Star Trek: Fall 02: The Crimson Shadow

by Una McCormack

  “Nevertheless, Commander,” Picard said, “those are our orders. You’ve already said how there’s been considerable anti-Federation sentiment expressed over the past few days—”

  “But from specific groups and most certainly not from people who work with us . . . sir.” Fry’s composure was slipping, Šmrhová thought. Understandable, perhaps, from a woman seeing a decade’s care and labor destroyed in less than a week. “This is not simply a matter of asking Cardassian citizens not to come to work. In some cases, we’ll be asking families to split. What, for example, do you suggest I say to the widow of Lieutenant Aleyni Cam? She’s Cardassian born. A Cardassian citizen. Am I required to tell her that her presence in her own home is now considered a security risk?”

  “In such cases, Commander, as in others,” Picard said, “I believe we can—and should—exercise discretion.”

  “It’s always the small people who suffer, isn’t it, Captain?” Fry stood up straight. “Well,” she said, “if I have to go and tell some of the most loyal and hardworking people on Cardassia Prime that they have to leave their homes in the middle of the autumn storm, I suppose I should get on with it.” She stopped at the door. “This order, and this order alone, will do more damage to the work we’ve done on Cardassia than anything else in the last ten years. Still, if it’s an order straight from the president . . .” She strode from the room.

  Šmrhová whistled softly under her breath. “Sorry, sir.”

  “I know what you’re thinking, Number One,” Picard said.

  “As I said,” Worf replied, “it is a strong signal.”

  “And I regret it,” Picard said. “But to the best of our ability, and within the bounds of reason and compassion, we must implement this order. HARF installations within the Union are now closed to all non-Starfleet and non-Federation personnel.”

  Šmrhová watched as the Enterprise’s first officer looked his captain straight in the eye. “All, sir?”

  Picard looked straight back. “Within the bounds of reason and compassion.”

  * * *

  Lunch finished, Mhevet decided she had better go and interview the two girls who had found the body. The fewer gaps there were in her investigation when the new guard arrived, the better. She might be able to leave on her own terms, rather than be shoved unceremoniously out of the door.

  Her first stop was a tidy tenement block near the Federation hospital on the northwest side of Torr. The woman who opened the door looked at her with distaste. “I was wondering when we were going to see you again,” said the girl’s mother. “Esla’s been in a state since that day. We should sue.”

  “I’m not entirely sure who you would sue, ma’am, but don’t let that stop you.”

  The interview was quickly over. The girl hadn’t seen anything but the body, and thinking about that reduced her to tears and incoherence. As Mhevet left, Esla’s mother said, “Are you going to see the other one now?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Because if you’re planning to interview her with a parent present, I doubt you’ll be in luck.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Go and see. They built that part of town from rubbish, and rubbish moved in.”

  And it was indeed a run-down part of Torr, cobbled together from Federation supplies that were only ever intended to be temporary and should have been replaced years ago. She found the girl sitting on the step outside a tenement building, and she was eating from a bag of something sugary.

  Mhevet stood in front of her and folded her arms. “Is your dad inside?”

  The girl, sticky-mouthed and sticky-fingered, gave her a look that said: What do you think?

  “Where is he, then?”

  “Why do you want to know?” She was dark-eyed and tired, as if she had been up all night.

  “Because I have to talk to you and I can’t do that without your mom or your dad there.”

  “My mom’s gone and my dad’s been at the geleta house all morning.”

  It was afternoon now. Chances were he was long since drunk and wouldn’t be much assistance in this interview anyway.

  “I’m not gonna tell you anything anyway,” the girl added, in a lackluster voice, more for form’s sake than anything else, it seemed. “Police scum.”

  “Police scum?” Mhevet rolled her eyes. There was something to be said for the old days when holodramas had to be licensed: that had at least set some standards for content. She nodded at the bag, which the girl promptly scrunched up and threw on the ground in front of her feet. Mhevet bit her tongue. “What if I buy you some more of those?” she asked. “Better still, what if I buy you some proper food?”

