“Then how do I know you’re not making this up?” Odo asked.
“Why would I make it up?”
“Why indeed.” He frowned, musing. “I suppose I’ll just have to check with Kellec.”
“Okay,” she said. “And Dr. Pulaski.”
“And Dr. Pulaski,” he said.
He didn’t move, though; he didn’t try to use his console or leave the room, either. He just watched her for a moment and then, to her surprise, he attempted a smile. It looked as if he didn’t make that expression very often. It came out as half a grimace.
“All right,” he said. “You may go.”
“As easy as that?” she asked.
“As easy as that,” he said.
“It’s too easy.”
“It’s what you wanted.”
“Yes, but you didn’t check.”
“You weren’t worried about it. That’s confirmation enough for me.”
“What about the quarantine?” Kira asked. “Aren’t you worried I’ll fly off somewhere else?”
“Why should I worry about that?” he asked. “Even if Cardassian space weren’t so heavily patrolled, you would never try anything like that.”
“Just two days ago, you were worried that I might leave here and infect someone else.”
“Two days ago, there wasn’t a Cardassian fleet surrounding Terok Nor and Bajor. You couldn’t go anywhere besides Bajor if you were the most cunning pilot in the quadrant.”
Kira sank into the constable’s chair. “The Cardassian fleet? What are they doing?”
“Think about it,” Odo said. “The plague is back.”
“And they don’t want it to spread to Cardassia Prime.” Kira pounded a fist on the console. “Those bastards!”
Something beeped beneath her hand.
“I would prefer it if you take your anger out on something a little less sensitive,” Odo said.
“Well, then, I guess my mission becomes even more urgent,” Kira said.
“It would seem so.” Odo rounded the desk. “I’ll give you clearance. Then the fleet won’t give you any trouble.”
She looked at him. Those eyes. So sad. She wondered why she always thought of him as sad.
“That’s the second time you’ve done me a favor. Why?”
He shrugged. “Maybe I’ll ask for repayment one day.”
“Maybe.” She slipped from behind the desk. “Anyway, thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “But be careful. If this disease is a designer virus, like they’re saying, finding information about it won’t be easy.”
She nodded. “Thanks for the warning.”
“And it might also be dangerous.”
“That one I figured out on my own.” She glanced at the door. Two Cardassian guards walked through the Promenade. “I hate to impose on you one more time,” she said, “but do you think you could beam me to my ship from here?”
He sighed. “What’s one more violation among friends?” he asked, and pressed the console a few times.
As the transporter beam caught her, she saw him look up. His expression was unguarded—and worried? No. That had to be her imagination. She vowed to shut that imagination off while she conducted her investigation on Bajor. She couldn’t afford to indulge in speculation.
Especially since that’s all her Cardassian counterparts would be doing.
Chapter Twenty-four
DISTANT PHASER FIRE ECHOED throughout the station. Quark had the doors to the business shut and bolted and was still hiding behind the bar. His ear was swollen and covered with blisters. It itched so bad he couldn’t think, and he was doing everything he could with his hands to keep them from scratching.
“That’s the last of it, brother,” Rom said as he came out of their quarters. His right ear was bleeding again. Quark shook his head. If the bar had been open, if he had had any customers, if he had still been serving drinks, he would have forbidden Rom to come out in public. But none of that mattered anymore.
The Bajorans had started rebelling in the Bajoran section, shooting the remaining Cardassian guards. Gul Dukat didn’t have the forces to keep the Bajorans in check. It would only be a matter of time before they overran the station—and then Quark really didn’t know what he’d do. The Bajorans weren’t well known for having a lot of latinum.
Nog entered the bar behind his father. He was wearing the cap the Volian had made for Rom, attempting to follow Quark’s edict not to scratch.
Quark sighed. He had hidden away all of the latinum, and had made Rom and Nog hide the expensive liquor. Now there was nothing he could do except—
“Aeeiieee!” He clapped a hand over his left ear and fell backwards. The itching suddenly got so intense that it was painful. Rom hurried to his side.
“Let me see, brother.”
“You’re not touching me with those infected hands,” Quark said and rolled over, pressing his ear against the floor.
“I’ll wash them first,” Rom said.
“Just let us see, uncle,” Nog said, crouching beside him.
Slowly Quark rolled the opposite direction so that they could see his left ear.
“Oh, my,” Rom said.
“Oh, my?” Quark asked.
“Oh, my, my, my,” Rom said.
“Oh, my, my, my, what?”
“Oh, my, my, my, my, my.”
With his free hand, Quark shoved his brother. “Stop it! What do you see?”
“They’re too big to be blisters,” Nog said.
“What are?”
“The lumps, with pus, traveling toward your ear canal.”
“Brother, you know how sensitive ear canals can be. If one of those gets down there and bursts…”
They all stared at each other. Then Quark got to his feet.
“I don’t care who is shooting at whom, we have to get to the infirmary.”
“People are dying, brother,” Rom said.
“They’re not dying anymore, stupid,” Quark said. “They’re just sick. And they aren’t threatened with—” he couldn’t suppress the shudder—“loss of ear function.”
