Darrah nodded. There was another boatload of Oralians arriving at Cemba Station the next day, and both he and the priest had to be there.
Gar gave a wan smile. “You know how it is, Inspector. The higher up the wheel you turn, the more things you have to deal with.” The flyer was settling on the road nearby. “I was just leaving. Do you need to go somewhere? I could have my driver give you a lift…” He trailed off, and Darrah knew that his old friend was reading him. “What’s bothering you, Mace?”
“I haven’t even opened my mouth yet. What makes you think there’s something bothering me?”
Osen frowned. “I’m your friend and I’m your priest. If I can’t tell when something is wrong with you, I’d be failing on both those counts.” He gave the man in the flyer a shake of the head and gestured back into the temple. “Come on. Unburden yourself.”
Darrah resisted. “I have no burdens, Ranjen.”
“No? Well, how about two men just talking, then? I’ll ask the Prophets to turn a deaf ear to anything sacrilegious you might say.”
A day later, and they were in orbit. Gar paused to smooth down the front of his robes and glanced down the length of the commerce platform’s reception area. It was a wide space, dominated by a large horizontal window that looked out into the void. He always found the station to have a slightly shabby, down-at-heel atmosphere to it, and if the option had been his he would have preferred to meet the Oralians on Bajor rather than up here. It wasn’t as if the place was decrepit or anything like that; it was just a bit too industrial. It lacked grace, and it was hardly the best first impression to give new arrivals. But there had been raised voices in the Chamber of Ministers about allowing Cardassians, Oralian or not, unfettered passage. It was largely down to the agitation of Keeve Falor that they were here on Cemba instead of holding a reception at the Naghai Keep. The priest sighed. Here, on the outer decks of Cemba Station’s main structure, the hemispherical shape of the orbital platform’s main hull joined a spider-web of thin gantries, extending out to tend to arriving and departing starships. Sunlight reflected from the Derna and Jeraddo moons illuminated the vessels in dock; the priest didn’t know the makes and models of the ships, but he did know the difference between Bajoran designs and Cardassian ones, and there were none of the latter in evidence. He had heard Darrah say that the Union military liked to keep their ships untethered, and indeed he could discern the shapes of a couple of craft farther out in higher orbits. Yellow-amber hulls glittered, reminding him of the mantas that swarmed in the Dakeeni shallows.
The inspector crossed his line of sight, in conversation with two of his watchmen, talking urgently and glancing at his chronometer. Security was another reason why the reception was taking place on Cemba Station. In Ashalla, Hathon, and Jalanda, there had been demonstrations calling for greater restrictions on the movement of the aliens, and some had concluded with hostility. Darrah Mace and his men were here to make sure that didn’t happen today. Darrah was all business now, and he was a different man from the person who had sat with Gar in the marketside temple the night before, angry and sad, trying to find a way to make his marriage work. There wasn’t even the slightest hint of concern on the man’s face; Darrah was in his element here, in perfect charge of things. Gar understood why Darrah gave so much of himself to his work: At least there he can feel like he has control over his life. He remembered the worry, the real fear, in his friend’s eyes when he spoke of Karys’s comment about going offworld. Osen had soothed him by pointing out that Mace’s wife had a history of idle threats, but then again she was touching on something that Gar had been seeing more often of late. There was a small but concerted movement by some Bajorans across the planet to leave it. Ships making the voyage to Prophet’s Landing and Valo were taking more emigrants along with their cargo. There were plenty of people whose issues with the government’s choices over the alliance had spurred them to leave. He sighed, thinking of the kai’s words outside the Kendra Shrine. This path that Bajor is on, it should be toward unity, not division. He wished she were here now.
The party from the clergy were talking quietly among themselves, and Vedek Arin was nodding at questions from the cluster of novices that had joined him from Kendra. Arin caught Gar’s eye and gave him a perfunctory smile. The ranjen had hoped that Kai Meressa would have joined them for this small outing, but Arin had closed that matter the moment he arrived. The kai was indisposed. That was the small lie they were using to save face. According to Arin, Meressa’s illness was making it progressively harder for her to leave her chambers at the retreat in Calash. The temperate weather and clear air there had helped her somewhat, but more and more Arin was assuming the role of her day-to-day proxy. Gar resolved to take a skimmer out to the retreat the first opportunity he got.
