Текст книги "Dawn of the Eagles "

Автор книги: Stephani Danelle Perry

Соавторы: Gene Rodenberry,Britta Dennison
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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

Dukat saw Gil Trakad through the crowd, such as it was, and sighed. There was only a small turnout for Merchant’s Day, a quarterly event on the station in which free samples of food and drink were passed out to the Cardassian populace, but there were enough people around that it was no place to discuss business. And from the eager expression on Trakad’s wide face, it could only be business.

Trakad spotted him and hurried across the Promenade. Dukat started walking as soon as Trakad reached him, steering them toward a quieter spot. They stopped near the entry to Quark’s—the Ferengi bartender did not participate in Merchant’s Days—and Trakad started speaking in a low, quick voice.

“I’ve got information,” he said. “I’ve been monitoring the private channels for transmissions of interest, and—”

“Keep your voice down,” Dukat said, glancing around them. There was no one close, but he disliked having confidential discussions in public. One never knew who might be listening.

Trakad spoke in a stage whisper. “Dalin Russol sent a message to a point outside Cardassian space. To coordinates that are listed as a possible Federation contact.”

Dukat cocked an eye ridge. “Really? When was this?”

“Yesterday, at precisely 2200 hours.”

“What was the message?”

Trakad shook his head. “Encoded. But no code is unbreakable.”

“Indeed not,” Dukat said, starting to smile. In spite of an exemplary record, Dalin Gaten Russol had remained something of an enigma since he’d come to Terok Nor. No matter the conversation, he kept himself removed from it, spouting clichés of patriotism in answer to any direct question. Dukat had half thought him another plant from the Order—they were always dropping their agents clumsily on his station—but perhaps Russol was something else entirely.

“Make an isolinear recording of the transmission and bring it to my office immediately,” Dukat said. He’d had no small experience with code breaking. He would decipher it himself.

“Immediately, Prefect.” He turned his smile to Trakad. “Depending on what the dalin had to say, perhaps we can revisit the idea of upgrading your quarters.”

Trakad bowed as he backed away. “Thank you, sir.”

Dukat waited a moment before turning and heading back to operations, reprioritizing the rest of his day as he walked, smiling faintly at the passing familiar faces. He had too much to do; his walk to the Promenade for lunch had been his only break in what felt like days. There was the famine in Hedrikspool Province to manage, thanks to a katterpodweevil infestation that wasn’t discovered until days before harvest. The surface commander summit was coming up, and he was expected to attend, to dispel rumors that a withdrawal was imminent. There were still the daily reports to get to, and a depressingly low weekly ore output to bury in the numbers…

As he stepped into the turbolift, turning to face the door, he saw Dalin Russol walk out of the security office, his head high, his shoulders back. A man with a purpose. He quickly disappeared from sight, but Dukat smiled again as the door slid closed, deciding he’d get to that recording sooner rather than later.

Kalisi considered her options carefully before acting, enjoying the feel of her mind at work again—looking for the best angle, the most propitious path. For the first time since leaving the science institute, she felt like herself, or the self she was before she came to Bajor. Like a woman willing to do whatever was necessary to achieve her goals.

When she felt comfortable with her plan—as comfortable as she could feel, considering the risks she meant to take—she contacted the university representative, double-checking the time difference to be sure she could reach her directly.

Tera Glees was again impeccably dressed, her tastes simple and expensive. Kalisi smiled politely.

“Ms. Glees, I’m so pleased to meet you.”

The woman smiled in turn. “Doctor Reyar, thank you for returning my contact. Have you had a chance to consider our offer?”

“I have,” Kalisi said. “I would like very much to work at the University of Culat. However, I’m currently invested in a project I can’t afford to walk away from at this time. Might I inquire if you mean to keep the position open much longer?”

The representative tilted her head slightly. “How long would you need?”

Kalisi tried to read the woman’s face for some indication of how much she could get, but Glees was impassive, her expression carefully controlled. Kalisi went with the truth. “I am uncertain at this time.”

Glees’ smile went flat. “Unless you can be more specific, I’m unable to promise anything…”

“Of course,” Kalisi said. “Perhaps I might inquire again, once I have a better sense of my time frame.”

Glees nodded. “That would be best.”

“Might I ask—have you contracted anyone to head the exobiology department?”

Glees blinked. “We have not. That is, the university already has Doctor Revel Panh on main faculty. He will probably lead the research branch, as well.”

