Star Trek: Terok Nor 03: Dawn of the Eagles (31 page)

“I could arrest you right now for that implication,” Odo said, and as he spoke, his hand extended, became a tentacle that wrapped itself around Gran’s wrists. Gran pulled, but he found the restraint to be impervious to his own strength.

“Kira Nerys!” Gran blurted, remembering at last. “That’s the name I’m supposed to tell you! She said you—”

Odo hesitated for a brief moment, and then the tentacle unwound itself from Gran’s hands, melting back into an arm. The shape-shifter spoke. “I will speak to Kira,” he said, “but I will not speak to you.”

“I can give you a communication code,” Gran said, not sure if it was yet prudent to feel relief. “She’s expecting your call.”

Odo’s tone was not quite so nasty now. “You will accompany me to my office.”

Gran was still nervous, but he knew he mustn’t falter now. The resistance movement depended on him, and if this plan could be carried out, it would strike a significant blow to the Cardassians. It was worth the risk of a few hours in the brig—or worse, really. He reminded himself of this repeatedly as he followed the constable back down the Promenade, and toward the security office, hoping hard that he wasn’t about to find out what the inside of a cell looked like.

Dukat had been up all night in ops; there had been a situation down in the fusion core—an imbalance in the reaction chambers that threatened to blow out the entire ion energy network, if not for the quick thinking of the chief of engineering.
Perhaps too quick,
Dukat thought. Dalin Kedat’s talent for keeping Terok Nor functioning at optimum levels seemed exceptional, but Dukat sometimes wondered if he succeeded in creating that impression merely by surrounding himself with lesser men, who, while not incompetent, were certainly far less efficient when not under Kedat’s direct supervision.

But while the initial crisis was resolved with relative ease, investigation into the cause led to Kedat’s discovering evidence of sabotage in the generator control system, necessitating an all-night search for more signs of tampering. Odo was of course called in immediately, and Dukat wound up virtually chained to the ops situation table as he spent the night monitoring the progress of the enineering and security teams. In the end, the cause was found to be a time-delayed software virus, one that apparently had been entered into the system months ago and remained undetected until it suddenly went active. Purging the system of the malicious code would be relatively easy, according to Kedat. Finding the saboteur after so much time and turnover would be next to impossible, according to Odo.

Dukat was thoroughly exhausted when a call came through from Legate Kell, demanding privacy. Dukat reluctantly climbed the short staircase to his office, letting the doors close behind him and experiencing the persistent ache of a restless night as he seated himself behind his desk.

“Legate,” he said.

“Gul,”
the Legate replied, seeming excited enough about something that he scarcely noticed the resigned rudeness in the prefect’s tone.
“I have lately been thinking a great deal about the current treaty with the Federation. This will give us a chance to re-direct some of Cardassia’s resources to the B’hava’el system. It will require careful planning on your part, to see that those resources are utilized properly.”

Dukat was insulted; he scarcely needed the Legate to point out his job to him, and it stung him that nobody seemed to recall that he himself had suggested a Federation treaty some time ago, with this very result in mind. But he merely smiled. “Of course.”

“I strongly advise you to reorganize the Bajoran cabinet. With more troops in place on Bajor, you will have the opportunity to finally improve the situation on your host world. But unless you give the Bajorans some indication that you actually mean to change your policies—”

“My Bajoran cabinet has been loyal and effective,” Dukat interrupted. He had no desire to replace Kubus Oak or any of the others—not now, and not ever. He had always assumed that when those fools finally died off, it would be best to just leave those seats empty, or fill them with Cardassians.

Dukat had lately come to consider the bigger picture of the Bajoran venture, extending much further than the span of his life. When the older generation of Bajorans—those who actually had some memory of their world before the annexation—died out, Cardassia would begin to enjoy full-scale success on this world. In the meantime, they would have to continue to put down Bajoran revolts as they emerged, developing better weapons if they could, and occasionally accepting minor setbacks. But in the end, it would all prove worthwhile, he believed, for the next generation of Cardassians, who could expect to colonize this world permanently. The Bajorans would fall in line once they began to accept the natural superiority of Cardassian ideals. Of course, Dukat could not put voice to his prediction, for he knew that he might not live to see it come true—and it would never come true if the Detapa Council accused him of buying time to cater to his own agenda. No, the civilian government wanted immediate results, without recognizing the long-term benefits of waiting for larger returns on their Bajoran investment. Dukat believed that those returns could be tremendous, but they would require patience, something that had always been in short supply at the Detapa Council.

“Secretary Kubus is the most loyal and effective Bajoran I’ll ever meet,” Dukat said. “I have no desire to replace him with someone who is likely to ply me with radical ideas—or worse, stab me in the back.”

“If you recall, you once told me that Basso Tromac was also loyal and effective—and he disappeared, didn’t he?”

“He was likely killed by someone in ore processing with a vendetta,” Dukat said, though he feared another possibility. Of course, it was true that Basso’s disappearance had occurred right about the same time that Nerys had slipped from Dukat’s careful grasp…but he preferred to think of that incident as little as possible.

“If your Bajoran adjutant could be murdered on your own space station, the crime so perfectly covered up as to provide neither body nor suspect, then you may wish to reconsider your level of control there,”
Kell said.
“Perhaps you need a new chief of security, as well.”

Dukat glowered in response. “The shape-shifter does a better job than Thrax Sa’kat ever did,” he said. “Besides, the last thing we want is for Odo to fall sympathetic to the Bajoran cause. The best place for him is here, where I can keep an eye on him.”

