Star Trek:
10.
Movements of the Unseen Hand
by Charles Hackney
DS9 is never a quiet place. Today, however, the station was near riot. Mar Teshem stood on an upper level of the promenade, near the Bajoran temple. His voice rang over the shouting of the crowd (in truth, Thornn was amplifying his voice just a bit, so his message would not be lost in the turmoil). �Why did we give them our devotion in the first place? What have the Prophets ever done for us? Did they defend us when the Cardassians attacked? Did they lift a finger when we were ground beneath their boots? Who liberated Bajor? Was it the Prophets? NO! It was us! The Prophets are nothing more than wormhole aliens with bloated egos and lying tongues!�
Enraged Bajorans tried to shout him down with cries of �heretic!� and �blasphemer!�. Others, however, were strangely silent as they listened to Teshem�s tirade. One Bajoran, his face filled with rage, shouted out �No, he�s right!�, but he was almost immediately turned upon by his fellow Bajorans and ran out of the promenade, clearly afraid for his life (which, believe me, was in danger. Bajorans take their religion very seriously).
Teshem continued to rant and rage against the Prophets, seeming to ignore the fact that he was surrounded by a bloodthirsty mob ready to lynch him on the spot. In fact, he seemed to draw strength form their animosity, becoming more animated and vituperative with each succeeding minute. Thornn�s ring glinted on his finger.
Captain Sisko stood on the lower level, watching the vignette with scowling disapproval. Beside him stood Odo, with a matching expression on his approximation of a face.
�I do not like this, Constable,� said Sisko. �Not one bit. We have enough trouble dealing with the Maquis; we don�t need the Bajorans to start another religious crusade. We�re still mopping up after that mess with The Circle a few months ago, and it was just last year that we had the school bombed over religious difficulties.� He turned to face Odo. �Constable, I want this contained and controlled. Free speech is one thing, but if this continues to escalate, we�ll have a full-scale riot on our hands, with plenty of bloodshed to go around.�
Odo eyed the crowd, his face becoming even more grim, if that was possible. �It won�t be easy. Despite this display of outrage, many Bajorans feel sorry for Mar because of his daughter dying so recently. They think it�s some kind of retaliatory phase that he�ll get over as he completes the grieving process. But, if this continues, I�ll have him locked up for disturbing the peace, and I�ll try to convince him to take his �crusade� elsewhere.�
Sisko nodded. �I do know how he feels. When Jennifer died, there was a friend of mine who tried to tell me that it was part of �God�s plan� when things like that happened. I tell you, Odo, I never believed in God; but if He did exist, I�d have been pretty angry with Him for letting the Borg kill my wife. I just might have gone off on a tirade myself.�
Odo softly snorted. �Personally, I never saw the need for a belief in anything beyond the physical. There�s enough trouble in this world without bringing supernatural forces into it. I have always shown respect for the beliefs of the Bajorans, but if they all decided tomorrow that the Prophets were nothing more than highly-evolved aliens no more worthy of devotion than you or I, the world would be a simpler place.�
�I certainly hope you didn�t mean that,� said a cold voice behind them. The two turned to face Major Kira Nerys, the station�s Bajoran second-in-command. Her earring hung very still as she fixed Odo with a glare that could peel paint from a bulkhead. �Well? Are you saying that I�m laboring under a delusion when I venerate the Prophets?�
Odo shuffled his feet and stammered before answering. Despite his never having revealed to Kira his true feelings for her, his deep affection lay not too deep below the surface, and this situation was awkward in the extreme. �Well. I. Uh. No, Major, I do not think that you are delusional, just mistaken. As I show respect for your opinions, please show the same respect for mine.� Odo now regained some of his composure and rose to his own defense. �I don�t believe in spirits, Major. As it is your right to believe, so it is my right to disbelieve.�
Kira did not respond verbally. She gave Odo a look of profound disappointment, and, with a single hateful glance at Mar Teshem, left the promenade.
Odo shuffled again uncomfortably. �If you don�t mind, sir, I�ll be going now. I�ll have my deputies keep an eye on the situation while I prepare the paperwork for Mar�s arrest.�
�Of course, Constable.� Sisko did not grin, though he considered the security chief�s romantic predicament a bit funny. His thoughts were on Teshem and the safety of his station.