Kalisi nodded. “He is renowned. Who is your exobiology specialist? You have one, of course.”

Glees hesitated just long enough to let Kalisi know she’d chosen the right tack. The representative obviously took great pride in her school; she did not like any oversights to be pointed out. “Why do you ask?”

“Only because my immediate superior is Doctor Crell Moset,” Kalisi said proudly. “You know of him? He’s been awarded commendations on several occasions—” She allowed a fleeting look of surprise to cross her face, of realization. “You could get him. He is eager to return to Cardassia Prime, to pursue his research.”

Glees looked surprised. “Doctor Moset is available?”

“He is,” Kalisi said, then smiled. “But don’t tell him I said so,” she added lightly.

Glees’ eyes narrowed. “Why not?”

Kalisi shrugged. “Oh, of course, tell him if you wish. I only meant to say that Doctor Moset is a great man, but of fragile ego. He’s quite proud of his reputation. You know how it is for men in the sciences…”

Glees nodded, catching on. Figuring it out for herself, exactly as Kalisi wanted. “He might be insulted that we did not contact him of our own initiative,”she said.

Kalisi nodded gratefully. “You understand.”

Glees offered a wry smile. “Too well.”

Kalisi didn’t want to overplay. Time to end the call. “I hope very much that I’ll be able to finish this project in short order, and that the weapons research position will still be open,” she said. “Work at the University of Culat…I am truly honored.”

Again, just the right thing to say. Glees’s smile was sincere. “Contact me as soon as you know anything.”

The two women broke contact, Kalisi pleased with her performance, the first step in the small charade that would end with her freedom—from Bajor, from Moset, from her ghosts, new and old. It wasn’t too late for her, not yet.

Quark’s bar was entirely empty, and he stared glumly at the people outside as they passed his entrance. He usually closed his bar for this event; it was Merchant’s Day, the ridiculous Cardassian tradition that requested all the sellers along the Promenade to provide free samples for the soldiers. It was supposed to bolster business, but all Quark could see was one great big handout. That wasn’t business, it was charity, and Ferengi most certainly did not advocate charity. Not only was it against the law on his homeworld, he could expect to wind up in the Vault of Eternal Destitution in the next life if he were to participate in such blasphemy. The very word was profane, and the idea of it made his gorge rise.

Quark’s back was to the door, his arms folded irritably across his chest, considering that he might as well have closed today, when someone entered, and Quark turned to see the new Cardassian soldier from security approaching the bar with long, determined strides. Quark broke into his best-rehearsed smile. “Welcome to Quark’s,” he said, but the Cardassian did not answer.

“Well, what’ll it– ugh!” he gurgled, as the big man grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him up off his feet, almost over the surface of the bar.

The Cardassian spoke with no inflection. “Morn tells me that you refuse to serve him. He’s planning to file a formal complaint.”

“M—Morn?” Quark asked, through quick, hyperventilating breaths.

“The Lurian,”the man said, with slow and deliberate anger.

“Is…he…a friend of yours?”

“I could care less about him,” the Cardassian said coldly. “I’m doing my job.”

“You’re Dalin Russol, aren’t you? I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.” Quark tried to smile, but the Cardassian said nothing. What is his problem?“Lurians are bad for business,” Quark squeaked. “Nobody will want to come in here if he’s hovering at the end of the bar like a ghoul, talking everyone’s ears off…and he wants to drink on credit!” He coughed, strangling. “But…maybe we could work something out.”

The Cardassian continued to glower forcefully as his grip tightened on the front of Quark’s clothes. “I have heard about you,” he finally said through his teeth, his voice a thin, tight line of fury. “From my very good friend, Natima Lang.”

Quark inhaled sharply. “Natima,” he said, the fear temporarily forgotten as he revisited his shame. “How is she? Is she well?” His labored breath slowed as he pictured her, so graceful, so clever and beautiful. He had never met another woman like her, and he didn’t expect he ever would again.

“Don’t you even speak her name,” Russol hissed.

“Please,” Quark begged. “You must tell her– auch!” He squealed as the Cardassian went for his ear. “Please!”he cried out. “Not the lobes!”

Russol continued to twist and pull while Quark struggled for his wits, anything he could give this man to make him stop this overt torture. “Wait!” he cried out, “I hear things on the station all the time… ow!…please stop! Listen to me!”

Russol loosened the pressure on Quark’s ear without letting go entirely. “What kinds of things?”

