THE FURIOUS FACE of Gul Marak glared out from the viewscreen. "I said I wanted to talk to Sisko, or that security constable, whatever he is."
Kira glared back, but her voice was chilly and expressionless. "Commander Sisko is in conference off the station. Constable Odo is presently unavailable." Odo was in fact in his native liquid state, regenerating his energies after a hard day's work.
After a moment Marak's breath exploded impatiently. "All right! I understand you have my deserter under arrest. Is it true?"
"We have a suspect in detention."
"Suspect! Detention! Look, Major Bajoran, I don't want to hear any of your slimy excuses. That traitor is mine! I want him!"
Kira ground her teeth together. It took all her effort to keep from yelling back at Marak, to tell him to take his traitor and perform obscenely improbable acts together. What one Cardassian did to another was of no possible concern to her. Let them kill themselves off, it could only benefit the Bajorans. But there was something insufferable about Marak that brought out her most intransigent reflexes.
"We're completing the processing of the suspect now."
"What processing?" Marak demanded. "You caught him, now hand him over!"
"We have procedures on this station, Gul," she said tightly. "We don't just turn over prisoners to anyone. This man's identity has to be established. At the moment, he can't identify himself because he's unconscious and under medical care. And we may have our own charges to place against him: illegal entry into Bajoran territory, assault on a Federation officer, sabotage of station facilities. Those charges will have to be processed before any determination on the prisoner's disposition can be made."
"If I don't get him back now—"
Kira interrupted, "If you want the prisoner turned over to your custody, Gul, I suggest that you follow procedure and submit an extradition request in the proper form. Beginning with a positive ID. I'll point out that for all the time you've been demanding the return of this man, you have yet to submit his records so we can establish his identity."
"We don't turn over Cardassian personnel records! Especially not to Bajorans!"
"Well, in that case, Gul, you can't expect this Bajoran station to consider your request! We won't hand someone over just on your word that he's deserted from your ship."
To her relief, he cut the connection, just as her control was starting to slip. But dealing with Marak was enough to strain anyone's self-control. Kira caught herself in the strange position of almost wishing for the days when they had Gul Dukat to deal with. Bajoran popular sentiment claimed that all Cardassians were alike, but Kira knew there were some who were even worse than others, and Marak was certainly one of those.
Well, at least Sisko ought to be satisfied this time. She'd dealt with Marak without making a single provocative remark. Strictly by-the-book. Almost.
It was easy for Sisko. Always so sure of himself. Always with a regulation to cover every situation. Maybe they taught them that at the Starfleet Academy.
Or maybe it's just me, she thought. I see a Cardassian face and something happens to me, inside.
Kira sighed. There was more than one prisoner in detention. More than one prisoner to be turned over to planetary authorities. The provisional Bajoran government had sent official notice that they planned to try Gelia Torly on charges of conspiracy and membership in a terrorist organization. Kira knew she'd be expected to testify. Her words were going to put a fellow freedom fighter into prison. And for what? For loyalty to her cause, to her organization. To her comrades.
Kira closed her eyes and sought her inner balance.
The comm technician interrupted. "Major, there's been a file transmission from the Cardassian ship."
Kira shook her head. It was always something. She called the data up onto her screen: the personnel file on a Cardassian maintenance technician named Berat. She glanced at it without much interest, except for a distinct sense of personal satisfaction that Marak had given in to her demands. "Notify security. Tell Odo we've finally got an ID on the Cardassian deserter."
* * *
Ben Sisko reached over from the conn of the Rio Grande runabout to put his hand on Jake's shoulder. He felt sorry for his boy. Jake had been wanting to visit the Bajoran planet, and he'd tried to warn him, but the disappointment was inevitable, he supposed. Much of Bajor's surface was a ruin. Every time Sisko saw it, he had to struggle against a sense of furious outrage, a burning desire to see the Cardassians punished for what they'd done. Wrecking DS-Nine had been one thing. The station, after all, was something the Cardassians themselves had made. But Bajor had been a living world, the home of an advanced civilization. What right did they have to come and destroy it?
