The Battle Of Betazed Part 4

"What do you mean?"

"Housman," Picard explained, "never met a Jem'Hadar."

Chapter Four.

J EM' H ADAR EVERYWHERE.

On a rocky ledge above the Loneel Valley, Lwaxana Troi lay on her stomach and studied the deep forest below through powered binoculars. Concealed by a hooded cloak of striated grays and browns that matched the surrounding stones, she counted the soldiers of the scouting party crashing through the underbrush below.

Eighteen!

Not only had the number of patrols doubled, their size had doubled as well. If the increase continued at the current rate, the occupation force would soon swell to more than fifty thousand, not counting the d.a.m.ned Vorta bureaucrats who controlled the Jem'Hadar on behalf of the Founders. It was only a matter of time until the soldiers came for the resistance, who were hanging on by a thread in their mountain stronghold and praying help would arrive before the final ma.s.sacre.

Enaren, where are you?

Her thought snapped petulantly into the darkness. Her cousin was no longer as agile as he'd been in his youth, and it didn't seem possible that he could slip undetected through the enemy troops that ringed the mountain stronghold of the Betazed resistance. For all she knew, the Jem'Hadar had already killed him.

I'm here, Lwaxana, behind you, but don't move. Wait until the Jem'Hadar have pa.s.sed.

She sighed with relief before her temper kicked in.

You've had me worried out of my mind! she scolded, then for interminable minutes remained motionless until the last of the soldiers disappeared into the thick trees of the coniferous forest. Leaping to her feet, she whirled to face Cort Enaren. Did you get it?

She needed no reply. The disappointment in his tired eyes and the defeated slant of his shoulders communicated his failure.

He shook his head.

Hurry, she ordered him. They'll return soon. We have to take cover.

With a grace and swiftness that belied her age, Lwaxana traversed the ledge and slid into a nearby creva.s.se. The opening, invisible unless one knew of its existence, was one of only two portals into the mountains where the Betazoids' resistance fighters and government in exile had established their headquarters. The craggy peaks ringed the caldera of an ancient volcano and were honeycombed with tunnels and caves formed millions of years earlier by bubbles of volcanic gas as the lava cooled around it.

High concentrations of fistrium in the surrounding rock and the depth of the underground caverns protected the colony of fifteen hundred from detection by Dominion sensors. Here the leaders of Betazed had established their temporary homes and would make their stand until the Jem'Hadar were driven from their planet.

Or die trying, Lwaxana thought. That grim possibility became more likely with each pa.s.sing day. If the Jem'Hadar didn't kill them first, they might all succ.u.mb to disease without proper medical supplies.

Shaking off her gloomy introspection, she followed the narrow, winding path among the boulders, trailing behind Enaren and wondering how much more heartache the poor man must endure. His son and heir, Sark, had failed to return from his mission to contact Starfleet, and Enaren did not know whether Sark had been successful, or even if he'd survived. To make matters worse, two days ago Cort's infant grandson and namesake had contracted Rigelian fever, a horrible illness similar to the infamous bubonic plague on Earth.

Over a century ago, s.p.a.cefaring Betazoids had brought the Rigelian fever home from one of their voyages. In the intervening years, to augment the antidote, ryetalyn, her homeworld physicians had developed a vaccine, but the prophylactic was too powerful for the physiology of any child younger than six. Thanks to the vaccine's effectiveness, however, the fever had all but disappeared from the planet. The illness survived only in insects infesting vermin of the inaccessible wilds, like the tunnel rats that inhabited the caves of the Loneel Mountains.

Yesterday, Damira, Enaren's daughter-in-law, had noted the tiny fleabite on her son's thigh. Within hours, his temperature had spiked. The doctor had administered ryetalyn, but his supplies were limited, and more doses would be needed to insure the child's recovery-and to treat other children who might become infected. Enaren had volunteered to venture out of hiding to secure more of the precious medicine.

I can't believe a hospital so close to the wilderness had no ryetalyn, Lwaxana complained.

Enaren stopped and turned to her, his emotions pounding her mind like fists. Rage. Sadness. Overwhelming fear. There's no hospital.

But the village - The Dominion warned that anyone involved in the resistance movement would be punished.

Lwaxana shook her head impatiently. What does their warning have to do with the hospital?

Enaren trembled with anger. The Jem'Hadar caught a resistance cell meeting there. They took the members prisoner and burned the building to the ground-and the drugs with it-as a warning.

