“What about them?” Garak asked.
“The codes next to the names? I recognize most of them, but not all.”
“Where did you get this?”
“From Thrax.”
“Ah, yes,” Garak said, his eyes growing wider. “I heard he was paying us a visit. Still the same sanctimonious prig he always was?”
“I wouldn’t know. I never met him when he was here before. We traveled in different circles.”
“No one traveled in Thrax’s circle except Thrax. He’s the most antisocial man who ever graced our little community. Well, until Commander Worf came aboard.”
“Enough, Garak. These codes.” He tapped the padd screen. “What do they mean?”
Pursing his lips, Garak picked up the padd. “I’m flattered that you should expect a simple tailor to know about such things. Couldn’t you just look them up in the Cardassian legal database?”
“I did. They aren’t in there.”
Garak studied the notations more carefully. “You’re sure?”
Now it was Odo’s turn to give Garak a “Please consider who you’re asking” look.
Garak studied the padd for another ten seconds, all the while shaking his head. “Then it’s come to that.”
“Come to what, Garak?”
“They’ve begun to manipulate the legal system to their convenience. They’re unmaking history.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I realize, Constable, that many of the Federation worlds don’t think much of the Cardassian legal system, that you don’t agree with the way we do things ...”
“Don’t include me when you say ‘Federation,’ Garak,” Odo said. “I’m not the Federation.”
Garak flashed one of his most insincere smiles. “Of course, Odo. My apologies. What I meant, of course, was, they don’t agree. ... And they don’t, do they?”
“No.”
“It’s all backwards to them. ‘Innocent until proven guilty.’ ” He smirked. “As if any of us is truly innocent.”
“I had no idea that Cardassians were so quick to merge morality and law.”
“Then you know nothing of my people, Odo, which, frankly, surprises me. I thought you, of all the denizens of our community, might grasp what it means to be Cardassian.”
Growing impatient with Garak’s meanderings, Odo growled, “The codes?”
“Or, for that matter,” Garak continued, seemingly oblivious, “our legal system. My, my, so many escapees.” His eyes glittered. “Doesn’t that strike you as strange?”
Odo’s irritation with Garak evaporated like rain on hot tarmac. “It didn’t,” Odo said. “But now that you mention it ...”
“Not only have the Dominion made my people forget their own soul by concealing laws, they’ve also made them careless. Forty-seven at once. That is exceedingly rare.”
“Then how did they escape the justice system unless ...”
“Yes?”
“They weren’t in the justice system.”
Garak pointed at the padd.” But you see their names here. And I see that some were thieves, some were, oh, robbers. A blackmailer.”
“And the other codes ...”
“Of course, Constable.” Garak pretended to study the display more carefully, then pointed at one of the entries. “This one? It means ‘Incitement to political connivance.’ And this one? He was not very popular with the neighbors for some reason. Oh, and here’s one you didn’t see very often even in my day—‘Intellectual privateering.’ ”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“He wrote something that someone else didn’t like. Or painted a picture or sang a song that caused offense. Who can say?”
The tumblers clicked into place. “Political prisoners,” Odo muttered.
“Not prisoners,” Garak said. “If they had been incarcerated, they never would have made it as far as the cargo pods on a Lurian ship. More likely, these charges were logged against them without their even knowing it. A convenience for when the day came that they should be rounded up.”
Odo stared into the middle distance, his mind racing. “And somehow they got wind of it and made arrangements to leave.”
“That has the ring of truth about it,” Garak agreed. He scanned the list more carefully. “If it’s any help, I’ve never met nor heard of any of them. None of them were known artists or intellectuals.”
“And you would know that because ... ?”
Garak attempted to wither Odo with an acid stare. “Constable, do I ask you how you know so much about what goes on here on the station?”
Grunting in acknowledgment, Odo relented. “So what you’re saying is that none of these people was a threat.”
Garak set the padd down on the table and passed it back to Odo. “The Dominion is notoriously disapproving of anyone they consider a dissident.” Lifting his mug of tea, Garak sipped it and made a face. “It’s gone cold,” he said. “And I really have to open my shop. If you’ll excuse me, Constable.”
“Of course,” Odo said. “Thank you for your help.”
“Not at all,” Garak said. “Always happy to assist an officer of the law ... whichever law it happens to be today.” He rose and headed toward the recycler with his cold tea, then paused and turned. “There was a time, Odo,” he admitted, “when I would have been happy to shoot boxloads of such people into the sun without a second thought. But I’ve found my attitude about such things has changed over the past few years.” He stared down into his cold tea and smiled a sad, ironic smile. “Personally,” he said, “I think the Federation puts something in the water.”
“How could they have been so ... so ... thoughtless? So careless?”