The sight made him come closer to understanding the Bajorans' motives, a fact that he suspected the Bajorans themselves recognized. It would explain why the secretary-general had insisted on holding this rather routine meeting on-planet.
"Going to be glad to get back to the station, son?"
Jake nodded glumly. Then he asked, "Dad? The Cardassians—are they really all bad?"
Sisko was startled to hear his own thoughts so closely echoed by his son. He shook his head. "No, Jake, I don't think so. I know it might seem that way, looking at the destruction on Bajor. But remember, neither of us has ever been to the Cardassian homeworld, either. It's not our place to judge other peoples."
"I suppose not." Jake seemed troubled by something. It worried Sisko, but maybe the boy was just growing up. It was hard to be a parent. You wanted to protect your child from all the universe's cruelty, but bringing him up on a Federation starship—or DS-Nine—made that impossible from the beginning.
Sisko gave a final squeeze to his son's arm and concentrated on his upcoming approach to docking at the station. But when he requested landing clearance, there was a pause as the duty officer exclaimed, "Commander Sisko!"
He could hear some kind of disruption in the background. Was that Kira's voice? What was going wrong now? "This is Sisko," he snapped. "What's going on there?"
Another pause. Then a familiar female voice came over the comm. "This is Dax, Commander. We have a slight problem here in Ops. Gul Marak has just transported onto the station. He's rather agitated and insists on speaking to you immediately. It's about the man who deserted from his ship."
Sisko felt a wave of profound relief. Dax: he could always count on her to be in control in any situation. Even on DS-Nine. "Tell Gul Marak," he said with forced calm, "that I'll be on the landing pad in ten minutes. That is, if someone there in Ops will clear my approach to dock."
"The Rio Grande is cleared for landing pad two," Dax said with calm efficiency.
Grim-faced, Sisko turned to Jake. "I want you to go straight back to quarters as soon as we dock. I'll have to take care of this."
"But Dad, I—"
"No argument. I'll be stepping into a situation, and it could possibly get violent. I don't want you involved where you could get hurt." He turned his attention back to the runabout's controls, coming in to the landing pad at the maximum velocity allowed by regulations.
A few minutes later he stepped off the transporter pad into Ops. There was indeed an angry-looking Gul Marak, facing an equally hostile Major Kira, flanked by a pair of security officers. Standing between them was Dax, who greeted his arrival with visible relief.
Marak was livid with rage. Dark blotches stood out on his rough skin. "Commander, this female refuses to release my prisoner!"
Sisko hated stepping into these situations where he hadn't been completely briefed and all sides were screaming at him to dispense instant justice—each according to its own notions. From the venom in Marak's tone, Sisko could tell that the female in question must be Kira, but who was the prisoner? The Cardassian deserter? He glanced quickly at Kira, who looked grimly rigid and defiant. A bad sign.
"Major?"
Kira said flatly, "I've placed this Cardassian under arrest for attacking station personnel."
Sisko felt a blood vessel starting to throb behind his eyes. He spent just one day away from DS-Nine …
Dax, soft-voiced and diplomatic, said, "The Gul transported onto the station to speak with you about the suspected deserter we have in station detention. When he was told that you were returning from Bajor, he attempted to take control of our communications equipment to contact you personally."
From which, Sisko was able to get a fair notion of what had actually gone on. The bruised appearance of the Bajoran comm technician confirmed his suspicions.
But Marak wasn't concerned about such trivial matters as assaulting Bajorans, only his own grievance. "That female pretends to have command of this station, over the disposition of my crew members! She refuses to let me contact the proper Federation officials—or any other official who isn't Bajoran!"
Sisko knew he had to back up Kira's authority— here, now, in public—regardless of what she'd actually done. Later, in his once, it might well be another matter. He said tightly, "Major Kira is the first officer on DS-Nine. When I'm absent from the station, she is in command. And she certainly has the right to arrest anyone attempting to interfere with station operations and assaulting personnel.
