by Diane Carey
“There aren’t even any bubbles. Garak, why didn’t you bring me bubbles?”
“Coming, I’m coming. Clear this away, Damar. You know your way around garbage, don’t you?”
“After long association with you, yes.”
Garak climbed back down in time to clasp Kira under the arms and haul her up out of the water. “You’ve lost weight,” he commented. “I’ll have to make you a whole new wardrobe.”
“That’s all right, Garak, perfectly all right,” she said, grinning as he hoisted her out of the cold wet basement. “I made six new suits while I was waiting for you. And some boots for my rat.
CHAPTER
3
If a planet could be beautiful, Cardassia Prime surely must be a jewel in the random night. Like a giant crystal ball, the planet seemed constantly to glitter in its subdued sun. Though he had been programmed with all necessary historical texts and the poetry that described them, Weyoun found himself still baffled by the romance with which many of the curious creatures in this quadrant seemed to speak of their homes. Yet he had come over the many weeks to see some of the attraction of Cardassia against the night.
The Dominion Briefing Room, set well below the equator of the planet he was here to defend, had many pictures of the planet from surveillance satellites and outposts on the moons. Weyoun broke from his communion with these monitors and went back to the one that counted. With enjoyable hatred he glared at the incoming swarm.
“Founder, the Federation invasion fleet has left Deep Space Nine. They’ll reach the Cardassian border in twelve hours.”
Seated at a desk near him, the glorious Founder was difficult to look at in these advanced stages of her disease. Her skin, once smooth as bisque soup, was now cracked and desiccated. She had no power to mask the advancement of the plague which was upon her and her people. The sight made Weyoun feel ill himself, though he fought to keep from glancing at her, to keep the disgust and horror from his voice. He knew her intelligence had not suffered—she would read his glance with all the cunning she had ever possessed.
Yet also it was a relief not to glance that way in order to avoid looking at the Breen general. Thot Pran was a sickening clod who was better ignored. The Breen were servicers, nothing more. Weyoun would tolerate them for now.
“Good,” the Founder quietly said. She had trouble forming words through her scabby lips, but turned to the Breen and added, “Our brave Jem’Hadar soldiers have a motto … ‘Victory is life.’”
The Breen answered her in his unintelligible static. His voice was nothing more than a crackle of electrical noise to Weyoun, but the Founder understood what was being said.
“I’m glad you’re familiar with it,” she said. “For today, those words have meaning for us all. I have no doubt,” she went on, speaking very slowly, and with trouble, “that the outcome of this battle will determine the outcome of the war. Either we destroy the Federation invasion force, or they destroy us. There are no other options.”
Weyoun overheard without looking, knowing he was not being spoken to, and yearned to rush to her, to extol the wonders of the Founders, the glory of the Dominion, to declare that nothing so petty could pull it down. As he clamped his lips tight, he listened to the static of the Breen general speaking in his barbaric manner.
“Fight well today,” the Founder told her minion, “and Romulus will be yours to do with as you please.”
How petty! Weyoun tightened his fists in disgust. To have to bribe the fools! To have to give them a planet just so they would defend the Dominion! Pathetic!
The Breen was buzzing again. He had better be groveling!
“Yes, yes,” the Founder said now. “And Earth too. I assure you, the pleasure is all mine.”
Apparently satisfied, if such a clod could be measured by body language, the Breen offered one more burst of sizzle, then went to a monitor and began clicking and snapping his troops into formation—at least that was what Weyoun assumed was going on.
Bribes! Giving away huge portions of their conquests to buffoons! Weyoun bottled his rage. He had no right to interrupt, yet a certain quiver of insult boiled up inside him.
His hands trembled. He pressed his lips tight. He glared at the screen in inconsolable fury.
“Is something bothering you?”
The Founder was looking at him again.
With monumental control Weyoun kept the contempt out of his voice.
“Apparently,” he said tightly, “I was under the mistaken impression that all Federation territories would fall under my jurisdiction … including Earth.”
