The Battle of Betazed - Charlotte Douglas [18]
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
J EM’ H ADAR 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 possibility 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