The Regent’s
tactical officer noticed the incoming vessel on his monitor. “Bird-of-Prey closing on intercept, sir.
Sensors indicate it’s the I.K.S. Marcus.”
“Kruge’s ship!”
Worf growled. Just then a volley of photon
torpedoes came from the Marcus, which Kruge had named after the Terran
rebel of an earlier era.
“Our sensors are
being disrupted!” the tactical officer continued as the Negh’Var shook.
“Our warp fields are destabilizing!”
“The p’tahk!”
Worf uttered as the Negh’Var and other Alliance ships were forced to drop out of warp by the
Marcus’ graviton burst. Kruge’s ship
continued firing at the other vessels. The
others returned fire.
“Today is a good
day to die, Kruge—for you!” the Regent said out loud.
The Marcus’ shields were on maximum, but they wouldn’t
hold for very long. But they didn’t need
to.
On the Marcus,
Kruge agreed it was a good day to die. “When
I get to the gates of Sto-Vo-Kor I will sing of your battles, of your
courage and honor Marcus,” he said as if David was in the room. “I’ll be your cha’Dich.”
Dax and Bashir,
who also felt the graviton’s effect, witnessed the battle at the edge
of their sensors. The Marcus was taking
heavy fire and its shields were finally collapsing.
A final shot from the Negh’Var’s disruptor batteries
finished it. The Alliance fleet would soon be able to resume warp. But Kruge had bought them enough time. They were ready to generate the warp shadow
decoys.
Smiley met up
with Dax and Bashir after their ships docked at Terok Nor.
Tuvok joined them. Dax
briefed them on Kruge. Together they’d
bought enough time to drive off the Alliance fleet. “So I
guess this would qualify as winning the victory he wanted?” O’Brien
asked.
Dax nodded. “I think so.”
“I’d have to
admit though that like most Terrans I’ve never really felt we have
souls,” O’Brien said.
“Vulcans call
them katras,” Tuvok said. “We are able to
place them into another person just before we die, if someone is
present at the time.”
“Of
course two centuries ago your people encouraged the belief that the
rest of us didn’t have souls, or katras,” Dax reminded him, “because
the rest of us can’t do that.”
“Unfortunately
that is true,” Tuvok admitted. “Many
Bajorans also believe in a ‘soul’ or ‘katra’. They
refer to it as one’s pagh, or boryha.” Bajor’s
vedeks and prylars had sheltered a number of people on the station from
the Alliance at one time or another, often at great risk
to their own lives.
“Of course I
have a new life every time I’m placed in a new host,” Dax pointed out. “Whether that qualifies as a kind of life
after death I can’t say.”
The topic got
Smiley thinking about something Dax said earlier when the first met
Kruge. “Was Spock able to place his katra
into anyone?”
“He was,” Tuvok
answered. “What
is not widely known is that they used a device Spock had obtained from
the first crossover to take him to the other side, because Mt. Seleya was under Earth control following the coup.”
They noticed
Captain Sisko and his son off to the side, looking very tired. “We lost Professor Sisko,” Tuvok explained. The others looked down.
“I’m going to
miss her,” O’Brien said.
“I just hope
they’re at peace, especially David,” Dax said. “What
happened wasn’t his fault.”