Rom’s eyes got bigger. Nog put a hand on his hat. “That won’t happen, will it, uncle?”
“Yes, it will,” Quark said, “and it’ll happen to me first. Let’s go.”
They walked to the door of the bar and peered through the glass design. The Promenade was empty.
“I think you should stay here, Nog,” Rom said.
“Why?”
“It might be dangerous out there.”
“No more dangerous than in here,” Nog said, tugging on the hat.
“I want him treated too,” Quark said. “I don’t want to be reinfected.”
He hit the door release and the glass doors opened. The silence was short-lived. He heard more shots and a few screams coming from far away.
“Follow me,” he whispered. He motioned them out and let the doors close and lock behind them. He kept to the wall and crouched; at this level, no one would mistake them for Cardassians. Or Bajorans for that matter.
It took only a few moments to reach the infirmary.
The stench was as bad as it had been before. Maybe worse. Quark let himself inside, and saw patients everywhere, mostly Cardassians, leaning against the wall in a semblance of a line. At the end of it, the male hu-man assistant was attacking them all with a hypospray.
A few Cardassians sat on beds, clutching limbs with phaser burns. Dr. Narat came out of the office and his gaze met Quark’s.
“I don’t have time for Ferengi nonsense,” he said.
“Look,” Quark said, shoving his ear in Narat’s direction. “The infection has gotten worse. It’s heading for the ear canal and when it gets there—”
“I don’t care,” Narat said. “You can wait. It’s not life-threatening.”
“Well, that depends,” Quark said. “If this continues, my quality of life will be dramatically lowered.”
“It’s a minor problem,” Narat s
aid. “Go back to your bar. When things settle down, we’ll worry about your ear infection.”
“Ear infection?” The hu-man female stood in the office door. She wore clothes and looked much too efficient for a female.
“Yes,” Narat said. “I’m trying to get rid of them.”
“Let me see,” she said. She walked over to Quark, who tilted his head up so that she could examine his ear.
Her fingers were gentle on his lobes. If he weren’t in so much pain—
“Kellec,” she said. “Come see this.”
Kellec Ton came out of the office and frowned at her. “What?” he said. “It’s just an ear infection. I treated it before.”
“You did?” she asked.
“Yes, with some antibacterial cream.”
“How long ago was that?”
“A few days.”
“And it’s come back, worse,” Quark said.
“When did this start?” the female asked.
“When the Cardassians poured drinks all over me,” Rom said, a bit too eagerly.
“When was that?” the female asked.
Rom frowned. “About the time that Cardassian turned green and—”
“About the time the plague started,” Quark said. He didn’t want Rom to admit they had carried a sick Cardassian out of the bar. Hu-mans, Bajorans, and particularly Cardassians wouldn’t take well to that.
“Really?” the female said. She bent over his ear again. “Was it this bad when you saw it, Kellec?”
“No,” he said.
Narat joined them. “What you’re thinking is not possible,” he said.
“What are you thinking?” Quark asked.
“A third species,” the female said, not to him, but to the other doctors. “And of course it manifests differently. And not as seriously.”
“That we know of,” Kellec said. “This could just be the early stages.”
“Are you saying we have the plague?” Quark asked.
“Come into the office and let’s find out,” the female said. She sounded remarkably cheery about the whole thing.
Rom grabbed Quark’s arm. “Brother, I don’t want to die.”
“It’s not high on my list either,” Quark said.
“It’s better than being green for the rest of your life,” Nog said, looking around. Rom shushed him, and shoved him forward.
“We won’t die, will we?” Quark asked Narat as he followed him into the crammed office.
“Oh, you’ll die,” Narat said. Then he smiled. “Someday, anyway. You just probably won’t die of this.”
“Some bedside manner,” Quark mumbled, and clenched his fists so that he wouldn’t scratch his extremely itchy ears.
Chapter Twenty-five
THE SOUNDS OF PHASER FIRE off in the distance echoed through the heat and choking stench of the Bajoran section. Kellec Ton had never thought he would ever hear the sounds of battle here. Clearly a few Bajorans had managed to get Cardassian guns and were holding off the Cardassian guards. All the Cardassian guards had been driven from the Bajoran section of the station. For all he knew, the fighters might even be making headway into the Cardassian section. But it wasn’t a headway that was taking them anywhere except closer to their own deaths.
And his too.
He had no doubt that if the final cure wasn’t found quickly, the Cardassians would destroy the station. And possibly even Bajor.
Yet he wasn’t going to tell the fighters that. They were Bajorans, fighters against Cardassian rule. As long as there was one of them left to fight, there was still hope.
Kellec moved quickly from one sick Bajoran to another, inoculating them with the temporary cure. It would get them back on their feet for at least ten hours. Then they’d be back sick again as the virus reformed and tore them apart. But at this point, ten hours was a very long time.
With luck Katherine and her people would find a final cure by then.
