Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Young Adult Books #7: Gypsy World Read online

  His lungs bursting, Jake caught up with Nog, who had a three-step head start on him, and together, stride for stride, they ran toward the hard ground. Certain he could feel the sand shifting behind him as the Sand Seeker torpedoed toward them, Jake pushed himself even harder.

  It seemed he had been running forever when his feet hit stone. He stumbled but kept running. After a dozen more steps he collapsed onto the hard earth.

  Gasping for breath, Nog tumbled on top of him. For a long time they lay there, breathing hard and sweating from their effort, listening to the Seeker slide away in defeat.

  Finally Jake rolled over and sat up. He saw they were safe. The desert was behind him and they were into the canyon country that led to the mountains.

  His throat was dry, and he turned to Nog. “Let me have a sip of your water.”

  Nog reached under his tunic and his hand came out empty. “It’s gone.” He looked out at the sand. “I must have dropped it when we were running.”

  “No,” Jake said, not wanting to believe that they had lost both of their water containers. “Now what’re we going to do?”

  CHAPTER 9

  What they did was continue on their quest. Moving into rocky, low canyon country, their progress was slow, and the shadows of late afternoon continued to lengthen. It was becoming more and more difficult to see what was ahead. The lack of water was not helping matters.

  “I’m getting thirsty,” Nog complained.

  “Don’t think about it,” Jake replied. “It will only make you thirstier.” His own mouth was dry and he would have given anything for a tall cold glass of Kilarian kola.

  “It’s getting dark,” Nog said, changing the subject.

  Jake looked up at the canyon rim. The sun was out of sight now over the edge. It would be another hour or two before the actual sunset, but the light from the sun didn’t reach far into the canyon.

  “We need to find shelter while we can still see something,” Jake realized. The last thing he wanted was to be wandering around here in darkness. They might stumble into Kala and the chasers—or something a whole lot worse.

  Nog scanned the horizon, which seemed to be all rock and stone. They might find a big boulder and huddle behind it, but the idea didn’t excite him. They needed something like—

  “There!” Nog stopped so abruptly that Jake, who was following close behind, nearly stumbled.

  “Nog, warn me next time you’re going to do that.”

  Ignoring Jake’s complaint, Nog pointed up at a dark spot thirty meters above them. “See,” he urged Jake. “It’s a cave.”

  Jake looked but did not quite see. Ferengis have better night vision than humans, so Jake had to assume that Nog was right. It was a cave. Or, at least, he hoped it was a cave.

  “How do we get to it?” Jake looked at the canyon wall, which seemed to rise straight up. There wasn’t a trail that he could see, and climbing in this twilight dark wasn’t a good idea. He said as much to Nog.

  “No. We don’t climb up. We climb down.”

  Jake was totally confused, until he saw what Nog had seen. Off to the left was the dry bed of what had been a small waterfall eons ago, when Eden was a wet planet. Centuries of dripping water had worn away the canyon wall, leaving almost a stairway. Then, some distance above the dark spot, there was a ledge that led directly over the mouth of the cave. Or what Jake hoped was a cave.

  “We get up there and we won’t be able to get back down in the dark,” Jake told Nog.

  “Got a better idea?”

  Jake didn’t, so they started climbing.

  The first few meters were easy, but it soon became more difficult. The canyon rock was dry and brittle. It broke away if they weren’t careful. They had to take the climb slowly and cautiously. A fall would certainly result in a broken leg, if they were that lucky.

  By the time Jake and Nog reached the ledge, it was nearly dark. The sky above the canyon was streaked with red from the dying sun. It was also getting chilly. Vija had told them the nights on Eden could be quite cold. That was another reason they needed to find shelter as soon as possible.

  The rocky ledge was very narrow, just wide enough to walk along if they leaned in against the canyon wall. Nog continued to take the lead. Jake followed, wishing he could see better. On the other hand, with the bottom of the canyon a long way beneath them, maybe it was better that he couldn’t see all that well.

