by Diane Carey
One of the Klingons, a warrior with a bitter face, glowered at him and spat a hate-dripping phrase in Klingon.
Or was it only that every phrase in Klingon sounded like an insult?
The other Klingon laughed, and both turned away.
"Actually," Garak interrupted, "I'm not sure the constable has a mother."
The Klingons swung back, basted with shock at a Cardassian who knew their language. They seemed to take Garak very personally for some reason.
Odo stepped between them and Garak before anything got started. "Gentlemen, if you have business on the Promenade, I suggest you go about it. If not, move along."
"I'd listen to him if I were you," Garak added in a particularly taunting manner.
The first Klingon snarled, "I don't take orders from shapeshifters… or their Cardassian lapdogs!"
"I may be a shapeshifter," Odo said evenly, "but I'm also chief of security of this station. So either you move along, or you'll be continuing this conversation from inside a holding cell."
With his attitude he hoped he conveyed the simple message that he would clear a cargo hold and incarcerate every Klingon in the task force to maintain peace on the station.
The Klingons held back. Odo found that unlikely and took it as a clue. These types would have been happy to start a fight just for the distraction.
They didn't. Why not? Orders?
Why would they be given such orders? Klingon commanders generally didn't care about fallout from the actions of their men.
"As long as you wear that Bajoran uniform, we're allies," the offender said with his lips peeled back. "Make sure you never take it off."
He nodded to his companion and the two of them stalked off.
Odo remained unimpressed, either by the Klingons or by himself. He hadn't scared them off. They'd deliberately kept control of themselves. Why?
"I didn't know you spoke Klingon," he said to Garak as he watched the Klingons round the curve of the Promenade's wide corridor.
"You'd be surprised," Garak said, "at the kind of things you can learn while you're doing alterations."
Garak entered his shop and wished he could find a nonsuspicious reason for keeping it closed. That would be too much of a signal. Everyone would be on him with questions to which he had no proper answers. Sisko would have questions, Odo would, the Klingons would have questions, everyone would.
There should be some kind of personal security measures in here. Something keyed to his own hand or eye or blood. Something that he could activate with brain waves. Any garden-variety master spy could fabricate such a system—what a challenge it would be to come up with something that even Odo couldn't turn into a key and breach.
Now Garak had a new hobby—figuring out a security system that Odo couldn't turn into himself. Was there anything Odo couldn't turn into? Hmmm…a raindrop?
On the other hand, there were times like these, when Garak would attract just as much attention by leaving his security measures off, thereby letting Drex and friends know they were expected back. Decisions, decisions.
He reached out to move a rack of nightdresses, and on the periphery of his vision someone moved to his left. A moment later there was also motion to his right.
They were here already. Five minutes earlier than expected. Maybe he had said two words too many.
How damned predictable they were. Probably taught at the age of three—it's part of being a Klingon…beat up a lot of people and always do the most predictable thing.
He swung around and pretended to be surprised. Four Klingons blocked his exit, including the two he and Odo had met on the Promenade. Drex and Ruktah.
They were exceptionally angry. Humiliated, most likely, on finding out that he had understood what they had said when they were in his shop before.
He had counted on that. It was what brought them back here now. They would vent their insult and wring the information out of him that they had left without before.
Garak controlled his facial expression with effort. He made his eyes gleam and his lips spread thin in what might have been taken as a smile. They were here, where he wanted them. He couldn't possibly stop what was about to happen. It was the price to be paid. If he showed fear, he would be even worse off.
"Let me guess," he said. "You're either lost, or you're desperately searching for a good tailor."
Drex wasn't tickled, any more than he had been when Garak had teased him on the Promenade by understanding his crack about Odo's mother not letting the constable speak to men. That had been the bait, after all—humiliate them, and they will follow you anywhere.
Drex stepped forward and landed a slaughtering punch to the tailor's midsection.
