fighter, member of the Ornathia cell

Basso Tromac(male) personal aide to Gul Dukat. (DS9/“Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night”)

Bram Adir(male) resistance fighter, leader of the Bram cell

Crea(female) resistance fighter, member of the Ornathia cell

Dakahna Vass(female) resistance fighter, member of the Shakaar cell

Darrah Mace(male) resident of Valo II, former member of the Bajoran Militia ( Terok Nor: Day of the Vipers)

Daul Mirosha(male) researcher at the Bajoran Institute of Science

Dava(male) a kai who lived several hundred years prior to the Cardassian occupation

Faon(male) resistance fighter, member of the Bram cell