  “Watch the loose rock,” Nog cautioned.

  Jake’s foot hit a stone and it tumbled noisily down the canyon wall. “I see what you mean.”

  “Oops.” Nog stopped short.

  “What oops?” Jake was almost afraid to ask.

  Nog stood at the edge of a break in the ledge. It was almost two meters from Nog’s right foot to where the ledge continued. Normally, Jake thought, it would not be that difficult a jump, but there was no room on the narrow ledge to take a running start—and hardly any room on the other side for even a small misstep.

  There were some rocks sticking out that they could grab onto after the jump, if they made it—and if the rocks didn’t break off.

  After talking it over, they decided that Jake would go first. Even if he didn’t have the advantage of Nog’s eyesight, he was the better athlete of the two. Not only would he have a better chance of making the jump and hanging on, he could also help Nog when the Ferengi made a try.

  Nog moved back while Jake planned how to make the jump. His father had taught him that a great athlete is first of all a smart athlete. He knew that he wouldn’t get the chance to try again, for any mistake would send him crashing down to the rocky canyon floor.

  Finally he stepped to the edge of the break, then backed off three short steps. That would have to be enough to propel him across the void. Jake had made much broader jumps, but he was sweating despite the cold evening.

  “Don’t take all day,” Nog urged impatiently.

  “I’ll take all the time I need,” Jake replied. “There won’t be a retry if this doesn’t work.”

  “Sorry,” Nog apologized. “I’m nervous, too.”

  Jake took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. He was as ready as he would ever be. “Here goes the galaxy,” he said, mimicking the words of the Rocket Rangler, his favorite holosuite hero. Jake took a running start … one step … two … three—

  —and he was off and leaping across the void.

  For a moment that seemed to stretch to eternity, Jake was certain he had misjudged the jump. He knew he wasn’t going to make it.

  Then he hit solid ground. He was across the void and on the ledge on the other side. But, indeed, he had misjudged his jump—and leaped too far. The wall here was smooth, there were no rocks to grab onto—and he fell backward over the edge.

  This was where Jake’s athletic abilities, all of his training in the holosuite under his father’s watchful eye, paid off. He twisted as he fell and managed to grab onto the ledge.

  “Jake!” Nog yelled out in desperation as he saw his friend start to fall.

  “Okay—” Jake gasped as he hung onto the ledge and slowly pulled himself up. “I’m okay.”

  After taking a couple minutes to relax, Jake moved close to the break in the ledge. He found a good solid handhold in the rock and then yelled, “Nog. It’s your turn.”

  Nog’s courage, which was not very deep to begin with, had vanished after seeing his friend’s jeopardy.

  He hesitated. “I’m not ready.”

  It was getting very dark. “Come on,” Jake encouraged him. “You have to do it now. I can catch you on this side.”

  Nog continued to hesitate. This whole venture up the canyon wall had been his idea, and now he was convinced it was going to end badly. “I can’t…”

  “Yes, you can. You’re afraid.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are. So was I. But you have to do this. You have to face your fear and leap through it.”

  Nog laughed as he heard the familiar words of their holosuit
e companion. “That’s the Rocket Rangler talking.” But this wasn’t an illusion, this was real.

  “Maybe. But it’s the truth.”

  Nog continued to hesitate. Finally Jake said, “I’m getting tired and cold. If you don’t jump now, I’m going into the cave and leave you dangling out here all night.”

  Both of them knew that Jake would never do that. He would have stayed on his side of the ledge all night if he had to, but it was enough to spur Nog into action.

  Moving quickly, so he wouldn’t have time to reconsider his actions, Nog stepped to the edge and leaped across.

  He hit the ledge with less than a centimeter to spare, but it was enough. Jake used his free hand to haul his friend in against the canyon wall while anchoring himself with his other hand. Nog slammed against the rock hard, but Jake was able to keep the Ferengi from bouncing backward and off the ledge.

  “That was easy,” Jake said when he was certain they were safe.

