“And this is Quark’s,” he said, sweeping a hand toward a nearly empty bar.
She peered inside. There was a lot of light and color, but no customers. A Ferengi stood behind the bar. He looked nervous, but then they all did to her.
This would probably be her only opportunity to let go of Dukat. She slipped her hand from his arm, and went inside the bar. The Ferengi looked at her in surprise.
“Care for a drink?” he asked.
Three Cardassians were passed out at a back table, and another Ferengi was trying in vain to wake them up. She frowned at them.
“A bit of hot water on the back of the neck usually wakes up a Cardassian,” she said to the bartender.
“Really?” he asked.
Dukat came inside. “I thought you were in a hurry to get to the infirmary.”
“I am,” she said. “I just thought—well, I had the impression that this would be the hub of the station.”
“It is,” the Ferengi said. “When no one’s dying.”
“Quark.” That menacing tone was buried in Dukat’s voice again. He sounded so threatening and yet so nice. How did he manage that?
“Have we far to go?” Pulaski asked, walking out of the bar ahead of him.
“Um, no,” Dukat said.
“And I take it the infirmary is this way?” She headed in the direction the guards had walked.
“Yes,” Dukat said.
She couldn’t look too knowledgeable or he would get suspicious, so she slowed down just enough for him to catch up to her.
“What I’ve seen of the station,” she said, “is already impressive.”
He smiled at her, and then turned a small corner. “Here is the medical section.” A door to her right slid open, and instantly the stench of rot overwhelmed her. She gagged involuntarily and put a hand to her mouth.
“She’s turning green!” Dukat said, a hand on her shoulder, trying to push her further inside.
She shook him off. “It’s a normal human reaction,” she said, barely keeping control of her voice, “when faced with a smell like that.”
His call, though, had brought a Cardassian to the front, and behind him, Kellec.
Kellec. Too slim by half. He hadn’t been eating again. His hair was messy and his earring was caught on the top of his ear. He had deep circles under both eyes, and lines around his mouth she had never seen before.
And he looked dear. Very dear.
“Katherine?” he asked. “Are you all right?”
“I just don’t care for the local perfume,” she said, and wrapped him in a great hug. He was thin, so thin he felt fragile in her arms.
He returned the hug, but she could feel him looking over her shoulder at Dukat. So she had been right. They were in a pissing match, and Dukat had tried—and failed—to turn her into an issue.
She stepped back and surveyed the room. There were cots everywhere, and makeshift beds, all filled with green Cardassians, many of them holding their stomachs and moaning despite obvious sedation. The green color was startling. No wonder Dukat had panicked when he saw her get nauseous from the smell. It showed that he was a lot more panicked than his let-me-give-you-a-tour-of-the-station demeanor let on.
She made herself turn to him, even though she didn’t want to. “Thank you for your kindness, Gul Dukat,” she said. “I do hope we’ll be able to finish our tour later.”
He bowed his head slightly. “It would be my pleasure, Doctor. And remember, if you need anything, anything at all, come to me.”
“I will.”
Dukat glanced at the Cardassian who stood to the side, and then his gaze met Kellec’s. There was pride in that look, and measuring, and something else, some sort of challenge. And then Dukat left.
“Tour?” Kellec asked. “He took you on a tour of the station instead of bringing you here?”
“He’s afraid I’m going to send a bad report to Starfleet,” Pulaski said. “But I made him bring me here directly.”
“No one makes Dukat do anything,” Kellec said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Pulaski said. “You managed to get him to bring me here.” She put a hand through her hair, wishing now that she had had a chance, a very brief one, to stop in her quarters. Kellec always made her feel like that.
“Dr. Pulaski,” the Cardassian who had rushed to the door said. “I’m Dr. Narat.”
He was hunched over more by the demands of his profession than with age. His dark eyes were sharp as well, but his face wasn’t as reptilian as Dukat’s. There was a softness to Narat, a compassion that seemed built into him. Even though she had never met him before, she got a sense from him that he, too, was exhausted.
“Thank you for coming,” he said. “You are alone?”
“I brought three assistants. I sent them to their quarters to drop off their things before coming here. I wanted to assess the situation alone.”
Narat nodded. He swept a hand toward the beds. “This is just one area, only the Cardassians. We have two other rooms full in the medical section and we’ve had to take over an empty business space right next door.”
“My heavens,” Pulaski said.
Kellec nodded. “If it weren’t for all the deaths,” he said, “we would need even more room.”
She glanced at him. She wasn’t used to him being so blunt. At least not about losing patients. So things were awful here. Only doctors who had seen a lot of death in a short period of time had that flat affect, that way of speaking about terrible things as if they were commonplace.
And apparently they were.
“How many have died?” she asked.
“Everyone who has been sick for longer than two days,” Narat said.
Her gaze met Kellec’s. It wasn’t just exhaustion she saw in his eyes. It was deep, overwhelming sadness, and more—a frustration and anger so strong that he had to fight to keep it held back. He knew as well as she, as well as any doctor, that anger only blinded. He needed to remain level.
“How many is that?” she asked gently. “How many have died?”