Quark’s head was bent uncomfortably where Russol gripped his lobe. “I heard…Dukat talking about you with his… ow!…one of his henchmen. He was talking about…the Federation or something…”

“The Federation?” Russol let him go abruptly, dropping him. “Tell me more, Ferengi, or I won’t just twist your ear, I’ll cut it off.”

From his huddle on the floor Quark cradled his ear, panting with relief and fear. “His lackey said something about you…talking to a Federation person or something…and then Dukat told him to make an…an isolinear recording of the conversation.”

“When was this?” Russol demanded.

“Just now,” Quark said. “Not ten minutes ago.”

Russol turned to leave, appearing very troubled, but he before he left he turned again. “I’m not through with you,” he said menacingly.

“Could you just tell Natima that I never meant to—” Quark stopped as he saw it was no use, Russol was gone. In another beat, Quark saw a massive shape in the doorway, and his first instinct was to shoo him off—it was the Lurian. But any business today was welcome business, and Quark smiled at the hairy alien instead, gesturing for him to sit, thinking that maybe letting this man have a drink on credit wouldn’t be the worst thing that he had ever done.

Odo was beginning to feel better suited to his new role as he crossed into the Bajoran side of the station, though he could not say why. He liked working with Dalin Russol, and the Bajorans here seemed to accept Odo’s authority, for the most part. Perhaps they believed that he was preferable to Thrax, his predecessor—this was Dukat’s estimation of the situation. Odo hadn’t seen any particular evidence of this, but he surmised it was a likely possibility. He was not a Cardassian, after all.

Odo found the red-haired woman named Kira in the same place he’d interviewed her before, sitting at a table in the eatery with a cup of tea in her hands. It was at her request that they met this time, though he couldn’t imagine what she wanted with him.

She wasted no time in telling him. “Constable,” she said in an urgent whisper, “do you know anything about my transport off the station?”

“What?” Odo did not immediately follow. “You were…leaving the station?’

“Of course I was leaving,” she whispered, looking around. “It was arranged that a Cardassian gil was supposed to transport me off the station, but he never came. He was supposed to pull me out of ore processing last night.”

Odo shook his head from side to side. “I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “Probably, though, the Cardassian pocketed the money and left. Motivated by profit, of course,” he added.

The woman only stared at him, no less angry and frantic. “It’s…a possibility,” she said, “but it’s just as possible that he was found out, and something happened to him.”

Odo frowned. “Are you concerned about him?”

“Of course not! I need to get off this station, don’t you understand?”

“I don’t know anything about it,” he repeated.

She sat back in her chair, looking down into her empty cup. She still seemed angry, but there was something else in it, too. Distress. Odo wanted to help her, though he wasn’t sure why. Helping her would certainly welcome chaos here, and Odo had no desire to bring more chaos upon himself.

“Why are you fighting the Cardassians?” he suddenly asked.

She looked up from her cup and laughed, though it was not a happy sound. “Because,” she said. “Because everything the Cardassians have, they stole from us. From my people—from me.”

Odo considered it. “It has been suggested that the Bajoran people asked the Cardassians to come to Bajor,” he said.

Kira shook her head. “Suggested by Cardassians, I’m sure.” Her eyes flashed, expressing a depth of emotion that he could scarcely imagine. “You see how we’re treated. You think this is something we want?”

It certainly seemed unlikely, but he did not see how his opinion mattered, one way or another. He could only do his job, which was to correct injustices as defined by Cardassian law…which quite suddenly seemed terrifically unfair. Shouldn’t he be allowed to discern fairness based on the specifics of any given situation? Shouldn’t everyone?

He spoke before he had a chance to think further. “I can help you,” he offered, having no idea how he would go about it.

“Help me?”

“Get off the station.”

Her eyes widened slightly, her expression of anger softening somewhat. “How are you going to do that?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But…I’ll find a way.”

16

Only two days after Kalisi contacted the university rep, Doctor Moset walked into the hospital’s main computer room with a broad grin on his narrow face.

This is it, she thought, and relaxed. Finally. The waiting had been uncertain.

“There you are,” he said, walking over to where she sat, running the weekly diagnostics on the security system. “You’ll never imagine what happened this morning.”

Kalisi was the picture of innocence. “What happened?”

He sat next to her, looking around to be sure they were alone. One of the nurses had been in to check something, but had left promptly when he’d seen Moset come in. No one else was within earshot.

