One of the uniformed officers in the corridor moved into a ramrod-straight stance, then answered. “Sir, we are deploying protective countermeasures in case the building should be breached by the protesters.”
“Do it with a few less men, Lieutenant,” Cyl said, his stern voice crisply conveying the order. “I want three armed guards with Senator Talris at all times. He’s about to address the crowd from the speaker’s platform.”
The guard nodded. “Understood, sir.”
“I don’t think this is wise, Senator,” Cyl said as the sound of phaser fire reached them from outside the tower.
Dax hoped they were only warning shots.
Talris’s face crinkled as he smiled, making him look like a beneficent grandfather. He chuckled as he said, “Given some of the risks you’ve taken lately, Taulin, some might question the wisdom of taking youradvice as well.” Dax supposed Talris was referring to Cyl’s recent decisions with respect to Bajor. Cyl, who had evidently known Talris for many years, did not appear to be offended.
“I’ll be fine, really,” Talris told the general, his eyes twinkling. “Now let me go. I have a rampaging horde to calm down.”
Talris stepped out of the lift to join the guards, leaving Dax and the rest of the group standing inside. Facing the lift, the senator touched the keypad on the wall, causing his confident face to disappear behind the lift’s closing doors even as a trio of guards moved toward him.
“We need to get to the tower’s security center,” Cyl said, his sullen tone making it clear that he wasn’t keen on leaving Talris’s side, guards or no guards. He tapped a special code into the lift’s keypad, and the conveyance began to descend. “From there, we should be able to track exactly what is going on top-side.”
“You mean outside the tower?” Julian asked.
Cyl nodded. “The security center has secure Z-twelve connections. We’ll bypass the public comm channels and link directly to the defense grid. That way, we’ll be updated about every location where there are major protest gatherings. We need to stay on top of the situation not only here, but at Mak’ala and elsewhere.”
The lift descended below the first floor, then stopped at an unmarked sublevel. The doors opened on a wide, bustling room whose walls were covered with monitors. Uniformed military personnel swarmed throughout the chamber, punching keypads, reading data, watching the screens, or vigorously discussing the events now unfolding on the streets of Leran Manev and other locales with others not present in the room.
In all her lives, Dax couldn’t recall having visited this place before. But she had been in other command centers like it—sprawling yet cramped control rooms filled from floor to ceiling with unbeautiful, solidly utilitarian computer keypads and monitors—both on and off Trill. She assumed that this was but one of perhaps dozens of similar security command centers located around the planet.
They quickly caught up with Cyl and Gard, who were already being briefed by an authoritative-looking female officer. Her head was nearly shaved clean, making the dappled purplish spots on her temples clearly visible. Dax immediately recognized her as someone to be reckoned with.
After casting a suspicious eye on Gard, the woman turned to Cyl.
“You have something to say, Colonel Rianu?” Cyl said gruffly.
“Permission to speak freely, sir?”
“I don’t have time for parade protocol right now, Colonel. Out with it.”
“Thank you, sir. I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to bring that man down here, General.” She nodded toward Gard with icy politeness.
Dax understood the colonel’s apprehension. After all, Gard had killed the head of state of an allied planet. It was pretty hard to keep one’s name and face out of the newsnets after such an incident. Gard’s deed, as well as the official pardon that had apparently followed it, had arguably made him far better known than befitted a Senate security operative long accustomed to working in the shadows.
Cyl appeared a good deal less understanding. “Colonel, Hiziki Gard is my trusted right hand, at least for the duration of the current crisis. I expect you to give him whatever resources he asks for—and to obey his orders as though they had come directly from me. Do I make myself clear?”
“You do, sir.” Dax was impressed at how impassively the colonel took the general’s browbeating. She suddenly recognized her.
“That’s Colonel Behza Rianu,” Dax whispered to Julian. “She’s supposed to be one of the best in the Defense Command.”
“She certainly seems to have things well in hand here,” Julian said.
“She has political ambitions, too. As well as a quick temper that’s kept her from achieving a Senate seat so far.”
“Are you sure she’s not advancing because she’s not joined?” Julian asked.
Even after everything she had witnessed so far today, Dax couldn’t have been more surprised if he had suddenly lobbed a grenade into the room. “I can’t even find the words to answerthat, Julian.” She glared at him for a moment, then attempted to resume listening to Colonel Rianu’s briefing. But in the back of her mind, Julian’s question echoed, and a small part of her knew it was relevant. Especially today.
In clipped, businesslike tones, Rianu informed them about the planetwide movements of various radicals, which she identified as anti-joining agitators associated with the neo-Purist movement, political radicals inspired by the late Verad Kalon’s anti-symbiont Purist group. Consciously putting aside her unpleasant memories of Verad, who had briefly succeeded in stealing her symbiont from Jadzia, Dax listened, turning with the others to watch a cycle of images scrolling past on a large bank of wall-mounted monitors. The holoscreens showed other government buildings in Leran Manev and elsewhere, the Symbiosis Commission, the Caves of Mak’ala, and two other smaller symbiont spawning grounds. Around each of these places, throngs of obviously discontented Trill humanoids had gathered.
The military presence was heaviest near the Symbiosis Commission’s copper-hued towers, though that structure was better protected than most of the other buildings in Leran Manev’s government sector; after all, it was practically surrounded by a moatlike body of water, with only a few roadways and powered hover routes leading to it. Dax noted that the building’s landing pads were filled with military defense craft, and that police were pushing the throngs slowly back away from the roadways that led directly to the Commission building.
Outside the Senate Tower, however, the situation was much worse. Protesters were throwing whatever was handy, and the guards were responding with force. Batons rose and fell, and the actinic flash of phaser fire split the air, some directed at the protesters, some aimed at the police. In the bunker, Dax noticed several people gathered near one monitor, each speaking into separate comm devices. On their viewscreen, she saw a flash of light as a soldier targeted a civilian sniper; the monitoring officers cheered momentarily, congratulating the soldier over one of the comm units. Dax assumed they had helped the shooter pinpoint his target. Though she was no stranger to combat, the sight of it occurring in the once tranquil Trill capital made her feel almost physically ill. After all, it was the living legacy of Verad, whose poisonous, invidious memories still lingered within her because of her symbiont’s brief joining with him.
“There’s got to be a way to resolve this without so much violence,” she said. “Can’t we release some neural gas in the plaza, or set up a phaser cannon for a wide-dispersal stun blast?”
“Either of those options could cause some deaths as well,” said Cyl, shaking his head.
“I thought Talris was supposed to speak to the crowd,” Julian said. “Shouldn’t he have started by now?”
Dax saw a look of surprise flicker across the faces of both Cyl and Gard as each of them realized that several minutes had passed since they had left the senator on the tower’s third floor. She knew they were thinking the same thing she was: What is taking Talris so long?