by Diane Carey
At once a question burst into his mind. He turned.
"Garak … how many years has it been?"
The exile blinked at him from down the hollow tube in which they had hidden themselves. At first he seemed not to understand the question, but soon a realization crossed his face and he fought with the answer. He glanced at the Elites, then looked again at the leader he had awakened.
"It's been rather a long time, High Gul … it's been almost a hundred years."
CHAPTER 11
RAGE! IT BELLOWED. Eighty, eighty, eighty years!
It shouted, it howled.
Not twenty years, but eighty. Years piled upon years in dumb hibernation, frittered away for nothing. Wives, families grown old, grown apart, even dead.
Power and governments built, squandered, fallen, built, fallen again, struggling foolishly under the scattered directives of those who had somehow silenced him.
The High Gul could feel his own heart hammering in his chest, his nerve endings tingling through his entire body. At his sides, he felt the shivers of his horrified men as they, too, battled to control themselves, to let him take the first step and decide which path they would take in this new … century.
Even in his misery, in his rage, he was proud of their restraint and knew it would not be so if Garak weren't here. This was a vast shock to absorb without exploding.
In his mind he saw their shriveled bodies lying on slabs year after year, so much longer than expected, then their slow awakening only hours ago as shades of purple blush seeped into the gray skin, the bony goggles around the eyes pulsing with so-subtle life, arteries down the neck throbbing as they struggled to come back from hibernation.
Eighty years was a very long time for a process meant only to last a few months, a means of short-term survival, perhaps under water, perhaps on an icy tundra. The airless void of a chamber at the abandoned end of a docking pylon hadn't been one of nature's considerations.
His family—his wife. The image he had banished until now came breaking through. Older soldiers had mates they considered no more than that—many Cardassian women had donated themselves, to make his force stronger. It had been his idea, because he knew so personally what happened when devotion turned to distraction. All his professional life he had fought that, all for her. Hers was the only worship he had ever wanted.
"Eighty years …" His voice was rough, taxed, as he turned again to Garak but did not approach. "Has memory of me faded then," he asked, "or become quaint?"
Garak straightened abruptly. "The opposite, High Gul! You've become more revered with every campaign! In every strategic meeting, all sides invoke your name to their purpose—'If the High Gul were here he would do this,' 'The High Gul would never accept that,' 'This will do honor to the High Gul's memory,' 'The High Gul would be on my side'—and every one of your words has been recorded and is memorized by students, by advancing forces. You're sanctified—almost deified! And now you are the glory of the past returned!"
He stopped suddenly, as if afraid he was saying too much or insulting the High Gul in some way.
The High Gul let the sudden silence molder. Not just his accomplishments, but his words? What good was that? He had been a soldier, not a philosopher. He found himself standing here, neither doing nor saying anything, rummaging through his memory to see if there were any embarrassing remarks.
"High Gul," Garak began again, "you must escape from here! I would help you steal a ship, but right now all the ships are in use. They're evacuating the station of all non-Starfleet personnel, but I don't know why. Something else is going on. But you have to get away from here and make a plan. When the people of Cardassia realize you were betrayed, there will be a revolution!" Sharply Garak stood up. "I will go to the Cardassian government with proof that you still live and were betrayed, talk to someone, or a lot of someones. The inept, shortsighted fools will have to listen! If you had been here, none of this would have happened to us! But first you must get away from this station."
"No, Garak. As we both understand, I am the only High Gul. I don't sneak off. But tell me, what is it like to live on this station? What is the common denominator between the people living here?"
Thrown off his excitement, Garak settled down and made a facial shrug. "The only common denominator on Deep Space Nine is that no one really cares what anyone else here thinks of him. It is a place where lines are not clearly drawn. Everybody encroaches on everybody else's job a little. Everyone oversteps orders a little, crosses boundaries, glances to see who is around before deciding how far to overstep … the only duty each can be sure of is who does the reports when the smoke is cleared."
"A dark-skinned man, large, strong."
"Yes."
"Tell me about him. I must know what I will be against."
Garak resisted the pinching of division that suddenly ran through him. Sisko had always defended him, given him sanctuary, protection, even a chance to build a business, make his own way rather than sit on charity.
Before him sat an individual who, legend said, could smell lies. How did one speak, never mind lie, to an icon?
But also in the embodiment of the High Gul were Garak's own chances to return to power—not only return, but leap beyond his former influence in Cardassian government.
What could it hurt to talk about Sisko? One step at a time, even if someone yelped beneath him?
"Sisko is …"
"Yes?"
"Broad-minded, certainly. A good arbitrator when he wants to be, occasionally lenient with those of us who bend the rules, because he likes to be free to bend the rules himself now and then. He has a good perception of how far out in space we really are … he knows he can be sovereign if he plays circumstances correctly. I believe he … there is a praetorial guard in him who is frustrated at being on sentry duty here."
"More."
Garak sighed. More? What did the High Gul want? Complication? There was nothing complicated about all this. Escape from the station, go back to Cardassia Prime, foment revolution, and make Garak Vice-High Gul.
