Odo twisted his body into his humanoid form and stepped out into a small clearing where the soldier would be likely to see him. The soldier did see him, an expression of surprise crossing his ridged face. He pulled his weapon clumsily from its holster.
“You there!” The soldier called out. “State your business! Do you have a permit to be in this region?”
“No,” Odo said. “I am merely traversing from one location to another.”
“Travel is strictly prohibited through this area, unless you have authorization from the prefect.” He stopped short after a moment, and holstered his weapon as he came closer. “Are you Odo’Ital, the shape-shifter?”
It was Odo’s turn to be startled. “Yes.”
“I have been instructed to bring you to the prefect,” the soldier told him. “Come along with me immediately.”
“But…I am traveling,” Odo said. “I don’t want to go with you.”
The soldier drew his phaser again. “It’s not for you to decide,” he said. He seemed angry, though Odo didn’t know why.
Odo decided it wasn’t a good time to attempt to puzzle out the soldier’s motives. He was no longer feeling quite so confident that the Cardassian’s weapon would indeed be harmless to him. He decided he’d better change his form, though he wasn’t at first sure what he should become.
The Cardassian took a step back as Odo shrank, and then expanded, transforming himself into a bird. A great bird with a massive wingspan—a sinoraptor, like those he had seen with Jaxa. He spread his wings, and then uncertainly moved them, testing his abilities in this form. The structure of his tapered bones was too heavy, and he hollowed them, feeling his body lighten with the shift. The soldier looked astonished. Although he had purported to know of Odo’s shape-shifting abilities, apparently he had not expected to see the ability displayed.
Before Odo knew it, he was flying, his wings lifting him up over the treetops, over the head of the bemused and frightened Cardassian soldier, who seemed to have quite forgotten what his phaser was good for.
Natima shifted uncomfortably in the straight-backed chair of the waiting room, but it wasn’t only the chair that made her squirm. Being on the surface again had brought up memories. Not all of them were unpleasant—far from it—but she had been so much younger when she’d been here before, still full of idealism and conviction, the indulgences of youth. Being here made her feel quite old, and not a little depressed at the steady passage of time.
A male secretary in a glinn’s uniform finally nodded at her, and she rose from the stiff chair and walked to the exarch’s office without further ceremony. His office was as dark and dusty as the rest of the Tozhat settlement, a place that she remembered as being clean and well-lit, nothing like the shabbiness she saw around her now. As she knew from her research, Central Command refused to appropriate any monies toward the maintenance of the mostly abandoned Cardassian colonies.
“Exarch,” she said to the man who sat in the dim room at a broad wooden desk of Bajoran design. He looked fatter in person.
“You may call me Yoriv.” The man was polite, but not entirely friendly. He gestured toward a chair and she sat, doing her best to seem at ease.
“Certainly, Yoriv. I am here on behalf of Glinn Gaten Russol, someone who has assured me that you will be sympathetic to the requests he has asked me to put to you.”
“Miss Lang, I remind you that I feel some reluctance in discussing political matters with an information correspondent.”
“Please, Yoriv. I understand your reticence, but I only have a message to deliver. There is nothing that you must say.”
The smile he gave her was small and patronizing, as if she’d already wasted his time. “Well then, deliver it.”
“Russol understands that a council is to be held on Terok Nor in the coming months,” Natima said. “The civilian leaders here will have the opportunity to present their opinions regarding the status of the Bajoran venture. Russol wonders if you might be likely to voice an opinion in favor of withdrawal.”
“Withdrawal!” Skyl snorted, apparently forgetting that Natima had excused him from the necessity of reply. “Central Command would never be in favor of withdrawal, not now that the resistance is finally straggling to an end.”
Natima spoke slowly, respectfully. “Russol believes that perhaps you are the sort of person who might understand that the Cardassian economy has begun experiencing a downturn, and will likely continue to plummet if the return of Bajoran resources continue to slow, as it has lately begun to do. Russol has long felt that the needless deaths of our troops on this world has not been sufficiently justified by the short-term success of the annexation.” She took a breath, for she had just made a bold statement. She hoped that in doing so, she would convince Skyl that she was not trying to trick him, but it seemed to backfire.
“Do you honestly believe that I would discuss my intentions with a member of the Information Service?” he asked her, his tone even less friendly than before. “By trying to draw me into this conversation, it seems you might be attempting to coerce me into making a statement that would be looked upon very unfavorably by Central Command.”
“As I said before, Yoriv, there is no need for you to make a reply, if you don’t choose to. I am merely here as a messenger.”
“Fine,” Skyl replied. “But you might want to tell Russol that the next time he wants to send me a message, he would do best not to employ an information correspondent to deliver it.”
“I understand,” Natima said, and stood to leave, the meeting clearly over.
“Miss Lang,” he said, before she reached the door, and she turned to look at him. “As a correspondent…you must be aware that the average Cardassian citizen doesn’t regard the deaths of the soldiers here to be needless and tragic, despite the mere temporary nature of Bajoran benefits. Those soldiers are heroes, not martyrs.”
“Yes, I do know,” Natima replied. “But Russol thought that perhaps you felt differently—that, being on the surface, you would have firsthand knowledge regarding the violence, and the speed with which the resources here are being depleted.”
Skyl laughed. “The state of Bajor’s resources has been a matter of much speculation,” he agreed, “but their actual status is unimportant. What matters is the people’s perception of their necessity. If Central Command decides that Bajor’s resources are spent, then they will be. If they decide otherwise, then it will be as they say.”
Natima was speechless. Skyl’s mocking tone seemed to indicate that he agreed with her and with Russol, but he was clearly not going to say so. She nodded to him with an uncertain expression of feigned politeness, and left, wondering if she had learned anything of value.
Dukat had been intrigued by Mora’s extensive “notes” on Odo’Ital, although the proper format was lacking; the man was far from fluent in Cardassian. Still, Dukat had managed to skim over most of the high points in the past weeks, since his team had trailed Odo to a village in Dahkur. Odo measured as highly intelligent, but had received no formal education, had been taught only from institute files and by the Bajoran scientist. Not that Dukat doubted Mora’s loyalty—the Bajoran had assisted with the sensors and weapons that had effectively shut down the Bajoran insurgency—but it did make him doubt Yopal’s good sense. Why hadn’t she assigned a Cardassian scientist, even a team of them, once she’d realized Odo’s potential? What if they could clone him, create a race of shape-shifters, working for the Union? Regardless of his future applications, someone should have been giving him a proper Cardassian education when he was still young enough for it to imprint.
Too late, of course, but Dukat was not a man to dwell on past mistakes. What mattered now was coaxing Odo to Terok Nor. Dukat knew he’d find inspiration for future plans once he actually met with the creature, but he hadn’t had time to follow up his initial plans, of late. There had been the yearly financial report to prepare, a problem with the processors that had caused them to miss their quota for more than a week—nothing to scoff at, when there was a growing push at home for the flow of metals and foods and building materials to increase, now that the rebels had quieted—and there was a girl, always a girl: a tender young beauty he’d rescued from the processing center, wise beyond her years, plucked straight off the transport from the surface.