Kellec shook his head. “We’ve been too busy to keep track of the numbers, and we have no real assistants. It’s not a relevant statistic at the moment.”
“But how have you notified the families?”
“Niceties are gone, Katherine,” he said. “We haven’t done anything except triage, palliative measures, and research. We haven’t had time.”
“Maybe now,” Narat said. “Now that you’re here, we can do some of those things again.”
Pulaski nodded. It wasn’t like Kellec to let go of the small details. For any reason. “You said everyone who contracts the disease dies?”
“Everyone,” Kellec said. “Within two days.”
She glanced around the room. If something weren’t done, a solution wasn’t found, all of these people would be dead soon. And all of the patients in the next room, and the next.
“Cardassian and Bajoran?” she asked. “No one has survived?”
“No one.”
She shook her head. “I’ve never heard of a plague like that,” she said. “The black plague on Earth, in the days when medicine consisted of trickery and leeches, left one-quarter of the population alive. The Triferian flu on Vulcan only killed half. The worst plague I’ve ever heard of, the Nausicaan wort virus, which struck a thousand years ago, killed 95 percent of the Nausicaan population. No plague kills one hundred percent. Someone always survives.”
Kellec shook his head. “If you contract this thing,” he said, “you die.”
“And that’s why you believe this is a designer virus?” she asked.
“That, and several other factors. Its precision, for one thing. And the way it works. Let us show you what we’ve found so far. It would be nice to have a fresh eye on things.” He took her arm and started to lead her toward the office.
She stopped though, and gazed at all the moaning patients. One hundred percent death rate. No wonder Kellec didn’t want to talk about it. That made
their job a thousand times harder. The best way to beat a viral infection was to discover what was different within those patients who were exposed and didn’t get sick. Or those who got sick and survived. Often their systems produced antibodies that worked against the virus, and those antibodies could be replicated and placed in those patients who didn’t manufacture them naturally.
But a 100-percent death rate completely cut the traditional options out. The solution had to be a lab-devised one, just like the virus itself. And that required researchers, not medical doctors. She did research, yes, but her main focus had always been her patients. Maybe Starfleet had been right in trying to send the viral experts here.
Maybe. But to do so would have meant at least a hundred more deaths in the time it took those experts to arrive. At least she was here now. Her assistants could look after the patients, and she could work with Kellec and Narat to find a cure.
The confidence she had spoken of to Dukat had vanished. In her entire career, she had never faced odds like this. Terok Nor had a small population. In order to save any of it, she and her colleagues had to find a solution fast.
The problem was that all the shortcuts had been blocked off. They had to do the impossible, and she wasn’t even sure how to begin.
Chapter Twelve
HE STOOD IN THE SHADOWS next to Quark’s bar, marveling at the difference a few days had made. Before there had been laughter and shouting, games and relaxation, but now there was silence. The Ferengi, Quark, was complaining about the silence, still worrying about his business, not realizing that soon, everything on Terok Nor would come to an end.
He had found it amusing when Quark had carried the ill Cardassian outside the bar before allowing his brother to report the illness. Quark still believed everything would turn around, things would get better, his bar would come back to life, and he would continue to earn his precious latinum.
Soon latinum wouldn’t be important at all.
He had had a bad moment, though, as Quark, his brother, and his nephew had passed, carrying the Cardassian. For an instant, his shield had fizzled. He had caught it in time, but Quark had turned his head, almost as if he had seen the shimmer the malfunction caused. Fortunately, the Ferengi was so self-involved that he apparently thought nothing of it.
Ever since, though, he had kept close watch on the shield. It was his only protection here, allowing him to go undiscovered. Not that there were many left to discover him. The sick Cardassians had made their way, one by one, to the medical section. The well ones were staying away from populated areas, keeping themselves in their rooms unless they had duties—and sometimes even then.
Humanoids all shared an attitude toward disease. No matter how sophisticated the society, humanoids still feared tiny little microbes that attacked the body unseen. From Cardassians and Bajorans to Trills and Klingons, the fear of illness was uniform. And all the more amusing in societies like Cardassia’s. Soldiers seemed to fear disease most of all.
He had enjoyed watching Terok Nor’s leader, Dukat, when he felt he was alone. The constant washing of the hands. His reluctance to touch other Cardassians or Bajorans. His nervous movements every time he was about to enter the medical section. All of them were tiny gestures, but they were oh, so telling. And if Dukat felt that way, so did all the other Cardassians. He almost wished the symptomatic part of the disease lasted longer. It brought out the fear in the unaffected—or the not-yet-symptomatic, to be more accurate—so much better.
He made a mental note about that, not certain if he were going to use it or not.
But he was here to observe, and since he had arrived, he had observed a lot. The way the Cardassians simply kept going until they lost control; the resigned futility among the Bajorans; the added calls to the Prophets who, of course, were not listening: All of this intrigued him. And pleased him, if he had to be honest. Things were progressing better than he had expected.
Although that could change. Dukat’s mood seemed lighter since he escorted the human woman across the Promenade and into the medical section. She looked vaguely familiar, with her brown hair and calm demeanor. He had a moment of panic when she excused herself from Dukat and walked into Quark’s. For a moment, he thought she was going to walk over to him. It was as if she saw him, as if she knew he was there.