Explosive pain bolted through Garak—he was surprised at how much it hurt. His lungs crumpled. His knees buckled under him.
As Garak slid back and the other Klingons closed in, Drex flexed his gloved fists.
"Guess again."
The gloves were studded. Not just the punch, but the impact of the studs crashed into Garak's ribs and drove him violently backward. He slammed against the computer console, then folded forward over blinding pain, his lungs screaming for air and his vision bursting with lights.
Before those lights faded, they hit him again.
"Give us the access to the memory banks, Cardassian," Ruktah demanded.
Gasping as he hung over the shoe rack, Garak choked, "You…wouldn't …appreciate it."
Clamped fists came down on his shoulder like a sledgehammer. He felt the bone crack and heard the sound of it in the ear on that side. The force of the blow drove him to the floor on his face. The taste of blood filled his mouth.
Drex dragged him to his feet and held him on his toes. "Give it up, Cardassian."
Feeling his head fall back on his broken shoulder blade, Garak wheezed, "Sorry. You'll have to get it yourself…this is a self-serve establishment now. By the way…I'm relatively sure my mother can take you."
"Swine!" Drex bellowed, and laid into Garak's ribs again with punishing efficiency.
It was working. The more Garak insisted he knew nothing, the more they were sure he knew everything. Predictable. He didn't dare hand over what they wanted. Being typical Klingons, they would figure that if he gave it to them, it wasn't worth anything. Any minute now they would—
Drex pitched Garak backward into Ruktah's unkind grip and growled, "I will take it somehow!"
He plunged to the computer console and hammered it as if it were Garak's shoulders. Right on time.
Slamming his fist to the board, Drex roared, "It's got a retina lock on it! We could've had it anytime! Bring me his head!"
"Please," Garak gargled, "bring the rest of me also. . . ."
Ruktah dragged him to the board and smashed his face up against the reader screen. It flashed red light in his eye, then whistled and downloaded file after file into the terminal cartridge.
"Hah!" Drex bolted. "It's ours!"
"Then get it and let's go," Ruktah said.
He hoisted Garak a foot in the air, then threw him like a ball into the bulkhead.
When Garak slid to the deck, Ruktah kicked him in the legs with those big hard-toed boots. "Can I kill this one now?"
"Leave him on his floor." Drex snatched the cartridge and stuffed it somewhere in his plates of armor. "Better he lie in his own drool than have a good death."
"But he'll tell them we took it!"
"Who cares?" Drex enjoyed one more kick at Garak's legs as he lay helpless and gasping. "His foul Cardassian mouth tells no truths. No one will believe him. Better leave him alive to confuse them."
"I hate you," Ruktah gnashed, and spit on Drex.
"And I hate you," Drex said. "So what? Let's go."
CHAPTER 5
"GARAK…GARAK…take it easy. . . ."
Very deep voice, pounding through his head, which was already pounding quite well on its own.
Blur of clothing on the rack above, hanging crookedly now. The collapsed shoe rack. Shoes all over
the floor in front of his face.
He was lying on his side. Tilting. Wall shifting angles. Someone was turning him over. There were echoes in the shop.
"Garak, you all right?"
"I'm…" Blood gurgled in his throat. The attempt to speak was followed by a raft of moans. He couldn't get a whole breath.
"You're safe now. Take it easy."
That wasn't an echo. It was Sisko's deep voice. These were Sisko's big hands gripping his arm, pulling him ever so slowly to a sitting position.
"You'll be able to breathe better now." Sisko's face wobbled beside him. He was pulling Garak up against a crate of waistbands. "What happened to you?"
"Klingons came in," Garak gulped and gritted his teeth against the pain in his ribs. "Acted very rudely. . . . They wanted…patterns for the… latest pajamas. Naturally, I refused."
Sisko steadied him with a hand on his broken shoulder, and with the other hand held a cotton blouse to Garak's bleeding face.
"I'll bet," he scolded. He nodded up at the console. "They accessed your computer. Why?"
