by Неизвестный
"Of course, Commander." That had been the other part of her assignment. "I can give you a quick verbal rundown if you like, then a complete written report in two shifts from now."
"Excellent. I've had Quark reserve us a security-screened booth in his establishment on the Promenade. You might find that more relaxing than this office."
Kira took a deep breath. "If you don't mind, sir—I'm not really in the mood for dealing with the crowds down there. I'm pretty tired."
"I can appreciate that, Major. However, I'm also aware of how rumors can spread from the Ops crew throughout the station. The official word is that you went to Bajor solely for the purpose of escorting these relics into our possession. If we take the time to go over your political analysis here, it may generate some speculation. Whereas a visit to Quark's will be seen as no more than some much-needed relaxation after completing your assignment."
What she really felt like was falling backward onto the bunk in her quarters and passing into dreamless sleep. The brief catnaps she had been able to grab on Bajor and in the freight shuttle's hold had been barely enough to keep her going. "Very well," she said, nodding. Inside her head, she was already sorting through and condensing her report to the barest essentials.
The details were just about ready, lined up for presentation, when she and Sisko stepped from the turbolift and onto the Promenade deck. That was when she saw the flash of metal.
He opened his eyes, even though he didn't want to. Jake had to; he had to see.
"Here you go—" The other boy's voice had broken through the silence Jake had tried to pull around himself. "It's your turn now."
A flash of metal, the blade of the knife—he saw it extended toward him again, glistening on the other boy's palm. The smile curled at one corner of the boy's mouth, beneath the dark eyes that watched Jake with conspiratorial delight.
He saw the other thing as well, on top of the stone the boy crouched beside; the thing that had been alive and whole when Jake had closed his eyes, and now was broken. But still alive. A jagged piece of shell had slid to the water's edge.
"Go on!" commanded the other boy, thrusting the knife's handle closer. "You know you want—"
Disgust and anger welled up inside Jake. His arm lashed out on its own, knocking the blade away, sending it spinning in the sunlight, bright silver above the creek's rippling surface.
He scrambled to his feet, his breath choking in his throat, and turned and ran. Behind him, he could hear the other boy laughing, the sky echoing with it as Jake reached his hand toward the horizon and the door to the sunless corridors that were his home.
The flash of metal stabbed his vision, as though the point of the pryblade had leapt the course of the Promenade. Even as Odo shoved the people around him aside, he knew that he had waited too long, knew that he had betrayed himself and his duty by holding back and watching. The weapon rose above Ahrmant Wyoss's head, his fist clenched rigid at its hilt; the man's eyes had opened wide and glaring now, as though the pressure of the madness inside his skull had broken through the last barrier membrane.
Someone screamed, a high wailing pitch of fright. The crowd surged back from Wyoss, the space around him expanding as the Promenade's visitors scrambled back from the naked blade. The humanoid wall in front of Odo tightened almost solid; he grabbed two different sets of shoulders and pulled them apart from each other, wedging himself through the gap and reaching ahead to drive another opening. The wave of panic had blocked his sight of Wyoss; shoving aside more bodies, he dove toward the retreating front of the crowd.
Odo saw then what had triggered Wyoss's sudden action. His own attention had been so focused on its target that he had lost track of anything else happening on the Promenade; he had only been vaguely aware of the turbolift doors opening few meters away from Wyoss. That was what he was waiting for, realized Odo. Waiting for—
Two people had emerged from the turbolift. Talking to each other, not perceiving the outbreak of chaos their entrance had caused . . . until it was too late.
He could see who it was, see that the ones who had stepped onto the Promenade deck were Major Kira and Commander Sisko. In a distant corner of Odo's memory, there was just space enough for a microsecond flash of what Quark had told him about a booth reserved for a conference. . . .
Then there was no time at all. With his hand straining desperately forward, Odo launched himself over the last ring of bodies. Even as Commander Sisko spotted the arc of descending metal and raised his forearm to ward off the blurring stroke aimed at him.
CHAPTER 2
For a moment, he saw nothing. One of the figures blocking Odo's path scrambled backward, away from the glittering pryblade in Ahrmant Wyoss's grasp, as though the weapon's curving path was about to scythe through every exposed neck on the Promenade. Odo fell onto his side, quickly rolling onto his hands and knees, and looking up in time to see a spark fly from the pryblade as it clanged against the turbolift's doorway.
Major Kira had reacted first, dropping into a crouch and using the uncoiling thrust of her shoulder to propel both herself and Commander Sisko out of the blade's path. The jarring impact of metal against metal shot through Wyoss's arm, snapping his head back, teeth clenched against the shock.
In another few seconds, before Odo could do anything to assist, it was over. Sisko rolled with the momentum that the major's thrust had given him, coming up against Wyoss's legs with enough force to stagger him against the wall. The pryblade flew out of Wyoss's grasp, then skittered across the Promenade deck, as Sisko brought the butt of his palm straight up into the underside of the other man's chin. An elbow check to the abdomen dropped Wyoss writhing to his knees.
"I've got him." Odo pulled Wyoss's arms back and snapped a pair of restraints onto his wrists. He pulled the unresisting form to its feet. "Are you all right, Commander?"
