Morn easily lifts her up into a bridal carry.
“On my mark,” Garak says. He watches for a break in the crowd. “Go!”
—
“Wait, wait,” Ezri says. “Go back.”
The Bajoran deputy rewinds the security footage taken from a camera outside Kasidy and Ben’s quarters.
“Stop.”
He pauses the video at oh-five hundred hours—long before Lenara’s hacked feed in Vic’s was up and running.
“Now play. Normal speed.”
On screen, Kasidy leaves her cabin seemingly of her own volition; she’s dressed for the day and even carrying a small overnight bag.
“Where is she going?” Jake murmurs.
Kasidy walks out of frame.
“Play through at triple speed,” Ezri orders. “I want to make sure she doesn’t come back. Good. Wait! Stop. Play that back.”
Two Lurians enter the frame, glancing up and down the corridor before stepping in front of Kasidy’s door. One keeps watch while the other cracks the lock. They go inside.
“Fast forward.”
The timestamp reading an hour after they broke in, the Lurians leave empty-handed, looking considerably sweatier than they had before.
“I think we figured out who trashed Kasidy’s quarters,” Ezri says.
“Do you want me to file a report?” the deputy asks.
“Not yet. Keep following Kasidy in the security footage. Jake, you ask around to see if anyone has seen her. I’m gonna go track down those Lurians.”
—
Silence envelops Garak’s childhood neighborhood. A far cry from where they just came from, the empty yards and dark houses could make one think that Garak, Morn, and Kasidy are the last remaining souls on the planet.
Normally, Garak would park on the street out front, but one car on an empty street would be a clear giveaway of their location. He pulls into the driveway and taps a remote control device hooked onto his dashboard. The ground beneath them lowers as the car is brought down into the house’s underground carpark—a new addition to the property, a kind of gift from the government to Garak, that he has never used for entirely personal reasons. Overhead, a false pavement cover closes, leaving no sign that Garak’s car was ever there.
When Garak gets out of the car, Jack and the others are (of course) standing in the carpark’s doorway into the basement, waiting for him.
“Where’s Julian?” Patrick asks.
“He had something to attend to on Deep Space Nine,” Garak answers.
“Who’s he?” Lauren asks, ogling Morn as he helps Kasidy out of the backseat.
“That’s Morn,” Garak says, “and this is Captain Kasidy Yates-Sisko.”
“Kasidy’s just fine.” Kasidy turns around, revealing her heavily pregnant belly to the genetically enhanced mutants, all of whom (including Sarina) recoil at the sight. “What? You act like you’ve never seen a pregnant human before.”
“We haven’t,” Patrick says, eyeing Kasidy’s belly warily.
“We spent most of our lives locked in a single room with no access to the outside world,” Sarina explains.
“Oh,” Kasidy says. “I’m. . . I’m sorry?”
Jack smiles, pointing at Kasidy. “Finally, an apology.” Jack sticks out his hand. “I’m Jack.”
“Hi.” Kasidy shakes his hand.
“These are, in order of personal preference, Sarina, Patrick, and Lauren.”
Kasidy gives a wave that quickly turns into a grimace. She grabs her belly. “Oof.”
Jack and the others jump away from her like she had just transformed into a fire-breathing dragon.
Garak touches her shoulder. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” Kasidy says.
“No, no, no,” Jack says, waving his hands in front of himself. “You are not fine. You are—you are definitely not fine. You are in labor.”
“I’m not in labor.”
“You look like you’re in labor,” Patrick says.
“I’m not in labor.”
“I don’t want to alarm you,” Sarina says softly, “but there is an eighty-six-point-three-four percent probability that you’re going into labor.”
“I’m not in labor!”
“I don’t know why you’re denying it,” Lauren says.
“I’m not in labor!” Kasidy snaps. “If I was in labor, Ben would be here.”
A pool of liquid forms beneath her.
“I might be in labor.”
