Shadow of Heaven Read online

  Ah, righteous anger. How often have I seen it in others? Jekri did not delude herself that all the prisoners she had had arrested, interrogated, imprisoned, or executed were true criminals or traitors to the Empire. Some were just inconvenient, and she had watched with cool detachment as they raged and pled.

  As, no doubt, those in control of her fate were watching her. It was a dreadful thing, to be inconvenient.

  She had no idea where the guards were taking her. Intellectually, she was familiar with the elaborate prison system, but she had no personal experience with it. She had had no desire to sully her hands with that sort of unnecessary detail, but now she wished heartily she had taken an interest. She would have had access to every plan, known every weakness, every possible avenue of escape.

  They went up a turbolift, walked some more, went down a turbolift. They marched her outside at one point. She could tell by the feel of the sun on her face, though the opaque blindfold did not let her even see a lightening of her darkness. This was another part of her mental torture. They were confusing her, trying to disorient her. It would have been much simpler to merely transport her from the holding cell to her permanent one. At some point, they would do that. She knew the routine well. But for the moment, it was important to them to start breaking her.

  They would fail.

  Finally, she was shoved forward. Her foot caught on a step and she tripped, falling heavily as her hands were bound and she could not catch herself. She was hauled to her feet, moved roughly into position, and then she heard the hum of the transporter.

  Cold assaulted her when she rematerialized. A voice came from nowhere. “Your bonds have been removed. You may take off your blindfold and behold your new home.”

  Slowly, her heart thudding in her abdomen, Jekri did as she was told. Even this dim light hurt her sensitive eyes, and she blinked several times before her vision adjusted.

  She gasped, then steeled herself to react no further, for she was certain she was being watched.

  They had imprisoned her beneath the palace, in the ancient cells that had once held the worst sort of traitors hundreds of years ago. They were not often used anymore, and the significance of her being in this place was not lost on Jekri.

  She would die here, alone and forgotten. And she would die soon.

  * * *

  Over the next few days, Jekri got to know her ancient cell very well indeed. It was small, only about three meters by two. The walls were meter-thick and made of stone. Moisture beaded on their surface. In the small space was a pile of rags that Jekri was supposed to use as bedding. She sat down experimentally on it and coughed at the stench. The old rags nearly dissolved beneath her weight, and dust rose in a choking cloud. There was also a hole in the floor for elimination, a grated hole in the ceiling for air, and a jug of stale-tasting water. With a little imagination, she could be a prisoner from eight, nine hundred years ago.

  Of course, twenty-fourth-century Romulans did not rely on centuries-old security measures. There was a forcefield in place instead of a heavy metal or wooden door. Her food, such as it was, was transported in. She knew her activities were being monitored day and night, though there was no day or night here. But she suspected that she was not being watched at every moment. It would be a poor use of a guard’s time. Heat sensors would record the presence of a living body. When she died, they would record that too, and someone would come to haul her corpse away so that some other prisoner could die in this place.

  Her guard was a son of a fvai. She knew he was trouble when he swaggered up, leering, and shut down the forcefield. Before Jekri could seize the opportunity he had fired his weapon right at her.

  Jekri went sprawling. Her body trembled in convulsions as she stared at her tormentor. Tingling pain raced through her and she felt saliva trickle from her lips as she spasmed helplessly. She could not stop it.

  He threw back his head and laughed. With a quick touch of his fingers, the forcefield hummed back into place. He patted his weapon as he returned it to his belt.

  “Lowest setting,” he told her. “Come to check on the little prisoner.”

  The needling pain was ebbing, and Jekri clumsily wiped at the spittle on her face. She swung her legs underneath her and clambered to her feet, swaying. “What was that for?”

  The guard grinned. “For fun,” he said. “You’re my prisoner now, Little Dagger. And we’re going to have a great deal of fun for as long as you can take it.”

  Her body was under her command again, and Jekri stood at her full petite height. She caught his gaze and held it. She did not say a word.