The Founder lowered her voice. “And so they shall.”
He looked at her. “But you just promised the Breen….”
Was she smiling beneath the scales of disease?
“I’d promise the Breen the entire Alpha Quadrant,” she told him quietly, “if I thought it would help win this war.”
How fluidly she conjured the future! What a wonder she was! To think of so many things at once, to understand so much, to know when integrity served and when it stalled—
He bowed before her. “The Founder is wise in all things,” he murmured.
He was about to say something else, to elaborate on his opinion about this turn, but was cut off when Legate Broca came into the briefing room without even chiming the door notice.
“Founder,” he began rudely, “I’ve heard a disturbing rumor about the traitor Damar.”
The Founder did not look at him. “What about him?”
“He may be alive.”
Now she turned to Broca. “Is this possible?”
“I don’t see how,” Weyoun attempted. “We destroyed his ship, his rebel base—”
“But his body was never found.”
“They say he’s here,” Broca insisted, “on Cardassia Prime. Here in the capital, no less….”
Weyoun stiffened. Would she be angry? What action would she want him to take? The detested traitor Damar—Weyoun could think of many fates he would inflict upon a Cardassian who had turned on the wondrous Dominion, which had once again raised the Cardassians to power in the quadrant. How could he turn on the saviors of his people?
The Founder showed no outer emotion at this news. She seemed, for a moment, not to have heard Broca at all. Then she gave him a beautiful gift, charging him with authority that would resonate far.
“Look into this matter,” she said.
Broca nodded.
Weyoun narrowed his eyes. “If Damar is alive—”
Broca snapped him a bitter glare. “He won’t be for long.”
“I smell smoke. Musky … thin. A cookfire.”
“The Jem’Hadar don’t cook. They don’t eat either.”
“Shh.”
“It could be Cardassian, but it doesn’t smell familiar.”
“Don’t obsess, Garak. You’re letting hunger get the best of you. Keep quiet. For a spy, you make a terrible sneak. Follow me.”
The alley was dank and slippery with lichen embedded between the bricks in the broken floor. They had been hurrying through these back alleys for hours, hugging walls, avoiding the main streets, climbing over walls, through ducts, and under piping. This was a slow way to traverse a whole city, but the only way to avoid patrols. Garak was clumsy, too long separated from soldiering. He had forgotten how to be stealthy. Now they had to move into the main streets, for their maze of back alleys had come to a dead end.
As they rounded a cold-molded building and moved out of the protection of the alley, their good fortune instantly dissolved in a disruptor strike against the building that nearly took both their heads off.
“Halt!”
A Jem’Hadar voice. Familiar enough, by now.
And a light—a spotlight, struck the wall, bouncing to brighten this whole side of the street.
Two Jem’Hadar soldiers blocked their path, if the light were not creating illusions. Yes, two, with one holding a palm beacon.
“Step forward. Slowly.”
<
br /> “At last!” Garak tentatively moved toward the two palefaced demons. “Some friendly faces! We’re new to the city and I’m afraid we’ve gotten lost—”
“Quiet!” the soldier on the left ordered.
Both soldiers stepped closer now, closing the distance between them.
The one who had spoken came farther forward by one step, and spoke again, but not to Garak.
“You are Legate Damar.”
Damar clamped his mouth shut, knowing his wide eyes had already given too much away. For what could he say?
Garak flopped his arms and shook his head and laughed. “You see? I told you you looked like him!” To the Jem’Hadar he attempted, “this isn’t the first time my cousin has been mistaken for that traitor—”
“He is Damar,” the unswayed Jem’Hadar insisted. “He will be taken to Dominion Headquarters. You,” it said then, looking at Garak, “will die here.”
Fear crossed Garak’s face as he apparently realized there was no way out of this. Damar’s mind ran with possibilities, though each one fell short. The Jem’Hadar’s weapon snapped up to Garak’s frightened eyes. The final seconds pulsed.
