She had brought the news to Garak and Damar in triumph. Weapons? You want weapons? I can conjure up weapons with a snap of my fingers!
Garak, however, had been less than satisfied with the arrangement.
“Forgive me, Commander,” he murmured delicately, “but one thing that tailoring taught me was that you should never conduct a business transaction without proper ... preparation.”
She had not much liked the implication that her friend—and, perhaps too, her judgment—could not be trusted, but she knew he was right. They had to be sure the meeting place was not being watched. So here they both were, a day in advance, squashed into a narrow space between two abandoned warehouses, watching the bridge and—in Kira’s case—sweltering.
Garak had seemed to know the spot well, and had settled down almost comfortably. Kira glanced sideways at him. He had not moved or spoken for over an hour now, had just sat beside her, knees drawn up and arms folded, watching the river and the bridge ahead, watching all that went on before him with cool, lizard patience.
You could just go back ... She dismissed that thought as quickly as it had arisen. It would be cooler down in their hideaway, but going back there without Garak meant she would be left alone with Damar. And the fact was that she would rather sit out here and suffer the heat. She looked up at the sky, heavy blue with unfamiliar constellations, and sweated.
“I don’t know why you’re taking so long over this,” she said at last, keeping her voice low.
Garak did not answer.
“I’ve known Estal Vilar for years, we grew up together in Singha.” Even managed to play together, she thought, although Prophets knew the camp had been hard for children.
Still no answer, although he did flick her a cool look.
“He supplied weapons to the Shakaar cell regularly. He never once let us down. He’d never betray me, Garak.”
At that, Garak uncoiled a little, stretching his arms out for a languid moment, then letting them come back to rest.
“I must ask you to indulge me just a little longer, Commander,” he murmured. “There are few things I refuse to do as a matter of principle, but trusting myself to an arms dealer I’ve never met is one of them. If you prefer,” he added, and this was with a sly, sideways look, “you could always go back and leave me to satisfy my paranoia alone. I’m sure Damar would welcome your company.”
“No thanks,” she shot back quickly—and then cursed herself for being so transparent. She stared ahead again with sudden interest, watching the reflection of the moon’s light as it flickered and broke on the ripples of the river. Her words hung between them, heavy as the night air.
Garak tapped a finger against his arm. “Sometimes, Commander,” he said eventually, his tone measured and unrevealing, “as I am quite sure you are already aware, it is necessary to set aside personal animosity to get a job done.”
She swung her head round to look at him, but he just kept on staring out patiently toward the river.
“I hardly think I need a lecture about the greater good from you of all people—!”
“You might not need a lecture, but you certainly need a reminder.” He was still looking out across the water. “You’re not the only one who could hold a grudge against our beloved leader, Commander. But right at this moment such things have to take second place.”
Ziyal. He’s talking about Ziyal. ...
She stared back at the river herself, and did not see it. She could not talk about Ziyal—not here, not now. Not if she wanted to go back and be able even to look at Damar, rather than launch herself at him, finally bring him to justice for the murder of that poor girl, her friend ...
She stretched out decisively and stood up. “I think we’re done here.”
“Not quite—”
“Enough, Garak,” she said, cutting him off before he could push any further. He raised an eye ridge. She drew in a deep breath of the thick air and then rubbed away the sweat on her forehead, her face, the back of her neck. The gesture calmed her, a little. “The curfew will be starting soon,” she said, pulling her hood over her face. “Do you want us to be even more obvious than we already are?”
He shrugged as if the matter were not of importance to him and stood up. “Very well. Let’s go, then.” He walked on ahead of her, and she followed him as he slipped into the shadows.
“And you needn’t worry too much for your safety, Commander,” he added silkily. He did not turn, and she could not see his face. “I’ve been dodging curfews in this city since before you were born.”
Two
Legate Damar—Hero, Legend, and the Man They Couldn’t Kill—sat by himself in a dark cellar and spun the-empty bottle resting on the table before him.
