STAR TREK: DS9 - Prophecy and Change

by Marco Palmieri, Editor

  Garak beamed at her approvingly, rather as a parent might at a small child who has just said something extremely clever.

  “You’re learning, Commander! You’re learning.”

  Six

  There was a plaque beneath the statue of Legate Rantok. It listed his greatest campaigns and conquests. He had once kept a city on Bajor under siege. For four months, they held out against him, until he won the nearby dam and cut off their water supply. Still they lasted: another eight weeks. Not long after the surrender, the rest of the region fell to Cardassian control. It was a turning point at the start of the occupation, and had ensured Rantok’s name would go down in history. He had been a legend.

  The metal of the plaque was tarnished, and the stone around it was weak. Damar crumbled it industriously with his forefinger. Like his father before him, he’d brought his son to the Veterans’ Bridge, to see the great men from the stories that were read to him at school. The boy hadn’t liked it here much, he recalled. The gray, looming figures had upset him.

  He looked up abruptly at Kira. She was frowning down at his hand.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to annoy you.”

  “What?” She looked up at him and blinked. “Oh! No, it’s all right.” She wiped a hand across her face, then set it back to rest upon her phaser.

  “The heat really gets to you, doesn’t it?”

  She sighed. “I’m sure I’ll get used to it soon.”

  “I’m sorry it makes you so uncomfortable.”

  She came to stand beside him, leaning both arms on the bridge. “And I’m sorry—”

  He raised a slow hand to check her. “I’m afraid I have to say, Commander,” he intoned, deadpan, “that we might have to stop apologizing to each other all the time. I’m almost certain it will irritate Garak more than if we were arguing.”

  She laughed. “I guess we shouldn’t try his patience too much.”

  “And certainly not once his arm is better.”

  The silence between them was a little more companionable now. More than it had been for the last couple of days, that was for sure, when they had both been looking past each other, embarrassed by what they had said and done.

  “So,” he said, after a moment or two, “you wish that you were cooler. And I wish ...” he thought for a moment, “for a full night’s sleep. Or, failing that, a decent meal.”

  She grinned. “It isn’t just me, then?”

  “No,” he said, smiling down at the stone, “it isn’t just you.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her start slightly, and her hand shift back down to her side.

  “Ah,” said Damar calmly, without looking up. “There you are.”

  Vilar shuffled forward as he spoke, his feet making little valleys in the gravel. “I thought I was being quiet ... Er, no disrupter this time, I see, that’s good, I suppose ...”

  “Vilar,” Kira scolded, “you’re late.”

  He was still staring at Damar. “Does he ever move? I mean, I’ve heard him speak, but I don’t think I’ve seen him move. Not that I’m complaining, mind you, if he wants to stand there and not move that’s fine by me ... it’s certainly better than having him go for that disruptor ... but still it’s a little bit unnerving that he doesn’t ever seem to, well, you know, move—”

  “Vilar, shut up!”

  “Eh? What? Oh yes. Sorry, Nerys.” He sidled closer to the bridge, looking past Damar, toward Kira and relative safety. Damar shifted his weight, just a little, advising no further progress in that direction.

  Kira leaned forward. “Well, Vilar?”

  “Oh yes. Well, I’ve done a bit of poking around since we met, spoken to a few people here and there ... nothing too obvious, of course, you can’t be too careful these days ... well, you can’t be too careful anyway ...”

  Damar was not certain whether he was about to like him or about to end his life. “Agreed,” he said.

  “Er, where was I? Oh yes! I’ve found someone who can get me a supply of some of those, what do you call them, pulse grenades ... they’re not terribly nice, I gather ...”

  Damar shook his head.

  “But I suppose that’s the point, isn’t it? ... Oh, and someone else I was talking to just last night—he said he could get his hands on seven of these new plasma rifles ... oh, hang on, they won’t be much use, there’s only three of you ... Did I really just say that ... ?”

