HollowMen

by Una McCormack

  Odo had, as a matter of course, done background checks on the crew of the Ariadne. He ran background checks on everyone who came aboard Deep Space 9. Nothing had shown in either Steyn’s or Trasser’s file. He had, however, been able to find out very little about Auger, except in relation to the Ariadne. He had so far put this down to Auger’s youth, and Steyn’s comments that he was not much traveled. Inexperience, after all, was not a crime. Nevertheless, Odo thought, perhaps it was time he went to have a word with that young man. And Steyn too. Who seemed to spend a lot of time gambling. And talked about being in debt to unmistakably shady characters.

  As Odo was assembling his files on the Ariadne’s crew, the door to his office slid open and Bashir came in. He seemed most excited.

  “Doctor,” Odo said, rising from his chair. “How can I help you?”

  “I’ve cracked it,” Bashir said. He was grinning from ear to ear.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The latinum!” Bashir said. “Odo, I think I know what’s going on.”

  “I was just about to go and speak to Captain Steyn again, and her young crewman—”

  “No, you were right all along.” Bashir’s eyes were shining. “It’s Brixhta, I’m absolutely sure of it.”

  Odo eyed him with interest. “That is something of a change of heart, Doctor—”

  “Odo, we’ve been working from completely the wrong premises.”

  “Have we?” Odo glanced past Bashir out onto the Promenade. Now that he had a new avenue of investigation, he was keen to get started. Of course, he thought glumly, this would be exactly the moment that Bashir would decide to become interested in the case. “In what way?” he said.

  “Well, think about it. What have almost all your questions to me been about?”

  “About Brixhta—”

  “No, more than that—about Hamexi, and about Hamexi physiology. Odo, we’ve been assuming that what we needed to track on the station was a biological entity. But what if it isn’t biological. What if it’s mechanical?”

  Odo took a good look at the doctor’s eager face. It was touching, in a way, to see Bashir become so enthusiastic about the whole business. Nevertheless, an investigation was not advanced by ignoring the facts and details of the case in favor of someone’s flight of fancy.

  “A mechanical Hamexi? Don’t be ridiculous,” Odo said, flatly.

  Something wasn’t working. Auger could feel it. The wheel was spinning just as it should, and it was telling him things, just like it should—but it just wasn’t quite right…. The picture, he thought, was splintering.

  He reached for his glass of water and began to play with it. After a moment or two, it was shifted away from him, and then he felt a touch upon his arm. He jumped, his already fractured concentration thoroughly interrupted, but when he looked it turned out to be Steyn.

  “Auger,” she said softly, “are you okay? Is something the matter?”

  Auger looked fretfully around the colors of the bar. Something dark impinged on his vision.

  “It’s him,” he muttered, jerking his head at Mechter. “He’s getting in the way.”

  “No, Odo, I mean it! Think about it!”

  Bashir was sufficiently thick-skinned, Odo noted, that being told his ideas were nonsense did not lessen his zeal in any way. He thought impatiently of the interview he wanted to conduct with Auger, and then looked at Bashir’s keen face. This was not a man who was going to be passed over without a hearing. He leaned back against his desk.

  “Present a little more of your thinking to me, Doctor,” he sighed.

  Bashir’s excitement visibly rose. “Brixhta calls himself an antiques dealer,” he said. “Now, I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word ‘antiques,’ I think of things like furniture, or paintings. But most of the merchandise Brixhta brought with him to the station was toys. And some of them were mechanical. Machines, Odo. I told you it was the chief you should have been talking to!”

  “A mechanical Hamexi?” Odo snorted again. “Doctor, you’ve seen what they look like!”

  “If he’s selling this stuff, he must know something about how to restore them, or…or how to build them.” Bashir leaned across the desk eagerly. “Miles would know better than me, but my guess is that it could have come in quite easily in any of the crates which Brixhta brought with him to the station. Nothing would have been detected on any of the scans you and I did looking for lifesigns. And even with Brixhta safely locked up in one of your holding cells, this machine—or whatever it is—can be going around doing…well, whatever it needs to do in order to steal the latinum. And if someone saw it, they would just assume it was the Hamexi that they had seen before. Odo,” he stopped for breath, “they all look the same!”

