by Dayton Ward
Bokar shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”
Sisko directed Bokar to the transporter pad as quickly as he could without seeming too suspicious. He needed to get out of here before Stan happened to see him, but he didn’t want Bokar to have any reason to balk at coming along.
“Where shall we go?” Bokar said as he stepped on the pad. Sisko quickly began touching the destination coordinates before Bokar could get at it.
“I’ve got a place in mind,” he said.
“Fine,” the Farian said, and stood back to wait for the transport, his expression guileless and content. He was pleased to be leaving work.
But when he and Sisko materialized on the farthest side of Trivas, surrounded as they were by old, broken-down mining equipment and tumbleweeds, Bokar’s face read bemusement.
“I thought the old mine was shut down here,” Bokar remarked, looking around at the desolation that surrounded them. “Is this where you meant to take us, Ben?”
Sisko didn’t answer. He stepped off the transporter pad, herding Bokar along, and drew his disruptor. “Tell me about Janel,” he said softly.
The Farian raised his hands, a sudden sheen breaking out around the sides of his face. “J-Janel? Tigan?”
“Tigan,” Sisko replied, his voice low now; but it was lost over the desolation that surrounded them, the abandoned machinery looming eerily in the background.
“I was only . . . hey, your father-in-law told me he was going to give you some trouble.”
“Did he really go back to Trill?”
Bokar shrugged. “It’s just like I said—he’s not coming back.”
“Because he’s dead.”
The Farian flinched. “You don’t have to . . . to . . .”
“Speak the truth?”
“Fine, yes. He’s dead. I don’t know what you want from me, Benjamin. Stan Devitt told me Janel was up to no good.”
“And you had every intention of blackmailing me, didn’t you? You were threatening me, at the tavern.”
“You’re paranoid.”
“I don’t think I am,” Sisko said. “But if you were in my position, wouldn’t you be?”
The Farian looked angry. He started to lower his hands. “The man was a lecherous drunk, anyway. He didn’t deserve to—”
Sisko squeezed the trigger. There was a blinding flash of light, the briefest sliver of a scream from Thadial Bokar, and then the man was lying in an unkempt, sizzling heap on the ground.
Sisko stared at the body. He felt calm, though he was not entirely sure what had prompted him to do what he just did. Terrans can’t trust anyone, Janel had said. This Farian was going to talk to someone, Sisko was sure of it. Or at least, he told himself as he dragged the man’s body toward an abandoned mine shaft, there was enough of a chance . . . Letting him live was not an option.
He could not consider the possibility that he had just killed the man for revenge. Janel was his friend. But then, Janel had threatened to blackmail Sisko even more blatantly than Thadial Bokar had. It made little sense to Sisko that he really wanted revenge on behalf of a man who was trying to ruin him, and so he did not allow himself to consider it further.
Sisko could hardly believe how cool he felt when he returned to Akiem headquarters, his shoulder smarting slightly from the effort of lifting the dead weight of the other man’s lifeless body. Maybe I am suited to this sort of work, he decided.
He hadn’t walked two steps off the transporter when he got a summons from Stan Devitt to come to his office right away. The ill-placed composure he had been feeling suddenly vanished, and he reluctantly headed for his father-in-law’s office.
Stan was seated behind his desk, which was a flimsy, inexpensive unit. It was obviously designed for a Cardassian, as it was a little too tall for Stan to use comfortably. The Cardassians didn’t care to outfit Stan with anything better than the absolute essentials. “Benjamin,” he said, as Sisko walked through the door, and he knew immediately that he was about to be disciplined for something; otherwise, Stan probably would have called him “Benny” again.
“Sir?”
Stan picked up a padd from the clutter on his desk. “I have here a manifest that tells me you have gone to the number two colonized moon of Trivas twice in just under a week, the last time being this very morning. Do you care to explain?”
“I’ve got a client who needs a little extra persuasion,” he said quickly. “I’m trying a new approach. I—”
“The man is a disabled, blind Terran, Benjamin. What kind of coercion could he possibly need, aside from the good-old-fashioned kind?”
