Star Trek: Fall 02: The Crimson Shadow

by Una McCormack

  Mhevet rubbed her cheek.

  “See what we mean?” asked Coranis. “You can’t expect us to rely on the constabularies. We made that mistake once, and we’ll never make it again. Yes, yes—perhaps we do trust you to do the right thing, and perhaps even some of your colleagues, but we’re not going to fool ourselves that people like you will always be in charge. There are others there—there are always others there—waiting to crawl out from under their stones. They stole our Union from us once before, and they brought us to the Fire. That’s not going to happen again. We won’t let it happen again.”

  Mhevet put down her glass. “You know I have some sympathy with what you’re saying,” she said. “But all this . . .” She gestured around the room, taking in the posters, the books, the pamphlets, Coranis’s latest half-written call to arms. “You’re keeping the Fire burning. This won’t bring stability.”

  “Cardassia was stable for a long time under the Obsidian Order, Ari,” Irian pointed out quietly. “But at what price?”

  “You should have stuck with us,” said Coranis. “You shouldn’t have gone back to the other side. Have you ever considered maybe that’s why we don’t trust you? We thought you were one of us, and then you crossed over to the other side.”

  “I’m not the other side! Why can’t you understand that? We’re not the same constabulary that existed under the Dominion, and we’re not the same one that was let loose in East Torr! Don’t you understand that’s why I went back? To make sure that the constabularies would never fail like that again? I’ve worked very hard to make sure of that. It’s not made me popular, but it was the right thing to do.”

  “And are you? Sure of it?”

  Obscurely, Mhevet found herself thinking about coffee. “Of course I am! How could I be part of it otherwise? We’re here to serve and protect you.”

  Coranis shook her head. “Police forces serve whoever is in power.”

  “The people are in power now on Cardassia,” Mhevet said.

  “You think so?” Irian sighed. “I suppose that explains why you did what you did.”

  “You’ll see,” said Coranis. “The constabularies will look after the people as long as the people agree with whoever is in power. The moment that changes . . .” She snapped her fingers. “They’ll come and shoot at us all over again. If you won’t do anything to stop Evek Temet and his gangsters taking control of North Torr,” said Coranis, “then why shouldn’t we think that you want them to take control? We’ll have to stop them ourselves.” She turned back to her comm and started writing again.

  “Thanks for the fruit, Ari,” Irian said, as she took her to the door.

  “Please be careful,” Mhevet said. “Don’t put yourselves in harm’s way.”

  Irian smiled. “We’re old hands at this. You take care too, out there among the enemy.”

  * * *

  Back at the department, Mhevet sat listening to the thunder build throughout the afternoon. At last, she went and knocked on the door of Kalanis’s office. Closing the door behind her, she launched straight in.

  “Don’t be angry with me, but I happened to pass through East Torr today—”

  “Just happened, did it, Ari?”

  “And there’s going to be trouble tonight.”

  Kalanis sighed. “What did I say to you about this?”

  Quickly, Mhevet pressed on, “I know you told me to stay away. I know I’m supposed to be solving a murder case—but this is serious, Reta. All the signs are there. There’ll be trouble tonight and I don’t think it will be limited to Torr.”

  Kalanis drummed her fingers against her desk. “Well,” she said, “in that case, I suppose we’d better be prepared. Overtime for everyone.”

  Mhevet sat down, pulled out her personal comm, and began to sketch out operations. “My guess is there’ll be two flashpoints,” she said, “at the tramlines and at HARF. I’ll speak to Commander Fry.”

  * * *

  There was indeed trouble and of exactly the kind that Mhevet feared: bitter and divisive. “You’ll get abuse from both sides,” she told her people as they put on armor and collected batons. “Don’t listen. If we kick off first, they’ve got their excuse to go in. Keep your visor down but your badge visible. Knowing you can be identified is what will stop you from doing anything stupid.”

