“All Bajorans are poets, Quark. Don’t you know that by now? We were poets when your kind were leaving slime trails through the mud of Ferenginar,” she teased.
“Sure you were, but was there any profit in your poetry?”
Ro threw a pinecone at him.
“So what’s next?” he said, imagining what recreational torture she might have conceived for round two.
“Ah. Now that’s a multilayered question.”
“Because—”
“Because if you’re asking what’s next tonight, I’d answer dinner, coffee, and maybe a night hike. There’s a watering hole not far from here frequented by the local wildlife—deer and raccoons. A family of beavers dammed up a water trickle and it became a pond,” she explained, scratching lines in the peaty soil with a stick. “But if you’re asking what’s next after today, or after next week, or next month after Bajor joins the Federation? Honestly. I don’t know.”
Quark said nothing. He knew that he and Ro were feeling the same sense of uncertainty about the future, both believing they’d have no place in the coming new order. For Quark, the prospect of starting over in some other galactic backwater didn’t have the same allure it once did during his youth. He suspected that was even more true for Laren.
“You know…after my second fall from Starfleet, I started to believe the reason I had so much trouble playing by its rules was that I kept finding causes that seemed more important than my career. First Garon II, then the Maquis…” She sighed, sprawling out so she could study the night sky. “I never meant to turn against Starfleet—a lot of who I am I owe to what I learned serving the Federation alongside good people. Both times, I eventually found myself faced with a choice. Both times, I followed my conscience. And both times, it ended in disaster.”
“So what are you saying?” Quark asked. “You think you made the wrong choices? Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t. But that isn’t really the issue.”
“It isn’t?”
“No. The problem with Starfleet is, its fundamental principles are flawed.”
Ro raised a sardonic eyebrow. “Oh, I can’t wait to hear where this is going.”
Quark sighed, realizing he was joining the salmon again. “While it’s all well and good to want everyone to be happy, the reality is that making sure every world has food, medicine and education doesn’t guarantee happiness. As much as the Federation tries to fix what ails the quadrant—and hell, sounds like they’re starting to preach their good news to the Gamma and Delta quadrants, too—their way of doing things doesn’t work for everyone. Because no matter how hard they try, or how honorable their intentions, equality is a bogus ideal and you can never make everyone be ‘good’ the way they define it.”
Even in the dark, Quark could sense Ro’s dubious expression. He refused to give up without at least attempting to prove his point, so he continued, “You’re one to believe in scientific principles. What’s the law of thermodynamics that says that for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction? Or what about the one that matter moves from a state of order to disorder? Either way, no matter where you look, nothing and nobody stays the same. You can’t have the good guys without the bad ones, and as quickly as you transform the fortunes of one backwater world, another one will be blown to hell. The Federation forgets that as quickly as you fix one problem, another one crops up. Starfleet flits about in their pretty starships, trying to make everyone happy and it’s mostly an exercise in futility. Is that what you want from your life Laren? Chasing a dream that can never be realized?”
Through dancing flames, Ro studied Quark pensively for a moment. Finally, she asked, “What’s better in life than dreams?”
“Results,” Quark spat. “You sail the Great River, you throw in your nets, you bring in your catch. I measure my successes by the latinum in my vault. Quantifiable, measurable results.”
“Latinum can’t love you.”
“Latinum can’t hurt you either,” Quark retorted sharply.
Ro sought Quark’s eyes, scrutinizing him closely. “You’re bothered about something. What?”
Commander Matthias’s words about Ferengi being easy to read came back to him. He pulled the blanket up over his ears. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Suddenly, Ro was sitting next to him, yanking the blanket back down. “Come on. You can tell me willingly or I can coerce it from you. Remember I interrogate people for a living.”
For once, bondage fantasies didn’t enter Quark’s mind. Instead, he considered what good it would serve if he talked about his feelings. He supposed if he wanted Ro to trust him, this was the moment to prove it. “Okay. Fine. I’m a little preoccupied with the Jake situation.”
“What about it?” She looked confused.
