Ziyal instructed the lift to go to her level of the habitat ring, heading for home. Perhaps if she had a good night’s sleep, she’d be able to figure out how to handle the problem with Damar.
He had to have been keeping an eye on Jake. The predatory look he’d shown the other night when Jake left Quark’s was just like the one that glinn had given her that night. The fact that Damar tended to fawn like a sycophant over her father wasn’t far from her mind. The idea that he might do something to Jake to gain Dukat’s favor was unsettling.
As the lift doors opened, she thought she heard a very familiar voice.
“What is it, Damar?” her father asked in a hushed tone.
“It’s Sisko’s son, sir.”
“Keep your voice down.” Her father’s voice grew softer, but the design of the corridors was acoustically generous. “Why worry about him? There’s nothing Jake Sisko can do that we won’t know about.”
The mention of Jake’s name from her father’s lips in such a conspiratorial tone perked Ziyal’s ears. The recessed entry to the lift allowed her to step off just far enough for the doors to close, but not so far as to be visible to anyone down the corridor. She just hoped the lift didn’t decide to drop off another passenger anytime soon.
“I think he represents a danger. The Bajorans trust him. He has some sway with them. I’ve been watching his actions, sir, and I’m concerned. He’s close to many known former resistance members. And ... your daughter has been fraternizing with him.”
Her father softly laughed.
“Sir,” Damar said, “respectfully, Ziyal could be exposed to even more Bajoran propaganda if she associates with Jake Sisko. It could turn her sympathies toward the Bajorans.”
“She spent months on Bajor. If she were going to be affected by any Bajoran propaganda, the damage would certainly already be done, wouldn’t it?”
The sarcastic tone with which her father had said “Bajoran propaganda” gave Ziyal a sick feeling. Her history instructor at the university had been in the Ornathia resistance cell, and had told her some stories about things her father was supposed to have done, things Ziyal had never heard of before that time. She’d heard that her mother wasn’t the only Bajoran woman in whose arms he’d found solace. She’d also heard of the many things he’d done to both the Bajorans and his own people, even so far as to taking the son of fellow Cardassian Kotran Pa’Dar and putting him into an orphanage. Ziyal wasn’t sure what to believe, but the tone in her father’s voice made her worry that at least some of it might have been true. Would it matter if it was?
“Yes,” Damar replied. “It would.”
Her father’s voice turned cold. “I don’t care for your tone, Damar. Nor do I understand this sudden fixation with Jake Sisko.”
She heard someone, presumably Damar, pacing. “I don’t trust him, sir. If there is an organized resistance on the station, he’ll be involved with it.”
Ziyal’s heart jumped into her throat at that. A resistance? On the station? They couldn’t be that desperate, could they? She could remember some of the horrors that the resistance had brought upon themselves during the Occupation. The tragedy at Gallitep was still something she didn’t fully understand.
The idea of Jake Sisko involved with another Bajoran resistance movement gave her a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. Her childhood hadn’t been full of friends, but of the few who had been able to see past her ridges, she’d lost too many over the years. The last thing she wanted was to add Jake to that list.
“Don’t let Jake Sisko worry you, Damar,” her father said in an icy voice. “I have him right where I want him, firmly under my control. If he does anything to offend my hospitality, I have no problem reminding him of his status.”
Ziyal had to fight to control her breathing. She had never heard such a ruthless tone in her father’s voice before. Was there really something to what Kira had been telling her? What right did she have to believe Kira over her own father? Why would Dukat lie to her?
He was her father, and she knew he would tell her the truth. That was what good fathers did. And one thing she believed with all her heart was that Skrain Dukat was a good father.
“Come with me.”
Jake looked up from his padd to find Glinn Damar staring bullets at him. “Why?”
Damar smiled thinly, a gesture that Jake realized only made the Cardassian look more reptilian. “Gul Dukat wants to speak to you.”