Damar was not a man much given to introspection—as he himself would be the first to admit. As his wife had often told him. He preferred action—preferred being faced with a plain choice, making his decision, and carrying that decision through, without second guesses or much in the way of regret. It was not the subtlest of philosophies, but it was one that had stood him in good stead throughout much of his life. It seemed, however, not to be working too well anymore.
He rested his elbow on the table and his chin on his hand, and gave the bottle another spin. It came to a halt pointing to his right.
A plain choice. These days—when they did come—they came with consequences he’d never imagined, had never wanted to be his responsibility. There’d been a plain choice before him just a few weeks ago, when there’d still been a resistance to speak of, and they’d gone to steal that Dominion ship for Starfleet. That choice had unfolded before him, out of his control before he could stop it, when Rusot had aimed his disruptor at Kira, and Garak had aimed his at Rusot. Choices didn’t come more straightforward than that, Damar thought bitterly. Perfectly plain—kill Garak, or kill Rusot. Choose the future, uncertain and unsafe; or choose the past, the Union he and Rusot had loved and served, and would have died for ... And Rusot had died for it, Damar thought now, died instead of Garak, and Odo—and Kira ... Rusot had died at Damar’s hands, telling Damar how much he trusted him.
He spun the bottle again.
Trusting Revok had seemed like a good choice. Half a million men. All his problems solved. He should have known it was too good to be true.
The bottle pointed left.
Kira had warned him about Revok, but he had not listened. And, in his heart—since Damar was not a dishonest man—he knew that it was not just because he had wanted the simple solution Revok’s offer gave him that he had ignored Kira’s warnings. It was because he had not wanted a free Cardassia delivered by a Bajoran in a Starfleet uniform. And now—thanks to his choices—he would not get a free Cardassia any other way. The insanity of this struck him once again.
What was I ever thinking of? What possessed me to choose her? Rusot and I served together all our adult life. And I shot him to save her.
Introspection did not come easily to Damar—but neither did dishonesty. And he knew too in his heart that he owed Kira; not just because she would—even if it killed her—do her utmost to deliver his free Cardassia, but because of another choice he had once made. Another choice that, at the time, had seemed like duty and now, with distance and—maybe—a little more wisdom, seemed like madness. The choice to shoot Tora Ziyal.
With an abrupt, dismissive movement, he reached out again and gave the bottle another twist. At least the fact that the bottle was empty wasn’t his fault.
A clatter at the top of the steps interrupted his thoughts. He looked up, reaching to his side instinctively for his disruptor, but relaxed when he saw that it was only Mila. Then he caught the look on her face.
“Now where’ve you hidden the medical supplies?” she scolded.
He gestured toward them, starting on a question—then more noise on the steps made him look up again, to see Kira and Garak coming down slowly toward him.
“What’s happened?” he said, standing up to meet them.
�
��Garak’s been shot,” Kira replied, raising an eyebrow at him.
He didn’t seem to be too badly hurt, Damar thought, appraising him anxiously, although he was leaning on Kira slightly and holding his left arm close to himself. Probably more to do with shock.
“We found ourselves facing a wall that we weren’t expecting,” Kira added as she maneuvered Garak toward a chair.
“I did find a way around it, Commander,” Garak murmured, his expression taut as he looked down at his upper arm. “Eventually.” He sat down heavily, and Mila set to work, berating him for his carelessness. Damar looked over her shoulder and winced a little at what he saw, but Garak had been very lucky—it was superficial. He would have had much worse in the past in the line of duty, Damar suspected—but it still looked painful.
“I thought you knew the city like the back of your hand,” he said.
Garak looked up at him sharply. “I did—eight years ago. It seems it’s rather difficult to keep track of town planning when you’re in exile,” he said bitterly. “So you’ll have to excuse me the lapse ... Mila, that hurt! Will you please be careful!” She carried on with her work thoroughly unabashed, and keeping up her stream of reproaches.