  At the tramlines that marked the unofficial border between North and East Torr, the two sides gathered. It began as chanting on one side and singing on the other. The people from the constabulary formed a double line between them: shields up. The sun began to set, and the chants got angrier and the songs more accusatory. Mhevet watched the last rays of sunlight sink behind the tenements. Then both sides surged forward.

  * * *

  Over at HARF, Šmrhová stood at the window of Fry’s office and watched what was happening outside. Darkness had descended, but the compound was lit up like a bonfire under bright security lights. Beyond the perimeter fencing, she could see the orange lights of the constabulary units and, beyond that, dark figures moving. Here and there, she caught the occasional red flash of disruptor fire.

  Worf came to stand beside her. “Hard to watch,” he said.

  “I hate not being part of the action,” Šmrhová said. “I hate not knowing what’s happening. I don’t know whether everything’s going as it should be.”

  “We have our orders,” said Fry. “Nobody goes out, and nobody comes in.”

  “Assuming the line holds,” Worf said. “Otherwise, they’ll all be coming in.”

  “The line will hold,” said Fry, calmly. “The constabularies know what they’re doing.”

  “Be ready anyway, Commander.” Worf turned to Šmrhová saying, “You may be called upon to defend this installation, if the constabularies can’t hold back that crowd.”

  Double bind, thought Šmrhová, peering out again into the gloom, trying to grasp what was happening. If they do get through, we’ll be brought forward. And that’s exactly what these agitators want: Starfleet officers pointing weapons at Cardassian civilians. It will be on every ’cast seconds later.

  * * *

  The line held, this time. Later, it would come to be known as the Battle for the Heartland: the worst violence seen on the streets of this turbulent city for years. Later, there would be holodramas about it, showing the plucky constabularies holding the line against two implacable forces set on tearing the capital apart. Mhevet would start watching one of these holodramas one night: at Year’s Turn, when most people were out on the streets, partying rather than rioting. She didn’t get very far through. It tried to make sense of the events. But there wasn’t that kind of sense, in Mhevet’s experience. Quite the contrary. There had been confusion and terror, and mistakes were made in the heat of the moment. There had been too much alcohol or other stimulants flying around; a gang of people (some in uniform) gorging on the violence; and another set of people (almost all in uniform) who were not being paid enough to try to stem the tide.

  Arati Mhevet had been there before in the chaotic days that followed the war and the crisis after Ghemor’s assassination, and, before all that, she had been out there when the Jem’Hadar went on their rampage. This time, like all the other times, she strode in and was patient, careful, and focused, and as dawn began to rise over Cardassia’s beaten capital, something like order began to take hold. Under the rays of the red sun, Mhevet shoved one more young man into the back of the big skimmer.

  He grabbed her hand.

  “Take that off me, Sunshine,” she rasped, “or I’ll break your wrist.”

  He let go, quickly. “Please,” he said, voice low. “I need to talk to you.”

  She looked at him. He had gray eyes. Intelligent eyes. She put her hand against his head and pushed him into the van with the rest of them. If he was really so smart, he wouldn’t be here. “Don’t worry,” she said wearily, “I’ll be talking to everyone here soon enough. Your turn will come.”

  Eight

  Late. The air thick and th
e stars blinded. On a night like this, I can believe that nothing else exists beyond this poor battered world. I can believe there is no chance of escape from its clutch. Perhaps you are wise not to visit Cardassia Prime. She only breaks the heart.

  EG

  —not sent—

  * * *

  A long night, made longer by the threat of the long, hot day that was bound to follow. By mid-morning Mhevet had conducted fifteen interviews, nowhere near half the number of the people arrested the previous night. Nationalists and radicals alike. Mhevet didn’t discriminate.

  Taking a break to stand outside the interview room where her latest rioter was waiting, Mhevet gratefully received a water bottle from Dhrok, who had been assisting her in the interviews. “Who do we have now?”

  Dhrok checked her padd. “Rakhat Blok. Mean anything to you?”