“He . . . he can’t pay,” Sisko said, scrambling for words. “I don’t mean to say that I’m trying to let him off the hook, it’s just that—”
“Benjamin, it is imperative that we treat all of our clients exactly the same, no matter the circumstances. We are not interested in the personal details of these people’s lives. We are interested in helping them keep their payments current with the Cardasssians, so that their lives can continue without further . . . complication. This is a service we perform, and it seems to me that if you’ve let this man slide in any way, then you are doing him no favors. You are doing him the opposite of a favor.”
“Yes, sir. I know that. But—”
“If you are telling me that you can’t handle a blind man, then I need to find someone else for this job.” He pressed his thumb and forefinger into the bridge of his nose. “Please, Benjamin, you are family. I don’t want to hear from you that I have to find someone else to do what you have been hired to do. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Now, I want you to go back there immediately, and kill the man’s sister.”
Sisko couldn’t move or speak for a moment before he finally found a reply. “Sir, the sister is the only one who’s capable of coming up with any money,” he said. “The man can’t work at all. If we kill her, we’ll never see a single strip of latinum.”
“Then kill him,” Stan said, shrugging. “I don’t know why the Cardassians even bothered to save him, unless they saw it as a means to earn more money. My records are showing that he was pretty badly off after the accident, but he’s still got one functioning kidney. If you can find the right markets, nonreplicated Terran organs can fetch a decent price. He’s probably got some implants that are worth a thing or two, as well.” He began to click away at his keypad. “I’ll look into it while you’re gone. Hopefully I’ll have a buyer by the time you get back.”
You could help us get away. We could all get away, Ben.
Sisko was thinking that he was going to have to learn to reprogram the shuttle after all, and he was going to have to do it quickly. He excused himself, but Stan wasn’t finished with him yet. The older man spoke again, just as Sisko was about to turn and go.
“I’ll send my man Thadial Bokar along with you, to make sure it’s done right.” Stan pressed a comm panel on his desk, but he got no response. “Damned Farian,” he muttered, “Can never find him when I need him. Don’t know why we keep him around.” He pressed his comm panel again. “En Shrall,” he said crisply into the receiver. “I’ve got an assignment for you, and it starts now. Report to my office.”
A surly-looking Andorian appeared a few moments later, his antennae squirming. His defiant posture suggested that he did not appreciate being in the position of being told what to do by a Terran, but he at least projected the appearance of respect with Stan, nodding and accepting the short briefing that followed. Sisko followed the white-haired man out toward where the shuttles were docked, his mind scrambling to formulate a plan, but he could come up with nothing.
Sisko thought he might pretend to get lost on the way from the shuttle dock to the Terran encampment on the moon where Kasidy lived, but the Andorian was too savvy and efficient for such tactics; he found his own way to Kasidy’s tent without even consulting Sisko about the location.
Kornelius was still sitting outside the tent in the sam
e posture Benjamin had left him in. He had a dark stain on the front of his shirt that had not been there before. Kasidy must have come out to feed him just after Sisko had left. Otherwise, the scene remained almost entirely unchanged from the way Sisko had last seen it.
“Kornelius Yates,” shouted En Shrall, his midnight-blue eyes narrowing.
Kornelius did not turn his head, did not acknowledge that his name had been called, only sat, his eyes as pale and colorless as the Andorian’s were dark.
En Shrall drew his disruptor, and Sisko heard himself say “Stop!” but the word was lost over the screech of the disruptor. Kornelius’s body sat upright for only an instant more before slumping over and, in what seemed like grotesque slow motion, falling to the dusty ground. The leg that was normally pinned so awkwardly beneath his body extended at an odd angle, causing Sisko to flinch. He looked away, his stomach roiling with nausea.
Sisko looked at his hands, and they were shaking. “What—why—”
“That’s how it’s done,” En Shrall snarled. He headed for the entrance of the tent, but Kasidy had heard the disruptor, and came running outside.