Two days later, Teshem had not stopped. In fact, he had assembled a surprising number of followers, disaffected Bajorans with angry eyes and harsh voices. Together, they railed against the Prophets and their religion, much to the growing concern of the vedeks. Occasionally, the religious leaders of Bajor would have to deal with a pah-wraith cult; misguided souls who worshipped pah-wraiths (evil Prophets who had been cast out of the wormhole and imprisoned in the fire caves) rather than the �true gods of Bajor;� but such a public and vociferous rebellion against the Prophets was almost unheard of in their history. This had to be dealt with.
Now.
In the Bajoran temple, Vedek Carn sharpened a dagger. His face, heavy brows above dark eyes, showed proof of the serious nature of his mission in the form of its grave expression (so to speak). A member of a shadowy covert force, he and his companions were sometimes called in when certain �tasks� had to be done for the greater good of Bajor. The elimination of Mar Teshem was such a task. Under assumed identities, they had slipped in yesterday and were preparing their weapons and strategy.
How to kill Mar Teshem. It was proposed that the members blend in with the mob and incite them to rush Teshem and kill him. Another plan was to make it look like an accident. Carn to wanted to make it look like he died in his sleep, but he listened to all points of view before deciding on a course of action. Another member wanted to poison Teshem�s food, making it look like he had contracted some kind of rare disease. Carn considered all the suggestions, the calm scrape, scrape, scrape of the sharpening stone against the blade it sharpened worked like a kind of mantra, focusing his pah and preparing him for the task at hand.
He decided to kill Mar Teshem in his sleep. The team would insert itself in his room without detection, work their subtle tricks on Teshem�s sleeping form, and vanish without a trace. There would be no evidence of any wrongdoing. Even the fine Federation physician would agree that Teshem had died of natural causes, perhaps brought on by the emotional pressures he had been under lately.
The next morning they were all dead.
After taking such meticulous care in preparing the vessel of his wrath, Thornn was not about to let a group of interfering mortals spoil his fun. So he had had fun with them.
This is what it looked like from their perspective: As the team entered, Teshem seemed to be sleeping soundly, a slight snore exiting his lips. Carn approached the intended victim with his lethal chemical agents in hand. He reached to uncork the container, and Teshem sat bolt upright in bed.
A strange, eerie sound filled the air, like the moaning of a hundred tortured souls, and Teshem levitated into the air. He seemed to be surrounded by an aura of flame as he glared at the interlopers, and a ring on his right hand seemed to pulse. The glare turned into a sadistic leer as the first member of the team also began to levitate and hover about three feet off the deck.
Teshem, empowered by Thornn�s psychokinetic abilities, tore the Bajoran assassin limb from limb. Slowly. The screaming was terrible, as was the spray of blood. One by one, Teshem killed the members of the team, saving Carn for last. He took his time, savoring the howls of agony his would-be killers produced. When there only remained Carn, who had been paralyzed by Thornn, Teshem lowered himself to the ground, and killed Carn with his hands. He motioned with his head, and Carn felt himself sinking to the ground. On his knees, Carn saw Teshem�s maniacal grin and the evil fire that burned its way out from inside him through his eyes. It was the last this he ever saw on this side of death. Mar Teshem gently placed his hands on Carn�s face, and slowly drove his thumbs into Carn�s eye sockets. Carn screamed as he had heard many dying Bajorans scream, and he felt the blood and vitreous fluid running down his face from his violated eye sockets. Teshem withdrew his thumbs, now coated with blood, from Carn�s ocular cavities, and grabbed Carn around the throat. With one hand, he lifted Carn off the deck and held him like a doll. With the other hand, Teshem drove his fist into Carn�s belly, rupturing the skin and muscles, and forcing his hand into Carn�s abdomen. Carn�s wails increased as Teshem felt around inside Carn, ripping out organs one by one.
At long last, Carn�s decimated body could take no more, and he died. The screams tapered off into a blood-choked gurgle.
Teshem, smiling, dropped the body and began cleaning up after himself.
He had not spoken during the entire episode.
Thornn beamed. What an apt pupil.
There is no day or night in space. On a planet, day and night is determined by one�s position on the planet and that planet�s axial rotation. In space, one can never really say �It is now day� or �It�s time to go to sleep.� It was therefore nothing more than a coincidence that Arthur was sleeping at the time that the night attack on Teshem was taking place. It was semi-dark in his cell, as it was the Juggernaut�s �night-time.� This would be a bit embarrassing if Arthur were to know that you know this, but a touch of drool oozed from his mouth.
