“Ships don’t vanish, Dal,” he barked. “They cloaked. Recalibrate sensors and get me a trail. I want it this very second!” He cut the signal before she could reply, but a heartbeat later the communicator signaled an incoming message. “Dukat,” he growled.

“Oh, Skrain.”Ico’s voice was cold. “I am so disappointed in you.”

23

Outside the shack the encampment used as its infirmary the congregation gathered and muttered darkly. Bennek could hear them through the thin metal walls—not things they were saying, not the words that they used, but the sense of them. The mood of the Oralians was one of fear and confusion, and it hung over the ragged settlement like a waiting storm.

The airtruck was out by the perimeter, the engine still idling and the cab door hanging wide open. The driver was a youth the cleric remembered as being from Culat, and he sat on one of the collapsible metal-framed canvas beds, weeping. Bennek and a woman named Seren, who had been a nurse before she had found the Way, were the only others in the hut.

Between choking sobs and gasps of air, the young man parceled out his story in broken pieces. The docks, the three men. The guns. Urad’s execution. The others, lost and likely dead. And Tima. Tima…

Bennek expected a sudden torrent of emotion to flood over him, but there was nothing. He felt numb all over, disconnected from the moment. He tried to remember Tima’s face, the scent of her skin, but it fell away from him, memory denying him. The youth kept speaking, but the cleric heard nothing. His focus slipped away as he tried to enclose the thought in his mind. Tima is dead. Tima is dead.But they were just words, meaningless words.

“Who would do this?” Seren demanded, her voice strident and furious. “Why would the Bajorans strike at us? We have always shown them honor and respect!” She spat on the dirt floor. “Why have they turned against us?” The nurse glared at Bennek. “That vedek, Gar…He must have done this, he must have sent the killers!”

Bennek shook his head, but she didn’t acknowledge his silent denial.

“Th-they called us filth,” stuttered the boy. “I was so afraid. I had to run…but the others…” He choked off his own words with a moan of guilt.

“You did the right thing,” insisted the nurse. “If you hadn’t come back to warn us, we would never have known this was coming.” She turned to Bennek. “We must be ready, they’ll try again!”

Bennek got to his feet, his balance lost, lurching. He tried to breathe, but the air in the hut was suddenly stifling. The cleric pushed away and out into the morning. The Oralians outside parted before him, their uncertainty plain upon their faces. He was aware of Seren following him out, her voice cracking as she repeated the boy’s words. A wave of shock radiated out around him as the congregation assimilated the horror of it, and in moments that disbelief re-formed into fury. Bennek glanced around and saw it igniting in the faces of his people, but still he could feel nothing himself. He clutched at his chest. The priest felt as if he were hollowed out, every emotion and moment of life inside cored from his being. Tima is dead. Tima is dead.

“Are we going to tolerate this?” Seren was shouting. “We are forced out here to live on the charity of others, and then these scum attack us at our very weakest? They burn down our homes, try to starve us, and we do nothing!”

Bennek heard her words and shook his head again, but it was a feeble gesture and it went unnoticed. Too late he saw it: the followers of the Way had been pushed as far as they were going to go. Oralius and her peace were no longer enough for them.

“We have to strike back!” said the nurse, and a chorus of assent went with her cry. “Fight for the Way, defend ourselves!”

The cleric searched for some parable, something from the Recitations to rally them away from anger, but like everything else, like Tima, that had suddenly been taken from him. Bennek’s hand came to his face, and he felt wetness on his cheeks.

He heard his name being called. The youth was behind him, screaming and pointing into the distance. They turned as one to see the lights approaching the encampment from the direction of the city—skimmers and flyers, dozens of them aimed directly at the Oralian settlement.

Bennek walked to the perimeter, to the bare patches of earth haloing the encampment. Dozens of men and women dismounted from the vehicles, all of them Bajorans, all of them mirroring the same hard need for retribution as his congregation. Many of them carried makeshift weapons, cudgels, and stunners. From the lead skimmer came a trio of figures in the robes of the church of the Prophets. Bennek saw Vedek Arin at the head of them, the Bajoran’s eyes flinty.

“What do you want?” demanded Seren, and the Oralians snarled and growled in her support. “Come to finish off the rest of us?”

The cleric searched the faces of the new arrivals, looking for men in docker’s overalls, and found none; instead he saw hate on every face, the burning need for someone to blame, to find an outlet for a mass of stored-up hurts and lingering affronts.

Some of the Bajorans shouted out hard words in reply to the nurse, but Arin silenced them with a sharp wave of his hand. He glared at the Oralians. “Bennek,” he grated, “why have your people done this to us? After all the hospitality Bajor showed to the children of Oralius, in the name of the Prophets, why?”

It was the last thing he expected to hear, and the cleric was bewildered. “What are you talking about? What did we do? What did youdo, Arin? You murdered our people!” And then, in that instant, as the words left his mouth the hollow inside him filled with a pure, burning sorrow so powerful he could barely contain it. “Tima is dead!” he moaned. “My followers have been slaughtered!”

Arin shook his head, and Bennek wanted to weep. “I know nothing of that,” retorted the vedek. “The temples, Bennek! In Korto and Ashalla and elsewhere, your people have attacked our places of worship, setting them afire!” The Bajoran mob reacted to the words, violence bubbling below the surface of their every breath and movement.

“Are you insane?” demanded Seren. “Our people are all here,Vedek! Starving and sick because of what your kind has done to us!”

Arin ignored her outburst. “Bennek, listen to me. If you have any shred of integrity, you will do as I say. Submit to my custody, bring your people with us back to the city and answer for this crime. Do this now, or else I will not be responsible for what takes place.”

Seren pushed past Bennek. “Your custody? What does that mean? We won’t willingly chain ourselves for you. What law are you invoking, what proof do you have—”

“Seren, be silent,” Bennek snapped.

The vedek’s face flushed crimson. “This a matter above the legality of men. This is a matter of the holy temple! You must submit, or else you will—” Arin’s voice was silenced as a fist-sized stone shot out from the lines of the Oralians and struck the Bajoran priest on the temple. The impact dropped Arin to the dirt, a livid wound leaking blood down his face.

Bennek turned and saw the young driver shouting out his hate, and he knew who had thrown the missile. Around him the Oralians erupted into a sudden hostility born of desperation; in turn the Bajorans cut loose and surged forward, the attack on Arin giving them the reason they needed to abandon the last vestiges of civility and retaliate.

The cleric stumbled back toward the encampment as the two groups collided with a clatter of violence. Stones and fire rained down toward him, scattering across the dull earth. Something impacted him hard across the small of the back and he stumbled forward, tripping over the ropes of a bubble-tent and falling to his knees. The confrontation was raging all around. He crawled, trying to drag himself from the melee, and every action was punctuated by a single thought. Tima is dead.