“Kira pretty much laid the whole thing at my feet the other night. And even though I know the ship I sold him was fine, I keep asking myself, ‘Am I responsible?’” There, I said it. I might have sent a trusting young man to his death by trying to make a profit off him. And not that much profit at that. He braced himself for Ro’s response.
She chuckled.
“Oh, that’s sensitive of you, Laren.
“Quark, I’ve had some of Starfleet’s best engineers review Nog’s inspection. They all concur: there was nothing to suggest there was anything structurally or systemically wrong with the ship you sold Jake. And Kira knows that.”
Quark shook his head. “You weren’t there—”
“No,” Ro agreed. “But I’d been watching her most of the evening, and even though she did a fine job of masking it, I could tell her emotions were coming to a boil. My guess is she lashed out at you for reasons that had nothing to do with Jake, or you.”
“You mean she put me through that abuse for nothing?”
Ro smiled, shook her head and rested her arm next to his. “I suppose that depends on your point of view. Probably did her a world of good to blow off some steam. And as a direct result, I just got to see your conscience working. It’s a sweet conscience, Quark. You should let it out more often.”
“It would ruin me,” Quark said weakly, suddenly realizing he was no longer cold.
“Yeah, it might,” Ro agreed, a small smile playing on her lips. “But I think you could stand a little ruining.”
“Devil woman.”
“Troll.”
“Kira to Lieutenant Ro.”
Quark closed his eyes and buried his head in his hands. There’s just no justice…
Ro shrugged apologetically and touched her combadge. “Go ahead, Colonel.”
“I need you on level ten. Section 65, conference room four.”
“The Cardassians.” Instantly, Ro was on her feet, brushing dirt off her clothes. “I’ll be right there. Ro out.” She turned to Quark. “Sorry, but duty calls. Computer, end program.”
Earth’s Pacific Northwest forest dissolved instantly, leaving Quark sitting on the hard holosuite floor, still wrapped in a blanket. Ro hollered her regrets for the abbreviated evening as she exited the room. He waved back absently, but remained seated on the floor for some time, trying to recapture the moment that the colonel had thoughtlessly extinguished.
From the beginning, Ro knew that putting Cardassians and Bajorans together on Deep Space 9 would be akin to a Rakantha typhoon. It might start off slow, but once the air masses collided, the tidal waves would start. The first tidal wave came ashore tonight, she thought, hoping this would be a sprinkle as opposed to a downpour. She had expected the storm front before now, but who was she to complain about a few extra days of quiet?
Traversing back corridors, an engineering turbolift, and not bothering to strip off her wetsuit, Ro reached the conference room in a matter of minutes. Kira, to avoid contaminating the crime scene, waited in the anteroom with Sergeant Shul, who ran security’s delta shift. Two corporals stood posted outside the conference room doors.
Being prepared for the worst, Ro was initially grateful she wasn’t dealing with a murder.
On another level, the careful staging of what she saw inside the conference room was almost as chilling. Whoever, whatever did this, might well be capable of murder. She suspected the sick mind she now contended with would be vain enough to show off a few more times before blood was shed, giving Ro time to smoke out the culprit.
Ro performed a cursory inventory, looking for obvious clues, but didn’t observe anything incongruent; even in the dimmed lights, she could see the conference room had been divvied up by delegation and individual, with each spot at the table corresponding to an identifying nameplate, indicating who sat in what chair. The Bajoran team lined one side of the table, with Minister Asarem seated in the center of her group; the Cardassian team lined the other, Ambassador Lang being seated in the spot directly across from Minister Asarem. Nothing unusual rested on the table either: neat collections of padds, writing styluses, maps and several legal tomes, etched with Bajoran pictographs. All the items appeared to be consistent with the work underway.
Whoever defaced the flag had used a natural flame of some sort, Ro guessed; the singed fabric edges had too much fraying to have been caused by a precision laser instrument such as an engineering drill or a surgical scalpel. And a beam weapon would have set off an alarm. The lines burned over the crest of the Cardassian Union followed an artful pattern, likely an Old Bajoran rune, though Ro wasn’t sure which one. She looked over at Kira, who appeared to be studying the same insignia.
