by S. D. Perry
“Do I…know you?” Reyar finally asked.
“Sir, I am here as a friend, to give you information regarding your daughter.”
Reyar’s face darkened. “My daughter,” he said softly. “Perhaps you had better come with me.” He gestured down the hall to a darkened, windowless chamber, surrounded on all sides by stacks of isolinear rods and old-fashioned books. Esad surmised this was Reyar’s personal office.
Reyar closed the door behind him, and Esad sat down, wasting no time in getting to the point. “Mr. Reyar, I know you have been looking for your daughter for some time, after she failed to make her scheduled appearance at the University of Culat…”
“It was Dost Abor,” the man said, without hesitation. “No matter what lengths the Order has gone to to cover it up, I know it was Abor.” He struggled to keep a handle on his obvious rage. “You are going to tell me that it was her lover, whoever he was, but I am no fool, sir. I know it was—”
“I am here to confirm your suspicions,” Esad said. “Indeed, Dost Abor is responsible for your daughter’s death.”
“Her…death…” Reyar said, sinking deeper into his chair. For a terrible moment, the man could not speak, and as the shock wore away from his face, he fought tears, fought them valiantly and in vain. Esad expected this reaction, but he had not prepared himself for it. He looked away, giving the man a moment to compose himself again.
“So,” Reyar said, choking on his words, “you have come to betray your colleague. Do you do this for revenge? Has the man done something to you, Mr….” he stopped, realizing that Esad had not introduced himself.
“No,” Esad said. “In all honesty, Mr. Reyar, I come to do what I believe is right. I acted as adjutant to Enabran Tain for many years, and I was often forced to do things that compromised my own values—for what I perceived to be good reasons. But the ultimate fate of your daughter is something with which I cannot come to peaceful terms. I felt that perhaps…in at least letting you know of her true fate…”
“You could absolve yourself?” Reyar’s tone indicated that he did not think so.
Esad hesitated. “Something like that,” he said. It was true that Kalisi Reyar had tried to betray Astraea’s location, but Esad himself was partially responsible for dragging Kalisi into the matter in the first place—for it was he who had brought her to the facility at Valo VI, the first time Abor had questioned her. For his role in it, Esad had always felt unsettled, that there was still a loose end that he could never hope to reweave.
There was a silence. Seeing the anger that was now replacing the other man’s sorrow, Esad thought he’d perhaps do best to leave. But before he stood, he added one more thing. “You may recall that Dost Abor was stationed at Valo VI for many years,” he said. “But that is no longer the case.”
“No?” Reyar said, looking expectantly to Esad for the rest.
Esad wasn’t sure if this was the right thing to do at all—in fact, he suspected it was not. But something within him insisted that he do it, whether to shift the blame away from himself, or whether he still had too much of the vengeful agent in him, he did not know. “You see…I put in a recommendation for Abor…that he be moved from Valo VI, and my praise has finally come to fruition for him. He is stationed right here, on Cardassia Prime,” Esad said. “In fact, he lives in the Coranum sector.”
“Here?” Yannik whispered. “The man who murdered my daughter is a stone’s throw from my own home?”
“Yes,” Esad said, keeping his own voice low. “He has assumed a new identity for his current post, per the orders of the new Obsidian Order head.”
“A fool,” mumbled Reyar, and Esad silently agreed with him. Not everyone could be the genius Enabran Tain had been. Tain was not a good man, that was absolutely certain, but he was a brilliant man.
“Dost Abor now calls himself Ran Lotor,” Esad went on. “He is posing as an educator.”
“Ran Lotor,” Esad repeated. “I don’t know him.”
“Well,” Esad said, standing up, “he will not be difficult to find, especially not for a man with military resources at his disposal. Perhaps you would like to go and…introduce yourself?”
Reyar stood as well. “I think it is a fine idea,” he said.
Esad did not linger, not only because he wanted to leave the man in peace, but because he was still not entirely comfortable with what he had set in motion today. As an Oralian, he was committed to a certain set of beliefs, but as a Cardassian, sometimes his personal feelings overwhelmingly overrode them. Esad was no stranger to this conflict, for his entire profession put his faith in constant compromise. As the servant let him out, he had to be satisfied with remembering that he was a complicated man, as all men were, and that his own personal feelings regarding a matter might sometimes take precedence over what he knew was right—and that sometimes the things he knew to be right could directly contradict each other. Today, he had chosen to act as a Cardassian.
20
Odo was making his regular rounds on the Bajoran side of the Promenade when another man fell in step with him, somewhat more conspicuously than Odo might have liked. He told himself there was nothing suspicious about having a friendly chat with some random acquaintance, Bajoran or Cardassian—though he was sure Dukat would have preferred that he keep his friends in the latter category.
The man spoke under his breath, which Odo felt made their interaction all the more noticeable. “Kira tells me you have agreed to speak to me.”
“Yes,” Odo said shortly, trying to remember this man’s name. He thought it was Gran. “Let’s do this quickly. I have other matters to attend to this evening.”
“At the start of his shift tomorrow,” the man said, “The chief of engineering is going to be implicated in some black-market dealings with a Bajoran here on the Promenade.”