He checked his hypospray as he leaned over a young boy whose mother held him in her lap. She looked as flushed and sick as her son. He injected her first, then the boy. He had enough injections for a few more hours at this pace. He had brought supplies from the Cardassian medical lab, and his Bajoran assistants were helping him make more serum in the Bajoran medical area. But down here the process was much slower, the equipment nowhere near as good. There was no way they could keep making enough to maintain all the Bajorans alive until a final cure was found.
Since he’d come into the Bajoran section, the fighting had expanded from isolated sections and now covered the entire area. Most of it was between his position and the Cardassian medical lab. He doubted he could get through at this point; he’d face that problem when he completely ran out of serum.
Again, phaser fire echoed through the wide corridor as two Bajorans carrying another headed toward him.
“Doctor,” one of them said, “can you help him?”
For an instant Kellec didn’t realize the man they were carrying wasn’t sick. He was wounded. A phaser had caught him in the left shoulder.
“Stretch him out here,” Kellec said, motioning to an open place in the hallway beside the woman and her son.
They did as they were told, and quickly he inspected the wounded soldier. Phaser burn. Shock. But he would live, given a little time and care, assuming the entire station lived through this.
Kellec quickly gave the wounded soldier a shot against the virus just to be sure, then glanced up at the other soldiers. “Get him to the medical area. He’s going to be fine. I’ll check in on him in an hour or so.”
“Thanks,” the soldier said.
Kellec watched them carry him off. How crazy was this? He was temporarly curing his people of a deadly desease so they could keep fighting and dying. Sometimes it was hard to keep straight just why he was doing this.
The young boy took a deep shuddering breath, and then started to cry softly.
Kellec glanced at him. Both he and his mother were clearly recovering quickly, regaining the pale, hungry look of a normal Bajoran worker here on Terok Nor. More than likely, they were recovering for the second time.
He watched the mother comfort the child, then nodded. There was one of his reasons. The child. Kellec was fighting for a future for that child beyond working in an uridium-processing plant for a Cardassian dog. He’d keep his people alive long enough to see the Cardassians beaten, even if he had to die along with many others trying.
He moved on, injecting the temporary cure into Bajoran after Bajoran scattered along the wide hallway. And with each patient, he tried not to think about the fact that their only real hope for survival and winning this battle was Katherine and her crew.
They had to find the final cure and find it fast. But if there was anyone he trusted to do it, it was Katherine.
Chapter Twenty-six
IT HAD TAKEN KIRA LONGER than she expected to set up this meeting. She had been back on Bajor for more than a day, and three times she’d had to scramble for her life. The fighting here was intense and getting worse by the hour. The Bajorans saw weakness in the Cardassians and were fighting more and more directly, facing Cardassian guards head-on. She had never seen such ferocity in her own people—and she had always thought of them as extremely fierce—nor had she seen such desperation.
She had been feeling a bit desperate herself. Every time she stumbled, every time she felt even the slightest bit light-headed, she worried that she was getting sick. But so far, the disease had eluded her. She hoped it would continue to do so. There was no guarantee she would survive it if she caught it.
The plague was moving too swiftly. Too many people were dying. They either didn’t have access to the temporary cure, or they hadn’t initally believed the cure was temporary and had disappeared back into the hills. Cardassian guards had taken to haunting medical areas, looking for resistance leaders, hoping to arrest them when they came in for the cure, and that was stopping people from seeking help as well.
The farther away fr
om a city center she got, the less frequently she encountered anyone with a cure at all.
So many Bajorans believed their faith would protect them. So many thought this plague was a lie invented by the Cardassians. And so many more believed that if they just stayed away from other Bajorans while the contagion was on the planet they would be all right. All of that served only to increase the death rate.
And now Kira was a little too far away from the medical facilities for her own comfort. But she had been tracking information on the origin of this disease, and she had come here.
She loathed this part of Bajor. It was barren scrub land, so unlike most of the planet that sometimes she felt as if she weren’t on Bajor at all. If she squinted she could see mountains in the distance—or perhaps she just imagined them and their comfort.
The resistance cell that operated out of this area was known for attempting to organize the other cells. It didn’t work, but it did mean that the information that flowed here was usually reliable.
“Nerys?”
She turned. An old man stood behind her, his arms open. She slipped into them and hugged him hard. “Chamar,” she said. “It’s been a long time.”
“Too long.” He backed out of the hug. “You’re looking well.”
“For now,” she said. “But I don’t like what I’m hearing.”
He nodded. “The plague. It is the final sin the Cardassians will commit against us.”
She took his hands in hers. “Where are the others?”
His eyes were sad. “They have scattered. Some to their families in this time of need, and others to fight a more direct war against the Cardassians. There are only a few of us left here, and I am the one who offered to come meet you.”
“You’re well?” she asked.
“For now,” he said, echoing her words. He took her arm and led her down a thin path into a copse of dying trees. Behind them was a sturdy hut that had been there as long as she remembered. And the nice thing about it was that unless you knew it was there, you couldn’t see it.
He pushed open the door. The interior was neat. A single room with a table and some comfortable chairs, and a small area set aside for sleeping.