A crackle of animate noise burst through the street. Breen!
Over there—the Jem’Hadar turned his light down the street. A Breen soldier stood at the other end of the alley from which Damar and Garak had just come. Had they been followed the whole time?
It came forward now, chittering its staticky voice. If Damar were any judge, it had just repeated itself. Perhaps it wanted one of Garak’s arms to chew on. How could any of them possibly know?
“I do not understand you,” the Jem’Hadar called. “There must be a malfunction in your communication device.”
In answer, the Breen soldier halted, squared both legs, raised his weapon and quickly fired it. Damar threw himself to one side, driving Garak out of the line of fire. They reeled briefly in the blast wash, but they had not been in the line of fire at all! The two Jem’Hadar had been struck instead—dead, both of them! What a wonderful sight!
“Actually,” the Breen soldier said in perfect English, “I don’t speak Breen.”
It pulled off its helmet. But how could it breathe?
Ah—there was the answer. Kira’s short red hair ruffled in the fallen light, which still shined at a funny angle on the bricks. Her bright brown eyes were lit with irony and superiority. She knew she’d done well to anticipate this, and she was happy to lord it over them.
Actually, Damar was pleased—even for a moment—to have been proven imprudent. In that one instant, Kira had shown herself as the experience-hardened guerrilla fighter whose youth had been forged in the oven of resistance. Though it had been his own people—an empire he had once served—that had driven her and all her Bajoran people down for so very long, Damar found himself feeling respect for her quickness and foresight. He determined to learn from this, to be better next time—and every time after that.
With a gush of relief, Garak blurted, “I hope you don’t consider me ungrateful, but what are you doing here!”
“Watching your backs,” Kira told them, with something less than affection.
She looked healthy enough, but they all knew she was still recuperating from her head wound down in that collapsed building. For hours they had made her rest, but as soon as the medic announced that her subdural injury had been healed she had insisted upon getting up and going back to their collective job as terrorists. Now she had saved their lives.
“I thought we agreed,” Damar said, turning to her, “it would be safer if you stayed off the streets and out of sight.”
“That’s what the helmet’s for,” she told him. “You should be wearing one too. Every Jem’Hadar and Breen soldier on Cardassia is looking for you.”
“If I’m going to lead this revolt,” Damar protested, “I can’t do it hiding in a cellar. I had to attend tonight’s gathering.”
“It was a great success,” Garak lauded, still breathing a little too rapidly from his near encounter with unfriendly fire.
Kira gestured them off the street. “You can tell me the details later.” Kira put her helmet back on, gingerly because there was still some swelling on the side of her head. “If anyone asks, you’re my prisoners.”
Damar bristled, but Garak clasped him by both arms and pushed him forward. “We’re honored,” the other Cardassian said, and they were off.
They made their way this time not through the alleys of Cardassia’s capital city, but down the main streets, at gunpoint, courtesy of the clever Bajoran woman who had gained their respect over the years. Her versatility was to be lauded. Her bravery was a given. But bravery is expected of soldiers and Damar gave her no extra credit for that. He both admired and was jealous of her ability to foresee intrigue. He must learn to do that, so as never to be humiliated again. Perhaps carrying weapons would have been wiser, even with the chance of their being detected by energy scanners. He must learn better to judge risks against each other, or find ways, as the colonel had, to use the negatives of his situation in his favor. Pretending to be Breen had never occurred to him, yet now it seemed so simple….
They hurried back to their secret cellar without further incident, other than one quick pass beside the Cardassian patrols, who failed to notice them in the darkness. They saw no other Jem’Hadar, no other Breen. Not surprising, given how many troopers had been sent to space duty. The planetary divisions were sparse now, and that was a good thing.
Once safe—relatively—in their hideout, Colonel Kira shed her Breen uniform and helmet as if they were infected. Despite their service, she hated them. Kira hid her feelings poorly. That which represented her enemy was also her enemy. Irrational. Damar decided to also learn from that.
