After they left Tanj’s office, Alden caught up with Pulaski in the corridor. “I gather I have you to thank for my inclusion in this,” he said, falling into step beside her.
“I’ll be frank. I didn’t want you to go, but Maurita persuaded me not to block your inclusion in the away team.”
“Either way, I’m grateful, although I’m interested to know why.”
“Why I’m letting you run amok in a first-contact situation? Yes, I’m wondering that myself.” Pulaski stopped walking to look at him directly. Yes, he was still a young man, despite the gravity and the world-weariness. Perhaps there was still time for him to remember that this whole business was supposed to be fun. Gruffly, she said, “I’m sure you’ve got enough on your plate given that your Tzenkethi is still on the loose, but it struck me that genuine first-contact opportunities must come your way rarely these days. So who am I to deny you the chance?”
Alden gave a half smile. “Thank you.”
He offered his hand. Pulaski shook it, very briskly. “And who knows,” she said, “perhaps the experience will convince you to give up your current life of crime and turn your attention back to science. We all win that way.”
Behind them, Tanj laughed. “Don’t be offended, Commander. This is Katherine Pulaski when she’s trying to be nice.”
Gravely and gracefully, Alden said, “I think I’d be a fool to ignore career advice from you, Doctor Pulaski. I’ll think about what you say.”
“Mind you do,” said Pulaski, and swept on her way.
* * *
“So,” said Quark, sidling up the bar toward Ro, “have you found your burglar yet?”
“Prophets, Quark!” Ro gave him an astonished look. “How do you know about that?”
Quark was offended. “How long have we known each other?”
“Far too long.”
“Well, there’s your answer. Besides . . .” He snorted. “Blackmer’s no Odo, is he?”
Ro was amused. “Missing your archenemy?”
“I don’t like change,” Quark complained. “Things should stay the same.”
“You’re getting old.”
“We’re all getting old, Laren. Even you. But enough about me—you’re not having any luck with this burglary case, are you? Do you need me to put out some feelers?”
Ro drained her glass. What, she wondered, would Blackmer say if she told him that she’d asked Quark to help with one of his cases? He’d be furious. But the way out of that problem was obvious. She wouldn’t mention it to Blackmer. “Quark, the day I come to you to help with security on this station is the day I pack up and go into retirement.” She smiled. “The day I formally come to you to help with security, that is. What do you know?”
Quark leaned in. “About your burglar—nothing.”
“Quark!”
“Wait, wait, wait! But about your missing Tzenkethi . . .”
Ro fell back in her seat. “How do you find out about this stuff?”
Quark tapped one earlobe. “I listen to the rhythms of the station. Nobody knows this place like me.”
“It’s a brand-new station!”
“The spirit remains,” he said portentously. “This is the same tributary of the Great River that it ever was.”
“Rubbish.”
He bared his teeth at her. “Do you want to know what I know or don’t you?”
“Get on with it.”
“So you—or perhaps I should say Blackmer—have been trying to pin this burglary on the Tzenkethi, haven’t you?”
“Blackmer would like to know how she got past him, and I share his concerns there.”
“But you found she was off the hook because she’d left for Bajor before the break-in occurred.”
“Quark, you are impossible—”
“Let me speak. What if I told you I’d seen her on the Plaza after that freighter left? The Prophet’s Tear, wasn’t it?”
“You saw her?” Ro glared at him. “Are you sure?”
Quark was palpably irked. “She is fairly distinctive. How many Tzenkethi do you see wandering around Deep Space 9?”
“Fair enough. Where did you see her? Where was she heading?”
“She was walking along large as life right there.” He pointed outside the bar. “Everyone passes by Quark’s at some point, even if they don’t come inside, more’s the pity . . . I’ve no idea where she was heading, but it certainly wasn’t to Bajor on the Prophet’s Tear.” He picked up a cloth and started wiping ineffectually at the surface of the bar. “Anyway, that’s all I know. But if you want to frame her for the break-in, she’s available. Whether she’s still on the station is another matter. And who she’s working for now”—he showed all his teeth—“I wouldn’t dare to guess. But I know what I’d do in her position.”