  The girl looked thoughtful. “Does my dad have to be there?”

  “Would you rather he wasn’t?”

  The girl shrugged.

  “Then let’s make it just you, me, and some hot terik stew and canka nuts from that canteen up the street.”

  The girl kicked the bag with a grimy shoe. “And some of that?”

  “If you pick up the bag.”

  The girl tutted, as if this was a flagrant violation of her rights, and picked up the bag. “All right,” she said. “Deal.”

  At the canteen, the girl fell ravenously on her nuts and stew. Mhevet picked at her own plate and watched her. Poor thing. She was smart, but what chance did she have? No mother, useless father—it would fall like a shadow over her life, and she’d probably never get out of this place. She thought fleetingly of something the ambassador had said: There’s a universe of wonders out there, and yet I seem to have spent my life in little rooms and seedy alleyways. He could have added “and bad canteens” to the list.

  Dessert arrived. The girl dug in with gusto. “All right,” Mhevet said. “Payment time. Tell me everything you saw that day.”

  “Just that day?” the girl asked, her voice muffled by the spoon shoved into her mouth.

  “What do you mean? Was there another day?”

  “Ye-ah! I saw that Bajoran down there loads. I used to go down there all the time. Not now. Esla’s mother won’t let her go around with me now, and it’s not as much fun. Stupid.” She blinked a couple of times. “Anyway, he was down there all the time.”

  Well away from any surveillance. So this was where he’d been going to—exactly where they’d found him. Mhevet sighed. Kalanis had told her to interview the girls. And why had she resisted? Because she’d been offended to be stuck with a case she’d thought was taking her away from her real work.

  “All right,” she said. “What was he doing there?”

  “Meeting people. You know. Talking to them.”

  “Did you hear what they were talking about?”

  “No. I used to hide. I could see them, but I couldn’t hear. There was one time they argued, though. I think they were arguing about the Bajoran’s wife.”

  “How many people were with him, usually? Just one other person?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes he was there too.”

  “Who? Who do you mean?”

  “Your friend,” the girl said, shoving another spoonful into her mouth and not realizing that she was in the process of kicking over Mhevet’s already fairly flimsy world.

  “My friend?” asked Mhevet softly.

  “You know. The one who was there that time you came to look at the body.” She looked at Mhevet. “The one who took us home.”

  Fumbling slightly as she reached into her pocket, Mhevet brought out her personal padd. She scrolled quickly through a series of images before finding the one she needed. From last Year’s Turn. They’d had a great party.

  “Yes,” said the girl. “That’s him!”

  “I see.” Mhevet put her padd away. “Did Esla ever see him?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Does it matter?”

  “Yes.”

  She thought for a while. “No. She only came there with me a couple of times. She knew she’d be in trouble with her mom.”

  “Is that the truth?”

&
nbsp; The girl looked up at her angrily. “I’m not a liar!”

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  “Yes, it’s the truth!”

  “Good.” One thing she didn’t have to worry about. “Stay here,” said Mhevet. “I need to make a call.”

  The girl ran her spoon around the sugary-sweet mess in her dish. “There’s still loads left in here,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Mhevet went over to the public comm. “Come on, come on . . .” she muttered, as the call was put through. Then: “Hi, Erelya.”

  Erelya Fhret looked past her. “Where on Prime are you now? Honestly, Ari, you find some real dumps to hang out in—”

  “Mm, well, comes with the territory. You fancy some lunch?”

  “Not there—”

  “Oh, but it’s great,” Mhevet trilled. “You’d love it. Best scattel fish in Torr.”

  Erelya’s eyes narrowed. She was allergic to scattel fish and knew Mhevet was unlikely to forget. The effects were memorable.

  “Maybe I will,” she said. “Everything good at your end?”

  “Oh, you know, the usual. People.”

  “People?” Fhret frowned.

  Please, thought Mhevet, get it. Please get it. And then please don’t let me down. . . .

  “Okay, Ari,” Fhret said. “I’ll be with you soon. How can I refuse?”