It was at this time that Juggernaut came within hailing distance of DS9. Stone had been awakened, as it was customary for the commanding officers of the station and the incoming Starfleet vessel to exchange greetings. It was also night-time on DS9, as I mentioned, and Captain Sisko had also been awakened when the Juggernaut had come within sensor range. Sisko wiped a bit of sleep from his eye and sipped a cup of raktajino. He faced the viewscreen overhead, the massive frame of Juggernaut filling the screen. One of the night-shift deck officers breathed a whisper of admiration: �Good God. It�s a monster.�
Sisko was of a mind to agree. �Fortunately, Ensign Wundt,� he said, �that monster is on our side. Starfleet want her to be our invincible command base in the Gamma Quadrant, so here she is.� Privately, Sisko thought that Starfleet was going about this the wrong way. Having a bull elephant like that as our first contact with the elusive Dominion would be more aggressive than he wanted to be. After all, how would you have felt if a mountainous warship like that suddenly appeared in your part of the galaxy, armed to the teeth and clearly looking for a fight.
A better approach, thought Sisko, would be a smaller, but still heavily armed and armored, starship, for survey and exploratory missions. A cloaking device would be good, too. He made a mental note to take it up with Starfleet Command.
Good idea or not, the USS Juggernaut was here, and was under orders to stay at the station for a bit, making last-minute repairs and corrections revealed by their shakedown mission. They were also to rendezvous with some extra crewmembers. The first mission had been undertaken with somewhat less than a full compliment. In particular, Ambassador Vemeth, an Andorian of great reputation in first-contact situations and dealings with belligerent beings, was due to arrive in three days. He had worked side by side with the formidable Kurzon Dax on occasion, and Jadzia Dax was greatly looking forward to a reunion with a colleague of her symbiont�s former host. Vemeth, like most Andorians, was soft-spoken and articulate, but possessed an indomitable will, and was respected even by the Klingons for his inner strength.
Stone�s reputation had preceded him, and Sisko felt confident about his ability to handle whatever came his way. While it may have been a bit too soon after his emotional difficulties for Sisko�s taste, Starfleet Medical had given him a clean bill of mental health, and that was good enough for Sisko. For now. And Sisko had certainly heard much about Stone�s inimitable first officer. All in all, it looked like it would prove to be a most interesting visit.
Provided the Bajorans didn�t start a religious civil war right there on the station.
Ensign Wundt reported: �Hailing the Juggernaut. We are receiving a reply.�
�On screen, Ensign,� said Sisko.
The face of Captain Stone appeared on the screen. Sisko took the initiative: �Captain, Stone, I presume? This is Captain Sisko. Welcome to Deep Space nine.�
�Captain Stone it is, Captain Sisko. On behalf of myself and my crew, I accept your hospitality.�
�Ordinarily, I would direct your helmsman to dock at one of our pylons, but it seems that your ship would not fit. My people will establish a computer link between our two transporter systems, and you can begin beaming your people over.�
�Very well. I will meet you in your office in ten minutes. Stone out.� The chiseled features of Quentin Stone disappeared, and Sisko continued to drink his coffee.
Twenty-five minutes later, Sisko and Stone were sitting in Sisko�s office. The technical and maintenance matters and scheduling of shore leave (including trips to Bajor) had been taken care of, and Sisko pointed to an item in the itinerary. �I was unaware that you were transporting two prisoners.�
�A slave we picked up when we apprehended Smythe. He engaged in disruptive behavior, and I had him locked up until we got here.�
�How exactly was he being disruptive?�
�He�s a religious fanatic, and he was causing a great deal of turmoil with his endless preaching.�
Sisko�s face sank. �Not another one.�
�Beg pardon?�
�We�ve got a fanatical Bajoran in the promenade, trying to rally the people to abandon their Prophets.�
�Doesn�t sound too bad to me.�
�What?�
�People are better off without religion. If this man succeeds in turning the Bajoran people away from superstition and zealotry, and toward rational thought, he will have my gratitude.�
Sisko�s frown deepened. �If I were you, Captain, I wouldn�t talk like that outside this office. Many people on this station, including my first officer, are believers in the Bajoran Prophets. You may end up causing trouble between our two crews. I urge tolerance in this matter. Let them have their beliefs. If you disagree with them, do it tactfully and respectfully.�
Stone harrumphed. �Well, in addition to Smythe, I give you Arthur David, cryogenically frozen in the early twenty-first century and currently sitting in my brig for aggressively proselytizing my people.�
�Come again? Cryogenically frozen?�
Stone told Sisko what he knew about Arthur�s history. Since we already know, it, we�ll skip over to the promenade. The vedeks who had brought Carn and his team into the picture couldn�t understand why Teshem was still alive, continuing his verbal assault on the Prophets, and why Carn�s people hadn�t reported since last night.
