She rose to her feet also, taking a step toward him. “Glinn Sa’kat, are you angry with me?”
He said nothing for a moment, and then he changed the subject.
“Astraea, I wish you would consent to go into hiding, at least until we have a better idea of what will be the outcome of the governmental upheaval.”
“No,” she told him. “I cannot leave the followers, not again.”
“The followers cannot afford to lose you.”
“The Way will never fade into obscurity, Glinn Sa’kat. I know this—with more than just a feeling. It is a truth. I do not wish to leave this place.” She said it more firmly than she had intended. “Besides,” she added, lightening her tone, “you will keep me safe.” She meant the last part to be affectionate, but he looked grave.
“Sometimes I miss the days that I was on Terok Nor,” he told her.
She felt a stab of unhappy regret, wondering if he was truly angry with her, before he went on. “From there, I had access to information from all over the Cardassian Union and beyond—systems from the Setlik to Valeria. Here, I feel much less capable of protecting you.”
She looked up, her voice trembling despite her efforts to control it. “Would you really rather be on Terok Nor, Glinn Sa’kat, than here, with…” She trailed off, and there was a moment of silence between them.
He gazed at her for a long moment, unblinking, before he stepped toward her. His hands came up from his sides, and he took her face in his hands. She scarcely dared to move, but after a single moment, the longest moment of her life, she felt her body go slack, seeming to melt against him, feeling the ache of long-unexpressed desire finally begin to ebb. He brushed his lips against hers, and she kissed him back willingly.
He broke away far too soon, but he did not take his hands away from her face. “I do wish you would listen to me more often,” he murmured.
“I will do whatever you recommend,” she told him, “but only if it means you will be with me.”
He did not reply, only embraced her once again, holding on as if he never meant to let go.
Odo answered his comm with trepidation, for the moment had come. “Odo!”Dukat was roaring. “Environmental control gone down, very likely due to yet another act of sabotage. You must double up your security at once.”
“Of course,” Odo replied. “Anything else?”
“Find Dalin Kedat and have him report to ops at once!”
Odo feigned surprise. “But Gul Dukat…Dalin Kedat is gone. I put him on the penal ship following his arrest, and I believe it has already left the station.”
Dukat looked quite flabbergasted. “And exactly what are we to do without a chief of engineering? You know those fools on his staff will squabble among themselves for an hour before even getting started!”
“Dalin Trakad has already put in for a replacement, sir, but he tells me it is standard procedure for there to be an interim period of at least three days before—”
“Three days!”
“That’s what I was told. You can speak to Dalin Trakad further on the matter. I consulted fully with him, and we were simply following…”
“Procedure, of course you were. It didn’t occur to you that we might be forced to bend the rules in the case of our chief of engineering. We can scarcely function without Kedat!”
“I…wasn’t aware of that, sir. I only knew that procedure clearly states—”
“Just…be sure to double up security as I asked. Immediately!”He signed off abruptly.
Odo stood, for there was a second part to his role in this mission. He left his office without bothering to answer Dukat’s call for more security, and headed to Quark’s.
“Odo!” Quark exclaimed as the shape-shifter entered his establishment. “To what do I owe…?”
“Save it, Quark. I need to speak with you in private.”
Quark gestured to his customer, a long-faced dal. “All right. Just let me just take care of—”
“We can do it at security, if you’d prefer,” Odo said sharply.
“No, no, there’s no need for us to leave the premises. Come into my office.” The Ferengi gestured to a room behind the bar, and Odo followed him, pretending not to notice as Quark hurriedly tried to hide a small crate under the counter. Odo had no time to address it now.
“Quark,” Odo said, once they were out of reasonable earshot of anyone at the bar. “I need you to do something for me.”
The Ferengi looked reluctant, but Odo went on.
“In about twenty minutes, I’m going to be bringing Dukat in here, as a way of apologizing for sending his chief of engineering on that penal ship. But I can’t stay in here to watch him. It would make him very suspicious—he knows I don’t eat or drink, and since I’ve spent so little time in here, he will certainly wonder why I’m suddenly so eager to be one of your patrons.”
Quark gaped. “You need me to baby-sit the prefect?” he said.
“That’s right,” Odo said evenly.
Quark considered for a moment before his expression changed, a shifting wiliness flickering in his eyes. “It sounds…important,” he observed. “Like…it might be worth something to you.”
Odo narrowed his eyes. “What do you have in mind?”
Quark grinned, unable to conceal his delight over this newfound leverage. “Well. For starters, maybe you could re-consider the fines you were imposing on my friend from Beraina—it’s made him pretty reluctant to do business with me. And speaking of fines, I’m thinking it’s possible that I may have…a few…unpaid debts with your office…if you’d care to check your records. Maybe we could enter into some kind of negotiation…”
“Negotiation?”
“Sure,” Quark said. “Isn’t that what we’re talking about? Like…say…forget about them altogether.”
Odo leaned toward him menacingly. “Or, perhaps you could just do as I ask, and I’ll pretend I don’t know anything about that box of illegal Terran cognacyou just stowed underneath the bar…not to mention the proscribed holosuite programs that are hidden in the false panel underneath the right corner of the—”
“Fine!” Quark interrupted quickly, “I’ll do it!”
“Of course you will,” Odo replied. He gave the Ferengi explicit instructions before hastily leaving the bar. It was time to buy Gul Dukat a drink.
Kira had been putting out the call to the Jo’kala cell for over an hour now, with no reply. This was not the first time she had attempted to alert other cells of the possibility of a grid failure, but it was the first time anything had been attempted on such a grand scale. She’d received confirmation from Terok Nor that the plan had been set into motion, the results likely to fall in their favor, and had spent much of the last ten hours contacting everyone who would answer their comms—resistance, civilians, family and friends and neighbors of the men and women who lived in the warren. While she had met with a few skeptical voices, most of the people she’d contacted understood the necessity of action tonight, and had agreed to spread the word.
“This is a wideband alert from six-one-six, I repeat, the grid is coming down. Terok Nor wil be blind for at least one hour without sensors, starting in approximately eight minutes…”
“Six minutes,” Lupaza corrected from behind her. “Nerys, get off the comm—it’s time to go!”
“But I wasn’t able to get through to anyone in Jo’kala…”
“Someone will have told them,” Mobara said. “Get your phaser, and come on—the others are already in the tunnels.”
“Someone should stay behind to monitor the comm.”
“I’m staying,” Gantt reminded her. He’d twisted his ankle a week before, and wouldn’t travel well. “Just go! Make the best of it, and keep me informed.”
Kira grabbed her phaser and her shoulder pack, following the others as they scurried quickly through the tight tunnels. She could feel a detectable shift, a change in the smell and quality of the air when they neared the entrance. And as always, her adrenaline jumped, knowing she was to be in the uncertain world beyond the warren. Today, she could scarcely hold still.