Dukat turned away from the other man and went back to his chair, speaking as he rounded his desk again. “Your file will be updated to contain an official reprimand. Gallitep is to be made fully operational again within five days. New troops will be provided to bring your personnel up to its previous level, and I’ll speak to Secretary Kubus about replenishing your workforce. The laborers who were exposed will continue to work for the time being. When they show symptoms of the disease, we can assess whether it will be feasible to treat them—or if they would be better off at Dr. Moset’s…hospital.” The good doctor was always in need of new test subjects for his Fostossa vaccines. “For the next two service quartiles, you will operate as usual, but you will be required to deliver semi-quarterly reports and submit to inspections by officials of my choosing—”
“The AI will require an upgrade.”
“You are hardly in a position to be making demands,” Dukat snapped.
“And I didn’t think I needed to remind you that Gallitep is by far Bajor’s most productive—”
“ WasBajor’s most productive facility. Terok Nor surpassed it some time ago, even before this…mishap.”
“I meant to say on the surfaceof Bajor, of course,” Darhe’el amended. “Though we both know that Terok Nor does not produce anything, only processes what Gallitep and facilities like it provide.”
Dukat busied himself with one of the other padds on his desk, refusing to look up. “Perhaps you should get back to what’s left of your facility now, Darhe’el.”
“Are you officially denying me the upgrade I’ve requested?”
“Qualified personnel for such delicate work are at a premium, as you know perfectly well. But I’ll see what I can do.”
“And the executions?”
Dukat scoffed. “What executions?”
“The examples we need to make to discourage further acts of sabotage.”
“This wasn’t an act of sabotage.”
“Does that matter?” Darhe’el asked. “News of the accident will spread, if it hasn’t already. The insurgents will use it in their propaganda. The facts will be distorted to fit their ends. They may even claim responsibility for bringing Gallitep to a standstill, and that in turn will embolden their countrymen to contemplate more acts of terrorism. We have to stop it before it starts.”
Dukat sighed. “I’ll take your suggestion under advisement.”
Darhe’el abruptly left the spot to which he’d rooted himself, and leaned toward Dukat with both hands on the gleaming black surface of the prefect’s desk. His voice was surprisingly quiet. “You’re throwing it away, Dukat. All of it. Bajor should have been brought under control long ago, but you insist on coddling these people. You want them to love you when you should be making them fear you. You’ve yet to learn that no one believes in benevolent despots.”
“Are you finished?” Dukat asked.
Darhe’el straightened, his expression as he looked down at Dukat one of undisguised disgust. “Permission to disembark… sir.”
“Go home, Gul Darhe’el,” Dukat drawled. “Go home to your hole in the ground.”
Darhe’el turned and marched out without another word, leaving the prefect alone with his thoughts. Dukat sat back in his chair, steepling his fingers. The other gul’s lack of proper deference was infuriating, but Dukat knew better than to succumb to it. Darhe’el might be Kell’s favorite, but ultimately he was as powerless to harm Dukat as Dukat was to harm him. Let him bluster. In time Dukat would show them all he was right about Bajor.
Darhe’el was correct about one thing, however: Gallitep’s AI software needed attention as quickly as possible to get the mining operation back up and running. But the Union manpower shortages on Bajor were ongoing, and he couldn’t afford to wait for Central Command to process a request for a specialist to be sent from Prime—the accident had already put them dangerously off quota. The longer it took, the farther behind they’d fall.
It then occurred to Dukat that the answer to his problem might already be within easy reach. Perhaps there was someone at the Bajoran Institute of Science who was qualified to handle the job….
Even as Dukat reached toward his companel to order Thrax to raise the institute, the console unexpectedly chimed on its own accord—in a specific pattern that Dukat knew denoted a personal call.
From Bajor.
He found himself glancing about his office guiltily before he answered, bringing up the image of a young Bajoran woman, sneezing uncontrollably.
“Skrain,”the woman said, between her violent nasal outbursts.
Dukat found himself backing away from the screen. “Naprem,” he said, addressing the attractive woman, almost young enough to be called a girl. “My dear, whatever is the matter? Are you ill?”
She shook her head, unable to speak as another sneeze overtook her. “No, Skrain,”she said, taking an enormous, exhausted breath. She sneezed again and shook her head. “Don’t you know what this means?”
Dukat slowly shook his head, trying to remember what it meant when Bajorans started to sneeze like this. He found it more than a little revolting, actually. Cardassians did not generally have such noisy and appallingly fluidbodily functions.
“It mean—ah—it means that I’m going to—choo— I’m going to have a baby, Skrain.”
Dukat was speechless, and watched her clear her breath for yet another sneeze.
“Did you hear what I said? I’m going to have our baby.”
“How…wonderful,” he said, his voice a little faint.
The room was sweltering. Laren could scarcely bring herself to take a breath; the air was searingly hot and smelled reptilian, the distinct odor of the filthy Cardassians who occupied it.
“Please,” gasped Ro Gale, twisting his body in a futile attempt to relieve the pressure from his wrists. He was manacled to chains that hung from the ceiling. “Get my daughter out of here!”
The Cardassian interrogator ignored her father’s pleas, his horrid skin as pale as fusionstone, his expression a mask of cruelty. His hair, the strange, distinct color of sun-scorched grass, shone hideously beneath the hot lights of the room. “We’re not finished here, Mister Ro.”
Laren’s hands tightened as she looked frantically for a way out. The cloying heat in the room was so intense, she feared she would lose consciousness if she remained much longer. She could not bear to watch her father be humiliated in this way. It shamed her; her father was supposed to be brave. He was supposed to fight the Cardassians, not cry and squeal like a child. She wanted to be out of this room. She wanted to be anywhere else but here, anywhere at all—
And then she was, bundled inside her sleeping bag, sweating between the layers of clothes and the coarse bedroll. She blinked. The light of dawn was just beginning to seep through the dense tree cover overhead.
Dream, just a dream. Forget it.It was what she told herself every time.
She wriggled out of the blankets and stood, began shaking off the dirt and leaves she had used to conceal the place where she slept, deep in the Jo’kala forest. The foliage here was so thick, the forest so wide, that the Cardassian ground tanks couldn’t penetrate the hilly terrain beneath the dense, heavy-branched trees. Soldiers had to patrol it by foot—but no Cardassian knew the forests well enough to venture very deep inside them, not without heavy communications equipment that buzzed and chirped so loudly the dead could hear them.
She rolled up her “bed” and set about organizing her few things. Though it was not yet dawn, she knew it soon would be. She might as well get up and face the day; she didn’t care to go back to sleep if it only meant having the same damned nightmare again and again.
She forced her thoughts ahead, going over what she had to do for the day. She stuffed her pack inside an old bag made from a sheet of Cardassian smartplastic, and slung it up around her shoulders, her phaser rifle fastened down around the bottom. She stretched her thin legs as she did this, and headed toward main “camp,” where Bram Adir and the others were probably still asleep. The nightmare, the memorywas still there, but it grew dim as she walked. She replaced the violence of her father’s death with well-worn thoughts of what it would be like to put a phaser salvo right into the hideously grinning face of that oddly light-haired Cardassian. There were times when she could think of little else.