Instead, she had asked the Ferengi a question or two, and then had gone on.
He hadn’t expected humans on Terok Nor. He hadn’t expected anyone associated with the Federation. He had purposely chosen Cardassians and Bajorans because they had no official ties with the Federation and so wouldn’t request Federation help.
What this woman was doing here baffled him, but she had obviously been brought in to help find a cure. Fortunately, a cure would prove extremely difficult. If not impossible. Diseases did not act the way this one did. Most doctors weren’t creative enough to understand something so different, so fundamentally alien.
A single human woman would make no difference in this laboratory. He would worry only when teams of scientists came in. Federation scientists.
And by the time they arrived, it would be too late. No matter how light Gul Dukat’s mood, the fact was that Terok Nor was doomed.
He had done the projections before he came, a timetable assuming everything went according to plan—which it had, much to his surprise. It was now time for him to leave. His cloaked ship would pick him up shortly.
And probably just in time. According to his projections, Terok Nor had very little time left.
Chapter Thirteen
SHE WAS CRAZY to have come back to Terok Nor. What had she been thinking when she offered to come here? Certainly she hadn’t been thinking very clearly.
It no longer seemed like the risks that she took getting here in her small rebel ship, keeping it hidden from Cardassian scans, and then beaming aboard, were going to be worth it. It had been harder this time, because Terok Nor was closed to almost all ships. She wasn’t sure if the beam-in had been detected; she doubted anyone was scouting for security breaches in the middle of this internal crisis.
Kira stood in the center of the Bajoran section. It looked nothing like it had a few months ago, when she had come here to get a list of Bajoran collaborators from a chemist’s shop. She didn’t like to think about that visit, and how close she had come to becoming a true prisoner of the Cardassians.
She ran her hands over her arms. She had goosebumps despite the warmth. This place smelled like rot, and if she hadn’t known better, she would have thought it like one of the prisoner-of-war camps on Cardassia. Dukat had always prided himself on keeping a clean, well-run station, where he treated the Bajorans “fairly.”
There was nothing fair about this place any longer. Not even the most delusional could miss that.
Ill Bajorans lay on the floor, their cheeks rosy, their eyes too bright. They held their stomachs and moaned, while family members tried to take care of them. Others were on blankets or coats that someone had given up. There were no Cardassian guards in sight—it was as if the guards had forgotten the Bajorans were here.
Not that it mattered. The Bajorans were too busy dying to think of revolution.
She had had no idea the disease was this bad. If she had to guess, she would estimate that half of the Bajorans she saw were in some stage of illness.
And she saw no sign of Kellec Ton at all. No sign of any doctors, no sign of any help. How could Dukat allow this? How could anyone?
There had to be someone that the Bajorans looked to for leadership, someone who took control of various situations. But she didn’t even know where to look. The fine web of corridors and large rooms that had served as the Bajoran section no longer had any order to it at all. The sick lay everywhere, even in the eating areas, and there were a few bodies stacked near the entrance to the processing plants.
Bodies. Stacked. She had never expected to see this.
She didn’t even know where to begin.
She wanted to roll up her sleeves and help,
but she knew nothing about medicine, at least this kind of medicine. Give her a patient with a phaser burn and she could treat it, or a broken arm and she could set it, but to die like this, moaning in excruciating agony while everyone around was busy with their own deaths, was something completely beyond her.
Two Cardassian guards walked through the corridor. They stepped over the ill and dying Bajorans as if they were simply rocks lying in their path. They were talking in low tones, their conversation impossible to hear.
Kira tensed. If they saw her, they might bring her to Dukat. And that was the last thing she needed.
She slid down the wall, and buried her face in her knees. She couldn’t bring herself to moan, to feign the illness so many others were dying of. But she kept herself immobile.
As the Cardassians passed, their conversation became clearer.
“. . . so desperate that he’s allowing the Bajoran doctor to work on Cardassian patients.”
“That’s not what I’ve heard. I’ve heard the illnesses are related, and if they find a cure for one, they find a cure for both.”
“It’s a Bajoran trick.”
“What makes you think that?”
“They designed this virus to kill us, but it backfired. It makes them sick as well.”
“Surely if that were true, Dukat wouldn’t let that Bajoran anywhere near the medical section.”
“Dukat is smarter than you think. Perhaps he wants Narat to catch the Bajoran infecting Cardassians . . .”
Their voices faded. Kira raised her head just enough to be able to watch them leave out of the corner of one eye. So the rumor about the Cardassians was true; they were dying of this disease as well.
And of course, the lower-level guards believed that the Bajorans were behind the illness, not realizing that the Bajorans no longer had the capability to do anything like this. Bajorans were struggling just to stay alive.
She hadn’t expected it to be so easy to discover where Kellec Ton was, though. He was in the Cardassian medical section, helping save Cardassians. She would never have believed it of him. He had to have some other plan in mind. But she wasn’t sure what that would be, nor was she certain how to reach him. It would mean leaving the Bajoran section. Some Bajorans did, she knew, but very few. And they were usually collaborating somehow.
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