—
On Ezri’s way around the station, asking anyone she passes, “Have you seen two Lurians?” she inevitably realizes that most people wouldn’t know what a Lurian looked like if one bit them. So she substitutes her question: “Have you seen two guys who look like Morn, but with hair?”
This leads her to the habitat ring where she receives a frantic comm from Avin Xostro. “Someone is inside my room,” he whispers.
“Where are you?” Ezri asks.
“In the bathroom. I was washing my hands when they came in.”
“Is the door locked?”
“No, I was the only one home.”
“Okay. Stay there. I’m on my way.”
“Hurry!”
Ezri sprints to Avin’s quarters, pulling out her service phaser before going inside. The living room is torn up just as badly as Kasidy’s; Ezri has a fairly good idea of what the Lurians were looking for. She silently sidles up to the bedroom door, peeking in once, and storms in with her sidearm pointed at the two Lurians tearing apart Avin’s mattress.
“Hands where I can see them,” Ezri orders.
The Lurians slowly drop what they are holding, raising their hands to cheek level.
“Who sent you here?”
The Lurians say nothing, staring at her defiantly.
“What did you do with Captain Kasidy Yates-Sisko?”
Still nothing.
“Fine. You don’t wanna talk? Let’s see what the magistrate has to say about your breaking and entering spree.”
They stand unmoving, still silent.
These guys are tough.
“These men know nothing of Kasidy Yates-Sisko’s disappearance,” Sybok says from behind Ezri, causing her to jump in surprise. “They searched her quarters because the Symbiosis Commission suspected Jake Sisko of harboring the symbionts for you. These two are on their way to tear apart the rooms of every person mentioned in the young Sisko’s article.”
“Well,” Ezri says, “it’s a good thing we caught them before they did.”
Sybok raises an eyebrow.
Ezri thinks as loud as she can, “I’m bluffing.”
Sybok catches on. “A very good thing, indeed.”
“You’re lucky,” Ezri says to the Lurians. “If you would have laid a hand on the Emissary’s wife, you wouldn’t have made it off this station alive.”
The Lurians share a concerned look, but say nothing.
Words, however, are not necessary when Sybok is the room. “They have plans for the Emissary’s son.”
—
“Well, that’s a fine suggestion, Morn,” Garak spits. “We’ll simply take Kasidy to the hospital. All we’ll have to do is brave the angry mobs of northern dissidents and roving bands of trigger-happy secret police to get there. And I’m sure the few doctors, who didn’t flee the planet and aren’t hiding with their families, won’t be too busy treating critical injuries from today’s violent revolt to deliver a human baby. After all, it will be such a valuable learning experience for them. It’s not every day a doctor gets to assist her first human birth through trial and error. Well done, Morn. Well done.”
Morn glowers at Garak silently.
“I don’t want a hospital birth,” Kasidy says. “Ben and I decided on a homebirth with a midwife.”
Garak taps his comm. “Garak to Rozhenko.”
—
A light flashes on Lenara’s panel, an antique they found in cargo bay two this morning; a relic from the days when Starfleet (and
humans in general) were still clinging to analog. Lenara can’t fathom why anyone would want to keep the dusty thing around (maybe Rom was using it for spare parts? or was there some crafty person on the station planning to turn it into a custom end table?), but it does the job well and it’s what they had on hand. The resistance is just lucky that Kahn was alive and working in electrical engineering during the panel’s heyday.
“What’s that mean?” Vic asks, hovering over her shoulder. (This is perhaps the twentieth time he’s asked some variant of, “What’s that button do?”)
“Someone in the field is paging me to put their lapel camera on the monitor.”
Lenara flicks a few levers below one of the monitors and the corresponding camera feed appears, displaying a large room filled with clothing racks and mirrors, a few dress forms left undisturbed yet covered with dust, as if this was once a dress shop whose owner left in a hurry one day and never returned. The camera moves deeper into the space, bouncing up and down in a rough, irregular pace as if whoever is wearing is being dragged by the arm. The movement stops and three figures step into the frame: a vice-commissioner and two Hera’jato agents.