His face ruddy with outrage and despair, he pivoted on his heel and continued toward the tunnel that led to the caverns, a vortex of emotions swirling in his wake. Lwaxana followed, fuming with anger. In all their long history, although they'd maintained a regulatory force, her people had seldom needed the military. With their telepathic abilities, they had cultivated more peaceful pursuits. The perpetuation of peace had led to Lwaxana's interest in diplomacy, to promoting the resolution of conflict through negotiation and understanding. But diplomacy was useless against the Dominion. While the Vorta seemed well versed in giving the appearance of reasonability, all their courteous overtures of friendship and apologetic explanations for each outrage committed against the Betazoid people came down to a single message: Cooperate or die.

At first she'd been certain Starfleet would force the Dominion back, just as they'd once forced back the Romulans, the Klingons, the Borg. But as the early days of the occupation stretched into weeks, it became clear to Lwaxana that Betazed's hopes for salvation rested as much with itself as they did with Starfleet. The Federation was fighting a war for its very survival on too many fronts, against a foe that never let up. Horror had filled her when the resistance got word that the Twelfth Fleet had been destroyed, leaving the people of Betazed to face the Dominion alone.

She refused to give up hope, however. She would not have it said that a daughter of the Fifth House had failed in her duty to keep her world free for her children. Her daughter Deanna, at least, was safe, or as safe as one could be aboard a starship fighting the Dominion. If dear Jean-Luc couldn't protect the Enterprise and her daughter from the Jem'Hadar, then the G.o.ds help them all.

She worried most about Barin, her two-year-old son. She had to protect him not only from alien soldiers but from the deadly fever that threatened all the young children of their mountain stronghold. Even though the men had set traps to clear the tunnels of vermin that might carry disease, more outbreaks of the fever were expected. She hoped Chaxaza, another of her cousins, who tended Barin while Lwaxana stood watch outside, had checked the boy for fleabites.

The thought of her small, rugged toddler made her smile and quicken her steps. Deanna, although a mature woman in her own right, would always be her "little one," so Lwaxana had adopted the Tavnian diminutive Barin for her younger child. In his father's language, Barin was her "little one," too.

Descending deeper into the caverns, Lwaxana picked up the scents of habitation: smoke from cooking fires, spices from foods roasting for dinner, and the tang of herbs intended to cover the stench of too many unwashed bodies packed too tightly together. Because water had to be carried in backpacks from the wilderness rivers, bathing and laundering were luxuries most had learned to live without.

Physical proximity was not the worst hardship for the residents of the stronghold. In a telepathic society, complete privacy was practically an impossibility, but at least before the war, all had lived in houses or farms set s.p.a.ciously apart to allow some psionic elbow room. Here, true privacy was even more rare than water now, and as a result, tempers often flared.

Especially that of Sorana Xerix, daughter of the Third House. Her protests reached Lwaxana even before she entered the cavernous common area where women gathered during the day.

My best robe, Sorana whined, and it's ruined with soup stains.

Be thankful the stains are food and not blood, Lwaxana shot back, drawing herself to her full height and fixing Sorana with a withering stare. With so many of our people dead and dying, my dear, your complaints are becoming a royal pain in the a.s.s.

Sorana's blast of offended pride and righteous indignation washed over Enaren and Lwaxana at the entrance to the chamber, and its other occupants glanced up in expectation. Damira, her ailing baby clasped against her breast, cried out in anguish when she realized Enaren's failure to obtain more ryetalyn.

Don't despair, he rea.s.sured her. I'll try another village tomorrow. The doctor has enough to keep the boy comfortable until then.

Barin broke from Chaxaza and raced across the room toward his mother, his chubby legs pumping, his arms spread wide, his delicious giggle balm for her aching heart. She scooped him up in her arms and hugged him tight.

"No bug bites?" she asked.

He shook his head, brown eyes shining, and patted her cheeks with his plump hands. "Cha'za looked."

Sorana glared at Lwaxana across the room, but Lwaxana for once was in no mood for an extended confrontation. After another fierce hug, she handed Barin back to his caretaker. "Call the resistance leaders together in the meeting room," she instructed in a voice ringing with authority. "We have decisions to make."

She spoke aloud, recognizing that not all inhabitants of the stronghold possessed the same degree of telepathic abilities. Some projected and read thoughts with more ease than others. When matters of communal concern were discussed, Lwaxana insisted on the spoken word. "The better informed, the less likely people were to panic" had always been her maxim. Today she wasn't so sure. All the news pending before the council was bad.

At the chiming of the sacred bell that signaled a meeting, people streamed in from other common rooms and private alcoves, where a blanket or quilt hung across the opening afforded the only privacy available. Most of the tiny cubicles were furnished with only the barest of necessities, items the occupants had grabbed in haste and carried on their backs as they fled the Jem'Hadar.

In spite of efforts at shielding, a mult.i.tude of thoughts and emotions jammed the air in the great chamber that served as the council hall. From her place on the dais at the end of the room, Lwaxana watched the others arrive, sensing fear and despair in some, renewed hope and determination in others, and a guarded watchfulness in a few.

