Star Trek Terok Nor 01: Day of the Vipers Read online

  When the door closed behind them, Dukat gestured to a chair in front of the chamber’s low table. Pa’Dar sat and glanced around; the dal’s office was lined with screens showing data feeds from different parts of the ship, but many of the panels were blank. Pa’Dar knew from experience that the Kashai’s main computer had detected his entrance into the room and automatically concealed any information that a civilian of his security authorization was not cleared for. He paid it no mind; it was just another part of the way of obfuscation, concealment, and secrecy that was the Cardassian manner.

  “Are you hungry?” asked the dal. “I decided that in order to acclimate myself, I would try a meal of Bajoran dishes.” He crossed to the replicator slot, examining the labels on a series of isolinear rods. “Veklava. Hasperat. These names mean little to me.”

  “Skrain.” Pa’Dar shifted uncomfortably. “Just now, on the bridge. You were making sport of me, yes? You did not actually intend to fire on the Oralians?”

  “Would you be perturbed if I did?” Dukat glanced at him. “You’ve made it clear in the past that you have little regard for the followers of the Way.”

  “True,” Pa’Dar admitted, “but in the end they are still Cardassians.”

  “Barely.”

  Pa’Dar continued. “Sometimes I wonder if they could be convinced to lay down their allegiance to their dogma and become part of society again.”

  Dukat gave a dry laugh. “You have changed since we were last together, Kotan. If anything, you’ve become softer.”

  “I just feel that now is the moment for Cardassia to look inward and put her own house in order. It’s been a year since the Talarian conflict was brought to a conclusion, but Cardassia Prime still feels as if it is on a war footing.”

  “Cardassia is always on a war footing,” Dukat grunted.

  “And the Talarian conflict was not concluded, Kotan. It came to a stalemate. The two things are not the same. Just because we have withdrawn from Republic space and no longer engage them in open battle, it does not mean we can turn away from them. They still represent a viable threat. Along with the Breen and the Tzenkethi, they hold walls around Cardassia on three fronts.”

  “And because of that, we expand toward Bajor?” Pa’Dar replied. “We should be consolidating, not expanding. Our people need to apply restraint to the factions in the council, marshal our citizens, and deal with the Oralian matter.”

  “And how would you accomplish the latter?” Dukat asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Most who follow the Way do it out of habit. If the Cardassian Union gave them the same leadership in their lives, they would reject the church. I would give them that and offer them a choice. Disavow their religion and reintegrate or leave the homeworld.”

  “To Bajor, perhaps?” Dukat selected a few data rods and put the rest aside. “Pack off the troublemakers and the zealots?” He nodded to a small screen showing an exterior view of the Lhemor. He smiled thinly. “Kotan Pa’Dar, I do believe that the colors of your clan are showing through that scientist façade you wear. Anyone listening to the words you just said would think you were a politician and not a man of learning.”

  “I speak plainly.” Pa’Dar bristled at the officer’s tone. “I know that is a rarity among the circles you move in.”

  Dukat chuckled again, and Pa’Dar knew he was mocking him. “So tell me, then. You have the solution to Cardassia’s social ills. What about her other needs, eh?” He gestured around at the Kashai’s dun-colored walls. “Our naval forces were depleted in the process of teaching the Talarians some discipline. We cannot rebuild faster because we don’t possess the minerals we need. Bajor does, but they will not trade it to us. We get only a trickle, too little too slowly. How would you address that?”

  Pa’Dar felt the color rising in his ridges, the flesh darkening. The open challenge in Dukat’s words was clear. If he backed down he would lose whatever respect the dal had for him. His jaw hardened. Very well. I will say what I wish to, and hunger take Skrain Dukat if he takes offense over it. “The answer is plain to see. The Bajorans feel intimidated by us. What we see as normal behavior they see as aggressive and demanding. To make them open up to us we must be more like them. Cardassia needs to foster a peaceable route toward collaboration. If we force them, they will dig in their heels and become intractable. Warships and soldiers like you won’t do the job.”