"Now, I suggest you go back to your ship, Gul, and I'll discuss the disposition of this case with you later, after I've been briefed on the situation."
Marak's coloring deepened. "I'm not leaving without—"
"Gul Marak, either you beam back to your ship now, or I'll have you forcibly escorted to the airlock."
The two commanders faced each other for a moment, but Sisko's security force was clearly waiting for the order. Snarling, Marak contacted his ship and in a moment had transported from the deck of Ops, leaving a universal sigh of relief behind him.
"That man almost makes me appreciate the times when Gul Dukat was here," Dax remarked.
Sisko exhaled forcibly. To Kira he snapped, "My office. Now."
"Dad?"
Sisko turned around in surprise. "Jake? What are you doing here? I told you to go back to quarters. This is an emergency. Now, I'll see you later."
"But Dad—"
Jake's voice was pitched high, and he was clearly upset by something, but he had to know this wasn't the time or the place.
"Jake!"
The tone of Sisko's voice made it an order. Reluctantly, the boy left Ops with a look backward that almost made his father call him back to ask him what was wrong. But Kira was waiting in his office and Gul Marak was fuming on the Swift Striker. There just wasn't time for all this!
A moment later Kira was facing her commanding officer. "All right, Major. Tell me about it. And where's Odo? He's supposed to be the one handling this matter. I told you, these confrontations with Gul Marak are exactly what I've been trying to avoid."
Kira took a breath. This was simply a matter of the facts. All her actions were completely justified, and the matter was of no real importance, anyway. Except to Gul Marak. "Marak beamed into Ops, started to make demands. I'd told him already that you were off the station and Odo was unavailable. He's resting now."
"Oh. All right. What happened, then?"
"Marak refuses to deal with a Bajoran. It's as simple as that. When he couldn't find Odo, he tried to contact you on the runabout, but he wouldn't go through a Bajoran communications technician."
Sisko shook his head in disgust. "All right, I understand that part. Now, what about this damned deserter? He really is a deserter, I take it?"
Kira nodded. "Odo and Chief O'Brien tracked down the Cardassian deserter, hiding in Quark's place. The Cardassian was armed, he fired at O'Brien—"
"He's all right?" Sisko interrupted urgently.
"O'Brien was only stunned. But the Cardassian turned his phaser on himself. It was on a lethal setting. Occino says that she shot to stun just as the Cardassian fired." Kira hadn't been surprised at the deserter's attempt at suicide. Cardassian punishments were notoriously savage, and Gul Marak was an intemperate commander.
"But I take it he's still alive. Where is he now?"
"Infirmary. Unconscious and under guard. Marak doesn't have to worry, he's not going anywhere."
"So the deserter is under arrest. What's the problem, then?"
Kira felt her jaw start to clench. "Marak has no respect for our procedures. He makes unreasonable demands."
Sisko's expression hardened. "Major, I know you don't exactly get along with Gul Marak. I don't get along with Gul Marak. No one on this station does. But that has nothing to do with the issue at hand. Why does he claim that you refuse to turn over this criminal?"
Kira stood very straight. "Commander, you can view the exchange for yourself. I've recorded it in the log. When Marak called up demanding the prisoner, processing wasn't completed. We had no positive ID, and he was still receiving medical attention."
"You refused to turn him over on medical grounds, is that what you're telling me?"
Sisko would believe that, Kira thought. It was the way they did things in Starfleet, humane even to an enemy. Starfleet could afford such an attitude. Bajor never could.
But it wasn't the truth. "No. I never explicitly refused to turn over the prisoner. I simply insisted that the Gul make his request according to the recognized procedures. That he provide a positive ID. And I warned him that there might be station charges we'd want to file, first. Like assault on one of our officers—Chief O'Brien."
Sisko looked at her. "Major, I don't suppose you're familiar with the term 'stonewalling'?"