Sisko brushed down the front of his uniform. He nodded, then glanced over his shoulder at Kira. "A little adrenaline overdose, Constable, but nothing serious. How about you, Major?"
"Don't worry about me." Kira glared at the man slumping from the hold Odo had on the restraints. "Who the hell is this creep, anyway?"
Odo detected an accusatory tone in Kira's voice, as though it had been his fault that the weapon had come within a few centimeters of her head. "The suspect's identity has already been established," he said stiffly. "There are a great many things about his background, and his motives, that remain the subject of an ongoing investigation."
Head lowered, Sisko peered into Wyoss's slack-jawed, semi-conscious face. "Is this connected to the, ah, incidents that you spoke to me about previously?"
"I'm afraid that's likely to be the case, Commander."
"I see." Sisko straightened back up. "We'll need to discuss is matter further. Have a complete report ready for me by the end of the shift."
Odo gave a quick nod in acknowledgment. "Come on—" Wyoss's head wobbled on his neck as Odo propelled him forward. "Go about your business," he barked at the circle of gawking faces. "There's nothing to see here." Leaning down, he scooped up the pryblade with his free hand. "Move along."
A path opened through the bodies, and Odo shoved the suspect toward the security station at the other end of the Promenade.
"Now I'm the one who needs a drink." Commander Sisko managed to show a thin smile from across the booth's table. "I think that little unpleasantness drew more attention from me than I was prepared to give."
Kira nodded, rubbing her eyes. "It certainly woke me up." She tilted her head back, trying to dispel the fatigue she again felt advancing upon her. "Has there been something going on aboard the station while I was away, that I should know about?"
"Perhaps . . . though I'm not sure yet." The creases in Sisko's brow grew deeper. "I'll have to give you a briefing as soon as I've gotten some more details from Odo. Let's just say for now that our encounter out there was not the first of its kind—though it was the first where I seemed to be the target."
When she h
ad recovered more of her mental energy, Kira knew she would have to examine the commander's troubling statement. An environment such as Deep Space Nine had a difficult time keeping out the galaxy's brain-sick refuse; much of the station's mission was to facilitate passage through its docking ports. Theoretically, entry could be denied to anyone posing a threat to the welfare of the station or any of its crew, but as a practical matter, there wasn't time to do more than the most cursory screening procedures. It was the age-old problem of access—and the abuse of same—in an open society. She and Odo had had discussions about it in the past. that the only way to truly secure the station would be to lock it down tight as it had been under the control of the Cardassians. And doing that alone would defeat everything the Federation was trying to accomplish here.
Determining where Odo stood on the issue had been difficult; Kira knew that the security chief's first loyalty was to DS9 itself, the only world he had ever known, just as hers was to Bajor. In his own way, Odo was as much a patriot as she considered herself to be. Everything else came second for him, just as for herself, as she had to admit when she examined her own heart's allegiances. To know that was also to recognize a certain coldness and calculation that entered into her dealings with everyone else, who didn't share the exact same agenda—such as Commander Sisko and any other representative of the Federation's Starfleet. Maybe that was why so many other crew members saw her and Odo the same way, as rigid and uptight, steel-spined—oddly so in his case, given that he regularly reverted to a complete liquid state.
And at the same time, she knew, Odo and Sisko—and she herself as well—had to present a united front to everyone outside DS9, from the Federation authorities who could withdraw their support for the station's mission at any time, to the Cardassians who were continually sniffing around for any crack through which they could worm their way back in and reestablish their control, now that the station's true value had been revealed. A united front against all of that and more, no matter what conflicting forces might be building up inside.
Kira rubbed harder at the corner of her brow, to ease the ache that had started throbbing behind the thin wall of bone. She had promised herself not to think about all this stuff, at least not now, and again she hadn't been able to stop herself.
There had been a time when things had been easier to figure out, when there had been no question who the enemy was. When she had been fighting with the Bajoran resistance, the rule of thumb had been that if it was Cardassian, it was worth a full-strength phaser shot to the head. Her moral landscape was rendered in shades of gray now, the effect of having become, in essence, a political animal. She had already encountered fellow Bajorans who would have been happy to see her dead; how much longer until she felt the same way over every little squabble about their mutual birthright, the fate of their home planet?
How much longer—what a joke, Kira ruefully chided herself. Bajoran politics had already reached that stage. That was what she was here to talk to Commander Sisko about.
"With the compliments of the house . . ."
Another voice broke into her self-lacerating thoughts. She turned and saw a familiar grinning face as the booth's curtain was moved aside.
Quark set a tray with two synthales upon the table and tilted his head in a parody of a formal bow. "In appreciation for the fine demonstration you just gave out on the Promenade. Well done, Commander."
One of Sisko's eyebrows arched. "It was not done for the amusement of you and your patrons." He picked up the mugs and set them down in front of himself and Kira.
"What a pity, then." Quark held the tray against his chest. "If we could schedule a display like that on a regular basis, it might prove very entertaining. We could use something to draw in a few more customers."
Sisko looked across the tables to the bar. "It doesn't seem as if you're hurting for trade."
