by S. D. Perry
“Ms. Glees, I’m so pleased to meet you.”
The woman smiled in turn. “Doctor Reyar, thank you for returning my contact. Have you had a chance to consider our offer?”
“I have,” Kalisi said. “I would like very much to work at the University of Culat. However, I’m currently invested in a project I can’t afford to walk away from at this time. Might I inquire if you mean to keep the position open much longer?”
The representative tilted her head slightly. “How long would you need?”
Kalisi tried to read the woman’s face for some indication of how much she could get, but Glees was impassive, her expression carefully controlled. Kalisi went with the truth. “I am uncertain at this time.”
Glees’ smile went flat. “Unless you can be more specific, I’m unable to promise anything…”
“Of course,” Kalisi said. “Perhaps I might inquire again, once I have a better sense of my time frame.”
Glees nodded. “That would be best.”
“Might I ask—have you contracted anyone to head the exobiology department?”
Glees blinked. “We have not. That is, the university already has Doctor Revel Panh on main faculty. He will probably lead the research branch, as well.”
Kalisi nodded. “He is renowned. Who is your exobiology specialist? You have one, of course.”
Glees hesitated just long enough to let Kalisi know she’d chosen the right tack. The representative obviously took great pride in her school; she did not like any oversights to be pointed out. “Why do you ask?”
“Only because my immediate superior is Doctor Crell Moset,” Kalisi said proudly. “You know of him? He’s been awarded commendations on several occasions—” She allowed a fleeting look of surprise to cross her face, of realization. “You could get him. He is eager to return to Cardassia Prime, to pursue his research.”
Glees looked surprised. “Doctor Moset is available?”
“He is,” Kalisi said, then smiled. “But don’t tell him I said so,” she added lightly.
Glees’ eyes narrowed. “Why not?”
Kalisi shrugged. “Oh, of course, tell him if you wish. I only meant to say that Doctor Moset is a great man, but of fragile ego. He’s quite proud of his reputation. You know how it is for men in the sciences…”
Glees nodded, catching on. Figuring it out for herself, exactly as Kalisi wanted. “He might be insulted that we did not contact him of our own initiative,” she said.
Kalisi nodded gratefully. “You understand.”
Glees offered a wry smile. “Too well.”
Kalisi didn’t want to overplay. Time to end the call. “I hope very much that I’ll be able to finish this project in short order, and that the weapons research position will still be open,” she said. “Work at the University of Culat…I am truly honored.”
Again, just the right thing to say. Glees’s smile was sincere. “Contact me as soon as you know anything.”
The two women broke contact, Kalisi pleased with her performance, the first step in the small charade that would end with her freedom—from Bajor, from Moset, from her ghosts, new and old. It wasn’t too late for her, not yet.
Quark’s bar was entirely empty, and he stared glumly at the people outside as they passed his entrance. He usually closed his bar for this event; it was Merchant’s Day, the ridiculous Cardassian tradition that requested all the sellers along the Promenade to provide free samples for the soldiers. It was supposed to bolster business, but all Quark could see was one great big handout. That wasn’t business, it was charity, and Ferengi most certainly did not advocate charity. Not only was it against the law on his homeworld, he could expect to wind up in the Vault of Eternal Destitution in the next life if he were to participate in such blasphemy. The very word was profane, and the idea of it made his gorge rise.
Quark’s back was to the door, his arms folded irritably across his chest, considering that he might as well have closed today, when someone entered, and Quark turned to see the new Cardassian soldier from security approaching the bar with long, determined strides. Quark broke into his best-rehearsed smile. “Welcome to Quark’s,” he said, but the Cardassian did not answer.
“Well, what’ll it—ugh!” he gurgled, as the big man grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him up off his feet, almost over the surface of the bar.
The Cardassian spoke with no inflection. “Morn tells me that you refuse to serve him. He’s planning to file a formal complaint.”
“M—Morn?” Quark asked, through quick, hyperventilating breaths.
“The Lurian,” the man said, with slow and deliberate anger.
“Is…he…a friend of yours?”
“I could care less about him,” the Cardassian said coldly. “I’m doing my job.”
“You’re Dalin Russol, aren’t you? I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.” Quark tried to smile, but the Cardassian said nothing. What is his problem? “Lurians are bad for business,” Quark squeaked. “Nobody will want to come in here if he’s hovering at the end of the bar like a ghoul, talking everyone’s ears off…and he wants to drink on credit!” He coughed, strangling. “But…maybe we could work something out.”
The Cardassian continued to glower forcefully as his grip tightened on the front of Quark’s clothes. “I have heard about you,” he finally said through his teeth, his voice a thin, tight line of fury. “From my very good friend, Natima Lang.”
Quark inhaled sharply. “Natima,” he said, the fear temporarily forgotten as he revisited his shame. “How is she? Is she well?” His labored breath slowed as he pictured her, so graceful, so clever and beautiful. He had never met another woman like her, and he didn’t expect he ever would again.
“Don’t you even speak her name,” Russol hissed.
