HollowMen

by Una McCormack

  Roeder walked on a little way, and then came to a halt, just beyond one of the lights. His face was obscured. Garak stopped walking too, leaving a couple of feet between them, keeping to the shadows himself.

  “Well,” said Roeder. “Shall we get down to business?” His voice was flat; it sounded emptied out.

  “I’d like that,” Garak replied, his gaze flickering between the figure standing opposite and the dark all around him, trying to pick out some information from both.

  “You’re still with Starfleet Intelligence, aren’t you, Roeder?” he said, stalling for time; trying to invent ahead of himself how this conversation might go. He was beginning to get very impatient with the other man. He had been as unthreatening as he knew how, given Roeder several opportunities to open up—but he had remained impenetrable. Garak was starting to think that Roeder might need to be presented with a more immediate threat to get him talking. People so often did.

  “Your association with the antiwar campaign,” Garak said, “it’s a front, isn’t it? You’re the man inside.” He reached up and slid his hand toward his inside jacket pocket.

  “I wonder,” Roeder murmured, “who could have told you a thing like that?” He eyes followed the route of Garak’s hand, and he shifted his weight slightly to one side. It brought him no closer, although it did seem to put him farther into the darkness.

  “Well, I have my sources,” Garak replied blithely, mirroring his movement. He had a much better sense of the river now. There were some lights, dotted here and there along the water. But he couldn’t quite make out where they were coming from. Buildings on the other bank? Boats? He could not tell if there was anyone close, and before he made a decision about what to do next, he had to know if he could be seen.

  “And I also have to wonder,” Roeder said, “if that were indeed the case, why that information would be interesting to you.”

  “Well…perhaps it would put us on the same side,” Garak suggested. He moved his hand further across his chest. From what he could make out of Roeder’s shape, black against black, he seemed to lean in a little in response.

  “Would it? Is there something you want to tell me about yourself, Mister Garak?”

  Garak pressed his hand against his chest and suppressed a sigh. Roeder seemed to meet every question with a question of his own. It seemed he would have to give Roeder a little more information, if he was going to get him to talk. If he wanted to stop this before it all got completely out of hand…

  “Imagine if you will,” Garak replied, “a former agent of the Obsidian Order, cast out from Cardassian space, who deplores the new regime, and wishes to see it destroyed. Who wants to keep Starfleet in the fight. And who would like to know a little more about how he might assist Starfleet Intelligence toward this end.” Something splashed into the river. Somewhere, a light went out. Garak slid his hand more into his jacket, trying to make it look real, trying to make sure it was not too unreal.

  “That’s a fascinating story,” Roeder said. “And not even remotely plausible.”

  Roeder could move at warp speed, Garak realized, as he crossed the distance between them and grabbed Garak’s wrist with his left hand, stopping him from reaching further into his jacket and the knife concealed within.

  Roeder began to reach for his own pocket. With a swift movement, Garak slammed the heel of his hand into Roeder’s face. He heard the crack of bone, felt blood trickle warm down his wrist, caught Roeder’s curse cold in the night air. That was perhaps a little too real, he thought, guiltily. They both fell backward awkwardly, away from each other. Quick as a flash, Garak had the knife out and held in front of him. He stepped in; not to kill, to take control—

  And found himself looking down at the snub nose of a phaser.

  Garak fell back a step. He looked up at Roeder, and jerked his head back in the direction of the embassy. “How did you get that in there?” he said.

  “It pays,” Roeder coughed out, voice thick and breathless, “to make friends with the men on the door.” He kept the phaser trained on Garak and, with his other hand, reached down into his pocket. There was a flash of metal. Garak jerked back again, expecting a knife—and then saw what it was.

  A hypospray.

  Roeder gestured with it toward the knife in Garak’s hand. “Drop it,” he said. Garak looked at the phaser, considered his options—and then did what he was told. Roeder took a step forward, and kicked the knife away beyond the railings. It made a quiet splash as it hit the water.

  This, Garak thought, might well turn out to be one of my riskier strategies.

  “Now,” Roeder said, his voice still muffled, but his breathing settling a little, becoming steadier, “The choice is yours, Mister Garak. We can do this the quick way,” he lifted the phaser, “or the easy way,” he lifted the hypospray.

  “Easy for who?” Garak asked, eyes flicking between his two immediate options.

  “Well—which one of us is armed?”

  “That’s a very good point,” Garak murmured. “And since you put it that way,” he looked up and could not help but smile at the sight of Roeder’s nose, “I think I’ll take it easy.”

  Standing at the bar, Quark could hear music, conversation, people eating and drinking…but underneath it all there was the grim and steady grind of the dabo wheel. Yet another spin, and Quark heard his profits take yet another plunge. He wiped a glass disconsolately, and put it clattering on the shelf behind him.

  Over at the wheel, the captain of the freighter patted her young crewman on the back, then she bent down and whispered something in his ear. He nodded absently, his attention entirely on the wheel in front of him. The captain stood up, and ambled over to the bar, settling herself on the stool right in front of Quark. She pointed up at one of the bottles behind his ear, so Quark poured her a drink from it and slammed the glass down in front of her. But it could not quite drown out the sound of the wheel spinning away more of his latinum.

