by Неизвестный
The malice remained in the other's expression, though the self-congratulating amusement had withered away. After a few seconds of silence, the man turned to the ancient hard-wired computer terminal on the desk and typed in a few commands. "The general's not in the building at the moment."
"When is he expected to arrive?"
Hand to chin, the man contemplated the screen. "He has staff briefing at noon. . . ."
"Fine." Kira pulled the terminal around so she could see for herself. "Notify the others that the briefing has been rescheduled for a half hour later. I'll be meeting with the general at noon." She pushed the screen back toward him "There, that wasn't so hard, now was it?"
As she turned away and strode toward the exit of the Severalty Front's headquarters, she could feel the man's gaze like twin daggers between her shoulder blades.
"Nice work, Kira." A familiar voice sounded beside her. "That pompous little ass has been asking for it for a long time."
She stopped in her tracks, amazed. It had been years since she had last heard the person's slyly edged words.
"Malen—" She couldn't help smiling at him. "I thought you were dead."
"You know what they say about rumors and gross exaggerations." Malen Aldris pushed her forward by the elbow. "May I suggest we keep walking? Before our conversation attracts any undue notice."
Outside, they found an alleyway tavern dark enough for concealment. Something resinous and lethal was served to them in cracked porcelain cups; Malen sipped at his while she scraped her tongue across her front teeth to get rid of the taste. It was on occasions such as this that she appreciated the standards of Quark's establishment back aboard DS9.
"You're looking well, Kira." Malen leaned across the wobbling table to peer at her in the dim light. "You must be getting something to eat on a regular basis these days. In the old days, you were always such a starved little rat."
"Thanks." Her old comrade in the resistance looked older and grayer than she remembered him, his thinning hair reduced to a few snow-white wisps straggling behind his ears.
"The last time I saw you, some distinctly unfriendly people were dragging you away to be shot—"
"Oh, that." He waved a dismissive hand. "You know, I can't even remember anymore which side it was that wanted me dead, the Cardassians or the Bajorans. Maybe it was a joint effort on their parts."
"So you can imagine how surprised I am to see you again."
"By now," said Malen, smiling, "you should never be surprised."
She knew it was unlikely that Malen Aldris would ever be listed as one of the heroes of the Bajoran resistance; that designation was usually reserved for those like General Aur, who had no hesitations about bringing about the deaths of others, and little apparent regard for their own lives. Malen valued his intact skin too highly, and was too squeamish about violence, to earn any medals. Not that he would have wanted them; any recognition would have interfered with the clandestine nature of his affairs. During the Cardassian occupation, Malen had specialized in ferreting out warehouse managers, distribution supervisors, military logisticians, anyone who was involved in shifting Bajor's increasingly meager food production from one spot to another, and cajoling, bribing, or otherwise inducing them to look the other way while a precious trickle of supplies was diverted to the resistance fighters. As much skin-and-bones as she had been during that time, she and the comrades beside her would have been actual whitening skeletons without Malen's efforts. The brain inside the overly prominent dome of his skull had been skilled at juggling figures, delivery dates, inventory databases—essentially making two sacks of meal appear where only one existed. Unfortunately for that brain and the hunched, fidgeting body attached to it, such activities involved close, friendly-seeming contact with a large number of Cardassians, a state that was subject to being interpreted as collaboration with the enemy by less well informed members of the resistance. Kira wondered how fast he'd had to talk escape the firing line.
She also had to wonder what he had been doing at the headquarters of the Severalty Front.
"Were you trying as well to get in to see General Aur?" She was willing to assume that he had some scheme of his own in motion.
"Why should I have to try? I see Aur practically every day, whether I want to or not." Malen sat back in the rickety chair. "I'm the head economics adviser for the Severalty Front's shadow cabinet."
"Oh." She hadn't expected an answer like that. "You're working for them."
"Of course I am—the Front's where the action is right now. And I'm at a pretty high level, Kira; when the Front comes to power, I'm in line to run the entire Bajoran treasury."
"I see. Not if, but when, is it?"
Malen shrugged. "Would I be hooked up with them if that weren't the case? Let's face it, Aur's got all the trump cards. The provisional government is falling apart; if they last out the year, it'll be a miracle. And where there's a vacuum, something is bound to rush in and fill it. That's what Aur and the Severalty Front are ready for."
Kira nodded slowly. "You know, there is something else that I'm surprised at. You always used to think everything through so carefully, Malen. Have you considered that there won't be much of a Bajoran treasury for you to run, after your new government breaks off all contact with the Federation. You'll be lucky if you have two minim coins left to rub together."
"Given your position with Starfleet, Kira, I could hardly have expected you to be jumping up and down with joy at the prospect of the Severalty Front setting its program into effect. But you needn't be worried about me; let's just say that I got a good deal more inside information than you do, at least about Bajor's economic potential. The Federation might be a bit discomfited when it finds out what Aur and his advisers have up their sleeves. The new Minister of Trade . . ." Malen picked up his cup and took a hefty swallow.
