The Battle of Betazed Page 5

“Why did you kill?” She sincerely wanted to understand. “Was it revenge? Jealousy? Ambition?”

  Tevren laughed, a dry husky sound like the rustling of dead leaves. “You psychologists are all alike, trying to see some great motivation behind every behavior. When I killed—except for my parents, whom I killed for practice—it was just for fun.”

  She tried not to show her horror. For the first time she truly understood why the authorities had locked Tevren away and buried his crimes. If word of his atrocities were to surface, if the knowledge he’d rediscovered were made public, the peace of Betazed might end forever.

  She forced herself to ask the next question. The answer, of course, hadn’t been in his file. And given what he’d just told her, she was certain it wasn’t documented anywhere. But she hoped his answer would give her some insight into his psychopathology. “How did you kill these people, Tevren?”

  He leaned forward again, until static from the force field sparked against the tip of his nose. He drew his lips back in a smile, his eyes glittering. “Remove this damned inhibitor from my brain, and I’ll be happy to give you a personal demonstration.”

  Troi put aside the memory of the sadistic gleam in Tevren’s eyes. “For four interminable months, I worked with Tevren for several hours each day,” she told Picard.

  The captain regarded her with compassion. “Were you able to help him?”

  She shook her head. “He was no nearer rehabilitation the day I left Darona than he had been the day I arrived. If anything, Tevren became more entrenched in his depraved fascination with death. He took perverse pleasure in describing every vicious detail of each of his murders, the agonies of his savaged victims, the so-called cleverness of his brutality. Director Lanolan worked with him, too, with no better results than I had. We tried everything—recreational therapy, behavioral conditioning. Even antipsychotic drugs were a dismal failure.”

  Picard raised an eyebrow. “I take it Tevren didn’t care for gardening.”

  Deanna nodded. “Since he could no longer kill people, he took great joy in mutilating the director’s prize plants. He was punished by confinement to his quarters, but he actually seemed to prefer the isolation.”

  “And he never revealed how he killed with his mind?”

  “I don’t think he could, not as long as the inhibitor was functioning. He implied the skill had to be conveyed telepathically.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand something, Counselor,” Picard said with a frown. “You said Tevren claimed to have developed the ability after studying the records of a cult. Why couldn’t the resistance do the same?”

  “Because the records were historical, not technical. I think they gave him clues. From what I could piece together from his usual half answers, it took him three years just to reason out the process of utilizing his psionic talents invasively. If it were any easier for a Betazoid to learn it on her own, there would be more like Tevren. But with someone to teach it . . .”

  “Deanna,” the captain said, “the people of Betazed are among the most benign, enlightened, and peace-loving I’ve ever known. I know from studying their history that your people’s telepathy and empathy were a force for civilizing your planet and creating one of the most unified and compassionate civilizations in the Federation. At the risk of playing devil’s advocate, I find it hard to believe that the knowledge of the mere capacity for abusing those talents would threaten your culture.”

  Troi smiled faintly. “That’s kind of you to say, Captain. And you’re right. To some degree, my culture owes whatever good it’s achieved to our ability to know one another telepathically. It’s made us truly whole in a way few species ever become. But every culture, no matter how benign, struggles with its own capacity for evil. That struggle is hardest on a telepathic species, where the slightest thought of violence, destruction, even death, can potentially be made manifest. There’s a reason the Vulcans struggled so long to master their passions, and still do. They know the capacity for evil can never truly be purged. Mastery is the best anyone can hope for.”

  “Hmm,” Picard murmured. “Your point is well made, Counselor. What’s your estimation of Tevren? Will he cooperate?”

  Troi took a deep breath. “That’s another variable in all this. It’s been seventeen years. I honestly don’t know how much he may have changed, if at all. It may be that after seventeen years of incarceration, he’ll do anything to be free. Or it may be that he simply won’t care anymore.” Deanna set her cold cocoa aside. “He’s truly a monster, sir. The man enjoyed wringing the last desperate breath from his victims. I read the autopsy reports. They all died slowly and savagely, their minds destroyed one tiny piece at a time. And this,” Troi said, “is the person in whom the resistance feels compelled to place their hopes.”