Ro sighed. “Go on, what would you do?”
He gave her his most ravenous grin. “What else? I’d sell, sell, sell, of course.” He stopped suddenly and looked over her shoulder. His expression was one of pure, joyful malice. “Well, look who’s come to visit.”
Ro turned. There, standing in the doorway, arms folded and face blank, was Odo.
“Quark . . .”
Quark’s face was a picture. “The gang’s all here,” he said blissfully. “Or at least everyone who counts. Laren, think—what would a refugee Tzenkethi who’s desperate to get home do with Federation secrets? Excuse me, I have ancient business to attend to.”
Ro left them to their reunion. She went back to her office pondering Quark’s words. An unhappy scenario was forming in her mind: that Corazame had somehow accessed the meta-genome data via Crusher’s files and was now on her way back to Ab-Tzenketh with it. She wasted no time in opening a channel to Alden on the Athene Donald. He looked preoccupied, explaining that a first-contact scenario was under way and he was forming part of the team meeting the visitors. Ro quickly brought him up to date on the latest sighting of Corazame and asked bluntly whether he thought she might try to buy her way home.
Alden shook his head. “No. Cory wouldn’t do that.”
“You’re very sure of that.”
“She wouldn’t betray me, but more than that she’s under no illusions as to what would happen to her if she returned. You have to understand that she was one of the lowliest grades on Ab-Tzenketh, practically a slave. They wouldn’t reward her for bringing home information about the Federation. They’d take what they wanted, then punish her to the fullest measure. Declassify her—in their terminology, make her null.”
“That doesn’t sound good. What does it mean, exactly?”
“Public disgrace, for one thing—her genetic material would be permanently removed from the screening programs. But more than that, she’d be the lowest grade of server for the rest of her life—and that really is slavery, Captain, by any definition. Tzenkethi of that level have no future and no voice. I mean that literally. They’re forbidden to speak to anyone outside their grade—they have to use a form of sign language in most everyday interactions. In Cory’s case, they’d silence her for good and curtail her future severely. They’d cut her vocal cords and work her to an early grave. But they’d make sure she was visible so that people were in no doubt as to what happens to someone who offends the Autarch.”
Memories of the atrocities of the Occupation came too readily to mind. “That’s obscene!”
Alden sighed. “I keep trying to make people understand the Tzenkethi, but nobody listens. I guess it takes a Bajoran to understand cruelty and exploitation and to value freedom and self-determination. I know how beautiful the Tzenkethi can look, but it’s superficial. Cory knows what’s in store if she goes back. She wouldn’t go. Not alone.”
Not alone, Ro thought—but might she go with assistance? And if not Alden’s, then who else might help?
“How do you know that wasn’t the plan from the outset?” Ro said. “How do you know she hasn’t been playing the part of a refugee to gain your trust and sympathy, to get close to you—and your work—a
nd then leave and go home?”
Alden frowned. “What do you mean?”
Patiently, Ro explained. “You only have Cory’s word that she is who she says she is. Couldn’t she have been undercover when you met her? Posing as a refugee? She could be a much higher grade than she’s ever let on to you. This could simply be the point at which she was due to return home, with whatever she’s learned from being with you.”
Alden didn’t reply. He put his hand up to his forehead and rubbed at the worry lines forming across his brow. Ro could see that this hadn’t crossed his mind—but surely it should have? That was his job, wasn’t it, to imagine scenarios like this? But he’d missed it.
“You’ve suggested many times,” Ro said, “that she has capabilities beyond her grading.”
“But that’s because their grading system is immoral! It limits the potential of hundreds of thousands of Tzenkethi! It’s not because Cory is a higher grade masquerading as a lower one!”
“But is there anything about this idea that couldn’t be true?”