  To his surprise, Dukat’s expression changed and he nodded in agreement. “I think you are correct, Kotan. If there are mistakes being made on Bajor, it is that our kind expect the aliens to adhere to our patterns.” He shook his head. “They won’t. And if Cardassia had the time, I would say that your route would be the one to take.” He activated the replicator, turning his back on the scientist. “But we will not. Cardassia does not have the luxury. The Talarians will nip at our borders once again, it is their nature. We have seen ample evidence today of Tzenkethi audacity, and then there is the constant pressure of the Federation’s influence. If we bide our time, we allow all those enemies to gain strength over us.” He nodded again. “Let me tell you what must be done. Bajor must be made to understand how lucky they are to have the Cardassian Union as a friend. They should give us what we need and do so willingly. They don’t appreciate that they should be grateful for our patronage, and that must be pointed out to them in the strongest of manners. Anyone who cannot see that, Bajoran or Cardassian, becomes an impediment to our greater good.”

  “That…that has all the color of a threat, Dukat.” Tension settled in Pa’Dar’s muscles. In a cold, immediate rush of insight, he saw something different, something callous and hard in the other man’s manner. It was as if a vast chasm had suddenly opened up between them; but then again, perhaps it had always been there, and only in this moment had Pa’Dar recognized it.

  The commander drew a number of steaming plates from the replicator’s maw and placed them on the table. The scents from spiced meats and pastries brought back memories of the feast in the Naghai Keep, but suddenly Pa’Dar felt his appetite fading. “Threats are only intentions never made manifest,” said Dukat, taking a seat and a large chunk of meat. “Why waste time on them? Bajor must be taught, and teaching requires the application of lessons.” He glanced up and saw that Pa’Dar had not touched the food. “You’re not eating. Is there nothing to your liking?”

  The scientist got to his feet. “I will take my leave of you, Dal Dukat. I’m afraid I find everything here…distasteful.”

  As the door closed behind him, Pa’Dar caught a ripple of laughter at his back.

  10

  Darrah Mace thumbed the entry control on the lock pad to silent and entered the house quietly. From the outside, most of the windows were dark, and he didn’t want to wake the children if they were sleeping. Sliding the door shut behind him, he stopped sharply, narrowly avoiding walking straight into the chest-high statue in the hallway. The sculpture had only been in the house a few days, and he still hadn’t got used to its being there. Another gift from Karys’s mother, the artwork was apparently quite valuable, but to Darrah it looked like the torso of a nude, corpulent woman crossed with a bunch of broken sticks. He thought it was unattractive and obstructive, and to his wife’s displeasure Bajin had expressed the same opinion. Only Nell, ever the conciliator, had said something nice about Grandmother’s efforts, and even then she had damned it with faint praise. Darrah imagined that they would follow the same pattern they did with every such gift from his in-laws; it would stay in the house for a couple of months before he shifted it to the basement to be out of the way with all the others.

  He threaded his way through the wide bungalow, following the faint smell of food coming from the kitchen. The shutters across the window were open slightly, and through them Darrah could see the glow of the city below the hills. The view was one of the best things about the place, and on a clear day he could stand there and pick out the habitat district where their old apartment block still stood. He slid open the kitchen door on its rails
and found his wife at the table, picking at a carton of food with one hand, reading a booklet with the other.

  Karys closed the book and inclined her head. “Kids are asleep.”

  “I gathered.” Shrugging his tunic onto an empty seat, he sat down opposite her, and she immediately got up, putting distance between them. Mace sighed and helped himself to a glass of kava juice. It was too warm, but he was too thirsty to care. “Is there anything to eat?” He cast an eye over the containers on the table, the debris of a take-out meal from one of the vendors down in the commercial quarter.

  “There was a couple of hours ago,” she retorted. “At supper. You remember supper, Mace? I think you had it with us when Nell was still crawling.”