“There,” said Tima, a young novice with blond hair and bright green eyes. She pointed out at the void. “There’s the ship.”
Gar saw the Lhemor as it came around the curve of the window, the long, corrugated shape of the freighter turning to settle against the docking arm. There was a resonant thud of metal against metal as it locked on to Cemba Station, and he saw glowing red lights turn white around the airlock tunnel. The priest saw a second vessel drift past, eschewing the open docks. It had the same manta-wing profile as the other Cardassian military ships, and it moved up and away to a steady distance from the commerce platform. Gar couldn’t escape the implication that the Lhemor’s escort was watching it like a desert hawk.
After a few minutes, with a whine of hydraulics the hatch at the end of the airlock tunnel dropped into the deck and revealed the Oralians. Gar scanned their faces, seeing a mixture of wary enthusiasm and, in some, slight disappointment. Vedek Arin came forward, and Gar moved with him as the figure at the head of the pilgrim party rolled back his hood, revealing the cleric Bennek. Gar was struck by how much the Cardassian’s face had darkened with deep lines that gathered at the corners of his eyes. A smile crossed the alien’s expression and he bowed.
“Vedek Arin, Ranjen Gar. In the name of the Oralian Way, I greet you and extend once more the thanks of our congregation for allowing us to visit your world.” His smile faltered a little. “The kai is not present?”
Arin shook his head. “She is indisposed, cleric, but she sends her most profuse apologies and warmest greetings.”
“The Fates protect her, then.”
Gar nodded. “Welcome back to Bajor, Bennek. I hope our honored friend Hadlo is well?”
There was a momentary flicker of emotion in the Oralian’s eyes, and Gar wondered what it could signify. “Hadlo remains on Cardassia Prime, engaged in matters of the Way,” he explained, “but he hopes to visit you again in the near future.”
“Just so,” noted Arin. “You know Gar, of course. Let me introduce you to some of our newer novitiates who will be joining us today.” The vedek ran through the learners, and Gar caught an unmistakable flush of emotion in Tima’s expression when Bennek shook her by the hand. The girl was clearly spellbound by the aliens.
Nearby, Darrah cleared his throat and indicated the corridor beyond the reception area. “Gentlemen? A shuttle has been fueled and is ready to take you down to the planet. If you’ll follow Constable Proka, he’ll show you the way.”
“Of course,” allowed Arin. As the vedek launched into a conversation with the Cardassian cleric, Gar watched the rest of the Oralian party disembark. There were more of them than he had expected, and he wondered if the shuttle might have to make two trips to the surface and back to take them all.
One of the males detached himself from the group and came across, a broad grin threatening to break out on his face. “Pardon me, but are you the ranjen Gar Osen of Korto?”
“I am.” Gar was surprised to be recognized by an alien.
“And you are?”
The Cardassian’s grin unfolded and he shook Osen’s hand, palm to forearm in the old fashion. “Pasir Letin, Ranjen! I’m excited to meet you. I hope we will be able to discuss som
e matters of theology.” He was walking quite swiftly, and the Bajoran had to quicken his pace to stay in step with him. “I was most fascinated by your monograph on Trakor’s Prophecies.”
Gar blinked in surprise, momentarily wrong-footed by the other man’s enthusiastic manner. “You read that? How did you—”
Pasir kept speaking. “There’s been a strong exchange of information among our faiths in recent years. I was particularly struck by some of the similarities between Trakor’s divination on the matter of the Pah-wraiths and Oralius’s words of rebuke in the Hebitian Records.”
The group was approaching the hangar bays, and as he walked, Gar formulated a reply. He was going to ask the Oralian a question, but the opportunity was snatched away as the deck of Cemba Station lurched beneath his feet, pivoting forward, the gravity controls struggling to compensate. There was a brilliant white flash of light from behind them, and the priest felt a wash of searing heat across his back and the bare skin of his neck.