  The comm ended. Mhevet paid for lunch, in coins, and went back to the table. “Eat up,” she said. “We’re going.”

  “I’ve still got all this—”

  “Bring it with you.”

  They went back outside and dashed through the rain over to the skimmer. “Are we going for a ride?” the girl asked, as they climbed inside.

  “No,” said Mhevet. “Not in this, anyway.”

  The girl was disappointed. “Really?”

  “Really,” said Mhevet, because it was a department skimmer, and it would be a matter of a moment’s work for Tret Fereny to trace them, the same way he could trace her if she used her personal comm. “Don’t worry, you’ll get to go in my friend’s. It’s much nicer anyway.”

  It was, too, as the girl made clear when Erelya Fhret pulled up in her very flashy skimmer. Mhevet pushed the girl quickly into the back and climbed into the front.

  “So,” said Fhret, as she pulled out into the rain. “Where to?”

  Mhevet tried to think of somewhere safe. “East,” she said, at last.

  * * *

  The little girl kept up a constant stream of chatter and wisecracks all the way to East Torr, and she didn’t seem to notice that the two women in the front were grimly silent.

  “Left here,” murmured Mhevet, and Fhret turned into a wide street. The market was closed today. The rain was pooling in the canopies over the stalls, which hung heavily and precariously as a result. “That building there.”

  Silently, Fhret eased the skimmer to a stop, aligning it perfectly to the building’s main door. “So you don’t get wet,” she said.

  “I can’t thank you enough—”

  “Shut up, and get on with whatever you have to do. But you owe me a lifetime of lunches for this, Ari.”

  Mhevet leaned over to kiss her friend quickly on the cheek, and she felt Erelya’s hand upon her arm. “Take care of yourself,” the other woman whispered.

  “You too,” Mhevet replied.

  At Mhevet’s barked instruction, the little girl hopped out of the back and dashed over to the tenement entrance. The skimmer pulled off as Mhevet rang the bell.

  “She was nice,” said the girl.

  “Glad you approve,” Mhevet said. “You won’t like Coranis.”

  At first, Coranis seemed set on proving this: she wouldn’t let them in until Irian intervened. “The kid looks worn out. Let’s give them a drink, see if the rain eases up, and then send them on their way.”

  “The rain,” Coranis grumbled, as she moved aside to let them in, “won’t ease up for hours.”

  Irian made them red leaf tea. She must have slipped something into it because, thankfully, the little girl curled upon the couch and fell straight asleep. Irian covered her with a blanket. “Why have you come here, Ari?” she asked.

  “I need to be off the radar for a while,” Mhevet replied.

  “Don’t you have colleagues who can take care of you?” Coranis, seeing Mhevet’s expression, burst out laughing. “So they’ve turned out to be not so reliable after all?”

  “Some of them are reliable. But they’re not in the ascendant right now. Coranis, this is important.”

  “What we do is important,” Coranis said. “And first you opted out, and now you’ve brought trouble here—”

  “Please. I need to be somewhere safe while I work out what to do next.” She nodded at the girl who was asleep on the couch. “I need to keep her safe. Not to mention dry. . . .”

  Irian touched her mate’s arm. “She’s a child. . . .”

  Coranis sighed. “Oh, all right! But you can’t stay here indefinitely. We don’t want trouble.”

  Mhevet nodded her thanks. “Can I use the comm?”

  Coranis and Irian glanced at each other.

  “Nobody will know it’s me using it,” Mhevet said.

  “Ari knows what she’s talking about,” said Irian.

  “Oh, go ahead,” Coranis said ungraciously.

  But it was difficult to know who to contact. Kalanis, obviously, would have been her first choice, but Kalanis was almost certainly under observation. Fhret had done as much as she dared, if not more so, given the way the CIB was going. She couldn’t approach anyone at work, because she didn’t know who was involved. Never never never would I have guessed Fereny. And she didn’t want to put anyone not involved in danger. The ambassador, her single friend in a high place, was dead.

  She had run out of Cardassian friends. What about Federation friends?