“I can’t believe it of Cory . . .”
Or of himself, perhaps, that he’d been fooled, and by one of his enemies. Gently, Ro said, “Betrayal is part of your business. You must have lied to a few people for your own ends over the years.”
“Not Cory. No.”
No, thought Ro, it wasn’t good to think that you’d been played so masterfully, particularly by people you thought of as . . . well, as your archenemies. “I’m sorry to put this to you when you’ve got plenty else on your mind,” she said. “But I needed to ask.”
“You’re wrong, Captain. I know Cory.”
“You didn’t know her well enough to guess that she’d jump ship on DS9, though, did you?”
Ro watched doubt settle on Alden’s face and decided she’d gone far enough. “It’s good to get your perspective. I guess we won’t know for sure till we find her. Blackmer’s on the case. Good luck with the first contact. I’ll get back to you. DS9 out.”
She cut the comm and sat for a while pondering the conversation. Who was she, this Corazame? Ro had not even seen her while she was on the station and had only the accounts of others to go on. Why, she wondered now, had they been so careless about her being here? Why had they let a Tzenkethi, of all people, wander around the station unaccompanied? Blackmer hadn’t trusted her at all. Ro sighed. The likeliest scenario was that Corazame was responsible for the break-in and the attempts to access the security and medical files, and had left for Ab-Tzenketh as soon as she could, concealing her departure from the station. Whether she was returning to throw herself on the mercy of her government, or whether this had been the plan all along, Ro couldn’t say. But if she were Commander Peter Alden right now, she’d be reviewing every conversation she’d had with Corazame, every place they’d been to, and everything that Corazame had seen while in Federation space. And if she was in Alden’s shoes, she’d be thinking up some pretty good explanations to offer her superiors.
There was another scenario, of course, and one that Ro didn’t much like either: that Corazame was still on DS9, and that whatever personal cloaking device she was using to conceal herself was something they hadn’t come up against before. That opened up a whole new series of security problems on a station already worried about security breaches. She reached for the comm to bring Blackmer up to date.
“Jeff, I’ve got some information on the Tzenkethi Corazame. We should talk about it.”
“It’ll have to wait. Can you get down to the Romulan consulate? Our Cardassian guests are causing a scene, and it’s about to turn nasty.”
“On my way,” Ro said. “Cardassians,” she muttered, pulling on her jacket and heading out the door. “You take your eye off them for one minute . . .”
* * *
The Romulan consulate was not generally a site for drama, its denizens preferring to leave the political posturing to superiors at the far end of a comm channel. Ro wasn’t even sure that she’d spoken to the envoy, a rather low-ranking political officer who seemed mainly to fulfill the function of messenger service. Today, however, a substantial crowd was assembled outside the consulate and the noise levels were rising by the minute. A small group of Cardassians, Mhevita Pa’Dan among them, was standing outside the consulate chanting: Where are our children? Send our children home.
It was not a popular cause on Deep Space 9. A gaggle of Bajorans, none of whom could be old enough to remember the Occupation, had started up a response: Cardies go home! Cardies go home! Others were more violent in their disapproval: I hope they’re all dead! Hope the Romulans finish off the lot of you! In the middle of all this, Blackmer and his team were forming a thin but sturdy barrier between the demonstrators and their critics.
Ro inched her way around to her security chief, clipping a mouthy Bajoran boy around the ear on her way past. “Jeff! What in the name of the Prophets is going on?”
“The Cardassians turned up about half an hour ago,” Blackmer explained. “They made a few speeches—”
“Sounds about right for Cardassians.”
“And nobody was paying much attention. Then Kala Morio and his cronies came out of Quark’s, saw what was happening, and decided to voice their opinions.”
“Ah,” said Ro, grabbing the shoulder of the Bajoran boy and holding him still. He wriggled against her. Kala Morio was one of Quark’s regulars, far too regular. Making his opinion known generally involved throwing a couple of wild punches and then falling over himself, before he was dragged to a holding cell to sleep it off. Today he was having considerably more impact than usual. But then nobody liked a Cardassian, missing children or no missing children.