“Please,” Quark begged. “You must tell her—auch!” He squealed as the Cardassian went for his ear. “Please!” he cried out. “Not the lobes!”
Russol continued to twist and pull while Quark struggled for his wits, anything he could give this man to make him stop this overt torture. “Wait!” he cried out, “I hear things on the station all the time…ow!… please stop! Listen to me!”
Russol loosened the pressure on Quark’s ear without letting go entirely. “What kinds of things?”
Quark’s head was bent uncomfortably where Russol gripped his lobe. “I heard…Dukat talking about you with his…ow!… one of his henchmen. He was talking about…the Federation or something…”
“The Federation?” Russol let him go abruptly, dropping him. “Tell me more, Ferengi, or I won’t just twist your ear, I’ll cut it off.”
From his huddle on the floor Quark cradled his ear, panting with relief and fear. “His lackey said something about you…talking to a Federation person or something…and then Dukat told him to make an…an isolinear recording of the conversation.”
“When was this?” Russol demanded.
“Just now,” Quark said. “Not ten minutes ago.”
Russol turned to leave, appearing very troubled, but he before he left he turned again. “I’m not through with you,” he said menacingly.
“Could you just tell Natima that I never meant to—” Quark stopped as he saw it was no use, Russol was gone. In another beat, Quark saw a massive shape in the doorway, and his first instinct was to shoo him off—it was the Lurian. But any business today was welcome business, and Quark smiled at the hairy alien instead, gesturing for him to sit, thinking that maybe letting this man have a drink on credit wouldn’t be the worst thing that he had ever done.
Odo was beginning to feel better suited to his new role as he crossed into the Bajoran side of the station, though he could not say why. He liked working with Dalin Russol, and the Bajorans here seemed to accept Odo’s authority, for the most part. Perhaps they believed that he was preferable to Thrax, his predecessor—this was Dukat’s estimation of the situation. Odo hadn’t seen any particular evidence of this, but he surmised it was a likely
possibility. He was not a Cardassian, after all.
Odo found the red-haired woman named Kira in the same place he’d interviewed her before, sitting at a table in the eatery with a cup of tea in her hands. It was at her request that they met this time, though he couldn’t imagine what she wanted with him.
She wasted no time in telling him. “Constable,” she said in an urgent whisper, “do you know anything about my transport off the station?”
“What?” Odo did not immediately follow. “You were…leaving the station?’
“Of course I was leaving,” she whispered, looking around. “It was arranged that a Cardassian gil was supposed to transport me off the station, but he never came. He was supposed to pull me out of ore processing last night.”
Odo shook his head from side to side. “I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “Probably, though, the Cardassian pocketed the money and left. Motivated by profit, of course,” he added.
The woman only stared at him, no less angry and frantic. “It’s…a possibility,” she said, “but it’s just as possible that he was found out, and something happened to him.”
Odo frowned. “Are you concerned about him?”
“Of course not! I need to get off this station, don’t you understand?”
“I don’t know anything about it,” he repeated.
She sat back in her chair, looking down into her empty cup. She still seemed angry, but there was something else in it, too. Distress. Odo wanted to help her, though he wasn’t sure why. Helping her would certainly welcome chaos here, and Odo had no desire to bring more chaos upon himself.
“Why are you fighting the Cardassians?” he suddenly asked.
She looked up from her cup and laughed, though it was not a happy sound. “Because,” she said. “Because everything the Cardassians have, they stole from us. From my people—from me.”
Odo considered it. “It has been suggested that the Bajoran people asked the Cardassians to come to Bajor,” he said.
Kira shook her head. “Suggested by Cardassians, I’m sure.” Her eyes flashed, expressing a depth of emotion that he could scarcely imagine. “You see how we’re treated. You think this is something we want?”
It certainly seemed unlikely, but he did not see how his opinion mattered, one way or another. He could only do his job, which was to correct injustices as defined by Cardassian law…which quite suddenly seemed terrifically unfair. Shouldn’t he be allowed to discern fairness based on the specifics of any given situation? Shouldn’t everyone?
He spoke before he had a chance to think further. “I can help you,” he offered, having no idea how he would go about it.
“Help me?”
“Get off the station.”
Her eyes widened slightly, her expression of anger softening somewhat. “How are you going to do that?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But…I’ll find a way.”
16
Only two days after Kalisi contacted the university rep, Doctor Moset walked into the hospital’s main computer room with a broad grin on his narrow face.
This is it, she thought, and relaxed. Finally. The waiting had been uncertain.
“There you are,” he said, walking over to where she sat, running the weekly diagnostics on the security system. “You’ll never imagine what happened this morning.”
Kalisi was the picture of innocence. “What happened?”
He sat next to her, looking around to be sure they were alone. One of the nurses had been in to check something, but had left promptly when he’d seen Moset come in. No one else was within earshot.
“I was contacted by the University of Culat,” he said. “They’ve offered me a position in exobiology, specializing in nonhumanoid. A chair, Kali, if it works out. And…I’ve accepted.”
Kalisi widened her eyes. “Crell! How wonderful!”