  Blok . . . Mhevet shook her head. “Nothing.”

  Not that the chief instigators were likely to give their real names or, indeed, to have been anywhere near the riot when it happened. Having lit the fire, they’d have been well away before the explosion. Maybe even as far away as the Assembly itself.

  Splashing some water on her hands, Mhevet pressed her palms against cheeks, forehead, throat, the back of her neck. “I suppose we should hear this one’s story before we charge him.”

  Wearily, she went inside, Dhrok following behind. The whole process was fairly predictable. People tended to make one of two defenses. There were those who said they were out shopping or seeing a mate or maybe simply going for a walk when they’d turned a corner and ran straight into the trouble. Bad luck, they said. Wrong place at the wrong time. The others at least admitted that they’d gone out on purpose, but only to see what was going on—they had nothing to do with any of it. Mhevet wondered which Blok would turn out to be. It would all be sorted out by the holo-recordings from the cams on the officers’ visors, but that would take time.

  Something about Blok seemed familiar. Mhevet had seen too many faces in the past few hours to be able to place him, but she knew she’d get there in the end.

  “Oh, at last,” he said, as Mhevet and Dhrok took their seats. “I’ve been asking all night if I could speak to someone.”

  That was who he was: the young man she’d arrested and unceremoniously bundled into the back of the skimmer. “You’re speaking to me now,” Mhevet said. “So, which is it? Were you in the wrong place at the wrong time, or had you gone out for a look and found yourself mixed up in things?”

  “No, no . . . This is important. Do you have a padd?”

  Dhrok pushed her padd forward. Blok took it and started entering numbers. “This is a code number for a secure line that will get you through to a friend of mine. It’s very important that you contact him at once—”

  Mhevet cut him off. “You do realize you’re under arrest?”

  “I know. Please, you have to contact this person. It’s incredibly important—”

  Dhrok leaned over to speak quietly into Mhevet’s ear. “Just to remind you that he does have the right to contact somebody. We ought to let him if we don’t want to run into trouble later at the arraignment.”

  Good point. It would slow down things for now; it would speed things up later. “All right. Dhrok, pass him your comm.”

  As the young man placed his call, Mhevet studied him. He was powerfully built and in excellent physical condition. Her instincts told her that this was not somebody born and brought up in Torr. He would have been smaller, less healthy. Children of the old service grades usually were. So who was he? A rich kid playing at militant? He looked a little too old for that, even with the brutal haircut and the army-style clothes. Still, Mhevet would put leks on this call being to an expensive lawyer, paid for by a wealthy parent. . . .

  “We need to talk, sir,” Blok said. “What? No, no . . . Look, I’ve been arrested. What? Well, how do you think—? I’m at—” He glanced up questioningly at Mhevet.

  “Constabulary HQ.”

  “Constabulary HQ. Ask for . . .” Another querying look.

  “Senior Investigator Mhevet.”

  “Senior Investigator Mhevet. What? All right, yes, that’s fine, yes, I’ll do that. Yes, I completely understand; I’ll make sure of that. Of course, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  He ended the communication and passed the padd back.

  “Care to explain?” Mhevet asked.

  “What?” Blok rubbed his eyes. “Look, I know you must have had an appalling night, and this must be an exhausting morning, and I’m sorry that I’m taking up so much of your time. But this really is important, and he won’t be long.”

  “He? Who are you talking about?” Mhevet leaned forward on the table, imposing herself onto the space between them. “If you think your connections can get you out of here, you’re fooling yourself—”

  Blok shook his head. “It’s not like that—”

  “Then who is ‘he’?”

  “He said not to say. . . . He also said that only you should be here, Investigator.” Blok looked apologetically at Dhrok. “Sorry.”

  “I don’t believe this. . . .”

  “He’s coming to the back door. He said to meet him there, Investigator.”

  “You really are something, aren’t you?” asked Dhrok.

  “I’m sorry about this. But it’s very important.”