The boy squirmed noisily in Ro’s grasp. “Shut up, you little wretch,” Ro said matter-of-factly, “or I’ll wallop you all the way back to Ashalla.” The boy subsided slightly, although he kept up a few grumbles. The jeering from the crowd, meanwhile, was getting louder, and the jibes were getting increasingly nasty: Hope they tortured them. Hope you get them back in pieces. From the corner of her eye, Ro saw one of the Cardassians, a young male, getting angrier. “Commander,” she said, “I think we have a problem—”
Too late. The Cardassian male broke through the line made by the security team and pushed his way through to the gang of Bajorans throwing the worst of the insults. The crowd began to bay for blood. Fists were clenched. Arms were raised. “Here we go again,” muttered Blackmer, ordering in his team as the brawl broke out in earnest.
It was hardly the worst scuffle in which Ro had ever participated, although it did have an unpleasantly partisan feel to it. And when she saw the glitter of a knife heading her way, she wasn’t surprised, although she was naturally alarmed. With one hand she shoved the Bajoran boy behind her; with the other she made to defend herself.
Someone was there already. A hand, at the end of an impossibly long arm, reached out and grabbed her attacker by the wrist, turning it until there was a howl of pain from its owner and the knife fell to the ground. Ro made the arrest and then glanced across the Plaza.
There was Odo, tucking himself back into his usual shape. He gave Ro one short, brisk nod, and she mouthed back, Thanks. Beside her, Blackmer muttered, “Where the blazes did he come from?”
* * *
After the dust had settled, and everyone who deserved it (and perhaps a few who didn’t) was languishing gloomily in the holding cells, Ro and Blackmer convened in the security chief’s office.
“I spoke to Quark earlier,” Ro said. “He claims he saw Corazame on the station after the Prophet’s Tear had left.”
Blackmer, who had been leaning back in his chair, nursing a cup of tea and beginning to relax, was immediately back on alert. “Do we need to organize another search?”
“I think we should. At the very least, if she is still here, I want to know where and how she’s hiding herself. If there’s a problem with our systems, I want it fixed, and if she’s using some technology we don’t know about, I want us covered in future
.”
Blackmer grunted his agreement, and set about instructing his deputies to start another search.
“There’s a great deal we don’t know about Tzenkethi biology,” Ro said. “Could she have some kind of biological capability to conceal herself?”
Blackmer was unconvinced. “I don’t think the Tzenkethi have special powers. If she’s still here, she’s cloaking herself. Or somebody is cloaking her.”
“But you’ve checked for cloaking devices based on what we know about Tzenkethi capabilities?”
“As best I can,” Blackmer said. “There’s a great deal we don’t know about Tzenkethi technology either.”
“She might well have magic powers for all we know.”
“If that turns out to be the explanation,” Blackmer said, “I’ll settle your bar bill.”
“If that turns out to be the explanation,” said Ro, “I’ll be drinking the bar dry. What’s our next move?”
“Search,” Blackmer said. “Search again. Ask O’Brien if he can come up with something to track her.”
“Another fine plan,” Ro muttered. “Well, there’s nothing much more we can do until we get news of her. Meanwhile, what do you want to do with the people we’re holding?”
“The usual. Keep them in overnight, release them to the magistrate in the morning for a rap on the knuckles. Kala Morio wouldn’t expect anything less.” He frowned. “This will go on my list of reasons why we should limit the hours during which alcohol can be consumed publicly on the station.”
“Send me a memo,” said Ro, recognizing a hobbyhorse when she saw one and keen to move on. “What about the Cardassians?”
Blackmer gave a grim smile. “I’ve already had the more sober of their number in here demanding to see their friends.”
“Demanding?” Ro frowned. That seemed bold, given the circumstances.
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