  Odo looked down at the padd he was holding. It was still showing the security reviews of Steyn and her crew.

  “Odo, don’t you think it’s possible?”

  “It’s possible,” Odo admitted, “but whether or not it is very likely—”

  “Possible enough that it’s worth checking out?”

  “I still want to speak to Steyn and that young man as soon as I can—”

  “You don’t have to do it yourself, you know. Just get someone to check.”

  Odo looked at Bashir’s face. Having gone to so much trouble to intrigue the doctor in the case, it seemed a shame, he thought, not to follow up on his suggestions. However unlikely they seemed.

  “Oh, very well,” he growled.

  Bashir looked back at him in delight. “Good man!”

  “Although my team is very stretched at the moment, Doctor…” Odo grumbled as he went back around his desk and started to punch at the comm.

  “And I appreciate you taking the time even to think about it.”

  Odo frowned, and tried a few more buttons.

  “Is something the matter, Odo?” Bashir’s voice had faltered a little.

  “Yes,” Odo replied. “This is odd. I can’t seem to open a channel on the com.”

  Bashir leaned over. “Are you sure?”

  Odo kept on trying for a moment or two more. “There’s nothing,” he said, and moved around from behind the desk. “I wonder if this is stationwide, or just in here.” He walked over to the door of his office. And then stayed standing in front of it, because it had not opened.

  Sisko stirred impatiently in his seat. Garak, Roeder, now Veral…He was getting tired of all this opacity in the conversations round here. “Subcommander Veral,” he said, “was there something you wanted to talk to me about?”

  She turned and looked at him, seeming startled, as if he had unexpectedly cursed. “Nothing of particular importance, Captain,” she said. “I do wonder, however, what you make of occasions such as this.” She nodded back toward the building.

  Sisko shrugged. “It’s just part of the way things work, I guess,” he said. “What do you make of them?”

  “I find them frivolous,” she said, coolly. “A waste of time. Perhaps that is something else to bear in mind.”

  “You don’t see any use in bringing the delegates together informally?” Sisko said, a little sharply, on Huang’s account, if nothing else. “You don’t think it might help us all—not just now but in the future—to find some areas of common ground other than the fact that we all want the Dominion driven from the Alpha Quadrant?”

  “That sounds to me very like many lectures I have heard given by Starfleet officers on how others should behave, but I am willing to admit it might be useful,” she conceded. “And yet…” She gave him another of her half-smiles. “…in practice, the delegates from the Klingon Empire stand at one end of the room, and my own colleagues stand at the opposite end, and between us flutter your own delegates, as pliant and ineffective as ever.”

  Ineffective? Sisko felt a flash of fury. Who the hell was it brought you into the war? he thought. That was pretty damn effective! He had a sudden urge to find out just how self-satisfied Veral would look once he had told her exactly what ha
d happened to the late Senator Vreenak. He suppressed that desire quickly. Admitting his responsibility to his superiors was one thing. Being provoked into breaching security was another. He looked again at her smile, and felt the sharp stab of anger that had become common but not comfortable over the past weeks. Although perhaps they’re both a kind of confession….

  “Adaptability isn’t a bad thing, Subcommander,” he said, with an effort. He kept looking resolutely out at the garden, rather than risk meeting her eye. “Particularly in wartime.”

  “I notice you have ignored my charge of incompetence, Captain, but otherwise it seems we are in accord with each other. Everything changes—particularly in wartime,” she agreed, nodding her head. “The old enemies no longer seem so inimical. The old certainties become fluid, perhaps; the line between good and bad is no longer so clear-cut. And I find myself wondering,” she said, with a studied carelessness, “how fascinating it would be to discover quite how adaptable the Federation and Starfleet are. How pliable their principles might be. Given enough pressure.”