Kell snorted.
“Keep your shape-shifter, then. But I stand by my recommendation for a new cabinet. You would do best to simply execute the current Bajoran officials. Accuse them of disloyalty, and then make a public spectacle of it. You could then ensure full cooperation from whoever replaces them.”

Dukat straightened out his features. “I will consider it,” he said, though he had no intention of doing any such thing; he was merely hoping to get rid of the old man so he could get some sleep. His wish was quickly granted, as the legate signed off, and Dukat wasted no time in alerting the duty officer in ops that he would take no more calls for the day. He had already decided against paying a call on his newest Bajoran mistress, though the relationship was very young and she had already proven a bit petulant; there were times when sleep took precedence over virtually everything else, even for the prefect.

The woman could speak to him only via voice transmission, but Odo still felt quite certain that it was really her. It had been the sound of Kira’s voice that had finally brought her identity back to him those few years ago, had made him remember the incident at the Bajoran Institute of Science. It was there, in Mora’s laboratory, where he had first heard the sound of her voice, from the tank where he regenerated. He had experienced a strange, unfamiliar desire to listen to her voice, to be near her. He remembered it well even now, as he spoke to her on his computer console from Terok Nor.

“So, will you help me, Constable?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I still don’t understand why you’ve come to me.”

“Because!”
she said, clearly exasperated.
“You helped me before, Odo. I trusted you then, and I want to trust you now. I believe that ultimately—despite your position, I mean—you are on our side.”

“I’m on nobody’s side,” Odo said firmly.

“If that’s true, then why did you help me before? Why not just arrest me?”

“Because,” he said, not immediately sure how to follow it up. “I…suppose I regarded you as an individual, in need of help. It wasn’t your cause that provoked my sympathy, it was just…it was just…”

“What?”

“I don’t know,” Odo said. He really didn’t know. It was true that he had helped her once, and it was therefore true that he had helped the Bajoran resistance movement once, too. But he’d been much less experienced then. He had been reacting to his immediate circumstances without thinking through the consequences.

“You’re lying,”
the woman said.
“You knew the Cardassians were wrong then, and you know it now.”

“Do I?” Odo said, trying to sound threatening, but it fell flat.

“Yes, you do. You’re not one of them, Odo. You’re one of us.”

“What does being one of ‘them’ entail, exactly?”

“It entails being…evil. Being a thief. A lazy, bullying thief. You’re not like that.”

Odo had the distinct sense that she was trying to manipulate him with this kind of talk, but the trouble was, it was working. “No,” he finally said. “I’m not like that.”

“Then you’ll help us?”

Odo nodded, though he knew she could not see it; the nod was more for himself than it was for her. “Yes,” he said.

“Good,”
she said, accepting his acquiescence without ceremony.
“Your role is twofold, but most of it will not be in any way out of character for you. The primary thing we need for you to do is to distract Dukat. Do you think you can do that?”

Odo almost laughed. In fact, it was often all he could do to get rid of Dukat, when the man sought company. “I think I can,” he told her.

After the transmission had ended, Odo second-guessed the security of the line. Nobody had been listening, as far as he could tell, but he knew that if someone meant to overhear, there wasn’t much he could do. He suspected that Dukat didn’t really trust him, despite the man’s repeated attempts to strike up confidential chats. Now that Odo had so few allies on the station—Russol was long gone, and Odo had made few friends on the Bajoran side—he had to constantly watch his back. Fortunately, for a shape-shifter, watching one’s back was an easy affair.

Why
was
he helping this Bajoran woman? Was it simply because he was intrigued by her, the first Bajoran woman he had ever encountered, so long ago at the institute, or did it go deeper than that? He supposed he had never really been able to sympathize with Dukat’s perspective, had never agreed with the Cardassian occupation in general, especially not since he had finally begun to understand the many facets of it. And yet, he had continued on at this station, with his job in security, sometimes staying true to his own code of ethics, and occasionally submitting to Dukat’s version of things just in order to maintain simplicity and stay beneath the radar of the Cardassians here. Odo didn’t want to leave Terok Nor—it came down to that. For he still hoped he would someday learn news of his own people, and he supposed this was the best place in the B’hava’el system to do that.

But now he risked it all—and why? He did not believe that it was strictly out of loyalty to whatever imagined relationship he had with Kira Nerys. No, it went deeper than that, he supposed. While he had often told himself that it had nothing to do with him, he had pretended often enough that he did not notice the disparity between Bajoran and Cardassian. Maybe now it was time to do something about it.

Cardassia City was atypically bleak and overcast. In the old times, it was said that portions of what was now the Western Hemisphere had been dotted all over with thick, lush forests, heavy with rainfall. But an atmospheric calamity of uncertain origin had let to centuries of drought, and the forests had all been shortsightedly cut down. The soil beneath the fertile canopy had, after a single generation of unsustainable farming, withdrawn from deep, silty black topsoil to the parched sands that were so well-known beyond the periphery of the cities. Desert now, where it had once been rain forest.

If only my ancestors had known better,
Kutel Esad thought to himself. The dense, verdant forests that had once existed on Cardassia Prime were all but forgotten. Historians and archaeologists had an inkling of what the old landscape had looked like, and of course, the Oralians knew—because it was described in the Recitations. But most modern Cardassians were entirely unaware of the paradise their planet had once been.

Esad walked for a long time, making his way through the city’s orderly sectors, navigating the tangled streets until he came to a particular residential neighborhood. Esad had been to this part of town only a few times; most of his business was conducted in the center of the city, and he lived in the area where the Paldar Sector met Tarlak, near the headquarters of the Obsidian Order.