“Odo isn’t known for his empathy,” Quark agreed.
Dukat was tired of listening to the Ferengi’s acquiescence, and deliberately set his gaze elsewhere until Quark moved on to ingratiate himself to someone else. It seemed to take an excruciatingly long time before the Ferengi finally lost interest in furthering the conversation. Dukat briefly remembered a time when he’d had people on the station he’d thought he could trust. There had been Damar—the young, but wise-beyond-his-years garresh—and there had been Kira Meru. Beautiful Meru, so sensible—for a Bajoran, that was—but both had betrayed him. And then Basso Tromac. The Bajoran had been such a loyal servant before he’d disappeared, never returning from his errand to collect Kira Nerys. Dukat was left to wonder if Basso hadn’t betrayed him as well.
He looked up to see Quark making his usual small talk with a group of security officers in the corner, the insincerity all but dripping from his words. It was certainly indicative of Dukat’s isolation that he would be forced to seek companionship from the shape-shifter—or worse, from the Ferengi. He could trust no one, he recognized now.
He hurried back to his office, warming himself slightly by the brisk walk, feeling strangely melancholy. Why was it so hard to find people he could depend upon? How could he be expected to function when there was no one to whom he could speak?
He found a message from Legate Kell waiting for him in his cold office. He reviewed it without enthusiasm, an ambiguous request for an immediate callback, and Dukat reluctantly put in a return call. Perhaps it was related to his new engineering chief…
“Dukat,” the legate said shortly. “I’ve given it much thought, and I believe my plan to reorganize the Bajoran government is best for all concerned.”
Dukat gritted his teeth. Why did Kell continue to concern himself with details of the annexation? Dukat felt smothered.
“We need to discuss the particulars of the transition, as I would like to see the alteration occur as soon as possible,”Kell went on. “But first, I feel it would be best to appoint a committee among some of your more trusted advisers, in order—”
A red light flashed on the console to Dukat’s right, accompanied by an audible alarm. Kell broke off speaking, his expression parodying surprise. “What is that?”
Dukat was already reacting, having swiveled to regard the console at his right-hand side. There had been a failure of the program managing the sensor towers on the surface, guiding the sweeps and returning the data to Terok Nor.
“I must go, Legate,” he said, ending the transmission without another word. He immediately alerted engineering, then called for his communications officer to start contacting surface bases for reports.
He spent a moment trying to call up more information on the nature of the failure, but the computer was giving him nothing. Frustrated, he stepped out into Ops, looking over his shivering skeleton crew as they went to task, working diagnostics and gathering information. The initial reports were bad—there was nothing coming up from the grid, no data being recorded at all, on any continent. Dukat sent them to double-check, his best hope right now was that the Bajorans on the surface would not learn of the failure.
He thought of the Ferengi, that ridiculous idiom repeating itself: When it rains, it rains extremely hard…
“Get me a diagnostic of the most vulnerable sites on the surface,” he barked. “I need troops in place anywhere that is susceptible to insurgent attacks.”
The dalin at communications spoke up. “There are literally hundreds of them, sir—could you be more specific?”
The female glinn working the sciences station spoke up, confirming the desolate news. “Sir. The entire detection grid has gone dark, sir.”
Dukat took a breath, reminding himself that this was not yet cause for panic. If the Bajorans were not aware that the grid was off line, then unrest on the surface was unlikely—at least, for now. He made a quick mental list of the precautions that must be taken, before the same female glinn spoke with urgency in her voice.
“A report, sir, forwarded from a manufacturing facility in Dahkur—it suggests that insurgents have attacked, but the signal was only partial, they can’t confirm…”
“Gul Dukat, there is a red alert coming in from the military base on the outskirts of Musilla Province!”
“A facility in Gerhami Province has gone offline!”
“Another report, sir, from Ilvia—”
More shouts, console lights winking and pulsing, simultaneous reports of scattered disasters, and Dukat felt his internal temperature plummeting, becoming as cold as his space station. This was not accidental, nor, likely, was the distraction of the environmental malfunction. This was sabotage, a carefully planned attack, and it had occurred on the prefect’s watch—on his own station.
21
The man who now stood at the podium was proving himself to be a poor speaker. Though it had been arranged far in advance of this date that he would preside over the meeting, Natima suspected that he felt uneasy with the location she had chosen—an empty classroom at the University of Prekiv, Natima’s alma mater and current place of employment.
Natima had worked very hard to get to her current position; in just under five years, she had earned a postgraduate position as an assistant professor in the political sciences department. She continued to take classes in her spare time, and expected to be a full-fledged professor within the next two years; Natima was nothing if not driven. But she was also nothing if not cautious about her own political status as a dissident, and she would not have agreed to host the meeting if she were not confident that the meeting would be private.
She knew that most of the staff here at the university were sympathetic to her causes, particularly those professors who worked in her department. Natima was confident that any members of the university staff who felt otherwise could not touch her. She had flourished within the precise hierarchy of the university system, and she knew her place in it. This classroom was by far the safest public location the group could have chosen to meet in—safer than in a private residence, for large gatherings at people’s homes were often secretly monitored by the government. Universities were generally better protected from that sort of intrusion, enjoying a certain measure of lenience in the name of education. Cardassians still valued education and knowledge very highly in the great scheme of their society, for it was the Cardassians’ superior knowledge that had allowed their scientific community to be one of the most advanced in the galaxy.
The soundproof room was large, with chairs arranged in semicircular rows before a podium in the center. The design of the classroom, with graduated tiers rising up to the back of the room, made amplification devices unnecessary, helping to ensure that conversation was not likely to be monitored. Natima had personally checked for listening devices, and as she had expected, there were none. But Dr. Tuken, a professor from the settlement in the Cuellar system who had been chosen to chair the meeting this afternoon, still appeared too ill at ease to speak freely. His statements were vague, his intentions unclear. Natima felt a little annoyed, for she took the man’s unease as a sign of his mistrust in her. She found his overly cautious, halting manner to be distracting, as well.
She glanced across the room to Gaten Russol, now a gul in the military, and saw from his expression that he was thinking the same thing that she was. After so many years of friendship, she could read him like a book. He met her eye, and then he stood.
“Thank you, Doctor Tuken,” Russol said smoothly, “for that introduction. I have a few items that I wish to address.”
“Of course, Gul Russol,” Tuken said, and stepped down from the podium. If he resented the interruption, he didn’t show it; nearly everyone knew to defer to Gul Russol. If their unnamed movement had a leader, it was Gaten Russol, and while the membership remained only somewhere in the hundreds, the squabbling and lack of direction of days past was gone now. The small, committed groups around the Union had mostly narrowed their focus toward common goals.