  Picard turned to look thoughtfully out the curved window of his ready room. “‘How dead we lie because we did not choose to live and shame the land from which we sprung.’”

  Deanna nodded. “Death or shame. Betazed’s choices exactly. Was that a quote from Shakespeare?”

  Picard shook his head. “A. E. Housman, another human poet.”

  “One who also understood the nature of war.”

  “Ah, but did he really?” the captain asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Housman,” Picard explained, “never met a Jem’Hadar.”

  Chapter Four

  JEM’HADAR EVERYWHERE. On a rocky ledge above the Loneel Valley, Lwaxana Troi lay on her stomach and studied the deep forest below through powered binoculars. Concealed by a hooded cloak of striated grays and browns that matched the surrounding stones, she counted the soldiers of the scouting party crashing through the underbrush below.

  Eighteen!

  Not only had the number of patrols doubled, their size had doubled as well. If the increase continued at the current rate, the occupation force would soon swell to more than fifty thousand, not counting the damned Vorta bureaucrats who controlled the Jem’Hadar on behalf of the Founders. It was only a matter of time until the soldiers came for the resistance, who were hanging on by a thread in their mountain stronghold and praying help would arrive before the final massacre.

  Enaren, where are you?

  Her thought snapped petulantly into the darkness. Her cousin was no longer as agile as he’d been in his youth, and it didn’t seem possible that he could slip undetected through the enemy troops that ringed the mountain stronghold of the Betazed resistance. For all she knew, the Jem’Hadar had already killed him.

  I’m here, Lwaxana, behind you, but don’t move. Wait until the Jem’Hadar have passed.

  She sighed with relief before her temper kicked in.

  You’ve had me worried out of my mind! she scolded, then for interminable minutes remained motionless until the last of the soldiers disappeared into the thick trees of the coniferous forest. Leaping to her feet, she whirled to face Cort Enaren. Did you get it?

  She needed no reply. The disappointment in his tired eyes and the defeated slant of his shoulders communicated his failure.

  He shook his head.

  Hurry, she ordered him. They’ll return soon. We have to take cover.

  With a grace and swiftness that belied her age, Lwaxana traversed the ledge and slid into a nearby crevasse. The opening, invisible unless one knew of its existence, was one of only two portals into the mountains where the Betazoids’ resistance fighters and government in exile had established their headquarters. The craggy peaks ringed the caldera of an ancient volcano and were honeycombed with tunnels and caves formed millions of years earlier by bubbles of volcanic gas as the lava cooled around it.

  High concentrations of fistrium in the surrounding rock and the depth of the underground caverns protected the colony of fifteen hundred from detection by Dominion sensors. Here the leaders of Betazed had established their temporary homes and would make their stand until the Jem’Hadar were driven from their planet.

  Or die trying, Lwaxana thought. That grim p
ossibility became more likely with each passing day. If the Jem’Hadar didn’t kill them first, they might all succumb to disease without proper medical supplies.

  Shaking off her gloomy introspection, she followed the narrow, winding path among the boulders, trailing behind Enaren and wondering how much more heartache the poor man must endure. His son and heir, Sark, had failed to return from his mission to contact Starfleet, and Enaren did not know whether Sark had been successful, or even if he’d survived. To make matters worse, two days ago Cort’s infant grandson and namesake had contracted Rigelian fever, a horrible illness similar to the infamous bubonic plague on Earth.

  Over a century ago, spacefaring Betazoids had brought the Rigelian fever home from one of their voyages. In the intervening years, to augment the antidote, ryetalyn, her homeworld physicians had developed a vaccine, but the prophylactic was too powerful for the physiology of any child younger than six. Thanks to the vaccine’s effectiveness, however, the fever had all but disappeared from the planet. The illness survived only in insects infesting vermin of the inaccessible wilds, like the tunnel rats that inhabited the caves of the Loneel Mountains.