  “And what we do isn’t?”

  Blok ran his hand through his short hair. “I think,” he said, “you’ll find out that we’re in much the same business.”

  Mhevet picked up her water bottle. She took a swig and rolled the liquid slowly around her mouth. “All right,” she said. “Dhrok, off you go.”

  “What?” she said.

  “Go and have breakfast.” She fished in her pocket and pulled out her card for the canteen. “My treat.”

  “Ari, there always has to be two of us—”

  “That’s fine,” said Blok quickly. “Really, that’s fine.”

  “How often,” said Mhevet, “do I bend the rules?”

  Dhrok sighed and stood up. “All right,” she said. “But if there’s any flak for this, Ari . . .”

  “I’ll take any flak.”

  She left, taking Mhevet’s canteen card with her.

  “Back door?” said Mhevet to Blok.

  “Back door. He won’t be long.”

  He wasn’t. Soon enough, a sleek, well-maintained skimmer pulled up at the end of the alley. Two men—one look told Mhevet they were bodyguards—got out, and then another man, smaller and trimmer, emerged. Mhevet felt a faint prickle of unease. Who had she arrested when she’d brought in Blok? Surely, from that skimmer, this was someone of influence. Was she finally finding the connections between the organizers of the street violence and the powerful of the city?

  The man moved toward her quickly with speed and grace. He was wearing a mask, although the dust wasn’t too bad this morning. Blue eyes observed her sharply.

  “Investigator Mhevet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you for this. I’m sure you have a great deal to do. Your assistance in this matter is appreciated.”

  “That’s fine. . . .” She was sure she’d heard that voice somewhere. “Do you want to step inside?”

  He nodded at his two bodyguards, who withdrew. “Let’s speak out here for a moment,” he said. “My experience of interview rooms tells me that they’re usually equipped with recording devices.”

  “All right. . . . What’s going on?”

  “Firstly, let me clarify who you’re holding. Rakhat Blok, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. In fact, his name is Glinn Ravel Dygan.”

  “Glinn Dygan?” Mhevet asked.

  “Yes, a very highly regarded officer, both here and on the Enterprise—across Starfleet in general, in fact. He’s been investigating on my behalf amongst the more . . . excitable residents of the Torr sector.”

  “Investigating? What kind of investigating?”

  He looked
at her coldly over the edge of his mask. “What kind do you think?”

  Mhevet decided she’d had enough of all this intrigue. She rested her hand upon her baton. He followed the movement with amusement in his eyes. “Who are you, exactly?” she asked.

  “Who am I?” The man smiled genially and tilted his head. “It’s something of a relief to know that I can still pass unrecognized in some quarters. My name, Investigator, is Elim Garak. I’m the Cardassian ambassador to the United Federation of Planets. May I speak to Glinn Dygan, please?”

  * * *

  At the ambassador’s request, she brought Blok out into the alleyway to speak to him. She tried not to think about how many regulations she was breaking. She watched from inside as they conducted a hurried conversation. Eventually Blok put his head around the door.

  “He’d like a word.”

  Blok—Dygan—took her place inside, by the door, leaving her alone with the ambassador. He still had his mask on, but when he looked at her, she saw that his bright blue eyes were no longer sparkling with amusement. They were dulled, anxious, like those of a careworn old man. “All you all right?” she asked. “Here, have some water.”

  He took her water bottle and, expertly, pushed it under his mask, drinking without revealing much more of his face. When he handed the bottle back, she could feel from the weight that he had drained it dry. But he looked less likely to collapse in the heat.

  “Another alleyway,” he said, looking around. “Makes a change from a small room, I suppose. There’s a universe of wonders out there, Investigator, and yet I seem to have spent my life in little rooms and seedy alleyways.”

  “I know what you mean,” she muttered.

  “My apologies for drinking all your water.”

  “I’d rather that than a case of heat stroke on my hands. How do you know Blok? Dygan, whatever his name is.”