Yet the High Gul's steady manner affected him. After all, this was the individual to whom Cardassian success over the past two-thirds of a century could be traced. Even for a practiced spy who was out only for himself, awe was a powerful narcotic.
All right, more.
"More … Sisko is distant at times. Afraid he will spend his life in administration, listening to his bones vibrate. That's another reason he bends the rules … excitement."
"And how is he when he isn't fierce and battling to devour enemies?"
Garak buried an urge to lick his own lips, going dry as they were with empathy as he watched the High Gul's dry mouth shape the questions. "Tranquil, sad …"
"Why sad?"
"His wife was killed in a battle. She was trapped under collapsed debris. Sisko was forced to leave her behind during evacuation."
"Alive or dead, left behind?"
"Dead, although I think he had some doubts at one time. I think he wonders sometimes."
"Does he have other family here on this outpost? Children from this wife?"
The answer popped instantly into Garak's mind, a skinny teenaged human boy with a simplicity about him.
"No," he said. "No children."
The High Gul strode nearer to him, strong and impressive even though he was older and less bulky than his own guards. "Too bad. Garak, you've been instrumental today. Be assured, I am not the kind who forgets. You will reap the rewards of your loyalty and your risk. One more thing—and think most carefully about this—is there anyone on this station we shouldn't kill?"
Pausing now, the High Gul gave him time to answer, plenty of it. He had just promised Garak what he wanted—rank, privilege, restoration—and now he requested something in return. But Garak had been living on this station for a long time, had fostered relationships, however tenuous or teasing, with the people here. The High Gul knew that, and Garak felt the skitter of excuses to keep a few of those
people alive as the High Gul and his men watched.
"Well," he admitted after quite a few moments, "no, I suppose not."
The High Gul reached out now and did the unthinkable—he touched Garak upon the shoulder, and Garak nearly shrank from the contact. There was a haunting reputation, legend again, that the High Gul could strangle with a glance.
"Remain silent, my friend," the ancient leader said, his voice echoing faintly in the chamber as if throbbing from the past. "We will contact you when you can help us again. We will foment war between everyone, and they will destroy themselves for us. Together we shall restore the true Cardassia."
And this leader from decades ago turned to what was left of the Loyal Elite.
"Let him go," he told them.
"Eighty years. And two thousand Elites … dead."
The High Gul paced like a woman, shuddering with the rage. His hands were ice cold. How long had his wife endured the personal chill and public humiliation of his disappearance? All those long years she had thought him dead, those interminable years, knowing his memory was being used to pervert all he had struggled to build—an empire that should have lasted a millennium, but was crumbling already.
Then he thought of the most sore wound. What if she still lived? What a cruel trick, that she could still live, and he would be here again, the same as he was eighty years ago.
The rage grew and grew.
"Should we let Garak show us to the weapons, High Gul?" Elto asked. "Show us the way around this station?"
"Not yet. Garak isn't to be entirely trusted. When he described Cardassia, in some ways he was describing himself. He awakened us, but I'm sure for his own purposes."
"How do you know that?" Elto asked.
"It's what I would have done. I dare not accept his suggestion that he was exiled here because he is nobler of heart than the standing order."
"Wise, Excellency," Koto acknowledged, though it was plain he didn't entirely understand.
The High Gul continued pacing. "I don't completely accept his story that Cardassia has been despoiled. He may be lying, or his point of view may be skewed. He is in exile, after all. However, there's no denying that this station was once Cardassian and is now occupied by others. Garak may be a liar, but no one is a good enough liar to put the respect and awe in his eyes that I saw there when he looked at me. I know now that whatever happened eighty years ago and in the years since, I am still High Gul."
He stopped pacing and touched the wall, gazing with unfocused eyes as he thought hard about what to do next. In his periphery he caught his men glancing at each other and knew he must be decisive, demand quick and specific action of them in order to distract them from the rage boiling in them also, or it would rip them apart.
He raised his head and looked at them.
"We'll ask Garak for something small first, something easy, and draw him in step by step. His doubts will fade away."
"Food, High Gul?" Clus suggested. "So we can sustain ourselves. He won't find it a threat to give us something so simple."
The High Gul blinked at him. "Are you hungry, Clus?"
The big Elite shifted and shrugged. "Well … a little, Excellency."
"I understand." The High Gul laughed. "After all, you haven't eaten in eighty years."
Clus stepped back into a shadow to hide his flush of embarrassment, and Elto moved forward to say, "Excellency, we could ask for translators. The time will come when we may want to speak to the intruders."
The High Gul gazed at him. "I'm proud of you. We'll ask tonight, after Garak has had time to be impressed. Until then, we'll work to our own purpose. I must have this outpost, and I hardly believe they will simply give it to me, therefore the first order of business is to chop off the head and leave the body sagging. I have no idea how to kill a shapeshifter, but he must be put out of our way. We'll find some way to incapacitate him. Once that is accomplished, the way will be clear to kill Sisko."
CHAPTER 12
ZZZZZTT … ZZZZZZTT
The walls shivered in their unthinking revulsion. Old ceiling tiles crackled overhead as the turbolift cab thundered behind its doors—doors open only two centimeters.
Just enough to see Security Ensign Ibrahim being electrocuted to death inside.