  “Easy for you to say. My ears are ringing. Next time I have an idea like this, talk me out of it.”

  Jake laughed. They both laughed. What might have happened was forgotten.

  In the pale light from Eden’s twin moons, they cautiously made their way along the ledge until finally they were standing directly over the cave entrance.

  Jake had always found that climbing down was more difficult than climbing up. This was true now as he carefully knelt and lowered himself over the edge and began to descend.

  “There’s a place for your foot just to your right,” Nog advised him, and Jake found it. He found another handhold just below the ledge and let himself drop down. One more step—and Jake was able to drop down onto the rocky shelf that led into the cave.

  With less hesitation than before, Nog quickly but carefully followed his friend. In a few moments they were both peering into the black interior of the rock cave.

  The night wind was beginning to pick up as they entered the shelter of the cave. It became warmer as they moved farther into the interior. Not comfortably warm, as in his quarters on Deep Space Nine, but more bearable that it would have been had they remained outside.

  They had taken less than a dozen steps when Nog’s foot crunched on something. He stopped to pick it up.

  “What is it?” Jake asked.

  “I don’t think you want to know,” Nog replied as he held the object up so that it caught the wan light streaming through the cave entrance.

  Jake looked at the object, then took it from Nog’s hand and felt it. Nog was right. He didn’t want to know what it was.

  What Jake held in his hand was a piece of bone that something had obviously feasted upon. And the moistness told Jake that it had not been very long ago.

  CHAPTER 10

  There were other bone fragments scattered around this part of the cave. They had no idea if the something, or more than one something, that had done the eating was still there.

  Neither of the boys wanted to stay and find out what might inhabit the cave, but it was cold and dark outside, so they had little choice. Cautiously they moved deeper, stopping when they found a small notch just big enough for the two of them a few meters above the cave floor.

  They decided that one would sleep while the other remained awake—in case. They didn’t want to go into detail about the “in case.”

  Nog slept first, crawling behind Jake to where there was room to stretch out. Jake envied Nog’s ability to fall asleep easily. Now that they weren’t on the move, he realized that he had never been so thirsty in his life. The yearning for adventure that the Fjori ship had stimulated was now dampened by the reality of their situation. What might be a wonderful game in a holosuite was a lot less fun when it actually happened.

  Two hours later Jake poked his Ferengi friend and woke him. “Your turn.”

  After some sleepy grumbles, Nog switched places with Jake. Being taller than Nog, Jake found it more difficult to find a comfortable position. But he was more tired than he realized and quickly he was fast asleep.

  Jake dreamed of being back on Deep Space Nine, of being in bed in his own quarters.

  Nog was supposed to waken Jake two hours later. But when something caused Jake to open his eyes, he saw that it was daylight outside the cave.

  “Nog, why didn’t you wake me?” Jake saw why, even as he asked the question—his friend was asleep, his ears twitching the way Ferengi ears twitched when they were dreaming.

  Jake nudged Nog to wake up. Now that it was daylight outside, they needed to get moving. Nog stirred, but his eyes remained closed. Jake nudged him harder, then stopped short. He heard it again. The sound that had awoken him.

  It was coming from deeper in the cave. A kind of soft padding. Something was in the cave with them—and it was coming in their direction.

  “Nog,” Jake whispered in his friend’s ear, and pushed him hard. Nog almost tumbled off the notch in the cave wall, but Jake kept hold of him as the Ferengi bolted upright.

  “What?” Nog was not quite fully awake.

  “Something’s coming,” Jake whispered.

  Nog heard it, and now he was wide awake.

  Together they leaped down from the notch and landed on the cave floor. There was enough light spilling in from the entrance that they could see all the bones littering the ground. They had stumbled into something’s kitchen, and whatever it was, it had a voracious appetite.

  Behind them, deeper in the cave, the padding was growing louder. They heard a roar—and then they saw the beast. It was like an Earth bear in appearance, except it had scales instead of fur, and the claws were terrible to behold.