In fact, Carn�s body, along with his compatriots�, had been burned to swirling ashes by Thornn and neatly stored away in a box, which Teshem had placed in Cargo Bay Six. The box was nondescript and unmarked, and buried at the bottom of a pile of similar boxes, which were to be loaded onto a cargo transport the next day. This is jumping ahead just a bit, but when the crew of the cargo vessel found the box of ashes, they were already four days underway, and they simply dumped the ashes into space and forgot all about it. Bolians have no respect for the dead. Back to the present.
Teshem was, by now, surrounded by more supporters as well as more dissenters, all of which were yelling at the tops of their lungs. It was a mess. However, it was a loud enough mess that Odo had sufficient cause to incarcerate Mar Teshem on charges of disturbing the peace.
Odo approached Teshem and waved his arms for attention. The mob quieted, and Odo spoke quietly to Teshem. Teshem shook his head, and Odo signaled to one of his deputies. The deputy took Teshem by the arm and escorted him off the promenade upper deck and into the security office. The anti-Mar crowd roared their approval while the pro-Mar crowd roared their disapproval. Why did Thornn and Teshem allow this, you might ask? Even demons have a sense of timing, and the time for an overt display of spiritual might was not yet at hand. Keep waiting. It�ll come.
Inside security, Odo faced Mar Teshem. �Mind explaining to me why you refused to take your public speaking activities elsewhere,� he asked.
Teshem�s face was a mask of arrogance. He replied �I will talk when and where I want. I will not allow an oppressive mob to infringe on my personal rights.�
�Standing up for your rights is admirable, but surely you must understand that there is a time and place for these things, and the middle of my station is not the place.�
�And the time?�
�Is not when I�m here. And I�m always here.�
Teshem�s face did not lose an ounce of its stubborn pride, but he did eventually promise to �ease off� his public tirades against the Prophets.
It was a promise he did not keep for long.
While Odo and Teshem were conversing, Arthur sat in a new cell, this one on Deep Space Nine. This time, his cell was opposite Smythe�s, and Arthur tried to strike up a conversation. Smythe, however, seemed to have nothing to say to anyone, preferring rather to sulk as he had been sulking the entire trip to DS9. Arthur settled for praying out loud for Smythe�s safety and well-being (which impressed Smythe much more than he let on), and settled down to await his interrogation from this station�s chief of security.
He was not too surprised when it turned out that the captain of the station also wanted to have words with him. He was impressed by this Captain Sisko; by the combination of the apparently indomitable strength in Sisko�s bearing and the depth of emotion behind Sisko�s eyes. Odo he could not figure out. He seemed to be made of wax that had been a little too close to a fire, his features smoothed and looking slightly melted. When he spoke, it was with a decidedly rough edge to it, despite his smooth features. It was a cynical voice, a voice that seemed to say �Try me. I�ve seen it all.�
Odo and Sisko both asked their questions at the same time, rather than in separate interviews. Sisko, in his smooth baritone, said �I�m willing to let you go, Mr. David, if I have your word that you will try to refrain from stirring up my people.�
Arthur responded though the forcefield: �I have no intention to engage in public speaking, and certainly no intention to cause any trouble. However, I will not promise to keep my beliefs a secret, and if anyone asks me a question, I will give them an honest answer. If people overhear and get offended, then that's their problem, and if people overhear and want to join the conversation, I won�t stop them.�
�That sounds reasonable to me. Lately, we have had some problems with religious speechmakers fomenting near-riots, and I want to make sure that I�m not letting another one loose on the station.�
�I assure you, Captain; I�m no speechmaker, and I have no use for riots.�
That seemed to settle that, and after he told his story again about being frozen in the twenty-first century, Arthur was released and assigned guest quarters until he booked passage elsewhere. I don�t think Odo believed the story, though. He snorted.