Their backgrounds were as varied as their emotions. Many of the leaders came from the cities, where they'd previously held high government office or venerable professorships at the universities.

Just as numerous were farmers and craftspeople and their families from Betazed's outlying villages. Diverse in profession, wealth, and knowledge, they shared one common goal-to drive the Jem'Hadar from Betazed soil, even if each of them must sacrifice her life to do it.

When the group had first fled the Dominion invasion and entered the stronghold, they had elected Enaren as their leader. Eleven other members of the ruling body, including Lwaxana, joined him on the dais, and he stood to address the other leaders and the crowd, which had a.s.sembled to observe the deliberations.

Enaren explained his failure to obtain more ryetalyn, and a shiver of fear for the children traveled through the group. "But I will try again tomorrow. Meanwhile, we must continue fumigating and setting traps for vermin."

He yielded the floor to Okalan, the council member who oversaw water and supplies. "The increased Jem'Hadar patrols make it almost impossible for us to reach the river. We must halve our water rations. We have pipes and cisterns in place, but the rainy season is still weeks away."

Grumbles filled the air, and Lwaxana noted with satisfaction that Sorana had the decency to look ashamed.

After Okalan took his seat, Lwaxana rose to present her report. The most skilled among them in diplomacy and negotiations, she had been a.s.signed the task of planning strategy against the invaders. "If Sark Enaren delivered our message to Starfleet, help should arrive soon. The Federation knows that the longer they wait, the harder it'll be to oust the Dominion."

"And what if Starfleet doesn't come?" a cavat farmer from Condar village demanded.

"Sooner or later, they will," she said. "Betazed is part of the Federation. Our sons and daughters serve in Starfleet."

The farmer leaped to his feet and said aloud what the rest of them already knew. "We can't be idle waiting for Starfleet! There's a ketracel-white distillery near my farm. If we blow up the cursed thing, the Jem'Hadar will die."

With revulsion, Lwaxana pictured the tubes puncturing the green-gray skin and carrying the enzyme that kept the soldiers alive. "Your plan would be a good one, but for one other fact. Our operatives have witnessed ketracel-white being unloaded from freighters arriving from Sentok Nor, so there must be another distillery there. If so, the Jem'Hadar would continue to receive their sustenance, and the retaliation against our people for the destruction of the distillery would be savage."

Enaren shook his head sadly. "Matters cannot become more savage than they already are. The lists of dead and missing are growing by the hour. And our operatives on the outside have noted a disturbing trend."

"What kind of trend?" Lwaxana asked and felt the a.s.sembly hold their collective breath, bracing themselves for bad news.

"When the Dominion forces first arrived," Enaren said, "they took away thousands of our healthy and strong young people-"

"Slave labor for their d.a.m.ned s.p.a.ce station," Okalan said with a scowl. "None of them returned. We must a.s.sume most were worked to death. And those who survived are still slaves on the station."

Enaren nodded. "For the past few weeks, however, the list of missing reveals that the Jem'Hadar are abducting the most talented of our telepaths."

Lwaxana stiffened at the news. "Why take only those with the greatest ability?"

Enaren shrugged. "Either the Jem'Hadar are killing talented telepaths in hopes of crippling our ability to communicate with one another-"

"Or," Lwaxana suggested, "the Dominion has become interested in their talents for some other reason."

Enaren set his lips in a grim line. He glanced first to the council and then across the hundreds gathered in the chamber. "We have many of the most talented telepaths of Betazed here in this room. The Jem'Hadar will be looking for them. We must be even more vigilant than before."

"If we're lucky," Okalan said, "the enemy will a.s.sume we managed to escape the planet and call off the search."

"I don't think we can hope for that," Lwaxana said. "If the Jem'Hadar really are somehow targeting our strongest telepaths, they'll scour every village and burn every forest to find us."

"We can't just sit here and wait for them to come for us," the cavat farmer yelled. "We have to fight."

"We're doing all we can," Lwaxana snapped.

"Which hasn't been nearly enough," Enaren replied. "Our hope now is that our message got through, and that Tevren will be brought to us."

Uneasiness rippled through the room like a foul wind. None, Lwaxana knew, liked the idea. "If anyone has an alternate plan," she challenged, "the council is open to hear it."

The room was quiet until the silence was broken by Okalan, who was shaking his head as if in grief. "All our hopes in a madman," he muttered. "By the First House ... what have we come to?"

Chapter Five.

"V AUGHN TO T ROI."

Deanna sighed and stopped in midstride down the corridor leading to the counselor's office, knowing Vaughn's call meant the next phase of unpleasantness was about to begin. She steeled herself and tapped her combadge. "Troi here."