She peered sharply at him. "Minister of Trade? Who's that going to be?"
"Hmm . . . this stuffs stronger than I remember it being." He gazed into the empty cup. "Has the unfortunate consequence of loosening tongues, doesn't it?" He waggled a finger at her. "You'll have to pump somebody else for secrets, I'm afraid. Didn't care for yours?" Malen reached across and took her cup, draining it before setting it back down in front of her. He pushed back his chair. "Kira, I'm really sorry we wound up on opposite sides on this one—but I suppose it couldn't be avoided. Good seeing you."
"Same here." She watched as he walked, a bit unsteadily, toward the door and the bright daylight beyond it. Only when she looked before herself, eyes readjusting to the tavern's gloom, did she notice the tiny scrap of paper stuck to the side of the cup.
Carefully, so that no one would notice, she peeled the slip back with one fingernail.
we're being watched and listened to. Below those words were a hastily scrawled address, one that she recognized as being in one of the city's more disreputable quarters, and the notation 7 p.m. Looking around the tavern's dimly lit interior, she saw two disheveled men hunched over their drinks, their sidelong gazes still directed toward the doorway.
Unobtrusively, she rolled the paper into a tiny ball and slipped it into her uniform pocket. Getting up from the table, she knew that the time was already close to noon and her appointment with General Aur.
* * *
She was out of breath by the time she reached the top of the last flight of steps. The building was close enough to the edge of the city to have sustained damage during one of the resistance's skirmishes against the Cardassians; a chill night wind billowed through the tattered canvas that had been nailed over a missing section of wall. Shards of broken stone mingled with the years' accumulated dust.
That does it, thought Kira as she waited for her pulse to slow back down. No more taking the turbolift everywhere I go aboard the station—at least until I'm back in shape.
"There was a time when you could have sprinted all the way up here." Malen had read her thoughts; he peered at her from around the edge of a door cobbled together
from scavenged wood planks. Yellow light fluttered from the lamp he held in his hand.
"That's what desk jobs will do for you." Kira took a deep breath and straightened up.
"Come on, get inside." He drew back into the dark behind the door.
She looked around as Malen set the lamp down on a low table. "A little shabby for the future head of the Bajoran treasury."
"I've done business out of worse places—you should know that." He glanced over his shoulder at her. "How did your meeting with Aur go?"
A shrug. "As I'd come to expect it would. I came ready to talk sense to these people, and no one is having any of it. Aur and the others may or may not have something special up their sleeves, but they're certainly acting as if they do."
"They've got a lot of reason for being self-confident. " Malen fussed with the lamp, to keep the flame from extinguishing in the oil below. "The Severalty Front can rightfully say that history—plus a lot of other things—is on its side."
"You sound like a true believer."
"Me?" He shook his head. "I've gotten to the age where I justify being interested solely in my own welfare. I've already done enough for Bajor, remember? Though I suppose for someone like you, there's no such thing as enough."
She ignored the last comment. "If all that were true, Malen, you wouldn't be talking to me now. Not in a dirty little hiding hole like this."
"Let's just say I like to be prepared for any eventuality. Such as the remote chance that the Severalty Front won't pull off all that it's planning."
"A remote chance that'll be brought a little closer by what you're going to tell me now."
He said nothing, but smiled thinly over his shoulder at her before turning back to make a final adjustment to the lamp.
The yellow radiance grew a fraction brighter, enough to send their shadows wavering over the ash-smeared walls. Kira watched as he paced across the narrow chamber. "It's this Minister of Trade—the one that Aur's going to install in office once the Front takes power. All their plans hinge on that one individual." Malen appeared to grow more agitated as he walked, rubbing a bony fist into the palm of his other hand. "These are things that can scarcely be credited. If they didn't need me to keep the books, I doubt if I would have been told anything at all." He stopped in front of the door and turned toward her. "The new Minister of Trade—"
There weren't any more words. But instead, a rose that blossomed from his chest—it looked like that to Kira, though she already knew what it really was, and had dived toward the corner of the room to get out of the line of fire. Crouching there, she watched as the last consciousness faded from Malen's eyes, one hand trembling as though in wonderment against the jagged splinters of his breastbone. A corpse, that looked like a bundle of rags with an empty face attached, crumpled to the floor.
A figure that Kira had last seen sitting behind a desk at the Severalty Front's headquarters stepped over the body and into the room. The functionary who had tried to keep her from seeing General Aur held an archaic particle weapon poised in his hand. Kira had used identical sidearms when she had fought in the resistance; the familiar, sharp explosion of its thrust charge still echoed in her ears.
"Don't move." The functionary turned the muzzle of the gun toward her. He glanced behind himself at Malen's corpse, then brought the resulting thin smile around in her direction! "Surely you're not surprised—didn't he say that everything the two of you did was being watched? And knowing that, to try and set up this little rendezvous . . ." He shrugged. "Very foolish. Or perhaps your old comrade had grown tired and had developed a bit of a death wish. And this way it could happen the way he thought it should have a long time ago."