“Dalin Kedat?”
“Yes.” Gran was impatient, though he struggled to maintain detached politeness. He seemed far from comfortable with this arrangement. “You’ll arrest him and somehow make the charges stick. Kedat is one of three people on the station, including yourself, who have access to the surveillance feeds from the computer core, and we need him out of the way. After you arrest him, Terok Nor is going to start feeling very cold to the Cardassians.”
“You’re sabotaging the environmental control system,” Odo surmised.
“For starters,” Gran said. “It’s going to look like a malfunction. We laid the groundwork for that aspect of the plan yesterday.”
“How?”
“That doesn’t matter—”
“It matters to me,” Odo growled.
“Fine!” the Bajoran hissed. “We used the environmental control interface for the Ferengi’s holodecks—bribed him to look the other way for ten minutes. Satisfied?”
Odo scoffed at the revelation of Quark’s involvement in the scheme, but very likely the Ferengi didn’t even know what the Bajorans were up to; the better to profit while maintaining plausible deniability, as he had done with Kira. “Go on.”
“The cold won’t do any real damage, but it’ll keep most of the Cardassians uncomfortable and busy trying to fix the problem. No one will question it if you move security personnel away from the computer core in order to guard the work crews.”
“What about Dukat?” Odo asked. He was the third man with access to the core’s surveillance feeds.
“Once the temperature drops, you’ll need to figure out a way to get Dukat out of his office and keep him occupied long enough for my man to enter the core and take out the detection grid. Twenty minutes is all he’ll need.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Then it’s not going to work,” Odo said. “Dukat won’t allow me to keep Kedat in custody during a mechanical failure—not on black market charges.”
“We’ll kill Kedat, then.”
“No, you won’t,” Odo said sternly. There would be no more innocent blood on his hands. This resistance member might no
t understand that, but fortunately there was another reason simply assassinating Kedat wouldn’t help them: “You murder a senior officer, and Terok Nor immediately goes on heightened alert.”
“You have a better idea?”
“Actually I do, but it means you’ll need to delay the environmental malfunction.”
“How long?”
“Four hours following his arrest.”
Gran swallowed. Clearly the idea of waiting so long to implement the next phase of the plan made him nervous. “All right,” he said finally. “We’ll do it your way, Constable.” The man started to move away.
“Wait,” Odo said, sudden doubt overtaking him. “What if something goes wrong? Do you have a signal, some way to let me know if you intend to abort?”
Gran snorted. “Dozens of things could go wrong, Mr. Odo. We just have to take the risk, and hope that everything will fall into place. There are no fail-safes.”
“But—” Odo found himself very uncomfortable with this level of uncertainty. “If we are caught, several people will be executed, and you may not get another chance to disable the grid. Dukat will take pains to ensure that no more attempts can be carried out.”
The Bajoran shrugged. “True,” he said wryly. “But some things are worth taking risks for.”
Odo remembered someone else saying something quite similar once—it was Sito Jaxa, the little girl who had boldly wandered into the forest with the belief that she could deliver information to the resistance all on her own. She had taken a terrible risk, and almost paid dearly for it. Odo was not much of a risk-taker himself. He wondered if he should back out, even as he was agreeing to the reckless terms of the plan.
He left the Bajoran man alone on the Promenade and continued on his rounds, knowing now that if he failed to keep up his end of the agreement, several Bajorans would be guaranteed a death sentence, and it would essentially be his own fault. On the other hand, if he adhered to the rule of law, he should turn in the man and all who were involved. He didn’t especially want that on his conscience, though it wouldn’t be the first time he’d assisted in putting a stop to Bajoran conspiracies. He felt as though something very new and very frightening had transpired within himself these past few days—but he took some comfort in knowing that it wasn’t too late to change his mind. It wouldn’t be too late until fourteen hundred hours tomorrow.
Astraea knew that because of her position, Thrax Sa’kat had long ago decided not to make any “inappropriate” overtures to her, and while she supposed it was meant to be respectful, she still wished it were otherwise. He had returned to Cardassia Prime from his assignment on Cardassia III, raving about a perceived threat to the shrine—to the last remaining copies of the Recitations of Oralius, the book she had sought so many years ago, that Glinn Sa’kat’s family had kept safe for generations. And to the Orb, though she knew that he did not need to worry about that now.
“Glinn Sa’kat,” she interrupted him. “I have spoken to Kutel Esad, and he insists that we will be safe here. I don’t wish for you to concern yourself so.”
“But there is unrest fast approaching on our world,” Sa’kat insisted. “The situation with Bajor is unraveling, and it is only the beginning, Astraea. The Detapa Council is gaining power, which can only mean—”
“Changes,” Astraea interrupted. “Favorable changes—you said so yourself.”
“Yes,” he sighed. “But a shift in governmental power will also mean violence.”
“Oralius will keep us safe,” she insisted.
“Astraea,” he said, “I have been thinking of the Orb…”
“The Orb of Wisdom.”