  Yesterday, Damira, Enaren’s daughter-in-law, had noted the tiny fleabite on her son’s thigh. Within hours, his temperature had spiked. The doctor had administered ryetalyn, but his supplies were limited, and more doses would be needed to insure the child’s recovery—and to treat other children who might become infected. Enaren had volunteered to venture out of hiding to secure more of the precious medicine.

  I can’t believe a hospital so close to the wilderness had no ryetalyn, Lwaxana complained.

  Enaren stopped and turned to her, his emotions pounding her mind like fists. Rage. Sadness. Overwhelming fear. There’s no hospital.

  But the village—

  The Dominion warned that anyone involved in the resistance movement would be punished.

  Lwaxana shook her head impatiently. What does their warning have to do with the hospital?

  Enaren trembled with anger. The Jem’Hadar caught a resistance cell meeting there. They took the members prisoner and burned the building to the ground—and the drugs with it—as a warning.

  His face ruddy with outrage and despair, he pivoted on his heel and continued toward the tunnel that led to the caverns, a vortex of emotions swirling in his wake. Lwaxana followed, fuming with anger. In all their long history, although they’d maintained a regulatory force, her people had seldom needed the military. With their telepathic abilities, they had cultivated more peaceful pursuits. The perpetuation of peace had led to Lwaxana’s interest in diplomacy, to promoting the resolution of conflict through negotiation and understanding. But diplomacy was useless against the Dominion. While the Vorta seemed well versed in giving the appearance of reasonability, all their courteous overtures of friendship and apologetic explanations for each outrage committed against the Betazoid people came down to a single message: Cooperate or die.

  At first she’d been certain Starfleet would force the Dominion back, just as they’d once forced back the Romulans, the Klingons, the Borg. But as the early days of the occupation stretched into weeks, it became clear to Lwaxana that Betazed’s hopes for salvation rested as much with itself as they did with Starfleet. The Federation was fighting a war for its very survival on too many fronts, against a foe that never let up. Horror had filled her when the resistance got word that the Twelfth Fleet had been destroyed, leaving the people of Betazed to face the Dominion alone.

  She refused to give up hope, however. She would not have it said that a daughter of the Fifth House had failed in her duty to keep her world free for her children. Her daughter Deanna, at least, was safe, or as safe as one could be aboard a starship fighting the Dominion. If dear Jean-Luc couldn’t protect the Enterprise and her daughter from the Jem’Hadar, then the gods help them all.

  She worried most about Barin, her two-year-old son. She had to protect him not only from alien soldiers but from the deadly fever that threatened all the young children of their mountain stronghold. Even though the men had set traps to clear the tunnels of vermin that might carry disease, more outbreaks of the fever were expected. She hoped Chaxaza, another of her cousins, who tended Barin while Lwaxana stood watch outside, had checked the boy for fleabites.

  The thought of her small, rugged toddler made her smile and quicken her steps. Deanna, although a mature woman in her own right, would always be her “little one,” so Lwaxana had adopted the Tavnian diminutive Barin for her younger child. In his father’s language, Barin was her “little one,” too.

  Descending deeper into the caverns, Lwaxana picked up the scents of habitation: smoke from cooking fires, spices from foods roasting for dinner, and the tang of herbs intended to cover the stench of too many unwashed bodies packed too tightly together. Because water had to be carried in backpacks from the wilderness rivers, bathing and laundering were luxuries most had learned to live without.

  Physical proximity was not the worst hardship for the residents of the stronghold. In a telepathic society, complete privacy was practically an impossibility, but at least before the war, all had lived in houses or farms set spaciously apart to allow some psionic elbow room. Here, true privacy was even more rare than water now, and as a result, tempers often flared.

  Especially that of Sorana Xerix, daughter of the Third House. Her protests reached Lwaxana even before she entered the cavernous common area where women gathered during the day.

  My best robe, Sorana whined, and it’s ruined with soup stains.