  The boys scrambled for the cave entrance. The beast was right behind him, but it was not running. It seemed to sense that its new found prey had no chance of escaping.

  Outside the cave, Jake and Nog found themselves on the narrow lip of rock below the ledge. And they found that they had forgotten something important when they dropped down from the ledge. There was no way to climb back up. The rock wall of the canyon was too slick.

  “There must be another way into the cave,” Jake said, realizing they had come in through the “back door,” which was why they hadn’t encountered the beast before. It probably only came back to this end when it was ready to eat—and now it was planning on having the two boys for breakfast.

  Jake suddenly had the awful realization they had two choices—jump and probably get killed when they landed on the rocks below, or stay and be eaten alive.

  Commander Benjamin Sisko woke up sweating.

  He had had a nightmare. His son was in danger, and there was nothing he could do about it. The feeling was like those terrible moments during the battle of Wolf 359 when his starship, the Saratoga, was coming apart. His wife, Jennifer, had already been killed by a direct hit from the Borg ship. The Saratoga’s reactors had gone critical and the ship was about to self-destruct. For what seemed like hours, Benjamin Sisko had been unable to locate Jake.

  Then, with what could only be described as a miracle, he heard Jake’s voice through the noise and chaos. He found his son unhurt but pinned under wreckage. With strength born of desperation, Sisko was able to move the twisted steel enough so that Jake could crawl out. Together, they had escaped in the shuttle, even as the Saratoga exploded behind them.

  Now, as he sat in his darkened quarters, Sisko thought he could hear his son calling out to him again—only this time there was nothing he could do.

  Jake was indeed calling out, but his voice was directed at Nog, who hesitated at the edge when he looked down at the canyon floor below them. “I can’t,” Nog said. “It’s too far down. We’ll be killed.”

  “You’re probably right, but we have no choice.” The beast was getting nearer. Jake would rather take the chance that he’d only break his leg than become a meal for some alien creature.

  Nog grabbed Jake’s hand. “Then we do it together.” They stepped to the edge and were about to leap out into space—when they heard a familiar voice.

&nbs
p; “Jake. Nog. Grab hold.”

  Looking up at the top of the cliff, they saw Vija peering over the edge. She had tossed down a rope. Jake grabbed the rope and pulled it to him. He saw that it had knots every meter so that it could be used for climbing.

  “Go,” he ordered Nog, who needed no encouragement as he quickly began to climb.

  The beast emerged from the cave and swatted at Jake as he started up the rope behind Nog. Jake felt something slash his leg as he tried to pull himself up out of reach of the beast’s claws.

  Ignoring the sharp sensation of pain, Jake continued to climb. In a few minutes he had reached the top and Nog was helping him up onto solid ground.

  “Thanks,” Jake was able to say to Vija before collapsing from the pain.

  For what seemed like an eternity, Jake lay on the stone roof of the canyon in a kind of slow-motion fog, while Vija ministered to the ugly gash in his leg. Now that the adrenaline from the escape was no longer pumping through his veins, the pain multiplied.

  Vija used a rather primitive, by Federation standards, med-probe to seal the wound. “Fortunately, it is not deep,” she told Nog. Then she froze the wound area to reduce the pain.

  “How are you feeling?” Vija asked.

  With the pain subsiding, Jake was able to sit up. “Better,” he mumbled.

  “Drink this.” Vija handed him a water container, and Jake quickly took several large gulps and started to cough.

  “Slowly,” Vija cautioned.

  Jake took her advice and took another long, slow drink. Then he returned the container to Vija. “Keep it,” she said. “I have another.”

  Jake fastened the container to his belt under his tunic. Now he stood up on still shaky legs, assisted by Nog, and looked around. They were on the top of the canyon. Behind them was the desert and the village. On the other side of the canyon was a flat plateau that led toward the mountains. Directly between them and the mountains was a dense swamp, a kind of huge oasis that had gone bad. Vija had told them that it was a place to be avoided if at all possible.