Sisko’s eyes locked on Kasidy’s for a terrible moment while he watched her take in the scene before her, and then she opened her mouth and screamed.
En Shrall tossed a padd at her feet just as her knees were beginning to buckle. Her hands picked it up, but she did not seem to understand what it was. She was weeping and crying as if her heart had just broken clean in two. She pressed the padd to her chest and sobbed like a child.
“Kasidy,” Sisko whispered, and at the sound of his voice she abruptly stopped crying, meeting his gaze once more. She rose to her feet, but she said nothing, only hurled the padd at Sisko with all of her strength. He caught it and his eyes flickered to the sum listed at the bottom. It was three times the original amount.
“You’ve . . . incurred some interest,” he said stupidly.
“Hurry up, Sisko!” The Andorian snarled. He had looped his forearms through Kornelius’s armpits. “Get his legs, will you?”
Kasidy shrieked again. “What do you think you’re doing? Where are you taking him? Don’t touch him!” She beat her fists against Sisko’s chest.
People were coming out of their tents to stare at the scene. “Stop it!” Sisko hissed to Kasidy. “You’ll get yourself killed—and everyone else here, as well!” He wrestled himself away from her and grabbed Kornelius’s ankles, helping the Andorian hustle the blind man’s corpse back to the shuttle. Kasidy collapsed into a heap on the dirt outside her dwelling, screaming her brother’s name, her cries escalating from grief to pure rage. Slowly, the onlookers went back inside their tents, and Sisko maneuvered the shuttle away from the desolation of the moon.
When Sisko reported to work the next day, there was a feeling of tension and chaos in the atmosphere that he could sense immediately. People were walking back and forth quickly through the corridors, engaging in clipped conversations, while others were gathered outside the turbolift in confidential little groups, passing information back and forth in urgent tones.
“What’s going on?” Benjamin asked the first person he saw, a Ferengi named Lat.
“Bit of a kerfuffle,” Lat said. “Cardassian survey team was out on the other side of Trivas today, doing some annual checks on properties that had been declared tapped out, that sort of thing. They came across the body of a Farian, and it hadn’t been there long. Forty-eight hours, tops, they’re saying.” The Ferengi grinned, obviously delighted to be wielding such potent gossip. “Guess who it was?” he whispered happily.
“I . . . don’t know,” Sisko said. He felt suddenly disconnected from his body, as though he were observing the entire exchange from another room.
“It was that cocky Thadial Bokar, that’s who. I always said that quet would get what was coming to him.” He spat the unfamiliar Ferengi curse in such a way that Sisko knew he probably didn’t want to know exactly what it meant.
“Huh, yes, you did say that.” Sisko could not be sure that his posture looked natural. He felt very much as though his bones were about to fail him altogether.
“Tech support is going over transporter configurations,” Lat went on. “They found some footprints coming from the direction of the transport there, though it’s hard to know which hub he might have come from. I’m sure they’ll find it soon enough. Your wife is on the job right now, and we all know she’s not going to leave any stones unturned.”
“N-no,” Sisko said.
Lat left him, and Sisko sat dumbly in the corridor, wishing to be absolutely anywhere but where he was.
The rest of the day passed by with Sisko in half a daze. He made an excuse to leave early, and as soon as he and Jennifer were taken home on the transport shuttle, he made a beeline for the tavern where he had once regularly gone with Janel Tigan.
The bartender brought him a synthale without being asked, and Sisko drained it quickly, but it was not long before he realized that it was probably not a good idea for him to drink alone. In fact, he decided, as he watched the bartender rub at a glass with a dingy cloth, if he was going to drink, this tavern, the tavern where he had recently been seen with both Janel Tigan and Thadial Bokar, was probably the very last place where he should be doing it.