  Kira started to laugh.

  Damar fixed him with an amused stare, and was just about not to smile—and then he heard footsteps behind them. Kira ducked her head, hiding her face within the shadow of the hood. Damar raised his hand to shield his face and looked back over his shoulder.

  It was a young couple, walking arm in arm. Damar watched them as they came to a halt on the other side of the bridge, only a few feet away. The young man turned round, frowned when he saw the three of them standing there, and glared hard at Damar. Looked like he’d thought it would be quiet here too. And then, before Damar could turn away again, before he could say it was time for them to get out of here, he saw it pass over the young man’s face—he saw that he’d been recognized. His response was automatic.

  The young woman screamed. She was dead too a moment later, but it seemed to Damar that the noise was echoing around him, out across the flat expanse of the city.

  “So you can move after all,” he heard Vilar say.

  He didn’t reply.

  “I knew I had to worry about that disrupter.”

  Damar straightened himself up. “Come on,” he said. “We can’t stay here.” He started to walk quickly down the bridge.

  “Yeah, I think you’re right ...” Vilar fell into step beside him, and Kira had hurried on ahead. He followed her.

  “Where are we going?” Vilar said.

  “I don’t know. Somewhere else. Somewhere safe.”

  “Oh, well, that’s all right then.”

  Seven

  Later, when Kira cast her mind back to this strange interlude in her life, it was not the casual death or the considered treachery, but the heat that she would always remember first—its heavy weight dulling her mind and her spirits, and the haze that hovered in the air, blurring her vision and her thoughts.

  “You were impossible,” Garak told her, later, “for the whole of that first week. Half the time you were exhausted, and then you’d flare up like that.” He snapped his fingers.

  “It was so damn hot ...”

  He looked out at the black rain lashing down on a ruined land.

  “That won’t be an issue on Cardassia anymore,” he said.

  What she would most often remember next was a sunset, the only one that she saw on Cardassia Prime. They were slipping along the north bank, Kira a few steps ahead, on the lookout, and a golden light had suffused the whole city. It had turned the river from brown to a lazy, liquid amber, and all the edges of the buildings were blurred by a soft glow. The wide, flat sky, which had until now felt oppressive, embraced her. For a moment it seemed to Kira that she was back again on Bajor, hiding with her friends in the hills, talking about their future and how they were making it real. Then she saw the city stretched out all around her; and they struck north, into a side street, where it was more covered, but the golden haze still lingered.

  They took the short cut that Garak had taught them, coming into Tain’s house the back way. As they came down the steps into the cellar, Kira saw that Garak was waiting for them, and he had his disrupter in his hand.

  “I’m afraid,” he said, “that we may have something of a problem.”

  “What is it?” she said, stepping toward him, willfully ignoring where the disrupter was pointing.

  “Commander, I’m sorry,” he said, and then she saw a flash of anger cross his face, before he could suppress it. “You shouldn’t have brought him back here.”

  “That was my fault,” Damar said from behind her. “The patrols forced us here. Where else in the city is safe?” He looked pointedly
at Garak’s arm.

  “Not one of your better ideas, Legate.”

  “What’s going on?” Vilar’s voice came out almost like a squeak.

  “Still,” Garak said calmly, not answering, “it does at least save me the effort of having to track him down.”

  Kira roused herself at that. “Garak, we’ve been through all this once already. What are you talking about?”

  He kept the weapon fixed on its target. “While you were out, I took the time to do a little investigating, Commander, and I found out some things that rather disturbed me.” He gestured at the table nearby, toward a padd that was lying on it. “We’re not the only ones he’s been talking to, Kira.” He looked straight at Vilar. “Are we?”

  “I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about! Nerys, what’s going on here?”

  “You’d better have a good explanation for this, Garak—”

  “And so had he, Commander.” He jerked his head at the table. “Take a read through that. Some ... transactions that can be attributed to your friend here.”