The next sound he heard was the explosion, the screaming roar of broken air and burning backdraft.
The tingle of the transporter died away, and Dukat took his first breath of Bajoran air in five years. He stepped off the reception dais set in the corner of the Union embassy’s atrium and crossed the chamber, his boots clicking on the dun-colored stone floor. Passing under a huge Galor Banner, he glanced toward the entrance doors below and saw the honeyed glow of sunlight through the windows set in them. Inside there was nothing but the soft chime of computers at the monitor stations, but out beyond the windows there were figures moving and shifting. Dukat imagined that if the building were not soundproofed, he would have heard shouts and disorder. He scowled. It was one more black mark against Jagul Danig Kell, and he filed it away.
Dukat noticed troopers with stunner rifles loitering near the doors, and with them a group of nondescript civilians in the uniforms of medical specialists. They appeared to be waiting for something. For a moment, the dal considered approaching one of the soldiers and demanding an explanation from him, but then he dismissed the thought. There were other, more pressing issues to deal with, and he wanted to get them out of the way as soon as possible. The quicker I speak with Kell, the quicker I can be done and return to my ship.
He presented himself at the security arch and eyed the technician behind the monitor. There was no need for an exchange of greetings; the operator knew who he was, her console reading the ident plate fused into his armor the moment he had materialized on the dais. She gestured to a wide-spectrum scanner matrix set in the floor like a tall, thin tombstone. “If you please, Dal Dukat.”
He did as he was bid, letting a pulse of blue light flick across his eyes. In moments, the noninvasive bio-scan and retinal profile threw up a confirmation, and a light glowed on the arch. “You may proceed, sir,” the woman said, and looked away, moving on to her next work item.
Dukat passed through the arch, and a discreet door opened in the wall across from him. The turbolift inside rocked gently as it took him into the embassy’s inner spaces. The building followed standard Central Command design protocols; it was a bunker within a bunker, a hardened blockhouse constructed from reinforced thermoconcrete on a sonodanite frame, concealed inside a rectangular building made from the densest local stone available. Dukat had been in several facilities of identical form and function, from Arawath to Orias, and each was the same. The uniformity was comforting, in its own way.
The doors opened and Dukat was waved through to the jagul’s office by a muscular glinn; and there he found Kell watching an oval holoframe, the transparent display hazing the air over his desk. Dukat saw grainy images, probably from the security monitors out on the embassy walls. A horde of Bajorans, a handful of them in Militia uniforms standing with their backs to the gates, the rest churning back and forth, shouting and brandishing pennants. The officer seemed to be only half interested in the screen, his attention wandering between that and a series of padds showing some kind of schematic.
He indicated the image. “Have I come at a bad time, Jagul Kell?”
“Dukat.” Kell drew out the name, ignoring the question. “Here you are. Welcome to Bajor.”
Dukat made a show of looking around. The jagul’s office was heavily decorated with thick hardwood paneling from Cuellar, and there were artworks that showed scenes of Cardassia Prime, a shelf of antique books. It was the polar opposite of the austerity of Dukat’s own duty room aboard the Kashai. “I feel as if I have not left the homeworld,” he replied.
Kell smirked. “High rank means men are granted allowances.” He shifted in his seat and pointedly did not offer Dukat the opportunity to take the empty chair across from his desk. Dukat studied the man. The stocky, uncompromising officer who had once commanded the Kornaire was still there, but Kell had grown more portly in the intervening years. An increase in girth was to be expected as a man became an elder, of course, but the jagul was still some time away from earning that level of distinction. The tailoring of his duty armor did its best to conceal it, but there was only so far it could go. Dukat kept a sneer from his lips, holding his contempt and faint disgust for the man in check. Is this what you have been doing in your glorious posting, Kell? Growing fat on rich alien food, guzzling their drink?
As if in reply, the jagul took up a glass of springwine and sipped it. “Cardassia endures,” he intoned. “Even beyond her borders, Cardassia endures. Tell me, how many more of the Oralian rabble have you brought here?”