  This is one big favor I’m asking for, Mhevet thought, as she started keying in Commander Margaret Fry’s code, but, then, I guess they’re going soon. . . .

  She was only partway through the code when her own personal comm chimed.

  “Are you going to answer that?” asked Coranis.

  Mhevet hesitated. If she answered, she would certainly be traced. Then someone began to speak: “It’s Blok. Get in touch when you get this.”

  She was hugely relieved to hear his voice. So there were still two of them. Quickly, reading from the screen on her comm, Mhevet keyed the code he had used into Coranis and Irian’s comm. “It’s me,” she said. “What do you want?”

  “We should talk. I have information for you.”

  “It’s pretty awkward right now—”

  “Tell me about it. . . . Where are you?”

  “With friends.”

  He frowned. She saw realization dawn on his face. “Like that, is it?”

  “Yes. And more besides.”

  “Can you say where?”

  Coranis grabbed her hand. “Who are you bringing here now?” she hissed.

  Mhevet shook her off and rattled off the address.

  “All right,” said Dygan. “I’ll get over straightaway.”

  He cut the comm.

  “How dare you!” Coranis said. “You turn up out of the blue expecting us to help you, and now you invite someone over without even asking!”

  “I’m sorry,” Mhevet said. “I’m a bad person. I’ve got no excuse. But he’s still coming around. When he’s here, we’ll leave. We’ll go somewhere else. I promise.”

  Not that she had much choice in the matter. When the bell chimed, Coranis took one look at the man standing on her doorstep and exploded. “Who is this, Ari? Look at him!”

  Mhevet could have kicked herself. She’d forgotten that Dygan was dressed for his role: hair cut brutally short and all in brown. He looked exactly like the thug he was pretending to be.

  “He’s undercover. . . . Look, it’s better if you don’t know anything about this.”

  “He’s not coming in here!”
>
  Mhevet glanced at the little girl, still asleep on the sofa, and said to Irian, “Look after her. Really, I can’t stress how important this is. There are some bad people after her, and we have to look after her.”

  “Tell him to go around the back,” Irian said. “And don’t worry—we’re old hands at this, Ari.”

  And they were, of course. They’d been radicals in the old days, when Central Command and the Obsidian Order had an iron grip on Cardassia; and then they had lived through Meya Rejal’s clampdowns and the Dominion purges. They were survivors, and they were good people.

  Mhevet sent Dygan around the back and dashed out to join him. He’d folded his big, solid frame under the fire escape steps, and it wasn’t keeping him particularly dry. Rainwater was running in little rivers down his face, and his brown jacket was soaked through. “Sorry,” she said, pulling her jacket over her head and joining him under the steps. “They saw you and panicked.”

  “That’s all right. I’d cross the street to avoid me. Listen, have you heard about the ambassador?”

  She nearly sobbed. Couldn’t stop herself. Dygan looked at her with concern. Strange from someone with his appearance. “Hey, it’ll be all right.”

  “Oh, yeah? It’s all blown up at the constabulary,” she said. “My boss has been suspended. There are new people in there, and I don’t think they’re our kind of people. On top of that, I’ve discovered who killed Aleyni Cam. One of my colleagues.”

  Dygan swore.

  “A little girl found the body. I went to see her. She recognized him.”

  “A girl? Where is she now?”

  “Up in the apartment with my friends—”

  He glanced up the steps nervously. “Can you trust them?”

  “I can trust them to be suspicious of authority and to put themselves between her and anyone who comes knocking at the door. Look, can you help? I don’t know where to go. I can’t take her back to the department. I don’t know what’s going on there. I don’t know how high up this goes.”

  “No. No, you can’t go back there. . . . It’s only you and me now, you realize?”

  “I know.”

  “The ambassador wasn’t stupid,” Dygan said. “I think he knew that once he found out, he’d become a target. The thing is . . .” Dygan wiped rain from his face, smearing red across his cheeks and brow. “The other thing is . . . after the ambassador was killed, I overheard a couple of people talking. They said that the word was that the ambassador had just come out of a meeting with the castellan. . . .”