“Well?” she asked abruptly. “What happened at the resistance meeting? We have to make a plan, know what to do.”
They sat together around a small crude table. Garak was fairly bursting to tell it, so Damar motioned for him to speak.
“The vote was unanimous,” Garak bubbled. “Everyone agreed that the work disruptions would begin tomorrow morning!”
Damar paused as Mila, Garak’s old family friend and the only Cardassian woman here, came down the steps with a tray of food. “Power, transportation, and communications facilities all over Cardassia will be sabotaged.”
“The Dominion fleet,” Garak barreled on, “will be cut off from all ground support.”
“That way,” Kira appreciated, “they’ll have to face the Federation alliance invasion force on their own.”
Damar nodded. “And once the Dominion is crushed—”
“Cardassia will be free again.” Mila spoke firmly, interrupting the men with a confidence she had rarely shown. Hope shined in her silvery face as she gazed down at Garak. “Elim, I have to admit than when you were a little boy, I was worried about you. Always getting into trouble … quiet, secretive, so full of deceit. Little did I know you would turn such distasteful characteristics into virtues. More tea?”
“You’re too kind.” Garak smiled up at her.
Damar leaned toward him. “She’s right, you know.”
“About me?” Garak asked.
“About Cardassia. We will be free again, we will rid ourselves of the Dominion once and for all.”
Never again, he held back from saying, would they allow themselves to be turned into stooges of another power. No, he couldn’t say that aloud! There was too much bitterness. It hurt too much to think how the Dominion had embraced the Cardassians, then shunted them lower than the Jem’Hadar, then lower than the Vorta, and now once again even lower than the Breen. A proud nation could only stand so much, no matter how much was promised. Some victories were simply not worth the price paid.
He turned to Kira before those unfortunate words came out.
“How ironic,” Garak added, “that the famous Bajoran of Deep Space Nine should come to Cardassia’s aid.”
Damar nearly struck him for his foolishness in remindin
g her of what she was doing, and for whom she was doing it, the strange bedfellows created by conquest and necessity. Here he was fighting against the official Cardassian allies, and she, a Bajoran, was in her way fighting for the salvation of the Cardassian nation which had so long tormented her and her people. Oh, irony and its many winds.
Though a flint of insult sprang in her eyes, Kira smiled. “Tonight is going to be a long night. A lot can go wrong.”
“Nothing will go wrong,” Damar told her. “too much is at stake.”
No one responded to that. It fell with a clunk to the stone floor, and he was sure it echoed.
“Have you assigned duties for the assault team?” Kira asked. Her question was firmly pointed—if he hadn’t, he should have, and if he didn’t, she would.
“We have a schematic of the city,” he responded. “I’ll lay it in a grid pattern and assign one commando to each grid. Whatever target facilities fall within a certain grid will determine how many resisters are assigned to each commando.”
“I can lay the grid,” Garak volunteered.
Kira added, “I can brief the teams.”
Damar agreed, then asked, “Do you have any information about when the invasion fleet will arrive?”
She sighed. “Well, it’s hard to keep a thousand ships a secret, but the allied force has done a fair job of distracting and confusing the Dominion spies—and ours right along with them. We know the fleet is coming soon, but if it were me I wouldn’t pull the squadrons together until they all rendezvoused at Deep Space Nine. Until then, no one would be sure how many ships were involved.”
“You saw how empty the streets are,” Damar pointed out. “Significant portions of the planetary forces have been depleted. That means the Jem’Hadar and Breen are being put back in space. That is why we must act tomorrow, while facility guards are at a minimum.”
“Two fronts, gentlemen,” Kira said. “The fleet in space, and us down here. Both had better succeed, or everything will collapse faster than you can say ‘labor camp.’”
Damar stood up, signaling that the talk was over and the action must begin. “Either way, by noon tomorrow our resistance movement will either be famous or we will all be dead. I’m looking forward to it.”