"Spare me the philosophizing." She could feel the muscles coiling inside her limbs as her brain raced, calculating some way around the weapon's small, lethal black hole. "Thoughtful murderers disgust me."
"Indeed. I hadn't expected such tender sensibilities from one of your reputation, Major. But I assure you that this man's death comes about with genuine regret on my part. Malen's skills would have been very useful for the purposes of the Front's coming government. I should know; I was the one who compiled our dossier on his . . . interesting financial activities during the Cardassian occupation."
"I see." Kira carefully gauged the distance between herself and the weapon. "You're obviously not the doorkeeper flunky I took you to be." If she could keep him talking, there was always a chance of distracting him, breaking the concentration that kept the weapon unwaveringly pointed toward her.
"No—and I'm neither inexperienced or foolish enough for you to have a chance of succeeding at what you're so obviously thinking about." The functionary's smile vanished.
"You forget how widespread the resistance was, across the face of Bajor; there were elements—groups, organizations, even individuals such as myself—of which you would have had absolutely no awareness. Just as now you have no real idea of the Severalty Front's intentions."
"They must not be too admirable, if you didn't want Malen telling me what they are."
The functionary hazarded a glance at the corpse, his gaze immediately flicking back to Kira before she could move. "Unfortunately, for all his potential worth to the Front, there had been some questions all along about the depth of his loyalties—a logical consequence, given the nature of his rather shifty reputation. Believe me, Major, if it hadn't been for my own intervention on his behalf, he would have been dead long before now." The functionary shrugged, causing the muzzle of the weapon to tilt slightly, then settle into aim again. "But I guess I was guilty of mere sentimentality. I was reluctant to believe that all members of the resistance's old guard, such as Malen and yourself, should be eliminated out of hand—or at least not until it could be proven that they couldn't be brought around to our way of seeing things." He gestured with the weapon. "Please stand up, Major. You must be uncomfortable."
Now she was able to look straight into the functionary's eyes. "If you're planning the same fate for me, you might want to remember my technical status as a liaison to Starfleet. It's unlikely that you'd be able to conceal my death for very long—or eventually being held responsible for it. And Starfleet does not regard the elimination of its personnel lightly."
"I admire your self-possession in what many others would consider to be an intimidating situation." The thin smile returned to his face. "But how Starfleet feels about the brushing aside of, shall we say, impediments to the course Bajoran progress is not something that concerns me. Your Commander Sisko and all the rest of Starfleet are at the end of a leash held by the Federation. Only the utterly naive are ignorant of the fact that both murder and the toleration of murder are often required in the interests of diplomacy."
Kira's gaze grew harder and narrower. "I'm beginning to think you got these annoying little lectures from someone else. This all sounds like General Aur to me."
"Whatever. It's true, no matter whose words they might be."
"Aur better hope he's got one hell of a trump card stashed away." Kira's muscles tensed, ready to feint down and to one side, then knock away the functionary's weapon hand with a forearm blow. "If he's going to take on the whole Federation . . ."
"At this point, it doesn't really matter." The functionary lowered the weapon, its muzzle pointing harmlessly to the floor. "Perhaps later. Fortunately for yourself, you present no threat to the plans of the Severalty Front. Even if Malen had been able to tell you what he knew, what he had found out—that wouldn't have changed anything. Because it's too late now." He stowed the weapon in a pouch slung from his uniform's belt. "You're free to go." He stepped back and gestured toward the doorway. "As, in fact, you always were."
She heard the explosions then. In the distance, trembling the night air. But close enough that she could hear the shouting voices mingled with them, somewhere at the city's heart . . .
The old building's stairwell echoed with her running. She came to a halt in the street outside, looking up at the fiery lights slicing open
the sky.
Already, the distant shouts had begun to change, to cries of jubilant triumph. She had heard that sound before, when the gears of this world had turned and meshed with each other, when one rule of power had changed and another had begun. A coup, she thought. What else could it be?
"We decided not to wait." The functionary stood right behind her. Without turning around, Kira was able to detect the smile in his voice. "And . . . we didn't have to."
CHAPTER 7
He knew that the doctor would err on the side of kindess. If he let him; that was why Commander Sisko ordered the station's chief medical officer to tell the truth, no matter what pain and guilt was involved.
"It actually looks pretty good," said Bashir. The two men stood in one of the infirmary's small consulting rooms; on the wall-mounted computer screen was a dense section of the results he had been reviewing when Sisko had entered. "I ran a complete battery of tests on Jake; everything from real-time neural pathway charting and catecholamine receptor indices, to old-fashioned Rorschach inkblots and draw-a-picture sequences. Given the resources we have on board DS9, there aren't any further diagnostic procedures I can administer to him."