Damar looked over their heads at Kira, and she gave him a faint, wry smile. “We got a bit lost on the way back, down by the docks. There was a new building there that Garak didn’t know about—it blocked our access across the river.”
“The new factory,” Mila said, shaking her head and tutting. “I could have told you about that, if you’d asked!”
“Remind me in future to run all my plans past you first,” Garak shot back.
“Seems to me you’d be better off if you did—”
Damar ignored their bickering and kept on looking at Kira. “And?”
“So we had to come back another way, but it was patrolled and the curfew had started. We ran into a couple of Jem’Hadar. We spotted them right away, but one of them got off a shot at us.” She grinned down at Garak. “He didn’t get a second one out though, did he, Garak?”
“And I believe I’ve thanked you for that once already.”
Careless ... Damar thought. He ignored—since it made little sense to him—his irritation at their display of camaraderie. We can’t afford these kinds of mistakes.
“I take it you weren’t followed back?” he snapped.
She looked up at him scornfully. “Of course we weren’t.”
“And the rendezvous?” He glared back at her, but she kept her eyes leveled on his. “You’re both satisfied?”
“I’m happy on that score at least,” Garak said.
Kira lowered her eyes first. Damar did not feel it was a victory.
“Done,” said Mila brightly, patting Garak’s arm with just a touch of malice, and he grimaced and scowled at her. “You’ll live. You won’t be going anywhere for a couple of days, though.”
“I’ll be going out tomorrow—”
Kira rubbed her back, working at the muscles, and sighed. “You’d just be a liability, Garak. I can’t make allowances for an injured man. I’ll have to go and meet Vilar alone.”
“You need someone to watch your back,” he said, looking up at her. “I can still do that.”
“Why are we even talking about this?” Damar cut through. “I’ll go with her.”
She hesitated. A split second, but Damar caught it. “You’re too conspicuous,” she said, turning away from him to busy herself by helping Mila clear up the medical supplies. “Your face is too well known. I’ll try to contact Vilar and fix another meeting.”
“They can trace the transmission. We can’t risk it, Commander,” Garak reminded her softly. “Go with Damar, or don’t go at all.” He leaned back in the chair wearily and closed his eyes. Kira gazed down at him thoughtfully.
“Well, Commander?” It came out sounding more like a challenge than Damar had intended.
When she turned her eyes back up to him she too was giving no quarter. “It’ll work, I guess. It’ll have to.”
“Well, thank the Prophets for that,” Garak muttered. Kira and Damar both looked down at him, but his eyes were still shut.
Three
Kira strode up the steps of the bridge two at a time, just behind Damar, but matching him stride for stride. Reaching the top, she saw that the bridge was lined with statues, tall gray figures of men. They went and stood in the deeper shadows beneath one of these, out of sight, but still able to watch the steps up which they had come, and the length of the bridge heading toward the north bank. Dim lamps between the statues cast a little light. Damar leaned back against the crumbling stone, his face hidden from Kira’s view. The silence deepened between them, and Kira struggled to think of something to say.
“Who are all these statues of?” she said at last.
“Legates,” he replied, and then seemed to decide she merited a less abrupt answer. “This is the Veterans’ Bridge,” he continued. “Commemorates men who had great victories in battle. It’s a good spot, a quiet part of town. Gives a clear view of the city. I can see why Garak picked it.”
“Garak seemed to know this part of town pretty well,” she said, trying to keep him talking, and picking the only subject on which she thought they might agree.
He snorted. “Garak would know the disreputable bits,” he muttered, and Kira risked a smile. He jerked his thumb to his left. “The north side—where we came in from tonight—is better. In fact, Tain’s house is in one of the best parts of the city. You’re staying at a very exclusive address, Commander.” He leaned forward slightly so that a little light caught his face and she could see his expression, dry, and with a slight smile of his own.
She did laugh then, thinking of the hot, dirty cellar into which they were crammed.
He pointed ahead, to where the river bent toward the south. “I had a house over there.”