“I was contacted by the University of Culat,” he said. “They’ve offered me a position in exobiology, specializing in nonhumanoid. A chair, Kali, if it works out. And…I’ve accepted.”

Kalisi widened her eyes. “Crell! How wonderful!”

He took her hand, squeezed it in his own thin, sleek fingers. “We could work together, darling. You must call them back, ask if the weapons position is still open.”

She met his gaze, her own filled with manufactured hope. “I’d like that. But—” She shook her head. “The vaccine…there’s the batch recovery in just a few more weeks. If we want to replicate the master samples, we should start with a new synthesis.”

Moset frowned. “Perhaps I could arrange to come back for a time…”

“No, Crell,” she said, firmly, lovingly. “I will stay. I’ve already explained that I have a project to finish before I can consider their offer, and you’ve accepted. I will see to it that the master vaccine samples are properly adjusted.”

He reached out to touch her face, fingers spidering over her skin. “It is my work, Kali. I couldn’t ask you to stay…”

“You’re not asking, I’m offering,” she said. “Truly, is there anyone else you would trust with the documentation of the process? To see it through?”

She waited, watched him think. She was prepared to lie outright to get him away—create some false family issue she needed to resolve before she could return home, or even suggest that she wanted him to make a place ready for her, calling on the archaic tradition in which a man creates a suitable home for his affianced before she will agree to marry him.

Funny, though, how neither of us has mentioned marriage…She suspected that he would, before much longer. Or not. In some ways, she knew nothing at all about Crell Moset.

He finally shook his head and answered her question. “You know there isn’t.”

“Let me stay,” she said. “I’ll finish the work, I’ll record everything…And then I can meet you at Culat.”

Moset beamed at her, impulsively raising her hand to his lips, dry as desert grass. “What would I do without you?”

So far, so good.

She smiled back at him. “Does this mean I’ll meet your cousin?”

“My cousin?”

“The one you were telling me about, who walks the Oralian Way.”

Moset grinned ever wider. “Did I say it was a cousin? I don’t recall.”

She laughed. “I thought you had,” she said, and went in another direction, wanting to defer his suspicions. “Ever since you told me about the Way, I’ve wondered…You say the current leader was trained at the Ministry of Science?”

“Yes.”

“As was I,” she said. “I am curious about when she was supposed to have worked there. Perhaps I knew her.”

Moset smiled. “Perhaps you areher.”

His attempts at humor were oblique and rarely funny. “What do you mean?”

“Only that when you told me you’d handled the Bajoran artifact—Astraea was alleged to have received her call by touching one of those Orbs, at the ministry. And she is about your age, I believe. You would have trained around the same time.” He chuckled, then turned mock serious. “Tell me, Kali, are you secretly speeding away to Cardassia City when you’re not with me, leading an ancient religion in your spare time?”

Miras.Instantly, she knew. Her friend from school, who’d borrowed Kalisi’s clearance to look at the Orb, who’d suffered some sort of hallucination that day the computers had glitched… Astraea is Miras Vara.

She’d planned to use the information about Moset’s relative as her leverage, but if it was true, if the secret leader of the Oralian Way was Miras…

She had to pretend admiration at his clever jest, but her laugh was real. Crell Moset had just inadvertently provided her with exactly what she needed to ensure that she could achieve all of her objectives.

I will be free, she promised herself, and laughed again.

Making his way through the corridor near the empty habitat ring, Odo was startled when someone grabbed his arm. Without thinking, he dissolved into a liquid from his shoulder to his wrist, removing himself from the clutching fingers. He was considering his response when he realized that it was Dalin Gaten Russol.

“Odo!” The Cardassian appeared unhappy, his movements anxious. “I need your help.”

Odo took a step back. The urgency in Russol’s voice was troubling. “What’s happened?”

“I…I need you to do something for me. There is an isolinear recording in Dukat’s office. I need that recording. My life depends on it, Odo. Possibly more than my life.”

Odo blinked, a conscious action that did not, of course, come naturally to him. It was something that he often remembered to do only when he was beginning to feel distress or confusion. It was one of the first habits he’d been taught. “What is more important than your life?”

“I can’t explain it, Odo. Just understand that this matter is of the utmost significance.”

“I’m sure I can retrieve it for you,” Odo said, and something occurred to him then—something vaguely related to the idea of profit. An exchange…of goods—or services. He spoke slowly. “But I will need you to help me with something, as well.”

“Anything I can do for you, Odo, I will do it. Just get me that recording by the end of the day.”

