Star Trek: Terok Nor 03: Dawn of the Eagles (13 page)

Odo blinked at him, slowly and deliberately, and Mora realized he was looking at a free man, a creature with nothing on his conscience and a limitless future. And for just a moment, Mora resented him so deeply that he could hardly stand to look at him.

Natima had been called to the Information Service’s headquarters in Cardassia City for her latest review with Dalak, the director of her department, and as she shifted in a stiff-backed chair in front of his small metal desk, she could tell by the tone of this encounter that he was probably going to be transferring her. There had been rumors of changes made, and he had that distracted, irritable air he acquired when he was forced to reshuffle assignments. She hoped he’d send her to Cardassia II. She had grown up in an orphanage there, but that wasn’t the reason she wanted to return. She’d made contacts in the past few years, people who had come to seem to her almost like family.

Of course, Natima wasn’t sure what it was like to have a family, so she couldn’t make the comparison with any certainty, but she had become very close to a few of the people within the rough organization that was beginning to take shape. In particular, Gaten Russol, though Natima had no romantic interest in the man. No, he was definitely more like a brother to her—or at least, her estimation of what a brother must be like. A brother that she had come to deeply trust and respect. He currently lived on Cardassia II, along with a handful of others within the nascent dissident movement that Natima was helping to organize.

It seemed that Dalak had other things in mind for Natima, however. It took her a moment to fully grasp what he had said when he uttered the words, “Terok Nor.” It was a name that was immediately familiar—and immediately repugnant.

Natima sat forward in her chair, her hands spread across the surface of the director’s desk. “No, no, Mister Dalak, you promised you would not send me to Bajor again. You said I—”

“I never promised you any such thing,” Dalak said crisply. “In fact, I am certain that I warned you this day might come. Come now, Miss Lang. It’s been years since that incident on Bajor. Decades, even.”

Decades? Could it really have been that long? Natima supposed it had. How had she suddenly come to be so old?

“Besides,” Dalak went on, “I’m not sending you to Bajor, specifically. Terok Nor is a thoroughly modern Cardassian facility, in orbit of the planet, with the strictest of security measures. You will be safe there and uniquely placed to report on the annexation from its command post.”

“Yes, of course,” Natima replied, though it wasn’t so much the issue of safety that made her loath to return to the B’hava’el system. It was the politics, the gross display of manifest destiny that she feared would someday drive her people into ruin. Could she safely keep her opinions silent in such a place? Especially with that degenerate prefect residing in the very same facility?

“It’s a temporary post,” Dalak assured her. “You’ll be there less than a year.”

Natima fell back into her chair, unhappily accepting the inevitable. This was her career, and though it was increasingly coming into conflict with her evolving ideals, there was no other profession she cared to pursue. She would go where the service sent her.

It was late, and the bar was closed for the night, but Quark was still at work, as he often was, tallying his daily receipts at one of the tables. He checked every number at least three times against his earlier totals. He was not a man to make mistakes in his ledgers, because he never failed to check his totals thrice.

Quark heard the footfalls of someone approaching the door long before they entered the bar. One of the Bajoran workers, wiping up a puddle of spilled
kanar,
flinched as an expressionless garresh jostled past him, as if he was not even there. Quark frowned. He had taken pains to project the image of neutrality, but sometimes it galled him to see the way the Bajorans were treated.

“Quark, you have a call,” the Cardassian told him. “Something appears to be wrong with your comm line—”

“I closed it down for the night,” Quark snapped, and then quickly checked himself. He couldn’t afford to express any attitude. He gave a strained smile. “So I could get a moment’s peace while balancing my account books,” he finished. “Thank you for informing me. I’ll take my call now.”

He watched the blank-faced garresh leave his bar and chased the Bajoran worker off before he activated his comm. The call was from Ferenginar, and Quark felt sure he knew the origin of the communication code—it was his cousin Gaila, doubtless looking for a handout. Now that Quark was beginning to enjoy some monetary success, he could look forward to every leaf and twig of his family tree coming along with their grubby hands outstretched.

His bar on the station had grown from a little gambling post in one of the storefronts on the Promenade to the largest business on the station. Quark’s had quickly overtaken the replimat as the popular place for Cardassians to drink and dine—no great accomplishment, but he wasn’t going to argue with success—and he’d plowed his profits back into his black market business,
and
created a fund to pay off anyone who might venture too close to his fledgling enterprises. Besides the foodstuffs—and the Bajorans were a nut-and-root type of people, mostly cheap vegetables and bird flesh—he oversaw a goods exchange, and he had a line on some utilitarian art from the surface, which he sold on consignment at one of the shops. Carved wooden bowls and tatted shawls were popular with the station soldiers; they liked to send them home to their families. He could get a piece of pottery that would sell for twenty slips on the station in exchange for a half-slip bucket of root soup. He was making money hand over fist, and of course his mother had to brag about it, telling tales that had reached the ears of many less-fortunate relatives and acquaintances. As it was, Quark had already taken in his penniless idiot brother and nephew, after Rom’s marriage had finally failed, and he wasn’t especially interested in showing anyone else the same degree of altruism.

Gaila’s ugly mug was spastic with excitement, and he didn’t bother with any pleasantries.
“Quark! Aunt Ishka tells me you’ve begun turning quite a profit these days! I wonder if you wouldn’t be interested in fronting a potentially very lucrative endeavor.”

“I’m already fronting a lucrative endeavor,” Quark told his cousin. “It’s nice to talk to you, Gaila, but I’ve got things to do.”

“Your mother also tells me,”
Gaila went on, as if not listening,
“that your brother and nephew have come to live with you. That you took them in entirely out of the goodness of your heart—”

“There’s no goodness in my heart,” Quark hastily interjected.