  It was the guard who finally looked away, muttering. As he stalked off, Jekri realized that she had probably made a mistake. As he had said, he had used the lowest setting. Next time, she would be treated to something stronger. Jekri knew people, and she did not doubt that this was just the beginning of the barbaric games the guard planned to play with her.

  She sat down and picked at the food, and actually laughed out loud. It would be just as simple to program something nourishing and tasty as what was set before her, yet someone had gone to a lot of effort to specify partially rotting meat, dry, stale bread, and raw, old vegetables.

  Idly, Jekri picked up a slice of some sort of root and threw it at the forcefield. Her eyes widened when the small tidbit was vaporized almost instantly. Of course, something larger, say the former head of the Tal Shiar, would not be so destroyed, but she would be incapacitated and perhaps injured. They had put the highest level forcefield on her door. Interesting. And good to know.

  “That was ill done,” came the disembodied voice.

  “I like my vegetables cooked,” Jekri snarled, searching for the source of the sound. She finally found it, hidden in a natural crevice of stone. She had just inserted a finger, thinking to retrieve the device and examine it, when a noise at the door made her turn.

  Despite herself, she swallowed hard. Three doctors stood impassively outside her cell, and they had almost certainly not come to heal her.

  One, a female, seemed to be in charge. With a graceful movement she tapped the controls and the forcefield was lowered. “Prisoner 8754, accompany us.”

  8754. At least the guard had named her. But she was in the “system” now, and that was no place for names, for identities, for individuals with emotions and families and talents and skills. She thought at first to fight, but she had only her hands, and there was no doubt in her mind that the doctors had hypos at the ready to render her docile.

  She stepped forward, head held high. This was it. They would begin the torture session now, and everything she knew would be revealed. Then they would throw her back in this awful place and there would be no more transported food, only the stench from the elimination hole and her own body as it decayed.

  I am a Romulan. I have lived like one, and now I die like one.

  Bonds were snapped onto her hands at once. “Energize,” the female doctor said.

  They rematerialized in a room as far away from Jekri’s cell as could be imagined. Everything was bright and clean here, sharply so. Sterile. Metal gleamed, glass shone from instruments and containers with which Jekri was almost completely unfamiliar. It promised torture, but Jekri tasted relief. It was not the sort of mental torture session she had feared. That would have broken her. This, she could withstand.

  Two of the doctors left. As Jekri watched them go, the remaining doctor, the female, said with a hint of amusement, “They have gone to watch the session, 8754. There are guards outside the door. Do not think of attempting to escape.”

  Jekri did not grace the woman with a reply. With as much interest as she might show toward a lab animal, the female doctor ordered Jekri to strip and step into a sonic shower. Jekri complied without argument. She had little interest in her body, save when she could use it physically for defense or sexually as a tool, and shed her filthy clothes without a qualm. The sonic shower felt good. They might be preparing her for agony, but they had given her a b
rief moment of feeling like a sentient being again.

  “Lie on the table.” Naked, Jekri clambered up. At once heavy metal cuffs slammed into place around her neck, wrists, and ankles. Now she did feel vulnerable, nude, exposed, and trapped.

  And when the doctor began, despite her resolution, she screamed.

  * * *

  Jekri awoke in her cell, naked and cold. Her body ached all over, and when she tried to sit up, her stomach roiled. She crawled on her belly over to the elimination hole just in time to vomit up what little she had eaten of the poor food they had given her. She tasted bile, and her stomach heaved again, straining to empty itself of something that wasn’t there.

  Shivering, Jekri wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She crawled over to the pile of dirty clothes and with an effort began to dress. Her head ached, and there was a burning pain in her wrist. She looked down at it. The flesh was an angry green. She touched it gently, hissed, and pulled her finger back, but not before she had ascertained there was something hard and round embedded beneath the skin.

  Was this how she would die, then? Were they going to keep infecting her, inserting things into her body, and see how long it took her body to surrender? What she would not give for a clean execution!