"They didn't tell me, Captain. Whatever they stole, I'm sure it was…information I just happened to put in this morning. Isn't that a…coincidence?"
Crushing an arm across his tortured ribs, Garak eyed Sisko. They had a somewhat elastic relationship, but it was definitely a relationship. A foggily defined alliance. Garak lived here on Deep Space Nine, and Sisko protected him. In return, Garak sometimes protected Sisko and Deep Space Nine. He wouldn't tell Sisko everything, but…
"What did they look like?" the captain asked. "What were they wearing?"
"Tall…wide…the usual…I couldn't quite get a look at them."
"You couldn't. Why not?"
"Because," Garak managed, one shattered breath at a time, "if I knew who they were, I'd be…obliged to press charges. It's better for all of us if they…go back to their ship, and take with them whatever they took from me. Now they'll leave us alone. Don't worry, Captain…they didn't get anything of any importance."
Sisko watched him cannily and almost smiled. Almost.
"Garak," he said, "sometimes I don't know whether to shake your hand or have you shot."
Garak nodded, then winced. "Either…would hurt right now."
Gingerly Sisko patted him on the arm. "The doctor is on his way."
"I can't believe you're not pressing charges."
Pain throbbed through Garak's back, thighs, and ribs, but he tried to offer a shrug to the doctor's comment. There were two or three muscles left in his right shoulder, enough to manage that.
"Constable Odo and Captain Sisko expressed similar concern," he said as Bashir picked and tapped at him with instruments of healing. "But really, Doctor, there was no harm done."
Julian Bashir stood back and looked him in the face. "They broke seven of your transverse ribs and fractured your clavicle."
Unexpectedly, Garak felt bad at the doctor's concern, for that was what lay beneath the clinical readout. Not just what damage the Klingons had done, but that they had done it at all. And would they come back, perhaps to do worse next time? Bashir was Garak's closest friend on this station. He took Garak at face value, without the haze of suspicion that kept most others at arm's length.
Hoping to ease the worry, Garak offered him a mollifying grin. "But I got off several cutting remarks that no doubt did serious damage to their egos."
"Garak, it's not funny."
"I'm serious, Doctor. Thanks to your ministrations, I'm almost completely healed. The damage I did to them will last a lifetime." He paused for a moment's enjoyment of Klingon psychological thinness, then continued in a calculated way. "What I can't understand is their inexplicable hostility toward me. Maligning Constable Odo is one thing. After all, he's a changeling and the Klingons don't know him as well as we do. But relations between the Klingon and Cardassian Empires have never been anything but amicable."
"With the exception of the Betreka Nebula incident," Bashir said, putting unexplained pressure on Garak's left shoulder, then adding the talents of a hypospray.
"A minor skirmish," Garak downplayed.
He knew he was stretching the use of that phrase, but didn't feel like searching out another one. The Cardassians were bombastic, hungry for power, the Klingons irate and greedy. The mixture was no good. So far, though, because each was timid to face down the Federation, conditions between them had remained stable.
"That minor skirmish lasted eighteen years," the doctor pointed out.
Garak shook his head. "That was ages ago. Maybe they decided they just didn't like me."
The doctor smirked. "Not like you? Impossible."
"You're right, as always, Doctor," Garak tossed off. "They must've mistaken me for someone else."
Bashir was gazing at him. Garak knew he wasn't fooling the doctor, that his surface lies were easily taken as lies and that he had come, in the company of these people, to expect to be read so. They knew him better than anyone ever had, though he had deliberately protected them from his clouded past.
Still, he had enjoyed being one of them for the past few years. They had defended him without really comprehending who it was they were defending. Bashir and the others, Sisko, Kira—they didn't make demands or require him to come clean about his past before they would be on his side in the present. They were decent people.
He had come to appreciate that.
"Garak," Bashir said, "I want you to talk to Captain Sisko about some private protection. After all, that's one of the benefits of living on a station run by Starfleet."