The grin disappeared, replaced by a heavy-browed scowl. "Of course, Commander, I couldn't expect you to be as knowledgeable about business conditions as we poor entrepreneurs have to be. Let's just say that people are finding . . . other means of entertainment these days."
"Please." Sisko held up his hand. "The major and I have a great many things to discuss. If you're not making the usual house percentage from your Dabo tables, I'm sure you'll find a way to rectify the situation. In the meantime . . ."
The bow was repeated, a little deeper and more obsequiously this time. "Your privacy is assured, Commander; our esteemed chief of security inspected these premises—or at least this part not more than three shifts ago, and found nothing amiss." Quark stepped back. "Just signal if you'd like another round."
With the booth's transparent shield in place, the murmur of voices from outside was cut to dead silence. Kira took a careful sip, then pushed the mug away from herself. "It's gotten worse, Commander." She studied her hands laid flat upon the table for a moment, then looked up at him. "Much worse than we had thought it would be."
Sisko nodded slowly. "The Severalty Front?"
"Who else? But then again, I would never have thought they would be able to organize so quickly, or so effectively." The details of all that Kira had discovered during her mission were now bleakly arrayed in her thoughts. "It looks like we severely underestimated the strength of anti-Federation sentiment on Bajor. Or to put it another way, we were completely unaware of all that was being done to neutralize the separatists. And by whom it was being done."
She didn't even need to speak the name aloud. Just by looking at Benjamin Sisko, the slump of his shoulders under an invisible burden, the grim set of his face, she could see that he knew exactly the person referred to.
"It certainly bears out the wisdom of that old Earth aphorism—" The commander tapped the mug before him with a fingernail. "—that one doesn't miss the water until the
well runs dry. I'm afraid that with Kai Opaka's absence, we're going to see a lot more dry wells, both here and on Bajor."
Absence, not death—Kira was grateful he had said it that way. She and Commander Sisko were among the handful of people who knew the exact details of the Kai's fate. A fate that, as far as other Bajorans were concerned, was the same as Kira had been aware, even before this mission, that an entire school of theological debate had sprung up over the Kai's having "answered the call of the Prophets" meant that she had suffered a corporeal death or had been transfigured to another plane of existence. Given the fervor of the disputants, it probably wouldn't have made much difference if Kira had told them that the Kai was still alive, albeit on a war-torn moon on the other side of the galaxy.
And in practical terms, the Kai's absence from Bajor, no matter what its true nature, meant a great deal. Now we really are missing that water, thought Kira. She and the commander had suspected for some time that Kai Opaka's influence on the simmering cauldron of Bajoran politics had been more than just that of a conciliatory spiritual presence. This just-completed mission had confirmed that all along the Kai had been working behind the scenes, deftly playing one faction off against another, pulling strings that were hardly more than spider threads, a whisper in one ear, a gentle smile of blessing that could shift a crucial vote one way or another. It had been the good fortune of Starfleet that all those delicate wiles had been expended on behalf of moving Bajor toward full membership in the Federation. The Kai had seen the future of Bajor in league with other worlds, a part of a galaxy-wide net, and not as an isolated world withdrawn into itself.
That wisdom, and all of the Kai's maneuverings behind the scenes, had given the pro-Federation forces a slim majority in the Bajoran provisional government. Given the passions of those who held contrary beliefs, it would have been impossible to have brought everyone around to the same conclusions.
"So what do you think?" The commander set his half-empty mug of synthale down. "From all that you learned this time, what would you estimate the chances are for the Severalty Front?"
Kira shook her head. "I don't know." Since the Kai's absence from Bajor, th
e splinter groups and factions opposed to membership in the Federation had managed to unite their efforts behind a single banner. "Who am I kidding? I do know. The Front's chances are good—real good. As I said, we had no idea of the opposition's numbers. That's the downside of what Kai Opaka accomplished on this issue; with her doing so much that we weren't even aware of, we were lulled into believing that the anti-Federation forces were ineffective and actually decreasing in number. Now that the lid's off them, it's clear that they're a much bigger threat than we ever gave them credit for."
"I still don't understand." Sisko rapped a fist against the table in frustration. "How any of your people can oppose a process that will bring their world such benefits—"
"Commander." She felt another fatigue, older and deeper, rising inside her. "We've gone over this before. The simple truth is that those supposed benefits just haven't shown up yet, have they? This is something I was afraid of from Day One here. In order to get the Bajoran provisional government to agree to Starfleet's taking control of DS9, the benefits of eventual Federation membership had to be sold, and sold hard to them. And so far the Federation hasn't delivered."
"These things take time, Major. But there will be a tremendous expenditure of financial and technical resources upon this sector—"
"Oh, sure. As if we haven't heard that sort of thing before." She had no resistance to letting her anger out; she found herself expressing the exact same thoughts as the isolationists. "For God's sake, Commander, the Cardassians told us as much while they were stripping every leaf and speck of minerals from the planet. After what they did to us, this station and its access to the stable wormhole is the only thing of value that Bajor has left. Can you blame us—that is, can you blame the Severalty Front—for being afraid that this will be stolen from us as well?"