Certain that he was making a mistake, Jake rose from his seat and followed Damar out of the Replimat. “What does he want to talk to me about?”
“I was ordered to find you, not answer questions.”
Jake’s pulse began to race. There were only four people on the station he could think of who could get away with ordering Damar around: Odo, the “female” Founder, Weyoun, and Dukat. He couldn’t think of anything he’d done in the past twenty-six hours that would have irritated any of them.
He tried to come up with a good way out of the situation. Striking out, he opted to follow Damar down the Promenade to the turbolift.
They rode in more awkward silence for several seconds before rising into the familiar surroundings of ops. The only thing unfamiliar about it was the sea of gray Cardassian uniforms where there should have been Starfleet and Bajoran Militia manned stations.
“Move, human,” Damar ordered.
Human? Until that point, he hadn’t seriously considered that Damar might injure him. Threaten, intimidate, and make his life miserable weren’t out of the question, but would Dukat actually allow Damar to hurt him?
Jake took a few steps forward, down into the central pit of ops. It was a quick walk, navigating between the various members of the duty shift, then up the steps that led to the door of what was once his father’s office. Fear hit Jake square in the chest as the doors slid aside and Damar pushed him over the threshold—
Into an empty office.
“Where is he?” Jake asked.
“Not here,” Damar replied. As the doors closed behind him, the Cardassian walked over to the edge of Dukat’s desk.
“Then why—?”
“You will not speak to Tora Ziyal anymore.”
Jake stared at Damar, mystified.
He didn’t get a chance to reply, as the doors slid aside again, this time for Weyoun.
“Mr. Sisko,” the Vorta said cheerfully. “So good to see you again.”
Jake wasn’t sure which to fear more, the thinly veiled disgust in Damar’s expression, or the obsequious look on Weyoun’s face. His eyes darted between the two men for a long moment before he said, “What am I doing here?”
The Vorta arched an eyebrow. “An interesting question. Perhaps you’d enlighten us, Damar?”
The Cardassian’s upper lip curled into a sneer. “Sisko’s son has been talking with Gul Dukat’s daughter. It will stop. He remains on this station at Gul Dukat’s sufferance. If he wants to continue living here, he’ll do as he’s told.”
Before Jake could even formulate a response, Weyoun’s voice turned cold. “Mr. Sisko is living here at my sufferance, not Dukat’s. And he will continue to live here, unharmed, for as long as he likes.”
“This human is a threat to the Dominion’s control over Terok Nor,” Damar shot back, rising to his full height in an obvious attempt to intimidate the Vorta.
Weyoun, however, was not cowed. “Whose threat assessment is that, Damar? Yours?”
“Yes,” Damar replied, not backing down. “If he’s allowed to continue fraternizing with Tora Ziyal, it will be detrimental to the Dominion’s relationship with the Bajorans.”
The look of complete disbelief on Weyoun’s face, under any other circumstances, would have gotten a laugh out of Jake. “This young man poses no threat to anyone. He is merely a reporter trying to write an article that I will allow him to send to his superiors. He has my permission to interview anyone willing to speak to him. You will not harm a hair on Jake Sisko’s head. Doing so would put relations between the
Dominion and Bajor at risk. Do I make myself clear?”
Mystified by Weyoun’s sudden support, Jake could do nothing but stare as the Vorta turned toward him, his arms wide. “Mr. Sisko. Please accept the sincerest apologies of the Dominion for this unfortunate incident.”
“I-I was planning to do an article on Ziyal, something to commemorate her exhibit,” Jake said, trying to find his voice.
Weyoun smiled his most placating smile. “Of course, what a wonderful idea. I look forward to reading it when you’re through.”
The Vorta took a step to his left, just far enough to trigger the automatic doors. “Now, if you will excuse us, I have a few things to discuss with Damar.”
Jake shot out of the office like an animal fleeing two hunters. Once he was across ops and safely ensconced in the turbolift’s cab, he ventured a gaze up to the clear office doors. Weyoun and Damar were in what appeared to be a heated discussion.