“I think it means ‘war.’ From one of the religious texts, I believe,” Kira said.
After a tricorder scan of the flag proved inconclusive, Ro ordered Shul to comb every centimeter, every wall, keypad and hallway for evidence. No one was to touch anything. She didn’t even allow Kira to sit until she’d scanned the chair for hair and fiber samples. Taking a seat beside Kira, Ro had her recite the sequence of events leading up to the discovery of the violated conference room. Unfortunately, Kira’s experiences didn’t cast any light on who might be responsible for the vandalism. The cleaning personnel Kira had run into as she entered had already been found and questioned by Shul. They claimed not to have seen or heard anything unusual.
“Whoever did this is playing mind games with the Cardassians,” Kira concluded. “Now that I think about it, even the rune has layered meaning. It comes out of the Book of Victory from the First Republic. A rallying symbol. A symbol of righteous indignation that warriors would paint on their foreheads in the blood of their fallen comrades. Whoever did this wanted the message to have the narrowest of interpretations.”
“But it was done quietly, in a clandestine fashion where the public won’t see or find out about it. Quite an effort for such a small audience,” Ro observed. “No chance of a rally when the propaganda warfare is invisible.”
“I’ve reviewed the checkpoint logs. No one has been in or out of this area that hasn’t been cleared through channels,” Kira said, puzzled. “Is it possible someone transported this flag in?”
“The flag, maybe, but the knife through the chair more or less indicates that our vandal was in the room. The stabbing angle, the irregular entry. Maybe the vandal transported in and out from one of the docked ships. I’ll check our transporter logs and request the logs of every ship in the vicinity.” Ro repeatedly ran her eyes over the chair, the flag, the knife, hoping that she’d find a new piece of information.
“Will you brief Ambassador Lang?”
Ro nodded. “I’ll give her all the forensic analyses as well. There’s always the outside possibility that someone within her group did this. Kind of a reverse psychology approach from a Cardassian who wants to prevent the talks from succeeding.” She had witnessed firsthand the reluctance among Macet’s men to turn in their weapons. If the lack of progress in the talks had frustrated any one of them, Ro could envision a Cardassian sending a symbolic warning. The rune could have been pulled out of the station database. Hardly classified material.
“I’ll sit in on the talks tomorrow,” Kira said finally. “Ambassador Lang needs to know that she has our official support. If the culprit is on either side, it might not hurt to observe the parties involved.”
Letting whoever it was know that they were being watched might not be a bad idea either, Ro thought. “Recommend we place a gag order on all Militia and diplomatic personnel. This incident shouldn’t be reported anywhere outside the highest-ranking officials and those it impacts directly. From now on, information is on a need-to-know basis. We don’t want to encourage our terrorist by providing publicity.”
Kira nodded her approval. “You classify the report and briefings. I’ll notify Admiral Akaar and the first minister.”
Imagining how ratcheting up the tension on the station with rumor would complicate security matters, Ro hoped that senior staff would understand this wasn’t an order to be second-guessed. If she discovered any in her purview that violated her declared policy, strict disciplinary measures would be taken. She felt grateful she had a commanding officer that put the interests of the job first, one who wasn’t jostling for political influence or courting popularity. She walked Kira to the door. The colonel paused, resting a hand on the door frame. Since they had dispensed with business, Ro guessed what Kira might still have on her mind.
“I take it you were in the holosuite when I paged you,” she asked, with a bemused half-smile.
“Windsurfing,” she affirmed. “With Quark.”
“And he—”
“Hated it.”
“Are you two—” Kira began, then cut herself off. “On second thought, belay that. I don’t want to know.” The colonel shook her head as she left the conference room.
Walking the room’s perimeter, Ro mapped out an investigation strategy in her head and then sent her deputies back to the office to retrieve the equipment they’d need. While she waited, she sat down in a chair across the table from the vandalized one, rested her elbows on the table, threaded her fingers together, meditationlike, and reexamined the room.