  The jibe barely registered. He flipped open the lids of the boxes and his lip curled. Cooked fish smells assailed his nostrils, smoky and potent. “What is this?”

  “Rokat fillets and seafruits in yamok sauce.”

  “That’s Cardassian food. Since when did we live on alien grub in this house?” He shot her a glance. “I want something Bajoran.”

  “You’re dealing with the Cardassians all the time now. I thought you’d be used to their foods. And besides, since when did you have a choice in deciding who eats what?” Karys came back toward him, bristling, and Mace knew she was gathering the momentum for an argument. “If you were around more often, you might have a say in it.”

  Mace shoved the boxes away and took a gulp from his juice. “I pay for this house. I pay for space for your mother’s damned monstrosities in the hallway. The least you can do is have something I can eat in the place when I come home!”

  “When you come home!” She seized on the words. “You promised me things would be different when we moved here, Mace!” Karys put her hands flat on the table.

  “The assignment with the enclaves, you said it would make us better off and you said you’d be home more often. But you’re not. Nothing is different!”

  “Nothing?” he shot back. “You have the home you wanted, I got you out of the stackers, gave you a life more to the taste of an Ih’valla. What more do you want?”

  “I want my husband in the house!” Her voice started to rise, and she checked herself. “For more than a few hours a week, at least!” She shook her head. “I see Rifin Belda at services and I feel like I’m turning into her!”

  Mace frowned. Belda was the wife of the late captain of the Eleda, and she had struggled hard to continue on with her life, left alone with two children after her spouse had been lost. “Belda’s husband is dead.”

  “And she sees his memorial more than I see you.”

  Mace’s temper flared. “That’s not true, and you know it.” He blew out a breath. “Kosst, Karys. What do you want from me? I’m trying to give you the best life I can, keep you safe. Don’t you understand, if I don’t work this hard, all this goes away?” He gestured at the house. “How many times do we have to rake over this old ground?”

  “So I should be grateful and silent, is that it?” She snorted. “Do you know, my sister sent me a comm from the colony today. We talked for a long time.”

  Mace rolled his eyes. “Oh, I’m sure that went well. She can’t stand me.”

  “She offered to get me passage out there, Bajin and Nell too. Suddenly I’m wondering if I should accept!”

  He got to his feet and drained the rest of the drink. “You’re going to go to Valo II? To a rural border colony? I don’t think so.”

  “What makes you so sure?” demanded Karys.

  “Because you’d go insane. After a couple of weeks of looking at fields and trees you’d be desperate to come home.” His voice shifted into the harsh tone he used in prisoner interrogations. “You hate being away from the center of attention, Karys, and that’s what Korto is these days. You like being cosmopolitan.” He flicked at the food containers. “You like being daring and worldly, the wife of a City Watch inspector who deals with exotic offworlders every day.” Her face darkened, and he knew he’d struck a nerve. “But you can’t have it both ways.” Mace felt buried tensions churning inside him, the legacy of dozens of half-finished arguments and directionless animosities forcing themselves to the surface. Part of him wanted to stay and unleash them, and for a long moment he balanced on the edge of giving them voice; but then he turned and snagged his jacket from the back of the chair.

  “Where are you going?” she snapped.

  He deliberately ignored the pleading tone in her words.

  “To get something to eat.”

  Darrah hopped a near-empty tram at the foot of the road and took it to the night market at the base of the hill. Hunger always made him terse and short-tempered. He found the first street vendor he came across and handed her a couple of lita coins, getting some savory porli strips in a rough mapa bread roll. He wolfed it down and then got another, along with a cup of ice water. Licking grease from his fingertips, Mace caught sight of himself in the polished chrome of the vendor’s food wagon. His face was set hard in a grimace, jaw locked and eyes narrow. The echo of his anger with Karys was still resonating in his bones. Walk it off, he told himself.