  Again, that half-smile. Sisko found himself almost shuddering, and he had to look away. He stared upward, up through the dark leaves of the apple tree, up at the sky beyond. The branches shivered in the breeze, and a sliver of moonlight slipped through. As he watched it touch the leaves of the tree, it filtered through Sisko’s mind that maybe this was not an academic discussion. That maybe Veral was talking about something very particular. Talking about Vreenak.

  “I can find myself imagining,” Veral was saying, so softly, “a situation in which a Starfleet officer might face a difficult choice. A choice between his principles, and a choice to adapt those principles in a new and hostile environment. I can easily imagine him adapting; and adapting to the new circumstances very well. And I would not blame him, Captain. Rather, I would applaud him. Everything changes, everything adapts. But only the strongest can survive. The strongest, and their allies.”

  Sisko listened to her voice almost as if he was dreaming. He watched the clouds slipping past the moon. There was no one to condemn what had been done. Not Ross, not Batanides—certainly not Leyton. And not even, it seemed, the Romulans themselves.

  “I welcome that,” Veral said, “in an ally.” She picked up her glass, and held it again by the stem, between both hands. “To our alliance, Captain Sisko. May it continue as it began.” Then, with a quick, decided movement, Veral stood up. She straightened the tunic of her uniform. “Perhaps you will excuse me now. I would like to explore a little more of this garden before the evening ends.” Sisko sat and stared at her. She gave her enigmatic smile, and then her expression changed, and became more sober.

  “There is one other thing I feel I ought to mention, Captain,” she said, hesitating. “I have noticed that you find yourself in some interesting company. I have no doubt that Mr. Garak has his uses. But you might wish to keep a closer eye on him.”

  Sisko looked back over his shoulder at the reception room. His eyes had become accustomed to the outside, and he found himself squinting against the lights. It was difficult to be certain, but he was fairly sure he could no longer see either Garak or Roeder standing by the window….

  “Goodnight, Captain,” Veral said, quietly.

  It was like a splash of cold water on his face. Sisko got up and almost ran back indoors. There was nobody in front of the painting of the H.M.S. Victory. He glanced around the room, until he saw Huang, still darting through the company like a hummingbird. He made his way over to her, gently touched her elbow until she smiled up at him, and then drew her aside.

  “Councillor,” he said, quietly, “you don’t know where Tomas Roeder is, do you?”

  Huang caught the urgency in his voice. She looked at him with concern. “Mr. Roeder? Didn’t he come and find you, Captain? He left with your friend. It seems that Mr. Garak was keen to see a little more of the city, and Roeder knows it very well, of course. They went…” She checked the time on a delicate silver wristwatch. “…I’m not sure exactly, five or ten minutes perhaps? It can’t be much longer. If you hurry, you might catch them. I should imagine they’ll head up the river.”

  “Thank you, Councillor,” Sisko murmured, turning to leave. He felt his fury rising again. I specifically told him not to wander off anywhere!

  He contained himself enough to avoid actually running out of the embassy, but he took the steps down onto the road two at a time. The street was dark and empty. Then he ran across the road, hopped over the wall, and stood for a moment looking up and down the embankment. A couple walked past, looking at him curiously in his dress uniform. There was no one else around that he could see. The lamplight winked down at him. The moon was bright. And the river flowed on by, broad and brown and slow.

  8

  ROEDER NAVIGATED A PATH slowly but purposefully through the reception crowd. Garak kept him just to his right side, and slightly ahead. The press of people thinned out as they reached the foyer, and the security guards at the door nodded at them as they went on outside. There were a couple of people out there, dotted about on the steps, making conversation, enjoying a drink and the evening. Roeder went down the steps. Garak sucked in a breath and followed his lead, still keeping the other man just a little in front.

  The night air was cool, but it seemed to Garak that the threat of rain had passed. The clouds had cleared and the moon had come out. Roeder led Garak across the street, and they went down toward the embankment. A line of railings ran along the line of the water, several yards from the river’s edge. Roeder stopped at them. Garak came to stand beside him. The sky was dark, and the moon was broken on the ripples of the river.

