“Secretary Kubus is the most loyal and effective Bajoran I’ll ever meet,” Dukat said. “I have no desire to replace him with someone who is likely to ply me with radical ideas—or worse, stab me in the back.”
“If you recall, you once told me that Basso Tromac was also loyal and effective—and he disappeared, didn’t he?”
“He was likely killed by someone in ore processing with a vendetta,” Dukat said, though he feared another possibility. Of course, it was true that Basso’s disappearance had occurred right about the same time that Nerys had slipped from Dukat’s careful grasp…but he preferred to think of that incident as little as possible.
“If your Bajoran adjutant could be murdered on your own space station, the crime so perfectly covered up as to provide neither body nor suspect, then you may wish to reconsider your level of control there,”Kell said. “Perhaps you need a new chief of security, as well.”
Dukat glowered in response. “The shape-shifter does a better job than Thrax Sa’kat ever did,” he said. “Besides, the last thing we want is for Odo to fall sympathetic to the Bajoran cause. The best place for him is here, where I can keep an eye on him.”
Kell snorted. “Keep your shape-shifter, then. But I stand by my recommendation for a new cabinet. You would do best to simply execute the current Bajoran officials. Accuse them of disloyalty, and then make a public spectacle of it. You could then ensure full cooperation from whoever replaces them.”
Dukat straightened out his features. “I will consider it,” he said, though he had no intention of doing any such thing; he was merely hoping to get rid of the old man so he could get some sleep. His wish was quickly granted, as the legate signed off, and Dukat wasted no time in alerting the duty officer in ops that he would take no more calls for the day. He had already decided against paying a call on his newest Bajoran mistress, though the relationship was very young and she had already proven a bit petulant; there were times when sleep took precedence over virtually everything else, even for the prefect.
The woman could speak to him only via voice transmission, but Odo still felt quite certain that it was really her. It had been the sound of Kira’s voice that had finally brought her identity back to him those few years ago, had made him remember the incident at the Bajoran Institute of Science. It was there, in Mora’s laboratory, where he had first heard the sound of her voice, from the tank where he regenerated. He had experienced a strange, unfamiliar desire to listen to her voice, to be near her. He remembered it well even now, as he spoke to her on his computer console from Terok Nor.
“So, will you help me, Constable?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I still don’t understand why you’ve come to me.”
“Because!”she said, clearly exasperated. “You helped me before, Odo. I trusted you then, and I want to trust you now. I believe that ultimately—despite your position, I mean—you are on our side.”
“I’m on nobody’s side,” Odo said firmly.
“If that’s true, then why did you help me before? Why not just arrest me?”
“Because,” he said, not immediately sure how to follow it up. “I…suppose I regarded you as an individual, in need of help. It wasn’t your cause that provoked my sympathy, it was just…it was just…”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” Odo said. He really didn’t know. It was true that he had helped her once, and it was therefore true that he had helped the Bajoran resistance movement once, too. But he’d been much less experienced then. He had been reacting to his immediate circumstances without thinking through the consequences.
“You’re lying,”the woman said. “You knew the Cardassians were wrong then, and you know it now.”
“Do I?” Odo said, trying to sound threatening, but it fell flat.
“Yes, you do. You’re not one of them, Odo. You’re one of us.”
“What does being one of ‘them’ entail, exactly?”
“It entails being…evil. Being a thief. A lazy, bullying thief. You’re not like that.”
Odo had the distinct sense that she was trying to manipulate him with this kind of talk, but the trouble was, it was working. “No,” he finally said. “I’m not like that.”
“Then you’ll help us?”
Odo nodded, though he knew she could not see it; the nod was more for himself than it was for her. “Yes,” he said.
“Good,”she said, accepting his acquiescence without ceremony. “Your role is twofold, but most of it will not be in any way out of character for you. The primary thing we need for you to do is to distract Dukat. Do you think you can do that?”
Odo almost laughed. In fact, it was often all he could do to get rid of Dukat, when the man sought company. “I think I can,” he told her.
After the transmission had ended, Odo second-guessed the security of the line. Nobody had been listening, as far as he could tell, but he knew that if someone meant to overhear, there wasn’t much he could do. He suspected that Dukat didn’t really trust him, despite the man’s repeated attempts to strike up confidential chats. Now that Odo had so few allies on the station—Russol was long gone, and Odo had made few friends on the Bajoran side—he had to constantly watch his back. Fortunately, for a shape-shifter, watching one’s back was an easy affair.
Why washe helping this Bajoran woman? Was it simply because he was intrigued by her, the first Bajoran woman he had ever encountered, so long ago at the institute, or did it go deeper than that? He supposed he had never really been able to sympathize with Dukat’s perspective, had never agreed with the Cardassian occupation in general, especially not since he had finally begun to understand the many facets of it. And yet, he had continued on at this station, with his job in security, sometimes staying true to his own code of ethics, and occasionally submitting to Dukat’s version of things just in order to maintain simplicity and stay beneath the radar of the Cardassians here. Odo didn’t want to leave Terok Nor—it came down to that. For he still hoped he would someday learn news of his own people, and he supposed this was the best place in the B’hava’el system to do that.
But now he risked it all—and why? He did not believe that it was strictly out of loyalty to whatever imagined relationship he had with Kira Nerys. No, it went deeper than that, he supposed. While he had often told himself that it had nothing to do with him, he had pretended often enough that he did not notice the disparity between Bajoran and Cardassian. Maybe now it was time to do something about it.
Cardassia City was atypically bleak and overcast. In the old times, it was said that portions of what was now the Western Hemisphere had been dotted all over with thick, lush forests, heavy with rainfall. But an atmospheric calamity of uncertain origin had let to centuries of drought, and the forests had all been shortsightedly cut down. The soil beneath the fertile canopy had, after a single generation of unsustainable farming, withdrawn from deep, silty black topsoil to the parched sands that were so well-known beyond the periphery of the cities. Desert now, where it had once been rain forest.