“One ship, the Lhemor.” Dukat answered the question even though he knew Kell had all the details of the freighter and Bennek’s pilgrims. “Other vessels are known to be preparing for voyages. The Oralians in the cities have been encouraged to vacate the population centers. They are being increasingly corralled in the outer territories, in shanty towns.”
“Enclaves…” Kell mused. “Rather like here on Bajor.”
“Central Command estimates that a full third of all declared followers of the Oralian Way are offworld at this time.”
“Following the pilgrim path to learn from the Prophets,” mocked the jagul. “Well. That would seem to indicate we have them where we want them. Diminishing and ineffectual. The Union will be all the better for it.”
“‘And the betterment of the Cardassian Union is the goal of all the nation’s sons,’” Dukat replied, the axiom coming easily to him. “If I may ask, sir, how have you fulfilled that edict?”
Kell’s eye twitched at Dukat’s open challenge, but he opened his hands to take in the office. “Look around, Dal. While you loitered with the Talarians, I have worked to cement Cardassia’s foothold on this world.” He frowned. “Perhaps not with the swiftness that Central Command wishes, but then the road to control must be taken with care.”
Dukat made a noncommittal noise and glanced at a small sculpture made of jevonite. “I wonder. Do the Bajorans living here in Dahkur have any inkling of what lies inside the blunt planes of this building?” He raised the object to his eyes, studying it. “They would be most displeased to find you have inserted a covert military base into one of their major cities.” He nodded to the walls. “I saw the secure hatches along the corridor.” Most of the interior spaces of a facility like this one were prefabricated rooms that locked together like a child’s construction blocks, modular components beamed directly into place from ships in orbit. “I’m curious. How did you prevent the Bajorans from detecting the transporter signatures? Scattering fields, perhaps?”
As he expected, the jagul couldn’t resist the opportunity to brag. “The trade with our homeworld has provided the Bajorans with some new sensor technology, which they use quite widely,” he noted. “Of course, it is possible that those who built those sensors know them well enough to exploit any…blind spots.”
“Ah,” Dukat nodded. “But it’s my understanding the Militia also operate sensor arrays using components of non-Cardassian origin.”
Kell mirrored his nod. “They do. Hardware that the Xepolites sold them.”
He sipped at the springwine. “Interesting to consider: Who might it be that sold the Xepolites their technology?” The jagul smiled slightly. “You see, Dukat, there’s nothing to cause any dismay among our gracious hosts.”
“And this?” Dukat pointed at the holoframe. “That’s not dismay, as you call it?”
Kell gave an arch sniff. “Embassy matters are classified at the highest level, Dal. I’m sure you understand.”
“You need not worry about my clearances, Jagul. I’m here at the behest of the Central Command, and my orders are to evaluate the circumstances on Bajor.” Dukat detected the twitch of annoyance in Kell’s brow, but the other officer hid it quickly.
“It seems I was mistaken,” Kell returned. “I was under the impression that you had been sent to Bajor, not on a mission of such great temerity as judging my command”—his voice rose slightly—“but because you had fallen out of favor with the Legates.”
It was Dukat’s turn to hide a flash of anger. The riposte was too measured to have been a chance comment. How is he aware of my circumstances? Dukat wondered. Some agency funneled that information to him. Someone with a long reach. “If you wish to ensure you don’t find yourself in a similar condition, you might wish to curtail scenes like that,” he snapped, nodding again at the rowdy demonstrators. He could make out Bajoran ideograms on the banners, and on some, in crude Cardassian, exhortations for them to quit the planet.
“On the contrary, Dukat, I’m allowing these protests to go on. In fact, I’m nurturing them.”
“Explain.”
Kell waved his hand in the air. “Nonlethal subsonics in the embassy’s defense grid. Tuned correctly, over a limited area they can create a sense of agitation in the Bajoran hypothalamus…” He shrugged. “Forgive me, I understand the theory but the science of it is beyond me.” Kell sniffed again. “When these so-called peaceful protests turn ugly, it serves us. The Bajorans become divided over the issue and Cardassia is shown to be compassionate when I send my medical staff in to help the injured in the aftermath.”
Star Trek Terok Nor 01: Day of the Vipers Page 21