Lenara checks the camera number against her list of names, trying to figure out who’s in that room.
She taps her comm. “Kahn to Dax.”
“Dax here,” Ezri responds.
“The Hera’jato have Jake.”
“Do you know where?”
“Some kind of abandoned dress shop.”
“Right. I’ll put someone on it. Dax out.”
Lenara looks back to the monitor, hoping whoever that someone is gets there fast. The Dominion might have been too smart to lay a hand on the Emissary’s son, but the Symbiosis Commission has very little interest in winning the hearts and minds of the Bajoran people.
“We know the ‘resistance’ is keeping at least one symbiont on this station,” the vice-commissioner says. “Where is it?
“When you asked me to come someplace more private for an interview,” Jake says offscreen. “I thought I’d be the one asking the questions.”
“I think the quadrant has read enough of your imaginative writing.”
“So, as a senior member of the Symbiosis Commission, you officially disavow the contents of my article? You deny that the initiate program discriminates against disabled Trill, that the Commission is staging a massive cover-up of the toxic working conditions faced by the Guardians, that almost half of the Trill population are capable of being joined? Do you deny that?”
Lenara has to hand it to Jake; he’s been captured by Trill’s shadow government and he’s still trying to collect sound bites. (Lenara wonders briefly if Jake allowed himself to be captured to catch this all on camera, whether out of devotion to their cause or to journalism. Humans, for being so short-lived, can be incredibly reckless in their youth. One might call that “bravery.”)
“I will ask you again,” the vice-commissioner says. “Where is the symbiont?”
“Which symbiont?” Jake asks. “There are a lot of joined Trill on the station today.”
“The symbiont that was stolen from us.”
“Stolen? So, the symbionts, as the Commission understands them, are possessions that can be stolen? Do I have you on record stating that the Symbiosis Commission owns sentient lifeforms?”
The vice-commissioner ignores the question. “Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be.”
“Is that a threat?”
“No, that—”
“Hey!” a voice off-screen—the Ferengi engineer, if Lenara isn’t mistaken—yells. “You can’t be in here. This area’s off limits to the public.” Nog walks into frame, carrying a toolbox. “Come on, Jake. You know that.”
“Sorry,” Jake says. “I was just leaving.”
The camera turns and proceeds out of the dress shop, faintly picking up Nog asking the vice-commissioner and his lackeys to leave so he can perform “routine maintenance.”
On the Promenade, Jake strides away quickly, heading in the general direction of Lysia’s jumja stick cart. The camera’s movement halts abruptly.
“I don’t have anything to say to you,” Jake whispers firmly.
“Come with us,” a voice offscreen—a Hera’jato perhaps—says.
“I’m not going anywhere with you. Let go off me!”
There’s the sounds of a struggle. Jake and the camera come crashing to the ground.
Lenara swears she could hear a pin drop in the dress shop with the Promenade grown this quiet.
Footsteps and an off-center view of Lysia approaching, holding her cooking knife. “Is there a problem, gentlemen?” she asks.
Someone helps Jake to his feet and from this angle, Lenara can see every Bajoran on the Promenade stopped to glare at the strangers who knocked Jake Sisko to the ground.
“No,” the commissioner says, backing away. “No problem.”
—
Garak lowers the false driveway down enough for Alexander to drop into the garage, leaving a superficial scratch on the hood of the car that nonetheless has Garak wincing.
Currently in between contractions, Kasidy takes a long look at the gangly adolescent making a house call, blanching noticeably. “Garak!” she yells, even though he is standing about two feet away from her. It is very, uh, cramped in the garage.
“Yes, Captain?” Garak responds, his ears ringing.
“That’s who’s supposed to deliver my baby?” she whispers. “He looks younger than Jake!”
“I assure you, he’s highly trained. Aren’t you, Alexander?”