  Kira grabbed the padd and started scrolling through the information. Something about system-2 disrupters, details of purchasing and supply. She glanced at the dates. “This was ages ago, just after the Dominion arrived—”

  “That’s it!” Vilar cut in, “that’s right! Look,” he said, speaking directly to Garak, “it was when they first got here. They were rounding up aliens—they were going to shoot me! I had to give them something. You know what it’s like!” He took a step forward, put his hands out in a placatory gesture. Garak stayed still, although Kira saw his grip tighten slightly around the weapon he was holding. Vilar backed away from him—straight into Damar, who placed a hand upon his shoulder.

  “Surely there’s nothing here we need to be worried about?” Kira said. “Supplying weapons is what Vilar does. That’s why we’re working with him, isn’t it?”

  “Except that your friend here has been working with our enemies, Commander. Are you quite sure he won’t do it again?”

  She looked up at Garak quickly, but he was still staring past her.

  “You shouldn’t have brought him back here.” His fingers had tightened a little more, and his anger was barely concealed now.

  “It’s done, Garak,” Damar said firmly, from behind her. “Now we have to deal with the consequences.”

  “What consequences?” Kira shot him a quick, almost frantic look.

  “I haven’t done anything!” Vilar’s voice had gone up another notch.

  “Garak!” Kira said urgently, taking a step toward him. He didn’t move. “You know this business at least as well as I do ... Wouldn’t you be more surprised if he hadn’t been dealing with the opposition? That’s what this game is like, you know that! Surely what matters is that he isn’t doing it now?”

  She looked back toward Vilar. Beneath Damar’s hand, he had started to shake with fear. He was staring at Garak. “What do you want?” he was saying. “I can get you whatever you want—”

  “Don’t you see, Commander?” Garak said. “He breaks under pressure. They had him once—and he gave them what they wanted.” When he spoke again, it was very softly. “Do you know what they can do to him, Kira? Do you know how many ways there are to make a man tell you everything that he knows?” His voice began to rise, and she watched Vilar’s terror grow with it. Behind him, Damar stood silent and watchful. “He’s done it once already, Kira,” Garak said. “You shouldn’t have brought him back here.”

  Kira turned back to look at Garak. He flicked his eyes at her for just a moment, away from Vilar, asking her the question she did not want to answer. She dropped her head.

  “Kira!” he said violently.

  She drew in a deep breath of the hot, heavy air. And then she looked up at Garak again, nodded her head slowly, and passed sentence.

  “You’re right,” she whispered. “He would break.”

  “Nerys, no!”

  In a daze, Kira reached to her side, fumbling for her phaser, and then suddenly found that she had been stopped. She looked down. Damar’s hand was clamped around her own, restraining her. His skin, she thought, seemed to scrape against her.

  “Let Garak deal with this,” he said, almost gently. She didn’t move, just kept on staring down as she listened to the footsteps heading up the stairs, to Vilar’s pleas, and Garak’s silence.

  Then she lifted her eyes to look at Damar.

  “Take your hand off me.”

  He did not move; and they just stood there, closer than they had ever been, face to face at last. She realized that his hand had begun to shake. And then she saw in his face the effort it took for him to speak.

  “I think I’m sorry,” he whispered, “sorry that I killed Tora Ziyal.”

  And that was something else that Kira would remember, later.

  Eight

  The sun was setting in splendor over the capital of the Cardassian Union. It was a rare sight. Elim Garak lowered his arm and raised his head to watch it as it died, blood red against a bruised sky.

  Cardassian memory was constant; it endured both change of circumstance and the passage of time. In the first years of his exile, Garak had found the weight of memory crushing—the sharp angles of the station had acted as persistent reminders of all he had lost, crudely approximating the more graceful contours of home. Bulkheads had stood in for architecture, corridors for avenues, artificial lighting for the heat and the vigor of the sun.