And a wife and son, she remembered, and bit her lip.
“What’s that?” she said, to change the subject. She gestured a little further east, where a tall black ziggurat rose above the low levels of the buildings around it, all sharp angles and points, forcing the eye upward to the single bright light at its peak.
“That? That’s the Tozhat Memorial.”
“Tozhat Memorial?” Why, she wondered, would there be a monument in the Cardassian capital named after a province on Bajor?
He turned his head to look her full in the face. “During the withdrawal. Twenty Cardassian women and children and nine soldiers were killed by a bomb left in a barracks.” He went back to keeping watch on the steps.
Tozhat ... They told a different story about Tozhat on Bajor, about how the base was being used to store—what was the phrase the Cardassians used for them?—that was it: soil declamators. Part of the scorched earth policy of the withdrawal. Planning to poison Tozhat province as they abandoned it, just like they’d done in Rakantha. Two cases of explosives had put a stop to it, but no one had known that only a few hours earlier the base commander had brought the little group of settlers still living in the area inside the compound. They said later in the resistance that he’d probably been ordered to use them as shields while the declamators were brought online, but Cardassian Central Command denied it, of course.
So that monolith was how the Cardassians remembered the tragedies of the Occupation? She cast her eyes again over it. There was a memorial in every town or village on Bajor, too, no matter how small or remote. Some of them were imposing, with gracious domes and curves, but none were so ostentatious as this one. She’d seen a memorial out in Amantha raised from the rubble of an ancient monastery that the Cardassians had burned to the ground. It was not much more than a cairn, a few feet high, but it had a subdued solemnity. Bajorans remembered their dead with reverence, she thought; they didn’t need show. Prophets, our whole planet’s a memorial to what the Occupation cost us. ...
Carried on the night air she heard the unmistakable sound of someone approaching, coming up the steps. Damar stirred beside her, pus
hing himself up from the wall. Kira turned her head quickly.
“Vilar, is that you?” she whispered, peering at the figure emerging from the darkness. A small man, hurrying toward them. As he came closer, out of the shadows, she gasped.
“Vilar, what have they done to you?”
“What?” Sharp familiar eyes blinked at her from an unfamiliar face.
“Your face ... !”
“Oh!” He put a finger up to the spoon-shaped ridge on his forehead.
Damar had set his hand very obviously on his disrupter. “I thought you were supposed to be Bajoran,” he said bluntly.
“I was! I mean, I am ... is that a disrupter?”
Damar turned to Kira, his anger held in check but plain to see. “Is it him, Kira?” His hand had tightened on the weapon.
“Yes, yes!” she said quickly. “I’d recognize him anywhere.” She turned back to her friend. “Vilar, what happened? Who did this to you?”
“Nothing happened! No one’s done anything!” He looked anxiously at Damar, whose hand was still clenched around the disrupter. “I didn’t think you were bringing your minder with you, Nerys. Any chance you could call him off?”
Kira glared at Damar. “Take it easy, will you? Vilar’s a friend. He’s put himself in danger coming here. There’s no need for threats.” She saw his shoulders relax just a little. His hand, however, stayed firmly in place on the disrupter.
She looked back at Vilar, and gestured at his face. “What did you do it for?”
“I was here ...” he hesitated, “well, on business. Then the Dominion arrived. Not the best place for a Bajoran to get stuck. So I took ...” he gave a short laugh, “evasive action! Quick snip here and there, and I was safe again.”
Kira’s gut twisted. How could he be so offhand about it? She remembered with revulsion seeing her own features warped into those of a Cardassian. And Vilar had chosen to have this done to him ... ?
“Nerys,” he said, patting at her arm nervously, “it’s good to see you again, but we’ve got to make this quick. Not a good idea to be out after the curfew. The Jem’Hadar squads are far more efficient than the Cardassians ever were.” He looked Damar up and down. “Well, you know what they’re like. Brawn and no brain.”
STAR TREK: DS9 - Prophecy and Change Page 36