  “The Thames,” Roeder said.

  Garak glanced at him. “I’m sorry?”

  “That’s the name of the river.”

  “I see.”

  “This isn’t the best view,” Roeder said, turning his back to the water. “We should go south of the river, and look back this way.”

  “Whatever you suggest.”

  “There’s a bridge a short walk away. We can cross the water there.”

  Roeder started off, and Garak fell in step on his right, putting Roeder between him and the river.

  “I was interested,” Roeder said, after a moment or two, “that you came to the reception this evening with Ben Sisko. You know that we served together?”

  “Yes, he told me.”

  “I knew him pretty well at one point. Sisko is Starfleet to the core. You’ll forgive me, Mister Garak—but you’re not what I would have picked out as being an obvious choice of friend for him.”

  “The same could stand in reverse,” Garak pointed out. “My home is being occupied by our mutual enemies, Mister Roeder. I have very few allies. But Starfleet is willing to fight the same war that I am fighting.”

  “Of course,” Roeder said, smiling down at the ground. “I should have guessed. What’s that expression? ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend.’ ”

  I really rather like this man, Garak thought. I don’t particularly want to kill him.

  “Which I’ve always found to be a very pragmatic philosophy. Whereas you…” Garak glanced at Roeder’s still face. “…you would say that you have no enemies?”

  Roeder remained impassive. “Oh, no,” he said. “I wouldn’t say that at all.”

  Garak risked a glance at the other man’s pale, thoughtful face. He frowned. Roeder was proving harder to crack than a canka nut. Talk to me, Garak urged him silently. Give me a reason to keep you alive.

  “Then…you choose not to fight them?” Garak hazarded. “Is that a little closer?”

  Roeder gave a thin smile. “A little,” he allowed. Then he added, in a low but still conversational tone, “By the way, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re being followed. Have been since we left the embassy.”

  “I had been wondering if you were aware of that.”

  “Shall we go and find out which of us it is that’s attracting all this attention?”

&nbs
p; “To be perfectly honest, Mister Roeder, I would rather we were left in peace.”

  “Peace?” Roeder gave a quiet laugh. “All right, Mister Garak. Let’s go and find some peace.”

  Dax looked up from her station. “Nerys, something isn’t right here.”

  Kira picked up the mug from the replicator. “What sort of something?”

  “I was just running the level-three diagnostic on the environmental systems, and everything has seized up on me.”

  “Seized up?” Kira abandoned her raktajino and went to join Dax at her station.

  “And now none of the systems are responding,” Dax said, shaking her head.

  “Communications?” Kira said.

  “Nothing….”

  Kira hit her combadge. “Kira to Odo.” There was a silence. “Kira to Worf.” No reply.

  Dax tried the same routine, but with no success. “Combadges too,” she said.

  “I don’t like having no idea what’s happening anywhere else on the station,” Kira said. “Try the doors,” she ordered.

  Dax nodded and tapped at a few controls.

  Nothing happened.

  “The turbolift?”

  Again, there was nothing.

  “Transporter?”

  Nothing.

  “Could this be something left over from when the Dominion were on the station?” Kira said. “The Cardassians had access to all of the systems then. Could they have left something behind, something that would start running at a predetermined time?”

  “It could be that,” Dax acknowledged, leaning over her station. “Although the chief and I were very thorough in our housecleaning afterward….” She started working at the controls. “I’m going to try bypassing the primary command pathways. That should let me get past whatever program is running….”

  “Try to be quick about it,” Kira said. “Because if this is the prelude to an attack on the station, I’d like to know before things start exploding around me.”

  Dax worked for a little while, and then began to frown.

  “What’s the matter?” Kira said.

  “Well, every procedure that I try is being blocked; it’s as if the program can counter everything I throw at it.” She jabbed, irritated, at the console. “And then it goes on to block that route in entirely. I’ve tried with a whole array of security protocols, but so far it’s no use….” Dax carried on working for a while, and then shook her head. “Whoever’s doing this had a very good idea of what we would try to do to get past it.”