Kira blinked uncomprehendingly, said, "No, I don't believe so."
"Never mind, it's mostly gone out of use, even in Starfleet. Look, Kira, is there any reason to seriously doubt the identity of the man we have in custody?"
Reluctantly, "No. Marak did finally transmit the deserter's personnel file. It's the same man."
"Then you don't have any real grounds, now, to deny Marak's request."
"You mean besides the fact that the Cardassian assaulted a Starfleet officer and most likely sabotaged the security grid?"
"Besides that."
Stiffly, "Are you ordering me to have the prisoner remanded to Marak's custody?"
Sisko rubbed his temples. "No. I'll take care of it. That'll be all, Major."
He rubbed his temples again, pressing against the throb, throb of the newborn headache. How could he run this station if he couldn't trust his first officer? Not her basic loyalties. He didn't doubt those. But she had spent so many years fighting the Cardassians. Could she be trusted to react objectively, without prejudice? He couldn't order her not to deal with them, not and retain the authority of her position at the same time. And they had to work with Cardassians here on DS-Nine, or the peace was going to fail.
It wasn't that he blamed her for the way she felt. Newly returned from the Bajoran surface, he could sharply appreciate the reasons for it. Only—
A sound at the door opened his eyes.
"Dad?"
Sisko got halfway to his feet. "Jake? I thought I told you—"
"Dad, this is urgent! Is Berat … Did they arrest him? Are you going to send him back? You can't, Dad!"
"What's this all about? Who's Berat? What are you talking about?"
"Berat! The Cardassian—the one who deserted from that ship. You can't send him back there! You don't know what they're going to do to him!"
Sisko was struck almost speechless. "Jake? You … know this Cardassian?"
Jake had been on the verge of tears, but now a slightly apprehensive expression came into his eyes. "I … talked to him. Once. He told me about it. What they did to him. What they did to his family."
Suddenly Sisko made the connection between Jake, the Cardassian, and what Kira had said about the deserter hiding out in Quark's Place. "Nog! That's who's behind this!"
But Jake had already incriminated himself too far to back down now. "I promised I wouldn't tell. I swore! I gave my word, Dad!"
His father said nothing. Jake went on, nervously, "Berat was fixing things for Nog. He hid him from the Cardassians. They want to kill him, Dad! If you send him back there, they will kill him! They'll hang him, and …" Jake choked on a sob.
"Son. Sit down. Take it easy." Sisko put his arms around him, led him to a chair. "These things are hard. But the Federation doesn't interfere in the internal affairs of other worlds. It's our Prime Directive. You know that. This man is charged with some very serious crimes. With murder."
Jake shook his head. "Berat told me about it. He said they were trying to kill him. They assigned him to that ship so they could get him out of the way and kill him where no one would see. It was self-defense. They already killed his father, all his family. They hanged them … they made him watch …"
Sisko's brows drew together. "Did he say why?"
Jake nodded. "They said they were all traitors. For withdrawing from Bajor."
Sisko straightened. He remembered the reports on the new Cardassian government, the executions. The confessions he had read. Then it was a political case! That changed everything! "Jake, I'm glad you came to tell me this. I wish I'd known about it sooner." A pause. "I'm just sorry that you didn't feel you could trust me."
Jake looked unhappy. "I promised Berat. He was afraid—"
"I understand that. But now you can see what's happened. Instead of asking for asylum, your Cardassian friend tried to kill himself. He almost succeeded. And he shot Chief O'Brien while he was trying to escape. Did you know he had a weapon?"
Jake nodded again, miserable.
Sisko exhaled. "We're going to have to have a long talk about all this. Later."
"Are you going to do something? Are you going to help Berat?"
"If your Cardassian friend is telling the truth, he has a good case for asylum."
"I should have told you. I'm sorry." Jake looked down at his feet.
"Why don't you go home now? I'll do the best I can, Jake."
"Thanks, Dad. I'm really sorry."
"I know you are, son."