“Yes.” He hesitated. “Perhaps Kutel was right when he said it was dangerous for us to have it. We don’t need any more reason to be targeted by the Order, or anyone else. I confess, since bringing it here, I’ve not felt at peace…”
Astraea was relieved to hear him say it. “Then you will be happy to know that I have already arranged for the Orb to be transferred elsewhere, Glinn Sa’kat.”
He looked up at her, his astonishment plain. “Transferred elsewhere? What do you mean?”
“You took it with you, Glinn Sa’kat.”
He was speechless, and Astraea finished quickly.
“Your business on Cardassia III,” she told him. “The Orb was with you when you traveled. I employed Kutel Esad to help me with this errand. We…had the Orb transferred to the cargo bay of your ship, and when it was unloaded—”
“Astraea!” Sa’kat cried. “Why would you do such a thing?”
“Because,” she told him promptly, “because that Orb did not belong with us. That Orb belongs to the Bajorans, and as long as we held it, Oralius did not look favorably upon us. Kutel told me he felt unsettled by the object, and I felt it too. The shrine was not a place of peace as long as it was here. I felt instant relief as soon as it was gone.”
“But…Astraea, there is no telling what will happen to it now, the cargo of my ship was unloaded at several military ports on Cardassia III…”
“The Orb will go where it is needed,” Astraea told him, stubborn in her certainty, “and, in time, so too will the six that are still in the Order’s possession. I have seen it.”
“But…” He stopped. Thrax Sakat had never argued with the veracity of her visions, but he appeared exasperated.
“I had to do it,” she said softly. “It was what Oralius wanted, please believe me.” She couldn’t explain it beyond that. She could never adequately put words to the overwhelming urges and insights she sometimes experienced. Usually, Glinn Sa’kat seemed to accept her actions and recommendations without question; this time seemed different.
“I thought…I was doing the right thing…”
“You didn’t do the wrong thing, Glinn Sa’kat. It doesn’t matter now. Please, let’s speak no more of it.”
He nodded without looking up, then he stood. “I had better go,” he said.
She rose to her feet also, taking a step toward him. “Glinn Sa’kat, are you angry with me?”
He said nothing for a moment, and then he changed the subject.
“Astraea, I wish you would consent to go into hiding, at least until we have a better idea of what will be the outcome of the governmental upheaval.”
“No,” she told him. “I cannot leave the followers, not again.”
“The followers cannot afford to lose you.”
“The Way will never fade into obscurity, Glinn Sa’kat. I know this—with more than just a feeling. It is a truth. I do not wish to leave this place.” She said it more firmly than she had intended. “Besides,” she added, lightening her tone, “you will keep me safe.” She meant the last part to be affectionate, but he looked grave.
“Sometimes I miss the days that I was on Terok Nor,” he told her.
She felt a stab of unhappy regret, wondering if he was truly angry with her, before he went on. “From there, I had access to information from all over the Cardassian Union and beyond—systems from the Setlik to Valeria. Here, I feel much less capable of protecting you.”
She looked up, her voice trembling despite her efforts to control it. “Would you really rather be on Terok Nor, Glinn Sa’kat, than here, with…” She trailed off, and there was a moment of silence between them.
He gazed at her for a long moment, unblinking, before he stepped toward her. His hands came up from his sides, and he took her face in his hands. She scarcely dared to move, but after a single moment, the longest moment of her life, she felt her body go slack, seeming to melt against him, feeling the ache of long-unexpressed desire finally begin to ebb. He brushed his lips against hers, and she kissed him back willingly.
He broke away far too soon, but he did not take his hands away from her face. “I do wish you would listen to me more often,” he murmured.
“I will do whatever you recommend,” she told him, “but only if it means you will be with me.”
He did not reply, only embraced her once again, holding on
as if he never meant to let go.
Odo answered his comm with trepidation, for the moment had come. “Odo!” Dukat was roaring. “Environmental control gone down, very likely due to yet another act of sabotage. You must double up your security at once.”
“Of course,” Odo replied. “Anything else?”
“Find Dalin Kedat and have him report to ops at once!”
Odo feigned surprise. “But Gul Dukat…Dalin Kedat is gone. I put him on the penal ship following his arrest, and I believe it has already left the station.”
Dukat looked quite flabbergasted. “And exactly what are we to do without a chief of engineering? You know those fools on his staff will squabble among themselves for an hour before even getting started!”
“Dalin Trakad has already put in for a replacement, sir, but he tells me it is standard procedure for there to be an interim period of at least three days before—”
“Three days!”
“That’s what I was told. You can speak to Dalin Trakad further on the matter. I consulted fully with him, and we were simply following…”
“Procedure, of course you were. It didn’t occur to you that we might be forced to bend the rules in the case of our chief of engineering. We can scarcely function without Kedat!”
“I…wasn’t aware of that, sir. I only knew that procedure clearly states—”
“Just…be sure to double up security as I asked. Immediately!” He signed off abruptly.
Odo stood, for there was a second part to his role in this mission. He left his office without bothering to answer Dukat’s call for more security, and headed to Quark’s.
“Odo!” Quark exclaimed as the shape-shifter entered his establishment. “To what do I owe…?”
“Save it, Quark. I need to speak with you in private.”
Quark gestured to his customer, a long-faced dal. “All right. Just let me just take care of—”