“I will get it for you now, if you like. But there is a Bajoran woman who needs to get off the station,” Odo said. “Do you think you could assist her?”

Russol looked surprised for a brief moment before he nodded. “That’s almost too easy,” he replied. He looked sidelong at Odo. “A Bajoran woman, eh? Why, may I ask, is this particular Bajoran important to you?”

Odo frowned. He was unsure of the answer himself. “It seems to me…if you are unwilling to share more information about your isolinear recording, then perhaps we can agree to keep our motives to ourselves.”

Russol nodded, a smile spreading across his face. “Agreed.”

Dukat was ready to see her, or rather, believed that Kira Nerys might finally be ready to see him. He’d watched the feeds from the processing levels off and on since her arrival, watched her shoulders begin to slump as she saw her future unfolding, grit and grease and no way out. Whatever rebellious spirit had dared her to come to Terok Nor, it had certainly been diminished. He didn’t want her broken, just receptive.

He summoned Basso Tromac to his office, considering how the meeting might unfold: young Nerys, frightened and alone, brought before the prefect, a man she’d been raised to fear and even hate, who’d loved her mother in secret, taken care of her as she had taken care of him. Nerys would never know that part of it, of course. That would be…counter-productive, in any case. But he saw a real opportunity here, to act as a father figure to the girl. Perhaps his could be the firm, guiding hand that would lead her away from her vain struggles, lead her to accept a better life for herself. Surely, it was what Meru would have wanted.

He sighed, wishing that was his only interest. In truth, he also sought distraction from the steady decline in Bajor’s export quotas. Until Kell and the Council finally relented, sending what was needed to keep Bajor profitable—surveyors, geologists, researchers to study pharmaceutical possibilities in the flora; the list of possibilities were endless—there would be no respite from the dropping figures. Bajor would serve Cardassia well for at least another generation, but until the Union was willing to invest, the statistics would tell a different story; would show, in fact, that the planet was beginning to run out of nonrenewable resources.

And the blame would be laid on me. He disliked the thought of how it might read in the story of the Union, the one dutifully memorized by schoolchildren. He could see how it would look, where the implications would fall…

A signal at his door, and then Basso Tromac walked in. “You wanted to see me, Gul?”

Dukat smiled, his thoughts returning to Nerys. “Yes. I think our Bajoran guest has squirmed long enough. I want you to bring her to me.”

“Here?” Basso asked, his expression giving the rest of his thought away– and not your quarters?Puerile of mind.

“Where else?” Dukat asked, his smile sharp.

Basso nodded. “Of course. Right away.”

He left the office and Dukat sat at his desk again. But perhaps he should be standing when Nerys was shown in. Which would be least threatening to her? It was his attention to detail that often won him the things he sought, and disarming the Bajoran girl of lifelong prejudices would be no easy task. This would only be the first session of many, he was sure, but first impressions were often the strongest.

He turned to his computer, calling up her file—calling up both of her files, after a moment’s thought, the original and the one he’d personally edited. Perhaps presenting her with evidence of his sincerity would be a good beginning. A handful of internal memos popped up—authorization requests, mostly—and he quickly answered them, only pausing over one. A waste processor needed replacement, a costly and time-intensive task, and while it needed to be done, he thought it might be put off awhile—

There was a noise, close behind him. Dukat turned, stylus in hand, the briefest pulse of instinctive fear clenching his gut—

– assassination—

–and he saw a vole, fat and sleek and holding something in its jaws, disappearing into the air conduit by the door. Another refugee from the storage bays, an ever-present nuisance that continued to thrive in spite of maintenance’s best efforts. The voles arrived in cargo containers from home, lived on the refuse left out by the Bajorans, by careless shopkeepers. Terok Nor represented the very pinnacle of Cardassian technology; that they couldn’t rid themselves of a few voles was an utter embarrassment.

Overcome by disgust, Dukat threw his stylus after it. He picked up a padd from his desk and threw that, too, but the gesture was a futile one. The vole was gone.

