“Hello,” he said to her, feeling the welcome tremble that always attended their correspondence.
“Hello,”she replied, her voice musical and soft, projected from his faraway homeworld. How he missed it. How he missed her! “To what do I owe this occasion?”
“I know it has been a long time,” he apologized. “My business here keeps me from contacting you as often as I would like.”
“Just your business?”she asked. “Not…threats?”
“No,” he said firmly. “There are no threats, I have told you. I am safe. I only wanted to let you know…I located a dissident on the station, someone who is to return to Cardassia Prime tomorrow. A woman—a correspondent for the Information Service.”
“What is her name?”
“Natima Lang. Do you know of her?”
“No, but I’ll see what I can find.”
“It could be helpful to do so. She is affiliated with Gaten Russol. But more interesting to you and me—she contacted a member of the Detapa Council here on Bajor. An exarch at one of the old settlements.”
The woman’s eyes shone with interest. “Do you think he is a dissident as well?”
“Time will tell,” Thrax told her. “But I believe he may be.”
“And you believe this is good news for us?”
He nodded. “If the Detapa Council continues to oppose the government to gain power, it could eventually wrest the Union out of the military government’s hands. It seems that the handful of dissidents I have been tracking have begun to add more followers to their ranks—followers in the civilian government.”
The woman nodded. “This could be favorable for us. But the Detapa Council may be no more in support of us than Central Command has been.”
Thrax frowned before his face twisted into a rueful smile. “Have you always been such a pessimist, Astraea?”
She smiled back, embarrassed. “No, Glinn Sa’kat,”she admitted, “only realistic.”
He laughed quietly. It always amused him that she continued to refer to him by his military title—even his colleagues on the station called him by his first name. But for her, it had become almost a sign of affection to maintain the formality he had shown to her upon their first meeting. “Well,” he said. “I thought it might be useful for us to find out more about these people, the dissidents. If there is any question that supporting their cause could serve to help us in the future—”
“I agree,”she said. “I don’t suppose they could detest us any more than Central Command already does.”
“One hopes not.” Thrax fell silent.
There was so much he wanted to say to her, but he would have preferred to do it in person. He had never been able to convey his feelings regarding her, not even when he was with her, on Cardassia Prime. His support of her position within the Way was much more important than their personal relationship, a relationship that had started when he had discovered her walking in a near daze along the periphery of Cardassia City, trying to put some meaning to the frightening visions she had been having. If the Fates hadn’t intervened that day, hadn’t seen to it that he would find her there—But of course, Oralius watched over Her guide. It was meant that he would find her, and he hoped it was meant that he would be reunited with her someday on his homeworld—sooner rather than later.
Two quartiles, three at most,he promised himself. No more than another year, certainly. He would be done with this place, and with Dukat.
“The Bajoran religious man we spoke of…he is still safe?”
“I can’t be certain, but I believe so,” he told her. “The one they call the kai is still safe, and I believe the man from your vision has a connection with her. That is what Prylar Bek tells me, but he will reveal no more.”
“He is mistrustful of you?”
“No,” Thrax said. “I believe he trusts me now, since I gave him the information to get his kai to safety before the detection grid went online. But he is simply not at liberty to reveal information. It is much the same way…that I feel about you, Astraea. I would guard you with my life.”
There was a moment of awkward silence while Thrax tried to think of another item of interest. “So…after the next Bajoran council, I think I will try to make a connection with Yoriv Skyl, the Tozhat exarch,” he said. “To see if I can discern his leanings.”
“A wise idea,”Astraea agreed softly, and there was another moment of silence. Their calls always seemed to be conducted this way, ending with strained pauses, loaded with unspoken emotions.
“May you walk with Oralius,” Thrax finally said, and she smiled, though she looked disappointed, too.
She signed off with a recitation from the Book. “‘To speak her words with my voice, to think her thoughts with my mind, to feel her love with my heart.’”Thrax repeated the words back to her, and she smiled, her eyes closing, as her image skittered from Thrax’s screen. He sat back in his chair and paused to reflect, to think exclusively of her for a moment, then he abruptly rose and left the security station, heading to his quarters for the night.
Natima’s eyes were dry, but she felt like weeping. The transport had already left the station, and there was no looking back now—not that she would have wanted to. Still, she was going back to Cardassia Prime entirely contrary to her appointment. Dalak would be furious with her for this insubordination, but there was simply no way she could have remained on the station, not after what had transpired earlier today.
She was the only civilian on this transport, which had little in the way of elbow room. There was a tiny commissary, small berths, two beds to a room, with a ’fresher that had to be shared—at least for the soldiers. Natima was lucky enough to have gotten a room to herself. Being a woman had a few perks, at least. She rested, as best she could, on the hard berth, and tried to shut her mind to the unhappy events that had unfolded earlier, but it was all she could think of.
Had Quark really believed he could hide from her forever in the microcosm of Terok Nor? She had cornered him leaving his quarters early this morning, and had demanded an explanation—hoping against hope that he would actually have one. But of course, through his pathetic attempts to justify what he had done, Natima saw the truth: not only had he stolen from her, he wasn’t even sorry he had done it.
She had threatened to turn him in to the authorities for his dealings with the Bajorans—or the very least, to turn him in for violating her acquisition number. She was going to have to explain it to the accounting department at the Information Service, a task she dreaded almost as much as facing Dalak regarding her sudden abandonment of her assignment. But then, she hadn’t turned him in after all—she still wasn’t entirely sure why.
How foolish she had been, to trust a man who pretended to have a romantic interest in her—a Ferengi, no less! She could only assume that he had been using her from the very beginning, and yet, she had not even turned him in to save her own reputation. She knew that it was dangerous to draw attention to herself this way. If accounting were to closely examine her acquisition codes, would they find anything that would point to her status as a dissident? Natima didn’t think so, but she couldn’t understand why she would even consider taking the risk for someone as dishonest as Quark had turned out to be. She supposed she was just a fool, in the end.
She was crying, now, which should have been a relief, but was mostly just a humiliation. She let herself cry softly for a few moments before pulling herself together. She would never go to Terok Nor again, or to Bajor, and if Dalak tried to make her—well, maybe she was done with Dalak, anyway. Maybe it was time to move away from the Information Service. She had long remained loyal to her employer in part because she’d believed that she owed her life’s success to the Service. But would it be so terrible, to attribute her success to her own actions? Maybe this was the push she needed to go in another direction, the sign that it was time to move into another phase of her life.