  Be thankful the stains are food and not blood, Lwaxana shot back, drawing herself to her full height and fixing Sorana with a withering stare. With so many of our people dead and dying, my dear, your complaints are becoming a royal pain in the ass.

  Sorana’s blast of offended pride and righteous indignation washed over Enaren and Lwaxana at the entrance to the chamber, and its other occupants glanced up in expectation. Damira, her ailing baby clasped against her breast, cried out in anguish when she realized Enaren’s failure to obtain more ryetalyn.

  Don’t despair, he reassured her. I’ll try another village tomorrow. The doctor has enough to keep the boy comfortable until then.

  Barin broke from Chaxaza and raced across the room toward his mother, his chubby legs pumping, his arms spread wide, his delicious giggle balm for her aching heart. She scooped him up in her arms and hugged him tight.

  “No bug bites?” she asked.

  He shook his head, brown eyes shining, and patted her cheeks with his plump hands. “Cha’za looked.”

  Sorana glared at Lwaxana across the room, but Lwaxana for once was in no mood for an extended confrontation. After another fierce hug, she handed Barin back to his caretaker. “Call the resistance leaders together in the meeting room,” she instructed in a voice ringing with authority. “We have decisions to make.”

  She spoke aloud, recognizing that not all inhabitants of the stronghold possessed the same degree of telepathic abilities. Some projected and read thoughts with more ease than others. When matters of communal concern were discussed, Lwaxana insisted on the spoken word. “The better informed, the less likely people were to panic” had always been her maxim. Today she wasn’t so sure. All the news pending before the council was bad.

  At the chiming of the sacred bell that signaled a meeting, people streamed in from other common rooms and private alcoves, where a blanket or quilt hung across the opening afforded the only privacy available. Most of the tiny cubicles were furnished with only the barest of necessities, items the occupants had grabbed in haste and carried on their backs as they fled the Jem’Hadar.

  In spite of efforts at shielding, a multitude of thoughts and emotions jammed the air in the great chamber that served as the council hall. From her place on the dais at the end of the room, Lwaxana watched the others arrive, sensing fear and despair in some, renewed hope and determination in others, and a guarded watchfulness in a few.

  Their backgrounds were as var
ied as their emotions. Many of the leaders came from the cities, where they’d previously held high government office or venerable professorships at the universities.

  Just as numerous were farmers and craftspeople and their families from Betazed’s outlying villages. Diverse in profession, wealth, and knowledge, they shared one common goal—to drive the Jem’Hadar from Betazed soil, even if each of them must sacrifice her life to do it.

  When the group had first fled the Dominion invasion and entered the stronghold, they had elected Enaren as their leader. Eleven other members of the ruling body, including Lwaxana, joined him on the dais, and he stood to address the other leaders and the crowd, which had assembled to observe the deliberations.

  Enaren explained his failure to obtain more ryetalyn, and a shiver of fear for the children traveled through the group. “But I will try again tomorrow. Meanwhile, we must continue fumigating and setting traps for vermin.”

  He yielded the floor to Okalan, the council member who oversaw water and supplies. “The increased Jem’Hadar patrols make it almost impossible for us to reach the river. We must halve our water rations. We have pipes and cisterns in place, but the rainy season is still weeks away.”

  Grumbles filled the air, and Lwaxana noted with satisfaction that Sorana had the decency to look ashamed.

  After Okalan took his seat, Lwaxana rose to present her report. The most skilled among them in diplomacy and negotiations, she had been assigned the task of planning strategy against the invaders. “If Sark Enaren delivered our message to Starfleet, help should arrive soon. The Federation knows that the longer they wait, the harder it’ll be to oust the Dominion.”

  “And what if Starfleet doesn’t come?” a cavat farmer from Condar village demanded.

  “Sooner or later, they will,” she said. “Betazed is part of the Federation. Our sons and daughters serve in Starfleet.”

  The farmer leaped to his feet and said aloud what the rest of them already knew. “We can’t be idle waiting for Starfleet! There’s a ketracel-white distillery near my farm. If we blow up the cursed thing, the Jem’Hadar will die.”