“Please, Yoriv. I understand your reticence, but I only have a message to deliver. There is nothing that you must say.”
The smile he gave her was small and patronizing, as if she’d already wasted his time. “Well then, deliver it.”
“Russol understands that a council is to be held on Terok Nor in the coming months,” Natima said. “The civilian leaders here will have the opportunity to present their opinions regarding the status of the Bajoran venture. Russol wonders if you might be likely to voice an opinion in favor of withdrawal.”
“Withdrawal!” Skyl snorted, apparently forgetting that Natima had excused him from the necessity of reply. “Central Command would never be in favor of withdrawal, not now that the resistance is finally straggling to an end.”
Natima spoke slowly, respectfully. “Russol believes that perhaps you are the sort of person who might understand that the Cardassian economy has begun experiencing a downturn, and will likely continue to plummet if the return of Bajoran resources continue to slow, as it has lately begun to do. Russol has long felt that the needless deaths of our troops on this world has not been sufficiently justified by the short-term success of the annexation.” She took a breath, for she had just made a bold statement. She hoped that in doing so, she would convince Skyl that she was not trying to trick him, but it seemed to backfire.
“Do you honestly believe that I would discuss my intentions with a member of the Information Service?” he asked her, his tone even less friendly than before. “By trying to draw me into this conversation, it seems you might be attempting to coerce me into making a statement that would be looked upon very unfavorably by Central Command.”
“As I said before, Yoriv, there is no need for you to make a reply, if you don’t choose to. I am merely here as a messenger.”
“Fine,” Skyl replied. “But you might want to tell Russol that the next time he wants to send me a message, he would do best not to employ an information correspondent to deliver it.”
“I understand,” Natima said, and stood to leave, the meeting clearly over.
“Miss Lang,” he said, before she reached the door, and she turned to look at him. “As a correspondent…you must be aware that the average Cardassian citizen doesn’t regard the deaths of the soldiers here to be needless and tragic, despite the mere temporary nature of Bajoran benefits. Those soldiers are heroes, not martyrs.”
“Yes, I do know,” Natima replied. “But Russol thought that perhaps you felt differently—that, being on the surface, you would have firsthand knowledge regarding the violence, and the speed with which the resources here are being depleted.”
Skyl laughed. “The state of Bajor’s resources has been a matter of much speculation,” he agreed, “but their actual status is unimportant. What matters is the people’s perception of their necessity. If Central Command decides that Bajor’s resources are spent, then they will be. If they decide otherwise, then it will be as they say.”
Natima was speechless. Skyl’s mocking tone seemed to indicate that he agreed with her and with Russol, but he was clearly not going to say so. She nodded to him with an uncertain expression of feigned politeness, and left, wondering if she had learned anything of value.
Dukat had been intrigued by Mora’s extensive “notes” on Odo’Ital, although the proper format was lacking; the man was far from fluent in Cardassian. Still, Dukat had managed to skim over most of the high points in the past weeks, since his team had trailed Odo to a village in Dahkur. Odo measured as highly intelligent, but had received no formal education, had been taught only from institute files and by the Bajoran scientist. Not that Dukat doubted Mora’s loyalty—the Bajoran had assisted with the sensors and weapons that had effectively shut down the Bajoran insurgency—but it did make him doubt Yopal’s good sense. Why hadn’t she assigned a Cardassian scientist, even a team of them, once she’d realized Odo’s potential? What if they could clone him, create a race of shape-shifters, working for the Union? Regardless of his future applications, someone should have been giving him a proper Cardassian education when he was still young enough for it to imprint.
Too late, of course, but Dukat was not a man to dwell on past mistakes. What mattered now was coaxing Odo to Terok Nor. Dukat knew he’d find inspiration for future plans once he actually met with the creature, but he hadn’t had time to follow up his initial plans, of late. There had been the yearly financial report to prepare, a problem with the processors that had caused them to miss their quota for more than a week—nothing to scoff at, when there was a growing push at home for the flow of metals and foods and building materials to increase, now that the rebels had quieted—and there was a girl, always a girclass="underline" a tender young beauty he’d rescued from the processing center, wise beyond her years, plucked straight off the transport from the surface.
Dukat had been busy. He’d twice tried to contact the glinn he’d tasked to monitor the shape-shifter’s movements in the past week, and twice been told that he was unavailable. He hadn’t focused on it overmuch, but he wondered at a man who would dare try the prefect’s patience.
A third day, a third attempt, and the garresh working communications couldn’t put him through fast enough. When the glinn finally showed his face on Dukat’s office screen, he did not look happy.
“Why have you not returned my calls?” Dukat asked.
The glinn tightened his jaw. “Sir, I regret to inform you that my men—that I have lost track of the shape-shifter.”
“How long ago?”
“Sir. We have been searching for its tracks without rest—”
“When?”
The glinn took a deep breath. He looked exhausted. “Four days, sir.”
“Did I not explain to you that he was to be closely monitored at all times?”
“And we did, sir. We have. It left the village in Dahkur, and we tried to follow it, but it approached one of my men. When he asked it to go with him, it—it turned into a bird and flew away. He was…startled, sir.”
Startled.Dukat said nothing, and the glinn was quick to fill the silence, his desperation lending him voice.
“How can we track a thing that becomes water, or a stone, or a snake? With all respect, sir, we don’t have the technology to keep it under surveillance.”
Dukat hovered between anger at the glinn—impertinence on top of incompetence—and a kind of weary resignation, that he should have the only sharp mind, it seemed, in all of Central Command.
“It chooses to be a man,” Dukat said, patient through gritted teeth. “It seeks out the company of other sentient beings. Go to the towns, ask questions. Cover the whole province, if you must. Someone will have seen something.”
The glinn nodded sharply. “Yes, sir.”
“And report back as soon as you’ve established his whereabouts. Do not approach him, or try to contain him in any way, do you understand? I will not indulge your ineptitude twice.”
He cut off the transmission, shook his head. If Odo were ever to come to Terok Nor, it would have to be of his own volition. For now, keeping track of him would have to do, if his soldiers could manage it without his direct supervision.
Dukat picked up the padd with his schedule for the day, turning his attention to other matters. Truly, it was a wonder he ever got anything done.
11
When she got the upgrade memo from the science ministry, it was all Kalisi could do not to scream. She read it three times, her blood pressure steadily spiking.
…and you will receive the newly calibrated RV7 models and have them installed before the end of the next quartile…
She read it again, then stood, agitated, pacing her small closet of an office. Only the year before, Cardassia Prime had gifted Doctor Moset’s facility with a brand-new computer system, state of the art—and backwards compatible with their outdated hardware. Since her arrival at the facility, Kalisi had spent countless hours elaborately reprogramming the system to get their aging equipment online and networked. And now the science ministry had actually come through with new hardware for the lab. Hardware that was, of course, incompatible with last year’s computer system.