  She was sick, and weak, and wounded, and the rags did not seem so foul this time when she clambered over to them and collapsed. Jekri fell asleep at once, and dreamed of good food, Romulan ale, clean clothes, and the touch of Verrak’s hands.

  Jekri was jolted awake by agony and the guard’s laughter. She flailed like a fish and was certain that for a moment her heart had stopped. He had indeed set his weapon for the next highest level. She wondered how many were on this particular one. He wouldn’t kill her, not deliberately anyway. She heard the hum and crackle as the forcefield snapped back into place. Heavy footsteps told her the guard was leaving.

  She made a decision. She could not live like this. Somehow, some way, she had to either escape or find a means with which to take her own life. With every minute that passed in this hole, the latter option looked like the most appealing.

  The hum of the transporter made her turn her head. There it was, another plate of the awful-looking stuff that passed for food. Despite her earlier illness, Jekri found she was hungry. Her stomach growled as her eyes took in the sight of old cheese, moldy bread, and withered fruit. At least there was some variety, she mused with dark humor.

  The fruit looked the least offensive. She picked up the puckered, lumpy shape of a quaeri, sniffed at it, and cautiously took a small bite.

  Her teeth bit down on something hard. She dropped the fruit and her hands flew to her mouth. Quaeris did not have hard pits; they had tiny, digestible seeds. What new torment was this?

  She spat the offending object into her palm, and stared at it for a second, not recognizing it. Then all at once, hope spurted through her and she stared with round, wide eyes.

  Embedded in the fruit, beyond visual detection, as if it had grown there, was a small, hexagonal piece of metal. She had almost swallowed it. She was not certain what it was for, but her mind raced with possibilities: a disruptor, a communication device, a piece of medical equipment that she could adjust to neutralize the forcefield.

  Slowly, so as not to attract more notice than she already had if someone was monitoring her, she closed her fingers around the precious piece of metal and took another bite of the quaeri. Its luscious juice had long since evaporated, and it was tough and chewy, but she barely noticed the taste. It was nourishment, and she would need every ounce of her strength when the time for escape came. Someone from the outside was helping her. He or she had managed to materialize the piece of metal into her food by placing its signal on that of the standard meal transport. “Piggybacking,” the Earthers called it.

  Then another thought came, and the food turned to ash in her mouth. What if this were merely another type of torture? Nothing was beyond Romulans, as she well knew. Would they study her reactions, tease her with the illusion of freedom, merely to observe? Or was it Lhiau? Did he truly hate her so much that he would go to such elaborate lengths to get her hope up simply so he could crush it back down again?

  She swallowed the bite, then took another. If that were so, then she would turn the tables on them. She would take their test and make it work for her. She imagined their faces, one day finding her cell empty, and realizing that they had unwittingly helped her to flee.

  Or it could be true. Though Verrak had been as false as it was possible for one to be, she never had learned the identity of the mysterious friend who had sent messages to her in her quarters that night when she had been attacked by Sharibor. This person could be very high placed—high placed enough so that he or she could help Jekri without attracting attention.

  With sudden determination, Jekri realized that the only way her enemies would win would be if she gave up. She finished the pathetic excuse for a meal and lay down on the rags, secreting the precious part of a tool deep in the dusty center.

  She would escape, and she would mete out justice, both to those who had aided her and those who would see her dead. It was a thought as sweet as a ripe quaeri in season, and this fruit would be plucked soon enough.

  INTERLUDE

  THE VIDIIAN DOCTOR WENT BY THE NAME OF DANARA PEL. The Entity knew her. Not of her, but knew her, the way it had known Maj Culluh. It did not understand how it came by this knowing, but merely accepted this fact.

  For over two thousand years, the Vidiians had battled a dreadful disease they called the Phage. Their desperate drive to stay alive as a race had prompted them to do terrible things. Often, they killed innocent aliens and harvested their organs. Skin grafts were necessary to replenish flesh as it died and sloughed off. They ought not to have survived, but they had, and their medical knowledge was almost unsurpassed in this quadrant.