He took her hand, squeezed it in his own thin, sleek fingers. “We could work together, darling. You must call them back, ask if the weapons position is still open.”
She met his gaze, her own filled with manufactured hope. “I’d like that. But—” She shook her head. “The vaccine…there’s the batch recovery in just a few more weeks. If we want to replicate the master samples, we should start with a new synthesis.”
Moset frowned. “Perhaps I could arrange to come back for a time…”
“No, Crell,” she said, firmly, lovingly. “I will stay. I’ve already explained that I have a project to finish before I can consider their offer, and you’ve accepted. I will see to it that the master vaccine samples are properly adjusted.”
He reached out to touch her face, fingers spidering over her skin. “It is my work, Kali. I couldn’t ask you to stay…”
“You’re not asking, I’m offering,” she said. “Truly, is there anyone else you would trust with the documentation of the process? To see it through?”
She waited, watched him think. She was prepared to lie outright to get him away—create some false family issue she needed to resolve before she could return home, or even suggest that she wanted him to make a place ready for her, calling on the archaic tradition in which a man creates a suitable home for his affianced before she will agree to marry him.
Funny, though, how neither of us has mentioned marriage… She suspected that he would, before much longer. Or not. In some ways, she knew nothing at all about Crell Moset.
He finally shook his head and answered her question. “You know there isn’t.”
“Let me stay,” she said. “I’ll finish the work, I’ll record everything…And then I can meet you at Culat.”
Moset beamed at her, impulsively raising her hand to his lips, dry as desert grass. “What would I do without you?”
So far, so good.
She smiled back at him. “Does this mean I’ll meet your cousin?”
“My cousin?”
“The one you were telling me about, who walks the Oralian Way.”
Moset grinned ever wider. “Did I say it was a cousin? I don’t recall.”
She laughed. “I thought you had,” she said, and went in another direction, wanting to defer his suspicions. “Ever since you told me about the Way, I’ve wondered…You say the current leader was trained at the Ministry of Science?”
“Yes.”
“As was I,” she said. “I am curious about when she was supposed to have worked there. Perhaps I knew her.”
Moset smiled. “Perhaps you are her.”
His attempts at humor were oblique and rarely funny. “What do you mean?”
“Only that when you told me you’d handled the Bajoran artifact—Astraea was alleged to have received her call by touching one of those Orbs, at the ministry. And she is about your age, I believe. You would have trained around the same time.” He chuckled, then turned mock serious. “Tell me, Kali, are you secretly speeding away to Cardassia City when you’re not with me, leading an ancient religion in your spare time?”
Miras. Instantly, she knew. Her friend from school, who’d borrowed Kalisi’s clearance to look at the Orb, who’d suffered some sort of hallucination that day the computers had glitched…Astraea is Miras Vara.
She’d planned to use the information about Moset’s relative as her leverage, but if it was true, if the secret leader of the Oralian Way was Miras…
She had to pretend admiration at his clever jest, but her laugh was real. Crell Moset had just inadvertently provided her with exactly what she needed to ensure that she could achieve all of her objectives.
I will be free, she promised herself, and laughed again.
Making his way through the corridor near the empty habitat ring, Odo was startled when someone grabbed his arm. Without thinking, he dissolved into a liquid from his shoulder to his wrist, removing himself from the clutching fingers. He was considering his response when he realized that it was Dalin Gaten Russol.
“Odo!” The Cardassian appeared unhappy, his movements anxious. “I need your help.”
“I…I need you to do something for me. There is an isolinear recording in Dukat’s office. I need that recording. My life depends on it, Odo. Possibly more than my life.”
Odo blinked, a conscious action that did not, of course, come naturally to him. It was something that he often remembered to do only when he was beginning to feel distress or confusion. It was one of the first habits he’d been taught. “What is more important than your life?”
“I can’t explain it, Odo. Just understand that this matter is of the utmost significance.”
“I’m sure I can retrieve it for you,” Odo said, and something occurred to him then—something vaguely related to the idea of profit. An exchange…of goods—or services. He spoke slowly. “But I will need you to help me with something, as well.”
“Anything I can do for you, Odo, I will do it. Just get me that recording by the end of the day.”
“I will get it for you now, if you like. But there is a Bajoran woman who needs to get off the station,” Odo said. “Do you think you could assist her?”
Russol looked surprised for a brief moment before he nodded. “That’s almost too easy,” he replied. He looked sidelong at Odo. “A Bajoran woman, eh? Why, may I ask, is this particular Bajoran important to you?”
Odo frowned. He was unsure of the answer himself. “It seems to me…if you are unwilling to share more information about your isolinear recording, then perhaps we can agree to keep our motives to ourselves.”
Russol nodded, a smile spreading across his face. “Agreed.”
Dukat was ready to see her, or rather, believed that Kira Nerys might finally be ready to see him. He’d watched the feeds from the processing levels off and on since her arrival, watched her shoulders begin to slump as she saw her future unfolding, grit and grease and no way out. Whatever rebellious spirit had dared her to come to Terok Nor, it had certainly been diminished. He didn’t want her broken, just receptive.