Garak looked up at him. "You mean, a bodyguard?"
"Yes, of course. I'm sure they can spare one Security man to escort you about for a few days."
"I'm sure that's not necessary, Doctor. They'll probably be leaving soon."
"Really?" Bashir tipped his head and drew his brow. "What makes you say a thing like that?"
"You know Klingons," Garak offered vaguely. "No attention span."
"I have it."
"Bring it to me."
Martok reached out to Drex as his second plowed back onto the bridge of the Negh'Var, and took from him the computer cartridge that had come perhaps a bit too easily.
"Did you get this from the Cardassian?" he asked.
"Yes," Drex said. "He is a coward and a worm."
"Did you kill him?"
"No."
"Did he give you the information or did you take it from him? Tell me that."
As Martok put the cartridge into their engineering computer access port and battled with it to override the Federation codes, Drex said, "No, General. He refused to give it. We beat him and threatened him, but he held back from us."
"Then how did you get it?"
"The computer had only a retina lock. We pushed his face into it."
"I see." Martok thought about that, then nodded. "Better. If he had given it to you, I would take it as all fabrications. Let us see what we are up against."
Together they watched as the United Federation of Planets crest rolled across the screen, then several skeletal graphics of the station of Deep Space Nine, and finally the information they were looking for.
Martok murmured as the pictures scanned by on the screen. "Standard phaser sail towers…upper and lower emitter stations covering hundred-and-twenty-degree segments of space…no recent upgrades…some use of shadow photons to give the impression of strength. Called 'Quaker guns,' the images are named after logs used in forts on Earth, made to look like cannons, to fool the enemy."
"Yes," Drex said. "I heard DS9 had used those photon shadows before."
Martok nodded and continued murmuring as the schematics rolled before them. "Structural tower and deflector screens with standard outer shield wall, no new technology…six fusion reactors, only two working… attitude-control thrusters a bit rusty, in need of some maintenance…current engineer Chief Tam O'Shanter reporting."
The scrolling ended, and the screen went to simple green.
/> The general sat back in the engineer's chair and sighed a great sigh. "So, this station is still almost as toothless as when the Cardassians had it."
"Yes," Drex said, and Martok noticed that his second-in-command was plied with relief that his information had turned out to be useful, his mission an apparent success. "According to this, Starfleet hasn't had time or resources to increase the armament here."
"The station was never meant to defend itself," Martok told him. "When the Cardassians had it, they kept it surrounded with ships that handled its defense."
"And all Sisko has to defend himself are Quaker guns. They simply look like they're heavily armed." He reached out and patted the computer screen like a pet. "Now I know not to believe the photon shadows I see here. All they have is that one ship docked on the lower pylon, and we can handle one ship. Drex, I am fully satisfied. Deep Space Nine is no threat to us."
"General," his helm officer interrupted, "pardon this—there is a ship leaving from the station. The freighter Xhosa. You mentioned it before—"
"Yes," Martok said, and hoisted to his feet. "Contact Commander Kaybok on the outer perimeter of the fleet, scrambled frequency."
"Yes, General…Commander Kaybok standing by."
"Put him on."
"Kaybok."
"Kaybok, your parade is beginning. Aren't you watching?"
"Yes—yes, I see the freighter. I will follow them under cloak."
"When you're far out, stop them and pretend to search."
"Pretend? I thought—"
"Yes, but I have a better idea. We cannot find changelings with blood tests. How can we give a blood test to a wall or a chair? Besides, I don't want any ship coming and going from Cardassian space. How will we know who comes and goes with them?"
"Then what should I do?"
"I want you to go ahead with the search, and while this search is going on I want you to place an explosive on board that vessel. Stop it, search it, apologize, leave, and an hour later it explodes. No one will ever know."
CHAPTER 6
"SHIP APPROACHING, KASIDY."
"What'd you say, Wayne?"
