Star Trek: ALL - Seven Deadly Sins (41 page)

He docked the shuttle on the cracked concrete foundation at the number two moon where Kasidy lived. He dashed from the cockpit and sprinted the twenty meters or so to the settlement, but he could see, even as he approached, that something was very wrong. Kasidy’s tent was not visible among the rookery of shacks and lean-tos.

As he got closer, he saw what was left of the tent, and felt his gorge rising. Kasidy’s shabby dwelling had been torn to shreds, her belongings strewn all around. Most of her things were broken and torn. The other people at the settlement must have picked over her things quickly, leaving behind only what could not be used. Sisko squatted to pick up the piece of torn sacking that Kasidy had been wiping her hands on when he had come to warn her.
I tried . . . I tried to tell her . . . 

Sisko rose to his feet and walked around the settlement frantically, hoping for any sign of where she might have gone, but she was nowhere to be found. The people all stayed inside their shelters, probably afraid that they would get the same fate that had befallen Kornelius Yates. “Kasidy?” he called, but he got no response, nothing. “Hello?” he called. “Can’t anyone tell me what happened to Kasidy Yates? Please, I’m not here to hurt you!”

An old Terran woman finally drew back her tent flap enough to poke her head through. She held one crooked finger to her lips.

“Do you know where Kasidy Yates is?” Sisko said frantically. “Please, anything you can tell me—”

“They came and got her,” the woman said softly, so quietly that Benjamin almost couldn’t hear her.

“Who came?” he demanded. “Who got her?”

“The Cardassians,” she said. “They came in an Alliance shuttle, like yours. She’s gone.”

“When?” Sisko wanted to know. “When did they come?”

But the woman withdrew, her tent flap falling closed. Sisko almost went after her, before deciding that it didn’t matter. His breath came very hard, so hard he almost felt he couldn’t exhale fast enough to keep from passing out, but he gathered his wits and ran back to the shuttle.

Once in the cockpit, he attempted to contact Stan Devitt, but the man was not answering his comm. Frustrated, Sisko switched the channel over to the next person he could think of, En Shrall.

“Where are you, Sisko?”
the Andorian snapped, as soon as his image appeared on-screen.

“I . . . Shrall, do you know if anyone else was sent back to the second colonized moon after you and I left yesterday?”

“You don’t have time to worry about that, Sisko—you’ve got to get back to headquarters right away. Stan Devitt has gone missing.”

It took Sisko a moment to register what the Andorian had just told him. “Missing?” he finally said, puzzled. “Where could he possibly be?”

“How should I know? The Cardassian higher-ups are here, asking everyone a thousand questions. And the first question they’re asking is where
you’ve
been all day.”

“I went to Terok Nor this morning,” Sisko said. “Stan knew all about it. Jennifer knows all about it too, she should have told someone.”

“Well, maybe you’d better come back here and tell them that yourself,”
the Andorian advised.
“There’s a lot going on back here, what with three people disappearing in just over two weeks, and if I were you I’d want to clear my name of any wrongdoing as quickly as possible.”

Stan Devitt is missing?
Sisko couldn’t even begin to imagine what had happened to the old man, but the very last thing he intended to do was go back to Akiem headquarters on Trivas when it was crawling with inquisitive Cardassians. He programmed a new destination and sat back while the shuttle took off from Kasidy’s moon.

“You weren’t gone very long, Benjamin.”

Sisko had been gone only a few hours, but the Intendant had changed her entire appearance. She was now dressed in a soft, emerald-
colored dress with loose elbow-length sleeves that were cut out at the shoulder. The color suited her much better than the harsh violet she had worn when Sisko first met her, and the style was more flattering than the severe bodysuit he had seen her in before. The long, sleek hem of her dress swept the floor when she walked, as she was doing now—pacing slowly with one hand on a slender hip, her bare shoulders gleaming next to the diaphanous fabric. She had removed her headpiece and styled her short reddish hair differently than usual, so that it was smoothed down over her forehead
instead of being swept back severely from her face. She looked radiant, and deadly.