As the lift took him away from ops, Jake hoped they weren’t arguing about him.
Jake took a long sip from his root beer. He still wasn’t sure how to take the grief he’d gotten from Damar, but he knew he had to keep talking to Ziyal. If he was going to do an article about her, he’d have to interview her at some point, whether Damar liked it or not. Besides, I think I’m beginning to like her.
“Jake!”
A flash of panic was quickly replaced by relief as he recognized the voice. He stopped drawing stick figures in his catsup with a French fry just long enough to catch sight of her walking up to where he sat on the bar’s second level.
“Ziyal. Hi.”
She gave his plate a puzzled look. “What’s that?”
“Cheeseburger and fries. Wish I could say it was a good cheeseburger.” Gesturing with the fry that was still in his hand, he asked, “Wanna try a fry?”
Shaking her head, she pointed toward his drink. “Although, that certainly smells interesting.”
Smelled interesting? Root beer? He’d never thought of it that way before. “It’s called root beer.” Grabbing the unused straw that the waiter had brought him, Jake stuck it into the mug. “Have a sip.”
She gave the mug an odd stare before taking a quick sip from the straw. He hadn’t noticed her being tense before, but her shoulders visibly relaxed as she considered the taste. “It tastes interesting, too.”
Jake gestured toward the waiter, requesting another mug.
“Jake.” Ziyal’s voice turned conspiratorial as she leaned toward him. “I heard what happened with Damar.”
“You did?” he asked, not sure whether he should be happy or worried by the revelation. “How? All of it?”
Ziyal nodded.
“Damar doesn’t approve of us talking.”
“I’m well past the age of being able to make my own decisions,” she replied. “Who I choose for my friends is my decision to make, not my father’s, and certainly not Damar’s.”
If any of the women he’d met on the station since moving there had been more like Ziyal, Jake briefly wondered if his life wouldn’t be very different right now.
“I think I’ve got Weyoun’s blessing, so Damar can’t do anything. I hope.”
“You’ve got Weyoun’s blessing for what?”
Jake took a long sip of his drink before he pitched the idea. “I’d like to do an article for the Federation News Service about your work. It’s a great step forward for interspecies relations, and it’ll help you get your message across to more than the people on Bajor and Cardassia.” Raising his eyes to hers, he added, “I really want to do this article, but I promise I won’t do it without your permission.”
For a very long moment, she seemed to consider the idea. Finally, she replied, “What about my drawings? You’ll need to put a couple of them with the article.”
All right! “Yes. Whatever you want to put in.”
“I don’t know,” Ziyal said, her lips curling. “The Institute asked me to do a holovid for them, introduce myself, talk about my work.” She wrung her fingers. “It’s easy to tell you about what I do, I guess. It just seems so inconsequential in the face of everything going on out there. Bajorans hate me because I’m half-Cardassian. Cardassians hate me because I’m half-Bajoran. There are times when I think one person can’t do anything to change that.”
Jake reached out and put a hand over hers. “Look, you’re exactly what people need to see right now. Someone who’s going on with her life, even here. Everyone needs to have something to live for. When there’s a war that could take that life away any second, having something like that matters even more. We’re going to get through this, Ziyal. We have to think about what we’re going to do when it’s all over. I want to go back to being a writer, and you want to be an artist. Right?”
A wistful smile worked its way onto her features. “Yes.”
“Then we need to think long-term. You’re the daughter of a public figure, and you’re starting to get famous for your drawings. If people see you doing what they should be doing, you might be able to get more than your message across.”
Jake wasn’t quite sure where the speech had come from, but he watched her expression for any signs that it might be working. Her smile turned into a beleaguered stare, then a slow nod.
“You’re right.”
Jake’s face split into a grin. “Really?”
Ziyal nodded. “I’d be honored to have you do an article about me.”