  It was heartbreaking, Quark thought. From what he could make out, the entire station was locked down. Nobody could get in and—more importantly—nobody could get out. He had customers trapped in here. Trapped. And yet still somehow all this profit was slipping through his fingers….

  Steyn drank deeply and then smiled at him across the bar. “So…” she said.

  Quark glowered back at her. “So?”

  “I was hoping that you and I could have a chat.”

  “Do you think you really have something I want to hear?”

  “Maybe,” she said. She started tapping her fingernail against the inside of the glass. Quark ground his teeth. As if she wasn’t irritating enough. “I thought,” the captain said, “that you might like to hear a little about my friend Auger over there.”

  “I can hear the damage he’s doing to my dabo table.”

  Steyn looked over toward Auger with a maternal pride. “That boy,” she said, “was a find. I tell you, it was like digging up treasure.”

  “Not from where I’m standing.”

  “You’d never think it on a day-to-day basis. He drops things, he breaks things…practically trips over his own feet. And yet I have never seen him lose a game. Of anything.” She stared down into her glass, tapping her nail against it again, and shook her head in admiration. Then she looked back up at Quark. “You ever heard a dog whistle?” she asked.

  A dog…That was some kind of Earth animal, wasn’t it? Quark thought he could remember something about fur. And fangs. He was certain there had been fangs. He looked back at Steyn in complete bewilderment. “Can they whistle?” he said.

  Steyn put her hand to her eyes for a moment. “No,” she explained patiently, “I meant, have you heard it. A whistle. For dogs.”

  “I’m not entirely sure what a dog looks like, Captain Steyn. Do you think I’m likely to have heard a whistle for one?”

  Steyn held up her hands. “Fair enough,” she said. “All right—the thing you need to know about a dog whistle is, it’s pitched at a high fre
quency.”

  In Quark’s opinion it sounded close to cruelty. He shuddered, and drew back a little further from Steyn. Was this meant to be some kind of threat? Hew-mons too often turned out to have an aggressive side. “What has this all got to do with my dabo table?” he said.

  “The high frequency,” Steyn said, tapping more vigorously at her glass, “means that people can’t hear the whistle but that dogs can. And sometimes,” Steyn nodded at Auger, “I think that boy’s a bit like that when it comes to gambling. Like he’s working on some higher frequency.”

  “Which just happens,” Quark said resignedly, “to be the same frequency my dabo wheel works on.”

  A guilty smile spread over Steyn’s face. “Yeah,” she said. “Sorry about that.”

  “Oh, I’m sure that makes you sorry.” Quark looked mournfully at the table. “What you’re telling me is that he’s going to clean me out.”

  Steyn shrugged. “Who knows? The game’s only just started, hasn’t it? But going on past experience, Auger will clean you out, and the rest of those poor mug punters—unless you’re running a much smarter program than anyone else we’ve come across yet. What are the odds on that?”

  So this boy’s gameplaying was up against Rom’s programming. It was like a battle of wills between the two village idiots…but while Quark was well aware of just how far his brother’s talents stretched, what he was less sure about was the extent of Auger’s talents. When it came to odds, Quark was a pragmatist. That was why he preferred stacking them. And watching the way the wheel had been turning for Auger, Quark thought that right now the odds were not stacked in his favor.

  “I think,” he said, unhappily, “that your young friend might well be on his way to cleaning me out.”

  “And that,” Steyn said, “is why we should have a little chat. Because I have a proposition for you.”

  Chaplin’s relief at seeing Sisko was palpable.

  “I’ve lost him, sir,” she said, the apology clear in her voice. “He was with Tomas Roeder. And I just don’t know where they got to….” She took a few deep breaths, steadied herself, and fell into step beside Sisko. “One minute they were walking a few yards ahead of me—and then the next thing…” She shook her head. “If they used a transporter, they could be anywhere. I can’t believe I lost him!” She kicked a stone out of her way. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said.

  “Roeder has about twenty years of Starfleet security experience,” Sisko replied, gently. “And Garak…well, I’m not sure of the full range of his talents.” He glanced across at her dejected face. “If they combined their expertise and really put their mind to losing you, I don’t think you stood much of a chance against them.” He smiled. “They didn’t exactly have much trouble shaking me off either,” he pointed out.

  That seemed to console her. Not much, but at least it helped her focus and give him a proper report. “Thank you, sir,” she said, and nodded. “I’m in contact with Marlow back at HQ—he’s doing a planetwide sweep for Cardassian life signs.”

  “Good.” He had been right about her competence. She had not panicked, no matter how fraught she looked right now. They passed out into the street again, into the moonlight. The river was still bending south, and there was another bridge coming up.

  “It’ll take a bit of time,” Chaplin said, “but at least we’re looking for something specific and not exactly very common on Earth.”

  “Well, I certainly hope not,” Sisko murmured. “Don’t worry too much, Lieutenant,” he said, at her rueful smile. “Councillor Huang said they were going to take a look at the city. I think it’s best if we just keep on searching while Marlow finishes up his sweep.” He pointed to the dark length of the bridge, spanning the river ahead. “I figure we’ll find them up there, swapping epigrams.”