“No,” Sisko said. “I guess I wasn’t gone long.” He choked out the next sentence with deep reservation. “I’ve come to take you up on your offer.”

Kira stopped in her tracks and turned to look at him, her eyes very round with surprise. “Is that right?” she said. “Well, I hardly expected you to have a change of heart as quickly as that.” She smiled. “You’re coming to me willingly, then?”

“I’m coming to you willingly,” he said, though it was hardly the case. The truth was, he had run out of options, and he was running out of time. It would not be long before Jennifer found out that he had been to the abandoned mining facility with Thadial Bokar. After that, it would all fall into place, and he would be implicated not only for Bokar’s death, but for Janel’s—and possibly even for whatever had happened to Stan Devitt. Sisko would rather have Jennifer hate him for infidelity than for being a murderer, especially if she was going to be led to believe that he had something to do with whatever had happened to her father. “And you can make all my problems go away?”

Kira slowly swaggered toward him. “Just like that,” she said, and snapped her fingers. The low lights in the room flickered across the sleek surface of her green dress, accentuating each dip and curve of her lithe body. She extended her hand, and Sisko took it. Her fingers wrapped tightly around his, and she pulled him along through the dimness of the room, beyond a screen where there was a bed with a plush velvet coverlet. She turned to him as she stood before the bed, reached behind her neck, and then let the gown slip to the floor in a puddle of shimmering green.

“From the first moment I saw you,” Kira whispered, pulling Sisko on top of her on the bed and unfastening his tunic, “I knew I had to make you mine. Knew I had to
own
you.”

Sisko said nothing, only allowed her to continue removing his clothes.

“What’s wrong, Benjamin?” she murmured, kissing his neck and chest. “Don’t you want me, too?”

“Of course I do,” he said hoarsely.

“Then
act like it,
” she commanded.

Sisko did as he was told.

Kira Nerys was greedy.

She used him not once that afternoon, not twice or even three times, but no less than six times, which was taxing on just about every part of his constitution. When Sisko almost failed to perform the fifth time, she threatened to bring one of her Klingon assistants into the equation, and the sheer terror of the implication somehow succeeded in making his body cooperate where the Intendant’s other attempts had failed.

Kira was now lying on her side next to him on the generously sized bed, rhythmically stroking his chest and stomach with both hands, as if he were a dog. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get tired of you, Benjamin,” she sighed. “You’re just . . . so . . . 
beautiful.”

Sisko swallowed.

“Well?” Kira said, as if waiting for something.

“Uh . . . yes?”

“Aren’t I beautiful, too, Benjamin?”

“Of course you are,” he said quickly. “Intendant, you hardly need me to tell you that you’re beautiful. Everyone knows you are.”

She frowned. “Yes, but I want to hear it from
you,
Benjamin. I want to . . . 
believe
it when you tell me. And I don’t want to have to ask you for it again.”

Her displeasure frightened him. “You’re beautiful,” he said, pretending, as he said it, that he was talking to Kasidy Yates, and not Kira. Thinking of Kasidy proved to be a mistake, though, and Kira detected the change at once.

“Your mind is elsewhere,” she accused. “You’re not thinking about me at all.”

“Of course I am.”

Kira stood up. She looked angry and betrayed for a moment, which worried Sisko profoundly, but then suddenly her expression turned serene. “Well, Benjamin. I wasn’t going to tell you this, but maybe you deserve to hear it. You performed quite well, just now,
though I suggest you try to act a little more convincing next time. Anyway, I suppose you’ve been through enough today.” She sighed. “Your little friend Kasidy Yates? She’s just fine.”

Sisko’s hands tightened around the sheets. “What are you talking about?”

Kira laughed as she picked up her green dress from the floor, where she had let it fall hours before. “Your little Terran friend, the girl who owed all that money to Akiem. The one you went looking for today, after I gave you the shuttle—just like I knew you would. I arranged for her to be taken somewhere safe. Don’t worry, Benjamin, they won’t find her.”

“Why . . . why . . . ?”

“When I told you I would make all your problems go away, I meant
all
of them,” Kira said. “I am nothing if not true to my word.” She sat down on the bed and began to stroke his chest again.