The sound of her father’s fist coming down on his companel woke Ziyal out of a deep sleep. Even with the solid thickness of her bedroom door between them, Dukat had let out enough energy in that one movement to wake the dead.
“Damar, come to my quarters now!” he yelled. “Why can’t I delete this thing? Who did this?”
Crawling out of bed, she padded to the door that separated her quarters from her father’s. As it slid open, she noted with disconcertion the disheveled state of her father’s usually slicked-back hair. “Father?”
He pushed back a strand of hair that had fallen in front of his right eye as he turned toward her. “Ziyal,” he said, his voice turning silky smooth and calm with a speed that frightened her. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“What’s wrong now?”
Dukat’s eyes flicked toward the viewscreen. “Nothing, my dear. Nothing at all.”
Her curiosity piqued, she cautiously stepped toward his desk. “If it’s nothing, then why are you angry? Did something go wrong at your meeting?”
Dukat didn’t reply at once, absently picking up a bit of silver metal from his desk. Her heart ached as she realized it was her mother’s earring.
She knew he had recovered the earring along with a pledge bracelet from Tora Naprem’s gravesite on Dozaria two years ago. Nerys said that he’d gone looking for confirmation of her and Ziyal’s fate, only to find that Naprem had died in the crash of the Cardassian freighter Ravinok, while young Ziyal had been consigned to a life of toil under the Breen. Together with Nerys, he had liberated her from that horrible existence, taken her back into his life.
Ever since that day, Dukat had kept both mementos of her mother, and Ziyal sometimes caught him fingering the earring when he seemed troubled, although only in the privacy of their quarters. But he never took out her pledge bracelet, seeming content to let it gather dust among his stored personal effects. This had always puzzled Ziyal, since the pledge bracelet was much more symbolic of the bond he and her mother had shared.
Dukat continued fingering the earring as he looked up at his daughter, smiling thinly. “I’m not angry,” he said.
Ziyal’s shoulders slumped. Dealing with her father could be so frustrating at times. “I am not some small child that you have to coddle and protect from the world. It’s obvious that something has made you angry. What?”
Dukat stared at the viewscreen beside him. “Someone has found a way around the station’s communication system. They’re sending out files that haven’t been approved for distribution. It’s nothing for you to be concerned a
bout, my dear. Now go back to bed and let me take care of this.”
Before she could pursue the subject any further, the doorchime rang. “Enter,” Dukat said, his fist closing around her mother’s earring.
“Reporting as ordered, sir,” Damar said as the door slid aside.
Her father gestured at the viewscreen. “Do you have any idea what this is?”
“No,” Damar replied, “but I already have people working on it. Someone got the signal through the subspace transmitters.”
“They got this to Bajor?”
Damar opened his mouth to reply, but stopped when Weyoun strode through the doorway, padd in hand. A confusion that she’d never seen in the Vorta was etched across his features. “Well, this is interesting.”
“I already have a list of suspects, Weyoun,” Dukat replied. “I will make an example of whoever perpetrated this.”
“Suspects, Dukat? Is this a criminal act? The Bajorans are merely setting up a method of communicating information. These articles are harmless. Springball championships. Who could possibly care about that?”
With an exasperated sigh, Dukat replied,” I am on top of the situation, Weyoun, and I assure you, these articles are not as harmless as they appear.”
Weyoun glanced down at the padd. “Really? Well, I suppose the followers of the Dahkur Hills players might find the article harmful, as they were not the victors.”
Ziyal recognized the look her father gave the Vorta. It was one he usually reserved for the astoundingly inept officers. “It’s not what the articles are about, Weyoun, it’s what’s hidden in them.” Dukat punched a few buttons on his desk, engaging what appeared to be a data analyzer. “When Cardassia first annexed Bajor, the resistance used to conceal coded messages in the text of Bajoran publications to spread messages to other cells. Why start up another news service if they didn’t intend to use it for the same purpose? We have a resistance cell on board.”
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