“That’s not what Aunt Ishka tells me!”
Gaila said.
“She says you’re becoming soft. I hear you’re selling food to those Bajorans at cost. I hear you’re—”

“You hear nonsense, then,” Quark snarled. His first instinct was for self-preservation—to deny outright that he was selling anything to the Bajorans—but he couldn’t back down from an accusation like that. “I may have lowered my prices somewhat, but you can’t gouge the Bajorans when they’ve got next to nothing to pay with. I wouldn’t sell anything if I didn’t make it accessible, and I’m selling plenty. You’ve got to know your market, cousin. I’m sure there’s a Rule of Acquisition that says something about that…” He racked his brains, but could not think of an appropriate Rule. Perhaps he should make one up.

“I know the rules, and I’ve got a better idea for profit in the B’hava’el system,”
Gaila said.

“You want to come
here?
” The last thing he needed was Ferengi competition—especially from his lousy cousin.

“That’s right. Food is one thing, but weapons—the Bajorans would pay well for them, wouldn’t you say?”

Quark snorted. “And I thought I was taking a foolish risk.”

Gaila ignored him.
“Would you loan me the latinum to get it started? A munitions consortium, that is. Think of it, Quark! If the Bajorans have a little money to spare for a bit of food now and again, they’ll have money to spare for guns and ammo, no question. I’ve been listening to the newsfeeds from Bajor since you got there, and the resistance will stop at nothing to—”

“I don’t know, Gaila.” What his cousin was saying made sense, but Quark wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to get involved. Of course, with his black-market goods business, he was already into the occupation pretty deeply, but he had a strong feeling that on a list of Cardassian punishable offenses, food-someone-might-eat and weapons-someone-might-shoot-at-you-with were not quite equal. “It sounds pretty dangerous.”

“I’ll buy you your own ship when I start to make profit,”
Gaila promised.
“I mean, in addition to paying you back, with interest. You name the rate you’re comfortable with.”

Quark frowned. The danger seemed a little less dangerous when he started thinking about interest rates. Gaila was a relative, of course, so he couldn’t go much higher than eighteen percent…

Gaila began to smile toothily, reading Quark’s silence in his own favor.
“Do we have a deal?”
he ventured.

“I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to be coming and going on Bajor,” Quark said.
It wouldn’t be good for either of us if he was caught.

“My associate will take care of the face-to-face business with the Bajorans,”
Gaila promised.
“All transactions will take place outside the system. You’ll never see either of us.”

“Well,” Quark said, thinking he could live with that arrangement, “I’m thinking about twenty percent.”

“Twenty percent! Quark, I’m family!”

“You told me to name my—” Quark stopped speaking, staring in horror at the blue light that had flickered on his keypad. “I have to go,” he said, and jabbed his finger at the disconnect. Someone was trying to listen in on his conversation.

Quark snapped his console shut with shaking hands. He reviewed, in his mind, the last few lines of the conversation.
We were only talking about financial matters, nothing to implicate me.
Thrax had been trying to catch him at his black market business for three years now, but Quark had been far too careful. His stupid, prideful boasting may have changed all that. If he hadn’t been so quick to defend himself; if he’d just denied Gaila’s implication that he was dealing with Bajorans—well, if Thrax had indeed heard his conversation, Quark’s only recourse was to construct a convincing lie. He put his ledgers away and began to close up the bar, already working on his alibi.

Since the presentation at the Bajoran Institute of Science, Dukat had thought often of the shape-shifter, Odo. He’d heard about the creature years before, of course, and had always meant to go see it—the discovery of a new sentient life-form was inherently interesting—but he’d had more urgent matters needing his attention, and indulging a mild curiosity on Bajor’s surface hardly seemed worth the time. Now that the resistance was finally—
finally
—firmly in hand, he’d arranged a presentation at the institute for some of the occupation leaders, to report on the new detection grid—and to make a show of Bajor’s safety, of course. The mere fact of inviting them was proof, and he’d overseen preparations himself, discussing with the director his ideas for the visuals, his feelings on how the material should be presented. As an afterthought, he had asked her to include something about the life-form.

Doctor Yopal’s presentation on the sensor and tracking systems had been brief and not overly technical, as he’d recommended, and had been well received. Too long a presentation, and the guls and legates attending might start to regret the trip, which would have been entirely counterproductive. Another scientist spoke more specifically on the systems’ impressive attendant weaponry, and Dukat had been positively gleeful, watching the grim, irritable faces of his detractors as they were forced to recognize his success. But the nondescript fumbling Bajoran who’d introduced himself last had stolen the show. Or rather, his shape-shifter had.

Dukat had displayed the same polite interest as everyone else, but he had no doubt that they were all just as astounded as he. The Bajoran had gone on about density and mass and theoretical subspace phasing, but all attention had been on the “man” that stood next to him, tall and lean and of strangely unmolded face. The being had shifted through a number of different forms, becoming a whole series of animals, a chair, a table, a pair of boots; at the Bajoran’s urging it had done tricks with its skin and flesh, stunning and amusing the rapt audience.

Afterward, several of Dukat’s departing guests had asked what he planned to do with the creature. He had managed some ambiguous answer, wondering that himself. The research had shown Odo to be impervious to any common injury, and capable of fantastic physical strength. There had to be some military application, something that would advance Cardassian interests—and therefore his own rank and reputation, a most agreeable corollary.

He leaned forward in his office chair, tapped in the code for the institute. A moment later, the director’s face flickered onto his screen.

“Gul Dukat,”
she said. She looked pleased to see him.