The calculated neatness felt especially wrong. Passion crimes tended to be messy. Ro hypothesized that the criminal had gone to his or her quarters, desecrated the flag, returned here to drape the flag over Lang’s chair and then, as an afterthought, driven the knife into the chair, making certain the vehemence of the sentiment was unquestioned. Pathological anger, anger so vivid and vicious that it motivated one to lash out rarely exhibited this kind of control. Not a padd out of place. Chairs tucked neatly against the table. All was in order. Her eyes traced the inscription on the nameplate marking the chair where she sat: “Asarem Wadeen, Second Minister, Bajor” in standard script. In an instant, Ro realized that she sat on the cusp of an investigation that required she scrutinize the most powerful individuals currently in this sector: the list of those with access to this conference room read like a list of who’s who in postwar politics. Any one of the people sitting at this table might have a motive.
She toyed with the nameplate. Even you, second minister.
Only two hours into alpha shift and Kira felt like she’d never gone off duty. Dealing with last night’s attack on the conference room continued into morning. She might have slept for a few hours, but she couldn’t remember if there had been a pillow involved. Making an executive decision on the exhibit, she left orders to have Ziyal’s art moved into its new home where the curator could spend the day arranging and rearranging it. Time to take Lang up on her offer—and take a welcome break from ops at that.
Sliding into the second row of chairs behind Sirsy and a handful of Federation observers, Kira’s seat placed her within eye-line of Lang and the Cardassian delegation. With every clattering stylus or chair scraping the floor, Lang jerked abruptly or lost her chain of thought. Damn, I knew the attack impacted her more than she let on. The ambassador had received Ro’s report with consummate professionalism, but the knowledge that she had an enemy making overt threats against her had to be disquieting. As she watched the proceedings, Kira brainstormed for more secure, alternate locations, on or off Deep S
pace 9, where the talks could be held.
When she changed to a new set of notes, Lang’s eyes registered Kira’s arrival and her mouth curved into a barely perceptible smile. She continued, however, with a seamless reading of her text.
“…and to continue humanitarian medical assistance until such time as Cardassia’s medical infrastructure has been reestablished and is strong enough to manage the needs of its people. Furthermore—”
“Excuse me, Ambassdor Lang,” Asarem interrupted, raising a hand. “But I’m not certain that aid on the scale you’re proposing is agreeable to our side.”
Lang sighed, bit her upper lip and paused, clearly trying to hold her tongue. “This isn’t a new proposal. These are the levels agreed to in the postwar Accords by the Romulans, the Klingons—”
“I’m aware of who signed the Accords, Ambassador. But that doesn’t change Bajor’s position that maintaining such levels of aid, indefinitely, is undesirable.” Asarem leaned back in her chair and rested her hands in her lap. Though Kira couldn’t see her facial expressions, she sensed Asarem felt comfortable in the lay of the battlefield. How she eased into the chair back, loosely crossing her legs and relaxing her shoulders said that she controlled the field. The burden was on Lang to flank her.
Kira recalled an experience with Shakaar when their cell awaited the arrival of a Cardassian weapons shipment they planned on stealing since their own supplies were running low. Though they had been outnumbered five to one, Shakaar remained in good humor. When asked why, he answered simply, “Because we hold the hills.” Watching Asarem, Kira couldn’t help but think that the second minister believed she held the hills. And why not? Her delegation hadn’t been threatened. At least Asarem won’t be susceptible to any Cardassian double-talk. She felt reassured that Bajor had an excellent steward. So why am I having a hard time trusting her?
Earlier, the task of briefing the Bajoran delegation had fallen to Kira. Asarem made sympathetic noises when she heard of the surreptitious threat against the Cardassians. Her immediate concern had been for Ambassador Lang’s safety and she asked what measures she personally needed to take to circumvent any future attacks. Nothing in Asarem’s manner suggested insincerity. Her untainted political record served as proof that she was an honorable public servant. Maybe that’s my problem, Kira mused. I don’t believe in perfection—there’s something in Asarem’s manner that’s so polished, it feels scripted. Still, if I agree with her positions, what’s my problem here? A marked increase in the volume in the room startled her back into paying attention.
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