Star Trek: Terok Nor 03: Dawn of the Eagles by S.D. Perry Page B

him—even if it is only a few times a week—”
    “We’ll do the best we can,” she said crisply.
    There was nothing Mora could say except to mumble a response.
    “Very well, then. Oh, and Doctor Reyar?”
    Kalisi turned, concealing her smile. “Yes, Doctor?”
    “Your transport is here. You probably don’t want to keep it waiting.”
    “Thank you, Doctor.” Kalisi was finished anyway. She had only remained in the lab to listen to what the director had to say to Mora. She took her things and walked out, uninterested in further pleasantries. She stepped outside into the cold damp, wondering what the hospital would be like. Well. She’d know shortly.
    Kalisi had very few things to be loaded into the shuttle’s cargo compartment, only a small valise with her work clothes, a few document and padd cases. The vanity she’d possessed as a younger woman was all but gone now. She’d had no time for a personal life here on Bajor, a fact that hadn’t troubled her when she’d believed her work would propel her to glory within the Union. Lately, though, she was starting to experience real pangs of regret for her decision to trade a family on Cardassia Prime for a career on Bajor. This transport seemed to symbolize her defeat, the certainty that she would never experience the notoriety in the scientific community that she had hoped for. She could expect to live out her twilight years calibrating biobeds on an occupied world. The thought was anything but welcome.
    She was the only passenger on the tiny vessel, and she tried to strike up a conversation with the pilot regarding her destination, but quickly found him to be less than garrulous. She satisfied her boredom by looking over some reading material on her padd, but the novelty of her uncertain situation made it difficult to concentrate.
    After what seemed like only a very short time, Kalisi looked up to see that the transport had continued to rise, as though the pilot meant to break out of the atmosphere. But that couldn’t be right, could it? His authoritarian silence unnerved her to the point where she did not feel comfortable asking questions, but when the shuttle did not drop, she dismissed her awkwardness.
    “Where are you taking me?” she demanded, just before the shuttle broke through the very highest clouds in the Bajoran sky, swiftly and calmly riding the turbulence out into the dark of open space. “I thought I was just going to the hospital at Huvara Province! Why have we taken this…unlikely route?”
    The pilot, seated behind a security compartment, spoke to her through a comm system, his eerily disembodied voice no more talkative than it had been before. “We are making a required stopover.”
    “A stopover!” she exclaimed. “Offworld? Why was I not informed of this before I boarded?”
    The pilot had nothing more to say, and Kalisi had no recourse but to ride in angry, terrified silence while the little skimmer took her not only from Bajor, but out of the B’hava’el system altogether. Her mind raced with questions, but there was no one to answer them. She clasped her hands together and waited.

4
    H e was too close. No Cardassian had ever come this close to the Shakaar cell’s hideout before, at least, not anytime before last week. He wasn’t close enough to guess where the hideout was, necessarily, and his scanning equipment couldn’t possibly reveal its location, for the hillside surrounding the caves was riddled with kelbonite. But he was still too close. Kira Nerys would have to get him before he got even a linnipate closer, just as she had gotten his two companions. The bulky Cardassian rifle she had lifted from one of the slain soldiers was slowing her down, and Kira knew that she was going to have to ditch it. She could come back for it later, she decided, even though Shakaar had been insisting for over a week that nobody leave base camp until they could confirm or deny the rumors they had been hearing. She was sure to get an earful