Kira didn’t answer immediately, but picked up the raktajino mug on the corner of her desk, stared into its depths, winced at the cold, black sludge she saw there, and then took a sip of it anyway. Grimacing, she finally asked, “That’s a peculiar choice of words, Odo. What do you mean by ‘careless?’ ”
Odo stared at the list of names and now-meaningless statistics displayed on Kira’s desktop terminal. He had called up the data to show to her because ... well, he didn’t know why precisely. Somehow, it had just seemed important. He was being irrational; he knew that, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the men and women in the cold, dark cargo pods, some freezing to death and the rest dying of suffocation. There was no sense to it, no logic. And then there were the air and battery packs. Why go into space without them? “They obviously hadn’t been thinking clearly,” Odo said. “Why else would they have taken such a foolish chance? How could they have allowed themselves to become enmeshed in such a desperate situation?”
“You’re talking about them like they had a choice,” Kira said. “Maybe they felt like they didn’t. During the Occupation, many Bajorans had to make similar or even more desperate choices. They did what they did—we did what we did—because we wanted to be free. As dangerous and as desperate as the choice must have seemed, they must have felt like this was their only option.”
“But you didn’t run away,” Odo retorted, an anger he could barely comprehend creeping into his voice. “You stayed and fought. If they had stayed on Cardassia, maybe they could have made a difference. Now all they are is dead.” He punched up the bio of an overweight middle-aged man with graying hair and drooping jowls. “Look at this,” he said, pointing at a line of text Nerys couldn’t possibly have seen from where she sat. “This man had two children.” He flipped to another record. “And his wife died, too.” Bringing up another pair of records, Odo said through gritted teeth, “This couple had three.” He spun away from the monitor, raging. “And what do you suppose will happen to the children without their parents? What happens to orphans on a Dominion-controlled Cardassia? I’m not even sure I know!”
As it had the day before when he sat in his office opposite Thrax, Odo sensed his frustration building in his chest and flowing up his arm into his hand, hardening it into the shape of a wide, flat hammer. ...
And why not? he wondered, looking at the images on the monitor. What else is there to do except lash out ... ?
Nerys held up her hand. “Children?” Nerys asked sharply. “How many of them had children?”
Odo stopped his fist in mid-swing and stared at her. He felt his face go blank and the extra mass in his arm flew back down into his torso. Reaching down, he began to flip through the biographical notations for the first ten records, and then the next ten. “Most of them,” he said.
When he looked up at Nerys, she was staring into the middle distance, her mind obviously racing ahead, annoyed with herself for being able to ask only one question at a time. “And the married ones ... are there any with a husband or wife who wasn’t in a cargo pod?”
While not an expert with databases, Odo knew enough to quickly parse the records, construct a query and run a search. Tense moments later, he said, “Yes. One. A woman named Tarrant. She was the wife of Kizon.” He skimmed through her biographical data searching for some” telltale difference between Tarrant and the other dead refugees. The entry for occupation stopped him. Unlike most of the others—the vagrants, instigators, and writers—Tarrant had a job that did not require a euphemism: She was an EV specialist.
Odo read this aloud and Nerys asked, “How many cargo containers would a freighter of that type normally carry?”
Odo called up the schematics, fearing he already knew the answer and cursing himself for not checking earlier. When the information came up, it was exactly what he feared. “Eight,” he said.
Kira slapped her combadge. “Kira to O’Brien.”
“Go ahead.”
“Prep the Defiant, Chief. We’re taking her out immediately.”
They found the cargo pod tumbling several million kilometers beyond the debris field. A quick scan with the Defiant’s sensors showed weak life signs, but they also showed that the irradiated hull wasn’t permitting a positive transporter lock. “If we’re going to bring them aboard, we’ll need to do it manually. A tractor beam would crush the pod,” O’Brien said.
“Suit up and take an away team over, Chief,” Kira said from the command chair. “We’ll match velocities and move in as close as we can. ...”
O’Brien rose. “I can be ready in ten minutes.”
“No,” Odo said suddenly. “I’ll go. I’m ready now.”
Kira half-spun around in her chair and met his eyes. She knew he could tolerate hard vacuum, at least for a while. And every minute would count now.
“Go,” she told him.
The airlock door opened silently and Odo stepped through, willing his epidermal layer to thicken and thin membranes to form over his eyes. No sound now, no gravity. Only the pinpoint stars framed by the open hatch. With one end of a grappling cable in tow, Odo pushed off the side of the Defiant and floated toward the cargo pod.
There was no sense of movement, only the grayish-green box growing larger in his sight as he closed with it. When he was less than a meter away, a fine crack appeared on one side of the pod. While anyone else would have had to wait for the hatch to open, Odo latched the cable to the pod, pressed a finger into the crack, and poured himself through.
Reconstituting himself inside, Odo saw the interior of the pod was as black as pitch except for a dim oval of light in one corner. A hand moved through the light—a helmet beacon?—then fell limp. Moments later, he sensed rather than saw all around him a circle of forms, all of them touching him, pulling at him, dragging him toward the fading light.
As Odo watched, the oval of light faded into nothingness.
“They’re hungry, of course,” Bashir explained outside the infirmary. “And exhausted and dehydrated, and there’s some tissue damage due to radiation, but we can treat that.” He had large, dark circles under his eyes and wore a haunted expression that Odo had not seen on his face since the earliest days of the war. Just when you think you’ve seen the worst thing you could ever see, the universe throws you a new one. ... “And, they’re terrified, all thirteen of them. They’ve been asking for their parents.” He rubbed the back of his ear, then closed his eyes. “And I don’t know what to tell them, Constable. I don’t have the words.”