His lanky, leaning form, his thin blade of a smile, his strange precision in even the smallest of tasks…Crell Moset was gone, packed and returned to Cardassia Prime. It hadn’t taken long, once the gears had ground into motion, moving the science ministry’s complicated transfer process along. There had been a formal reassignment of staff, a small, private dinner attended by a handful of colleagues, and a final, inevitable night of passion with Kalisi. She had enjoyed the sex. His efforts were sincere and practiced, making it easy to forget the rest of it—what she’d read recently about his experiments with polytrinic acid, for example, on living Bajorans. Or the radiation tests, or the additive to the Fostossa vaccine, or a dozen other things she’d learned since first submitting to his caresses. Her body responded in spite of her thoughts and, she had to admit, because of them, the darker feelings adding a flavor to their coupling that had frightened her, afterwards, but had, at the time, been extremely stimulating.

Only hours after their final, lingering kiss, the very morning his shuttle left atmosphere, she set to work. She destroyed every existing variation of the sterilization component and spent several hours wiping its formulation from the records before she set the machines to work up a new synthesis. Or, rather, the old one. The one that lacked Moset’s additive. On the chance that someone might later try to recover his work at the facility, she altered the lists of chemicals taken from inventory over the past year. Finally, she replicated the original masters and issued the commands necessary to begin full facility batch fermentation. The Bajorans would receive the Fostossa vaccine, nothing more.

It didn’t take long to tear it all down, his brilliant solution to the Bajoran question; she’d managed it in only a few hours. With Moset gone, much of the research facility that adjoined the hospital had been shut down. Another doctor would reopen in a few weeks, someone doing a study on botanical medicine or something equally uninteresting. Kalisi was not bothered by anyone as she worked. Anyway, she had higher clearance than any wandering aide who might wonder what she was doing, running the entire system and every outlet from the computer room, searching each database for particular files that might have been cached away. By midafternoon, she was certain that there was no trace of Moset’s recent work left anywhere in the system. She could do nothing about his personal hardware—he’d taken his work padds with him, of course—but she had reason to hope he wouldn’t be around to use them for very much longer.

She sat in his private office, looking around at the empty spaces where the doctor had kept his eccentric memorabilia: an anatomical model of a Cardassian heart; a holo of his mother and grandmother, sharing a single stern expression; a complete set of the works of Iloja; and his prize, an extensive collection of beetles from different worlds. The room still felt like him, though perhaps that was because parts of her still ached from his heartfelt farewell, and she could still smell his breath in her hair, feel his hands on her body…

She shivered, a mix of revulsion and heat that she did not attempt to explain to herself. What mattered was that her first objective had been met. She wasn’t sorry that she had acted, although she knew that if the rest of her plans didn’t work out, she’d just signed her own death warrant, deliberately destroying legitimate research of use to the Union. Would Moset come after her personally? She didn’t know. More likely, the ministry would insist on a trial, the doctor their main witness against her. Because her guilt was incontrovertible, a trial, too, would mean her death.

Why had she done this thing? Why would she willingly place what was left of her career in jeopardy, risk bringing shame to her family, risk her own execution? She had thought upon it often since the day she’d assisted in sterilizing an entire community of Bajorans, and had come to realize that she did not wish to spend the rest of her life haunted by what she had helped Crell Moset create. She could still have children, might even choose to do so if she met a fitting suitor to sire them; she might, she might not…But the understanding that she had the choice was important for her, as a woman and as a Cardassian, as a responsible member of the Union. As little as she cared for the Bajoran people, she didn’t want her name to be associated with the sterilization of a species. If it was true, what Moset said, that allowing them to bear young would doom tens of thousands of them to slow starvation, then she’d just created an apocalypse for them. But their future was not set in stone. And if he was wrong, she’d left them a choice, and that did not seem to be such a great evil. They would probably choose incorrectly, anyway. They were an illogical people.

Her reasons no longer had bearing, which was a relief; she could stop thinking about that aspect. It was done, and if she hoped to survive the aftermath, she needed to act.

From the empty office, she put in a call to her father, using his secure channel, breathing deeply as she waited for the relays to go through. She was no longer certain she understood what evil was. She’d always believed it to be a deliberate thing, a conscious decision—one man chooses to kill another for personal gain; he is evil. Working with Dr. Moset had taken her certainty away about a number of things. He did not wish the Bajorans any harm; he simply saw them as a factor in his equations, another variable to be quantified and managed. He had his formulas and his experiments, he looked at the numbers, he decided how best to fulfill his purpose, and acted accordingly. It was cold and brutal, science without sentiment, and it was who and what she had been before coming to work with Doctor Moset. Evil? May as well attempt to apply morality to mathematics. The only thing she knew with any certainty anymore was that she never wanted to see Crell Moset again. She wanted her last chance at a real life, that was all.