"Please meet me in holodeck two in half an hour for combat drills." Vaughn phrased his words as a request, but the underlying hardness in his deep voice made it seem more like an order.

"Commander, is this necessary?" Troi asked. "I have a great deal of paperwork-"

"Table it," Vaughn said. "We have little time until the mission, and a great deal of ground to cover beforehand. I want you ready."

"Ready for what?"

"For anything."

Deanna hesitated. She had continued to sharpen her combat skills when she had the chance, but she suspected Vaughn wouldn't consider her abilities up to the needs of the mission. On the other hand, a physical workout would probably do her some good. No doubt Vaughn knew that.

She couldn't help recalling, however, that her least favorite courses at Starfleet Academy had been those in hand-to-hand combat, where close contact made tuning out her opponent's emotions impossible. In her subsequent Starfleet a.s.signments, she'd had to kill on occasion, both in self-defense and to protect the lives of others, but those deaths haunted her. With her empathic abilities, she had felt her enemies' pain, had sensed their fear, and their spirits draining away until only soulless voids remained. Each time she'd been compelled to take a life, something of her had died with the victim.

"How long since your last refresher course in hand-to-hand combat?" Vaughn's voice demanded over her comm link.

"Too long," Deanna admitted. "And I should warn you, Commander, I've never had much of a killing instinct. Most Betazoids don't."

"But you have a survival instinct. That's a start. Thirty minutes, Commander. s...o...b..s only. Vaughn out."

Deanna sighed again and would have laughed at Vaughn's little joke if the situation weren't so deadly serious. In recent years, Starfleet had designed a uniform variant specifically for ground-based combat operations. Characterized by their padded black fabric-unbroken except for the division-specific color stripe that cut across the chest, shoulders, and back-the uniforms were supposed to be referred to as "surface operations blacks." Of course, it wasn't long before somebody shortened the name to s...o...b.., a designation that was quickly extended to anyone who put on the uniform. Deanna had never expected to be involved in a mission that required her to don the garment, and wondered how much of the nickname was self-fulfilling.

After detouring back to her quarters and quickly replicating the uniform, she put it on and stood in front of the mirror for a few minutes, feeling ridiculous and trying not to think about how dark all of Starfleet's uniforms had become in the last few years. It was, she believed, symptomatic of a fundamental shift in the Federation's cultural psychology, a response to the growing number of threats in an increasingly hostile universe. Her days of wearing flowing azure dresses on the bridge were long gone.

Now Vaughn required her to wear this. She thought again about Betazed, about the effect she feared Tevren's knowledge might have upon it. And part of her wondered if Vaughn was now doing the same thing to her: turning her into a stranger that the Deanna Troi of ten years ago would have reviled.

Vaughn. When she had met him earlier that morning, Deanna had still been coping with the news of the defeat at Starbase 19, and so had spared little thought for the man himself. Now, as she thought back to this morning's meeting, she reviewed the unconscious impressions she'd been too preoccupied to consider at the time, and compared them to what she recalled of his infrequent visits to the Troi household decades ago.

Deanna's earliest memories of Vaughn went back to childhood, years before her empathic abilities had developed. He'd been a friend and colleague of her father's and, she recalled, a source of tension for her mother. Even back then he'd seemed old, and Deanna remembered wondering, in the way children sometimes do, what had carved such deep lines into the man's face, especially around his eyes. Those lines had cut even deeper in the years since.

To Will and probably to most humans, Deanna realized, Vaughn seemed curt, somewhat harsh, perhaps even a little condescending. But thanks to her empathic sense, she knew this was an incomplete picture. There was a kind of "mist" around Vaughn, indicating he'd had his guard up emotionally-a fairly standard technique for officers involved with advanced tactics and intelligence work, but only partially effective most of the time. The mist meant that she couldn't read him as clearly as, say, Captain Picard, but it couldn't keep certain intense emotional states from getting through. Even so, she found she'd only picked up two clear emotions from Vaughn during the morning meeting: a self-directed bitterness and, she now realized, a sincere concern for Deanna's well-being. Everything else was white noise.

Accustomed to forming a generally accurate profile of someone after only a first encounter, Troi was frustrated by her inability to see clearly past a veneer that Vaughn had obviously spent years fortifying, precisely in order to discourage what she was attempting. She wondered if her father had developed similar skills.

The thought completed a circuit in Deanna's mind, and she suddenly recalled the last time she'd seen Vaughn, when she was only seven years old. He was there, in their home on Betazed, speaking quietly to her mother just before a grief-stricken Lwaxana had told young Deanna that Ian Andrew Troi was dead.

Deanna walked to her desk and swiveled the computer display so she could see it. "Computer," she said. "Show me the personnel file of Commander Elias Vaughn."