  He wandered into the alleys of the market, between the narrow walls of the stalls selling clothing and trinkets, hot and cold foodstuffs, entertainment software or old books. When they saw him coming, some of the sellers rather indiscreetly used cloths to cover parts of their stalls to hide their wares. He didn’t doubt that some of the vendors were trading pirated isolinear disks; there was a strong trade in illegally copied holo-programs from the United Federation of Planets that the City Watch was continually trying to stamp out, which kept rising again no matter how hard they worked to eradicate it. Others kept their stock discreetly hidden, like the men who traded in programs of a more questionable kind. Although it didn’t fall directly in his jurisdiction anymore, Darrah was aware that sales of that kind of material had spiked in Korto and other cities where there were enclaves. It appeared that some Cardassians had an interest in Bajorans that went beyond the cultural; and the trade wasn’t just one way, either. The idea that Bajorans wanted such intimate information about the reptilian aliens made his gut twist. He made a mental note of faces and resolved to pass the information on to Myda at the precinct in the morning.

  Darrah looked up at the ornate chronometer that towered over the night market. It was a little after twenty-three-bells. In the past, the stallholders would have been tearing down their pitches by now, rolling up their stock, and dismantling the stalls before calling it a night, but if anything the bazaar was running at a good clip. There were customers in every alley, and Darrah noted that the majority of them were Cardassian. They like the warm nights, he recalled, thinking of something that Lonnic had told him. The vendors were staying open later in order to service their new patrons. They come into the city at dusk during the summer months.

  The offworlders fell into two groups. There were knots of Oralians, who were never in anything less than a group of three or four, hooded figures shrouded by pastel robes of dusky pink and sky blue. The pilgrims dallied mostly around the stalls selling used paper books or tourist trinkets depicting items of local interest like the bantaca spire and the keep. Small resin models of the Kendra Monastery and laser-cut crystals in the shape of an Orb ark were the most popular purchases, or so it seemed.

  The other Cardassians were the soldiers in their beetle-black armor, men from the escort warships in orbit or the so-called “support staff” out at the enclave. Darrah never saw any signs of weapons on them, but he imagined that the carapace plates of dark metal could easily conceal small blades or beam guns. These aliens walked either in a tight group, with the same watchful motions as a recon unit in enemy territory, or else they were alone, loping from stall to stall, talking in low tones to the dealers.

  In accordance with council ordinances, colored ribbons on the stall frames denoted the permissions and contents of a given booth, but most of the stands also had banners dangling alongside them with Cardassian text
written in a sketchy, poor hand. Darrah couldn’t read them, but he knew the food vendors had banners explaining that their cooking was compatible with Cardassian digestive tracts, or that offworlders and “friends of Oralius” were welcome. He frowned at the signs and walked on, crossing under the clock tower, finishing his water and discarding the cup.

  It wasn’t just the aliens themselves that showed their influence on things in the city. At the toy stands there were little kits one could purchase that would make a model of a Selek-class starship from paper and glue. He saw commemorative Peldor Festival plates from the year the Eleda crew had been returned, disks of white porcelain with montage images of the funeral at the Naghai Keep. There were clothes on sale, knockoffs of the fashionable items worn by the higher D’jarras that resembled the cut of Cardassian tunics and Oralian robes; and there were more subtle things, like the way the traditional icons of hearth and home were being supplanted by symbols of space and new horizons. Once it had been a rarity for Darrah to cross paths with an alien, and now that he did it every day, it seemed so natural. He glanced up as a flyer hummed past overhead. He knew immediately that the vehicle had a Cardassian engine—the tone of the drive was dull and tight, unlike the grumbling throb from less powerful Bajoran-made craft.

  “Ho, Mace!” The voice cut through his musings, and he turned to see Gar Osen beckoning him from the steps of the marketside temple.

  “Ranjen,” he said, coming over. “What are you doing here?”

  Gar indicated the small temple. “Just a small bit of church business about tomorrow’s new arrivals. It went on a little longer than I thought it would.”