  As was the hate and fear they engendered.

  The Entity had a deep connection to the Vidiians. What was it? It had lost something, had given it up. Had it once been a flesh-being, and had its organs harvested? That was close, but it was not quite right. There was a nobility about the Entity’s loss, a sense of yielding that transcended victimization. What was it, what was it?

  The thought went away as it regarded Danara Pel. She still bore the scars of the illness that had ravaged her body, but was no longer a macabre patchwork of other beings’ parts. She was cured of the Phage.

  And imprisoned.

  When the Phage had been cured, it had seemed like such a blessing at first. Kuros and his group of mercenary intellectuals had offered a cure in exchange for Vidiian medical knowledge. It had seemed so little to ask. But as with so many things, there was a dark side to the request. In earlier times, the Vidiians were known as educators, artists, explorers. Once the Phage had been cured, many raced to embrace these neglected passions, looking forward to the chance to contribute to, instead of prey upon, the other aliens in the quadrant. But others had gotten used to the casual brutality of a mind-set that rationalized murdering fellow sentient beings and using their organs.

  Dark matter, floating through this system, had escalated the conflicts. Civil war had erupted. At a time when the species ought to be rejoicing in its deliverance, they were fighting one another. The Sodality had imploded and the Vidiians were easy prey for a variety of alien races desirous of revenge.

  So it was that Danara Pel, compassionate doctor who had never wanted anything more than to help her people, was a slave. She was forced to use her knowledge to perform experimental surgeries and vivisections to appease cruel masters. At least the Vidiians had done what they had to survive. This alien species, the Charasin, merely wanted conquest.

  They, too, were infested with dark matter, sensed the Entity. Their commander, one Pektar Sirumal, was quite mad because of it. And Danara Pel, a cancer spreading through her internal organs, knew it. The Entity felt terror coming off the woman in waves as she sliced and cut and speared and dissected. The victim moaned softly on
the table. The white cloth on the table had turned bright purple with its blood.

  The Entity knew pain. The pain of the victim, and the pain of the doctor.

  And it knew anger at the dark matter, anger at those who valued torment over healing, subjugation over art. It did not drift upon Danara Pel, it charged her, hurtling through her system and ripping the dark matter from her cells. Danara gasped and staggered backward, a bloody instrument in her hand. Recognition passed over her face, and the Entity realized that Danara knew it the way it knew Danara. But it did not linger for confirmation.

  Borne by the heat of its anger, it swept through the ship. It hurtled through the bodies of the slaves and masters alike, gathering the wrong things and neutralizing their darkness. It paused for a moment, hovering beside Pektar Sirumal, repulsed by the dark matter writhing in his body and systematically devouring his brain. If it removed the dark matter, there was not enough natural matter to keep him alive. To purge him would be to kill him.

  The anger faded. The more familiar sensation of compassion took its place. It had to be done. The mutated dark matter had to be retrieved. The Entity would kill as kindly as it could.

  Gently, like the softest of rain showers, the Entity descended on the leader of the Charasin. They were a hard people, and their ideology was not one of understanding, but they were not monsters. No species was, though individuals could become monstrous. The Entity coursed through Pektar’s system, as tenderly as it could, and in his angry, infected brain, it planted thoughts of pleasure and calm.

  Pektar stiffened, then relaxed into his command chair. He saw before him scenes from a long-ago childhood. Faces long dead smiled at him. Slowly, softly, the Entity plucked the dark matter from his brain. There was not enough natural matter to take over the higher functions, so the Entity told Pektar to sleep, sleep deeply and well. And as he closed his eyes for the last time, he thought he saw another face, one he did not know; that of a beautiful woman standing before him, wreathed in gold, with a smile of tenderness upon her lips and compassion in her blue, blue eyes.