“Well,” Sisko said, feeling slightly confused. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Kira said. She sounded friendly, but then her voice turned steely. “But don’t think for a moment that I will ever let you get away with something like that when you work for me. Kasidy Yates was a pass for you, Benjamin. You will never get another pass like that. Not ever again.”

“Fair enough,” he said, and this time, he was telling the truth.

“You will never see her again, either,” Kira commanded.

Sisko nodded, slowly, and tried to smile.
It’s all right. Just to know that she’s safe.
It didn’t keep his heart from sinking, though.

Kira stood up again and wandered beyond the screen, handing her green dress to a Klingon assistant who had been standing there the entire time she and Sisko had been in bed together. She gestured to another Klingon, an especially brutish-looking man who brought her a white dressing gown, and the ugly alien helped her into it.

Kira walked back toward the bed as she wrapped her dressing gown around her waist. “I’m almost finished with you for now,” she said.

“All right,” he replied.

“I’m arranging for you to have quarters right next to mine. Would that make you very happy?”

“Yes,” he lied smoothly.

“Good,” she said, and sat down next to him. “I know it would make me happy.
Very
happy.”

Sisko watched her for a moment, wondering what more she wanted from him. She did not touch him again. She seemed to be searching for something in his face. He wondered, for a frightened moment, if she was searching for love, if she truly wanted him to love her. If that was what she wanted, she was going to be very disappointed.

To his consternation, she suddenly broke out into a little laugh.

“What’s funny?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Kira said, but then she threw back her head and laughed again. She laughed for a very long time, leaving Sisko very uncomfortable, even more uncomfortable than he had been when he’d been having sex with her. To be used and then laughed at—it was too much.

“It’s just,” she gasped, as she struggled to regain her composure. “It’s just that—oh, Benjamin. To think—that Jennifer already
knew
everything! If you could have seen your
face,
how frightened you were that she would find out . . .”

“What do you mean?” he demanded. “What do you mean she already knew everything?”

“I mean,” Kira said, still chuckling to herself, “that Jennifer
already
knew that you killed Thadial Bokar. She already knew, and she had already covered it up.”

“What . . . what are you talking about?”

“Benjamin, Jennifer has been covering for your blunders all the way back to the beginning with Akiem. You would have been exposed as a fraud a long time ago if you didn’t have a wife who loved you enough to cover your tracks. She also probably knew about your visits to the moon where Kasidy Yates lived, and she very well may have known why.”

“No,” Sisko said hotly. “You’re just trying to get under my skin. You’re lying.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter either way,” Kira said. “You’re safe now, aren’t you, Benjamin?’ She smiled her characteristic, unnerving smile, like a beautiful, deadly snake.

Sisko got up from the bed and angrily began to pull on his clothes.
He could not bring himself to believe what he was being told, even though . . .

Even though maybe you always knew it. You always knew that someone had to be looking out for you, to keep your skewed tallies from being discovered, and you knew it had to be Jennifer.

Benjamin felt sick. “What about Stan Devitt?” he demanded. “You know so much—do you know what happened to him?”

“Well, much as I wish I could claim credit for him, I actually had nothing to do with his death,” Kira said casually. She lay back down on the bed with her arms behind her head.

“He’s . . . dead, then?”

“Yes, one of my men confirmed it this morning. Oh, don’t look so upset. He was marked for death anyway.”

“What do you mean,
marked for death?
”

“He was meddling, trying to put some heat on my political rivals in order to prevent me from getting to you and Jennifer. I had every intention of getting rid of him. But someone else got to him first.” Kira sighed. “I suppose it doesn’t matter either way, but I would have done a much cleaner job of it than the woman who ultimately got to him.”

“A woman? Who was it? Why would anyone have reason to kill him?”

Kira shrugged. “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure. It was a Trill woman, I was told. Maybe he was having an affair with her. My man told me she was . . . quite pretty.”

A Trill woman?
Sisko had no clue who would have wanted Stan dead . . . besides the Intendant.

Kira went on. “But I suppose I should thank her, whoever she was. With Stan out of the way, I can now have you both, if I want.”