Not precisely—so far he was still screaming. The "to death" part hadn't happened yet.
Odo stood aside as two other Security men worked feverishly on the doors, but had only succeeded in making them rattle.
The deck thrummed, and he knew someone was running this way, someone with substantial mass and a strong, long stride.
"Captain," he said, without even glancing to his side.
Sisko arrived and bumped to a halt beside him. "What's happening in there?"
"Ensign Ibrahim is caught in some kind of electrical field. Possibly a faulty security loop."
"Can't you cut it off at the field source?"
"We're attempting that also."
"The doors?"
"Are absolutely jammed. We may have to phaser them open."
Sisko's face went hard. "That'll take an hour. That man's being tortured in there."
"Yes." Odo watched his men's shoulders as they threw themselves into forcing the doors open with the jaw-wrench that was braced between them. Another centimeter. At this rate they'd have that man out in four or five days.
Ibrahim's nerve-throttling screams were turning higher in pitch, affected by the man's exhaustion and panic as the fight was zapped out of him and he dissolved to agony, and every few seconds that hideous zzzzzttt zzzzztt. . . .
"Did you investigate the tunnel?" Odo asked, giving in to a need to fill the air around them with something other than those two terrible noises.
"Empty," Sisko said. "Either the bodies were stolen and their uniforms taken by the infiltrators, or—"
"Or the infiltrators are the bodies?"
Those fierce black eyes struck Odo hard. "Did you have a suspicion or were you just extrapolating?"
"Mostly extrapolation, but I've learned not to trust Cardassians … not even Cardassian biology. Now we have to wonder who put them there, and why, and what woke them up."
"We may have made them wake up when we broke into that chamber and let air in. I think we can guess some kind of hibernation process that we just have never heard about." Sisko looked at him. "You've never heard of anything like that, have you?"
Self-conscious about the years he lived with Cardassians and somehow failed to note such a proclivity, Odo sighed in frustration. "No, I never have."
"Well, there's one of us who has. When we get this man out of here, I want you to find Garak and gently drag him to me."
"You don't really think you'll get answers out of Garak, do you?"
"Depends on how tightly I close my fingers while I'm holding onto his neck."
"But Garak wanted them sealed in. Why do you suspect deception?"
"That's like asking why I suspect there's snow on top of the mountain." With a deep sustaining breath, Sisko leered at the lift doors as they creaked open another half centimeter. "I'm beginning to question why he was so passionate about having them sealed in. Or about our believing he wanted them sealed in. Garak's not a simple man, Constable, and it's not wise for us to accept simple answers from him. I'm afraid I did that."
"Well," Odo grumbled, "they did look dead, they were neither breathing nor moving, they read dead on the doctor's tricorder, and it's not asking too much to assume that dead is dead. Some things simply are what they seem."
"Quite a statement, coming from you. I want the station's Universal Translator checked. It doesn't do any good to yell 'Stop or I'll shoot' if they don't understand."
"It's not only the words, but the sentiment they may not understand," Odo said bitterly.
Sisko pushed past him toward the door, and received a crackle of electricity that snapped through the tiny opening between the door panels. He winced, then said, "I need a phaser. I've had about enough. Let's get that man out of
there."
"I'll go in." Odo had tolerated enough too, and pushed his Security men to get them to move out of the way.
"Wait a minute—" Sisko caught his arm. "What'll that electrical field do to you? I don't want two casualties."
Caught between the mind-wrench of those screams and the responsibility to himself, and even to Sisko's command sense, which would stop him from going in there if he implied the truth—that he didn't know what those flashing fields would do to him—he shored his posture and said, "I'll be fine."
Perhaps it was the relentless zzzt or the pitiful whimpering that had come into Ensign Ibrahim's shrieks, but Sisko accepted the lie, though Odo knew he hadn't fooled the captain. There were times when a volunteer was acceptable, even for a suicide mission, and when officers knew to keep their mouths shut. Even such a silence, at the right times, was a command decision.
Grateful for the chance to save his man's life, or at least to make the gesture, Odo threw his mind into its most relaxed mode and allowed himself to dissolve from physical form into the liquid state that would let him melt through that two-centimeter crack.
The lights changed, the sounds became muffled, and he was in the turbolift, feeling electricity strike him and crackle through his substance until it dissipated somewhere in the deck. There was not precisely sight in this liquid condition, not so much as there was sense, awareness of space and place, and a foggy perception of movement, as if seeing shadows in his mind of the beings and things acting around him.
Once inside, he reintegrated instantly into his humanoid form like pouring into a mold, and was struck with a perception of why evolution had come up with hands and feet. Sometimes he simply needed fingers.
Ensign Ibrahim was crumpled, exhausted, battered, on the turbolift floor, flinching and moaning, as jets of electrical power continued to crackle from floor to ceiling. Odo stood over him immediately, hoping to block some of those strings of energy, and wedged his fingers into the jammed access panel. Ibrahim had kept his head long enough to try breaking into the panel, and had the sense not to use his phaser on it without knowing what circuits he was breaking. Valiant, considering the swords of electricity slicing back and forth at unavoidable diagonals in here.