But would it make me seem more guilty if I stopped coming here altogether? Sisko ordered another synthale, to clear his head, he told himself, but again he downed it rapidly and felt as though his thirst had not nearly been slaked; had not even been touched. I should go, he decided, but he ordered one more synthale. This one went down a little more slowly, and Sisko found that, even though sitting here at the bar alone was not especially enjoyable, it seemed that it must be far better than whatever was waiting for him at home.
Sisko lost count of how many ales he drank before he finally picked himself up from the bar stool and found his way back to the apartment that he shared with his wife. When he walked in the door, he expected Jennifer to be asleep, or maybe working on one of her many projects at the computer console in the bedroom. But the lights were all on, and Jennifer was sitting at the low-backed sofa in the front room. She did not appear to have been doing anything; she was apparently just waiting for him, and her expression made him very uneasy. He had found himself less and less able to read her moods in the past few years, but it could not have been more clear that she was unhappy about something.
“Hello, Jen,” he said carefully.
“Hello,” she replied. She lifted her chin slightly to look at him, but said nothing else. He stood before her without talking for a moment, and then he went to the kitchen for another synthale.
“I never see you anymore.” Jennifer’s voice came from where she sat on the couch.
Sisko walked back into the front room and stood before her once again. “I know,” he said, hoping there was some way he could keep this fight as brief as possible. “I’m sorry.”
“When I do see you, you’re drunk.”
He looked at the bottle in his hand. “I’m not drunk,” he said softly.
“Yes, you are. I can always tell when you’re drunk, even before you say anything. Your . . . your posture is different.”
Sisko had no reply. He just continued to stare at the bottle in his hand. Was she really just angry about his drinking?
“Well, go ahead and have it,” she said, indicating the synthale. “I’m not going to stop you. You’re already drunk, it hardly matters.”
There was a chime from the other room, indicating that a communiqué was coming in to the console.
“Who would be calling this late?” Sisko wondered.
“It’s not that late,” Jennifer said, and got up from the davenport to check the console.
Sisko didn’t say anything to that; it felt very, very late to him, but he supposed it was only an effect of how exhausted he was.
Jennifer made a little sound, a clicking of her teeth, seeming to indicate that she was frustrated with whatever she saw on the conso
le.
“What?” Sisko said, following after her. “Who is it?”
Jennifer pressed the receiver panel without answering him. The screen immediately drew up an image of a pale-skinned, wide-eyed woman with red hair and a silvery headpiece encircling her forehead. It was the Intendant of Terok Nor.
“Hello, Intendant,” Jennifer said formally. “How good to hear from you at last.”
“Jennifer,” Kira replied, blinking her eyes rapidly and letting her mouth slide into a disarming smirk. “I hope your husband is available.”
“He is,” Jennifer said, turning to Sisko so that only he could see her dark expression. “You’re lucky—he just walked in.”
“Oh, wonderful,” Kira said, craning her neck as if she could see through the viewscreen. Sisko stepped into her periphery and did his best to look respectful.
“Intendant,” he said.
“Benjamin, how positively lovely to see you. I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind coming to pay me a little visit again. I’ll send you a shuttle, just like last time.”
Sisko did not look at Jennifer, but from the corner of his eye he could see her expression. “I’m not sure,” he said carefully.
Kira laughed. “Oh, Benjamin,” she sighed, her voice a singsong. “I’m sorry. I suppose I made that sound like a request, didn’t I? Be ready to go at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow morning. I can’t wait to see you!” She flashed a brilliant smile, and then her image vanished from the screen.
Sisko shut down the console to ensure that any conversation he had with Jennifer could not be picked up by the receiver on Kira’s end, and then turned to his wife.
“You’d better not even consider it,” Jennifer warned him.
“What am I supposed to do?” he said. “Your father said he’d do what he could, but if he can’t—”
“You’ll figure it out,” Jennifer said, and turned angrily to go into the bedroom. “You always do,” she added, and then closed the door, leaving Benjamin alone. He looked down at his hands to find the unopened bottle of synthale still there. He twisted off the cap and took a long swallow.