Odo didn’t have an answer, so he asked another question. “What about Tarrant? What did she die from?”
“Asphyxiation,” he said. “Just like the other adults. She must have been monitoring their batteries right up to the end, swapping out the dead ones for the ones the children’s parents left her. In the end, she must have had to choose between staying alive to continue working or giving one of the children her own battery.” Bashir smiled wearily. “We might have been too late for one or two of them if you hadn’t gone out for them, Odo. It was a matter of minutes for a couple. ...” The doctor looked up at Odo like he was expecting a smile in response, something wan, heroic, and reassuring.
He would wait a very, very long time.
“Thrax.”
Seated alone at a table on the balcony level of Quark’s, the Cardassian looked up from his glass of kanar. His eyes, which before had struck Odo as bright, seemed dull now. “What is it, Constable? I’m very tired and I’m due to depart in less than an hour.”
Odo sat down across from him. “You knew about the missing children,” he said. “You laid out the clues deliberately, hoping we’d put them together and find them for you. That’s why you were so interested in the details of the Militia’s recovery operation.”
“Of course I knew,” Thrax said. “I helped get them into the containers. I made sure Tarrant was with them in case the worst happened. And it did. Once I learned what your people found, and what they failed to find, deducing what really happened was a simple matter.”
Odo shook his head, still struggling to wrap his mind around the chain of events he had put together. “The freighter didn’t blow up immediately. While the Lurians tried to stop the core breach, the parents put Tarrant and the children into a single pod, along with the suit batteries and the air packs, and launched them into space before the ship blew. Then the parents returned to their pods and waited. If the Lurians could save the ship, they could retrieve the children’s pod later. If not, at least the children had a chance at being found before their air and heat were depleted.”
“And Tarrant was their chance,” Thrax told him. “She was a clever woman. Calm under duress ...” He shook his head, eyes tightly shut. “No child should ever have to see their parents die. Not that way, at least.”
Odo could see the man was exhausted, but he didn’t care. Still putting the pieces together in his mind, he needed confirmation. “The planet you contacted in nonaligned space—Lejonis, in the Celeth system—that was their destination, wasn’t it? This whole body exchange program, it’s a cover. To get people like them off Cardassia.”
“Not that we don’t also return Starfleet’s fallen to the Federation. We do.” A shadow of a smile played at the corner of Thrax’s mouth. “Just not as many as the Dominion believes.”
Unable to contain his anger any longer, Odo hissed, “How can you put people at risk like that?”
The light that had been missing from Thrax’s eyes suddenly blazed. “Because some of us are that desperate. Because this is what your people have brought mine to.”
“They aren’t my people,” he said, acutely aware it was the second time he had said it in the last day.
“No?” Thrax asked. “Then whose are they, Constable? Or should I ask, who are yours? Who do you belong to?”
“That’s not the issue. ...”
“Don’t misunderstand me,” the Cardassian said. “I’m not accusing you of anything. Just stating facts. And the fact here is that the Dominion isn’t going to return Cardassia to any state of former glory. It’s crushing us. Slowly. Inexorably. And the first to die will be those the Dominion considers unnecessary.”
“The men and women in the cargo containers—not criminals?”
“The worst sort, Odo,” Thrax said, smiling wanly. “Writers, artists, freethinkers
. Never popular on Cardassia at the best of times. Even less tolerated now.”
“So you set up your pipeline—the smugglers, the neutral planets.”
“I can’t take credit for the idea, but, yes. I’ve been working on this for months.”
“And if something went wrong—like it did with the Lurian freighter—you’d be the logical person to deal with it.”
“Exactly. I had to make sure the pipeline wasn’t exposed. So I came to the station under the pretense of conducting a criminal investigation, hoping to defuse the situation here before the Dominion took notice of it.” He paused, shaking his head slowly, shoulders sagging again. “And then when I realized not everyone was accounted for in the wreckage, I knew, I knew they’d taken steps to keep the children safe. I had to find them.”
“You could have told me the truth. ...”
“You really understand nothing about us, do you, Odo? All those years living with Cardassians and you learned nothing. I couldn’t risk it. Finding the children was important, yes. But keeping the pipeline from the Dominion was even more imperative. It still is.”
“I would never have—”
“This is war, Odo,” Thrax said. “If your side took sufficient notice of something like this, that guarantees that Dominion would take notice too. Unless I could defuse the situation first by convincing you it was, at worst, an isolated scheme hatched by someone like Quark.”
Odo shook his head, astounded by the wild chances, the desperation being revealed to him. “You can’t keep this up forever,” he said.
“It doesn’t need to be forever,” Thrax told him. “Just long enough.”
“Why haven’t you fled Cardassia as well? Why do you stay?”
Thrax smiled. “Because someone has to.”
Odo’s voice softened. “Perhaps I can help.”
“If you want to do something, Constable, then bury this incident. Make it disappear, and make sure the children get to Lejonis. There are other refugees already there who will take care of them.”
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