  Cardassians were constant in memory, and so he had set it aside, suppressed it ruthlessly as he had much else across the years, only to find it could be quickly triggered—by a warm draft of air, the smell of spices drifting from a shop front, the touch of Ziyal’s hand upon his own. Then, set free by these sudden reminders, a flood of images would cascade through his mind—summer evenings by the river watching a terra-cotta sky; sheltering from the late-afternoon sun under the dark-green leaves and scented shade of trees in a city square; raising his face to feel the scarce and precious rain falling to freshen the dusty, shabby streets. And then there were the other memories—summoned in their turn too easily by Sisko’s simmering mistrust or Kira’s sour contempt—memories of the cries of men in fear or pain, or of the coldness of metal in the hand.

  Garak put away his disruptor. The sun was almost gone now, the crimson fading into shadow. He watched the darkness settle on his home, and rubbed absently at his aching arm. What was it Damar had said, just after he’d killed Rusot?

  His Cardassia’s gone. And it won’t be coming back.

  It was full dark. Then the city lights came on.

  “Well,” said Garak, to no one in particular, there no longer being anyone else there. “Another day, another death.”

  His words passed away into the night, and then he heard a soft footfall in the yard behind him. He did not turn to look, but he did close his eyes for a moment. The footsteps halted.

  “Don’t say it, Mila,” he murmured, with more than a touch of weariness.

  “I will say it,” she answered fiercely. “I have to say it, because it seems to me you need the reminder. It’s like you’ve forgotten everything you ever learned.” He listened to her come a little closer. “And don’t stand there making me look at your back! That was your father’s trick, and I never liked it from him either.”

  There were some comparisons that were insupportable. He turned to face her.

  “You shouldn’t be mixed up in all of this—” she began again, shaking her head, and he cut her off straightaway, raising a finger to silence her, but speaking gently.

  “But I am—and I should.”

  “Your father—”

  “Is dead and gone. And so is all he stood for.”

  They looked at each other for a while, she unsure and he quite certain, and then she lifted her hands as if to acknowledge defeat. She looked at him fondly and gave a snort of laughter.

  “Are you becoming an idealist in your old age, Elim?”

  “Better late than
never, I suppose.” He smiled at her, sadly, but affectionately. “And you know me, Mila. I always preferred to set fashion, rather than follow it.” Then he looked down at the ground at his day’s work, and gestured with his good arm. “Would you ... ?”

  It was her turn to hold up her hand to silence him. “It wouldn’t be the first time. Go back inside and forget about it, Elim.”

  And he did part of what he was told, and left her to her task.

  He passed quickly through the house and went down the steps into the cellar. The other two were sitting there in silence, waiting for him. Damar sat with his arms folded, straight-backed and eyes fixed on the wall opposite. Kira was slumped with elbows on her knees, head resting in her hands, staring at the ground.

  Garak walked straight past without giving them a second glance. His arm was aching abominably now. He hunted around in their medical supplies until he found the painkillers, then measured out a dose in a hypospray and pressed it against his skin with practiced ease. Its numbing effects took hold pleasingly quickly, but his mouth was still sour and dry. There was a full flask of water on the table, and he drained it. By the time he turned to face the others, he had schooled his expression back to its customary blankness.

  He pulled up a chair, sat down, and then looked at the other two in turn, expectantly, wondering when they were, going to ask what they plainly wanted to know, and wishing that they would do it sooner rather than later.

  Damar spoke first.

  “Is it done?”

  “Done? Yes.”

  Damar opened his mouth as if to speak again. Garak narrowed his eyes.

  I swear, Damar, if you thank me, I’ll shoot you on the spot.

  Damar hesitated for a fraction of a second, then shut his mouth. He looked directly at Garak, and then gave one firm nod of the head, closing the matter between them. Garak felt a grudging respect for the man. You had to hand it to Damar—he never flinched away from looking you straight in the eye. Such directness from another Cardassian was not only unusual—it was almost ... refreshing.