  It made her laugh, as he had intended. “So you’ve noticed that about Mr. Garak too, sir?”

  “I’d say it was one of his distinguishing features.”

  In the security office, Julian sat leaning against the desk, his arms folded, his head slightly down. But he watched covertly as Odo trod a narrow line back and forth in front of the locked door.

  “Odo—” he said.

  “No, Doctor,” Odo replied firmly. “I do not require your attention.”

  “I just wanted to ask,” Julian said mildly, “if you were due to regenerate soon.”

  He watched Odo’s pace quicken.

  “Yes,” Odo replied.

  Julian nodded slowly. “Do you keep a medkit in this office?” he said.

  “As I have already said, Doctor—”

  “You may not require my attention now,” Julian said, “but you might later. My medkit is safely locked away in the infirmary. Do you keep one here?”

  Odo gestured over to the desk and, as he did so, Julian saw a flake come away from the constable’s hand. He went calmly over to the desk and looked around. He opened one box and, looking inside, he saw a small figurine of a Bajoran. It was painted to look like the kai. He fastened the lid again quickly, and kept looking around the desk. Eventually, he found the medkit.

  “Odo,” he said, carefully, making sure he was looking away from his patient and examining his medical supplies, “you said that you had experienced something like this before—”

  “I’m afraid that that is a security matter, Doctor.”

  “I understand,” Julian said quickly. “I don’t want to know how or where—I just want to know what the likely effects are going to be on you. I have to know a little about what’s happening to you, Odo.”

  “Is that really necessary, Doctor?”

  Julian knew how closely guarded Odo was, but he was not prepared to sit back and watch the constable suffer just to honor his stubborn streak. Before he could answer, there was a burst of static from the comm on Odo’s desk, and then O’Brien’s voice came through; very distant and breaking up. “Anyone there? Odo?”

  “Thank god,” Julian muttered to himself. “Miles,” he said urgently, “am I glad to hear your voice. What the hell is going on?” He looked up. Odo had ceased his pacing to come and stand beside him at the desk. Julian took the opportunity to survey his patient. It was as if Odo was drying, he thought, watching the coarsening and flaking.

  “Hallo Julian,” O’Brien said. “Seems we’re having a few problems with the station. Well, one problem, actually—it’s not under our control right now.”

  “That’s what I would call a fairly large problem,” Julian agreed.

  “And you’re the smart one. You got Odo there with you?”

  “Yes, he’s here….”

  Odo did not miss his hesitation. “I am quite well, thank you, Doctor—”

  “I do think that I should be the judge of that—”

  “I am certainly well enough to speak to the chief!”

  Julian got out of his way.

  “How may I help you, Chief?” Odo said.

  “Dax is trying to bypass this program from ops, but none of the standard protocols are working. Can you give us some higher-level ones, Odo?”

  To an accompaniment of static, Odo supplied the protocols. “Is it possible to put me through directly to ops?” he asked.

  “It’s all I can do to keep this one channel open—we’re going to be pretty low tech for a while yet. Odo, do you remember when that counterinsurgency program of Dukat’s locked down the station?”

  “I remember the occasion extremely well.”

  “Didn’t Garak have some security codes that let him access systems? I was thinking that if we could at least have a look round—”

  “After the event,” Odo said, “I came to the conclusion that leaving Garak with an array of access codes was not in the interests of station security. As a result—and, regrettably, given the circumstances—they do not work any more.”

  “Huh. Well, can’t say I blame you, Odo.”

  “Miles,” Bashir said, urgently. “Odo and I think that someone is in the process of stealing the latinum.”


  There was a pause.

  “Miles? Are you still there? Miles?”

  “You might want to see if you can switch on the viewscreen in there.”

  Odo went across the office and turned on the viewscreen, and Julian came to join him. They stood and watched, aghast, as they saw the Hamexi moving effortlessly around the station. Without cloak or hat, and the doors opening and closing behind him, it was an eerie sight.

  “Well,” Julian breathed after they had watched for a while. “That’s…uncanny.”

  “I’m by no means convinced as yet by your theory that this is a machine,” Odo said. “We have no way of knowing what’s been happening in the holding cells.”

  This new turn in events had the benefit of taking Odo’s mind off being trapped, Julian thought. “You think Brixhta might have got free?”

  “Part of this program might have been to enable Brixhta to get out of his cell,” Odo said. “I am assuming that anyone who has this level of control over the station will be able to deal with the forcefields sealing off that section of the Promenade. But Brixhta would still have to get past the security team outside the assay office. And then there are the biometric scanners on the crates—”

  As if on cue, the monitor switched to a view just outside the assay office. There was a slight haze to the air, as if the area was filled with some sort of mist. Peering through, Julian saw the two security guards, slumped against the bulkheads.

  “I admit it’s difficult to make a proper diagnosis from this range,” Julian said, “but I’m going to make a guess and say that they’ve been drugged.” They carried on watching for a little while, and then a shape began to emerge from the mist.