Distracted, Alexander blows his dismount off the car, slipping off the trunk onto the cool garage floor. To his credit, he picks himself up remarkably fast and with little fanfare, as if falling down and humiliating himself is a part of his daily routine. He smiles at Kasidy. “I’m certified by the Klingon Board of Midwives and the Federation board. I’ve delivered thirty-two babies, three of whom were human. Normally, I’d give you references, but I think I broke my PADD in the fall.” He pats the medical bag resting on the hood of the car. “But I have all my other stuff with me. Feel free to ask me any questions.”
Without a beat, Kasidy asks, “Do you believe in God, Alexander?”
“Um. Which one?”
“Any god. Any higher power.”
“I don’t know. I mean, my dad raised me to believe in Klingon traditions, and we killed all our gods, but my grandparents did all the holidays with me and I enjoyed that a lot more than the Klingon stuff. But I don’t know if that’s just because I liked dressing up in costumes and getting chocolate money.”
“Outside of religion, do you think things happen for a reason? That we each have a destiny?”
“Yeah. I guess I do.”
“Good. Because I don’t. And I’m going to need someone to help me let the Prophets take the conn on this one, because the only way I see myself being able to give birth, without my husband, in Garak’s garage, is if I think all of this is happening for some greater purpose I’m too linear to understand.”
“I think I can do that.”
“Then let’s do the will of the Prophets.”
“Great, um.” Alexander looks around the one-car garage. “Is there some place safe we can go with more room? What’s behind that door?”
“The basement,” Lauren says.
“We’re not supposed to go in the basement,” Patrick says.
“That’s the one rule,” Jack says. “Don’t go in the basement.”
“Why not?” Alexander asks.
“He won’t tell us,” Lauren says.
“But,” Jack adds, “we think it’s because—”
“It’s fine,” Garak snaps. “You want to go in the basement? Go in the basement. Let’s all go in the basement.” Garak swings the door open, not daring to look inside. “Come on. Go in. What? You’re not scared, are you?” Personally, he’s terrified.
Everyone files inside, Sarina passing him with a sickeningly sympathetic
look. His sneer doesn’t move her at all.
He stays there for a moment, holding the door open for no one, alternatingly steeling himself for the inevitable and concocting excuses for why he has to stay in the garage. Forced to admit that this revolution will last longer than the time it takes him to wax the car, Garak steps into the basement.
He doesn’t know what he was expecting: a tombstone, a chalk outline of her body, a flashing neon sign pointing to the exact spot where she died? Not carpet or a kitchenette, a bathroom or a tiny bedroom Alexander leads Kasidy into for privacy.
He supposes there’s some profound metaphor in all this: a new living space in a room he associates with death. The rise of a new Cardassia, carpeting over old wounds.
So why does he feel like he’s lying in her grave?
He chides himself for indulging in such petty grief when so much is at stake, hoping perhaps that if he berates himself enough he can whisk this feeling away and focus on the task at hand. Although that approach has never been very successful in curing his claustrophobia.
Someone taps his shoulder.
“What?” he snaps.
Sarina doesn’t flinch. “We made a supply run upstairs—”
“Great. You’ve probably drawn half the resistance to our door.”
“No one saw us.”
“Are you sure?”
“I know how to be invisible; I’ve spent most of my life doing it.”
“Very well. What did you bring down?”
“Food, water, blankets, things Alexander said Kasidy and the baby need. And I found this.” Sarina picks up a large but surprisingly light trunk from the floor, passing it to Garak.
He flips the top open, finding fabric and a small sewing kit inside.
“The baby’s going to need clothes,” she says. “None of us were ever allowed to have sharp objects, so we never learned to sew. But I thought you or Morn might be able to put something together.”
“Well.” He coughs. Is it dusty in there? “I wouldn’t subject anyone to Morn’s dubious fashion sense—not even an infant—so I suppose I’ll have to tackle this myself.”
“Thanks.”
Garak bows his head. “You’re welcome.”
Sarina goes back to divvying up the goods from upstairs, while Garak sits down on the couch and gets to sorting the fabric.
The Trail: A Star Trek Novel (New Frontier Reloaded Book 1) Page 22
