Part 10 (1/2)
A single human woman would make no difference in this laboratory. He would worry only when teams of scientists came in. Federation scientists.
And by the time they arrived, it would be too late. No matter how light Gul Dukat's mood, the fact was that Terok Nor was doomed.
He had done the projections before he came, a timetable a.s.suming everything went according to plan-which it had, much to his surprise. It was now time for him to leave. His cloaked s.h.i.+p would pick him up shortly.
And probably just in time. According to his projections, Terok Nor had very little time left.
Chapter Thirteen
SHE WAS CRAZY to have come back to Terok Nor. What had she been thinking when she offered to come here? Certainly she hadn't been thinking very clearly.p> SHE WAS CRAZY to have come back to Terok Nor. What had she been thinking when she offered to come here? Certainly she hadn't been thinking very clearly.p> It no longer seemed like the risks that she took getting here in her small rebel s.h.i.+p, keeping it hidden from Carda.s.sian scans, and then beaming aboard, were going to be worth it. It had been harder this time, because Terok Nor was closed to almost all s.h.i.+ps. She wasn't sure if the beam-in had been detected; she doubted anyone was scouting for security breaches in the middle of this internal crisis.
Kira stood in the center of the Bajoran section. It looked nothing like it had a few months ago, when she had come here to get a list of Bajoran collaborators from a chemist's shop. She didn't like to think about that visit, and how close she had come to becoming a true prisoner of the Carda.s.sians.
She ran her hands over her arms. She had gooseb.u.mps despite the warmth. This place smelled like rot, and if she hadn't known better, she would have thought it like one of the prisoner-of-war camps on Carda.s.sia. Dukat had always prided himself on keeping a clean, well-run station, where he treated the Bajorans ”fairly.”
There was nothing fair about this place any longer. Not even the most delusional could miss that.
Ill Bajorans lay on the floor, their cheeks rosy, their eyes too bright. They held their stomachs and moaned, while family members tried to take care of them. Others were on blankets or coats that someone had given up. There were no Carda.s.sian guards in sight-it was as if the guards had forgotten the Bajorans were here.
Not that it mattered. The Bajorans were too busy dying to think of revolution.
She had had no idea the disease was this bad. If she had to guess, she would estimate that half of the Bajorans she saw were in some stage of illness.
And she saw no sign of Kellec Ton at all. No sign of any doctors, no sign of any help. How could Dukat allow this? How could anyone?
There had to be someone that the Bajorans looked to for leaders.h.i.+p, someone who took control of various situations. But she didn't even know where to look. The fine web of corridors and large rooms that had served as the Bajoran section no longer had any order to it at all. The sick lay everywhere, even in the eating areas, and there were a few bodies stacked near the entrance to the processing plants.
Bodies. Stacked. She had never expected to see this. She didn't even know where to begin.
She wanted to roll up her sleeves and help, but she knew nothing about medicine, at least this kind of medicine. Give her a patient with a phaser burn and she could treat it, or a broken arm and she could set it, but to die like this, moaning in excruciating agony while everyone around was busy with their own deaths, was something completely beyond her.
Two Carda.s.sian guards walked through the corridor. They stepped over the ill and dying Bajorans as if they were simply rocks lying in their path. They were talking in low tones, their conversation impossible to hear.
Kira tensed. If they saw her, they might bring her to Dukat. And that was the last thing she needed.
She slid down the wall, and buried her face in her knees. She couldn't bring herself to moan, to feign the illness so many others were dying of. But she kept herself immobile.
As the Carda.s.sians pa.s.sed, their conversation became clearer.
”... so desperate that he's allowing the Bajoran doctor to work on Carda.s.sian patients.”
”That's not what I've heard. I've heard the illnesses are related, and if they find a cure for one, they find a cure for both.” ”It's a Bajoran trick.” ”What makes you think that?”
”They designed this virus to kill us, but it backfired. It makes them sick as well.”
”Surely if that were true, Dukat wouldn't let that Bajoran anywhere near the medical section.”
”Dukat is smarter than you think. Perhaps he wants Narat to catch the Bajoran infecting Carda.s.sians...”
Their voices faded. Kira raised her head just enough to be able to watch them leave out of the corner of one eye. So the rumor about the Carda.s.sians was true; they were dying of this disease as well.
And of course, the lower-level guards believed that the Bajorans were behind the illness, not realizing that the Bajorans no longer had the capability to do anything like this. Bajorans were struggling just to stay alive.
She hadn't expected it to be so easy to discover where Kellec Ton was, though. He was in the Carda.s.sian medical section, helping save Carda.s.sians. She would never have believed it of him. He had to have some other plan in mind. But she wasn't sure what that would be, nor was she certain how to reach him. It would mean leaving the Bajoran section. Some Bajorans did, she knew, but very few. And they were usually collaborating somehow.
She had been outside the Bajoran section last year, when she went to the chemist's to steal that list of collaborators, but everything had gone wrong. She had had to kill the chemist, and she had gotten caught. She managed to lie her way out of it, though, and escape with her life.
She wasn't sure she'd be that lucky this time.
But if the Carda.s.sians were sick too, and the guard levels down here were any indication, she might have an easier time of it. The entire station seemed to be preoccupied with itself, turned inward, not outward. Maybe no one cared any longer about collaborators and the resistance. Maybe all anyone on Terok Nor cared about was surviving from moment to moment.
She waited until she was certain the guards were long gone. Then she rose ever so slowly, looking both ways. As she did, the wall at her back moved.
She gasped and turned. What she had thought to be a small beam attached to the wall turned into a liquid, then formed itself into a man. The security chief. Odo.
She swallowed. He had caught her the last time, and nearly tried her for murder. But she had convinced him that she hadn't killed that Carda.s.sian chemist and he had helped her escape. She hadn't expected to see him again.
”Kira Nerys, isn't it?” Odo said, as his shape solidified.
She didn't answer him, just watched him.
”I wondered who would be foolish enough to beam aboard a quarantined station.”
She swallowed hard, but lifted her chin in a defiant movement.
”Or didn't you know that everyone is dying here?” He tilted his head. He was such a strange creature. His features weren't completely formed, and yet she could see something in those eyes. A sadness, perhaps. ”You're not dying,” she said.
”I'm not Bajoran or Carda.s.sian.” Odo crossed his arms. ”You do realize that I should tell Gul Dukat of your arrival.”
”I thought you said everyone is dying.”
”It was only a slight exaggeration. Dukat, so far, seems fine.”
”That's no surprise,” Kira said.
”What does that mean?”
”It means those guards had this whole thing backwards. The Carda.s.sians designed this plague to kill Bajorans, and now it's backfired on them.”
”Do you actually believe that?” Odo asked. ”You always struck me as such an intelligent woman before.”
She felt herself flush. ”So you believe the Carda.s.sian version?”
”Actually, I have a feeling that there's something else going on entirely. Your people and the Carda.s.sians are so focused on your hatred for each other that you can't see beyond yourselves.”
She frowned. ”What do you know?”