"I'M AFRAID I don't quite understand you, Major," Odo said.
Kira looked up from her console. "What do you mean?"
"Well, although I try to appear humanoid, I don't have the same feelings you do. I can't really understand the need for revenge. But, you were the one who first thought it might be the Cardassians behind the bombings. You said that Bajorans wouldn't destroy their own station. Now we have the proof that you were right.
"But look at all those names there on your screen: all those people you're holding for questioning. Aren't they all Bajorans? Except for Garak? All the rest of us agree that it was the Cardassians behind the bombs, but you still seem to have doubts."
Kira ran her fingers back through her hair. It was already a mess; she couldn't make it look any worse.
"It just doesn't all fit. I keep running into loose ends. What abnout Gelia? She was Kohn Ma. She did leave that poster on the wall near Garak's shop. And somebody did give her the order. I have to know who that person was. And I can't just believe it was a Cardassian. A Cardassian knowing Kohn Ma recognition codes?"
"It isn't impossible, you know. People were interrogated. Tortured. I understand the Cardassians are good at that sort of thing. Someone could have let things slip, under pressure, under drugs. You can't be sure."
"I have to be sure! And that isn't all. Sisko is right. If it was a Cardassian who planted the bomb, how did he get it into the reactor room without being spotted? There's always a technician on duty." Kira shook her head. "There's something here we just haven't got hold of yet. Something we're overlooking—I don't know what."
"Does that mean you aren't going to interrogate Garak?"
"Oh, no!" Kira stood up purposefully. "Interrogating Garak is what I'm going to do right now!"
The Cardassian tailor stood up with a look of wounded indignation. "So, Major, it's you. Finally. I suppose that now I'm going to learn why I'm being detained here like this."
"You're being detained for questioning, Mr. Garak."
"For questioning? Right now? In case you haven't heard, Major, this whole station is scheduled to be blown up in just sixteen hours."
"Oh? You have personal knowledge of the schedule for blowing up the station, do you?"
Garak frowned in annoyance and looked down at the polished nails on one hand. "You know what I mean. You know what the rumors are. People are evacuating DS-Nine! I want to get onto my ship before it's too late."
"And what ship would that be? The Swift Striker, maybe? You have an arrangement with Gul Marak?"
Garak replied stiffly, "As a Cardassian, naturally I applied to the Gul when I decided to seek passage off the station. In case you've been too busy interrogating innocent people to notice, Major, let me inform you that space for departing passengers is at a premium right about now."
"Is it, now? But maybe you haven't heard; the evacuation's been called off."
"Ships will still be pulling out. You can't stop them. You can't stop a warship, at least."
"We can try. But, tell me, Garak, just when is the Swift Striker going to undock?"
The Cardassian sniffed. "I'm sure Gul Marak is the person you should be asking that question, Major. Not me. I'm just a civilian. I own a tailor shop."
"Simple Garak. Right. You know, Garak, I've always wondered just why you stayed on this station after the Cardassian occupation force pulled out. Did you think we were going to miss the chance to see a Cardassian face every day?"
Still stiffly, "We've gone into this before, Major. I was never a member of the Cardassian occupation force on Bajor. I'm a civilian, a businessman, I had money invested here. Why should I abandon it?"
"But you're prepared to abandon it now."
"You Bajoran fanatics are going to blow up the whole station now! I don't really have a choice, do I?"
"I think you do. You can either talk to me or you can stay right here in this cell until we both know whether this bomb rumor is true."
Garak tensed. "You can't keep me here."
Kira's lips lifted in a slight smile. "Oh? I can't?"
The Cardassian wrung his hands. "All right! Go ahead, do your worst! Ask your questions!"
But Kira stood up and walked a few steps away. With her back to Garak, she said, "I never wanted to believe any Bajoran would go so far as to blow up this station. Not even the Kohn Ma. But someone was setting off those explosions. So I asked myself: Just who has more to lose in this situation? Who has more to gain? And do you know the answer I came up with? The Cardassians."
Garak said nothing.
"But if the Cardassians were behind the bombings, they had to have an agent working for them here on the station. Guess whose name is at the top of my list of suspected Cardassian agents?"
She turned around just as Garak exclaimed shrilly, "You think I'm the one who set off those bombs? In case you don't remember, I was a victim of this terrorism! My shop was blown up, my equipment damaged! I was maimed!" His hand went to the nearly healed scar on his face. "I could have been killed!"
"Yes, that was a very good way to divert our suspicion. Make yourself a victim. Plant a misleading message on the walls near your shop. Everyone would believe it was just another Bajoran terrorist, striking out at an innocent Cardassian civilian.
"Or did you make a mistake when you were arming the bomb? Was it an accident? Maybe you just staged the rest of it to cover your tracks."
Now Garak was standing very still, confronting her. "You're wrong, Major," he said quietly.
"Maybe I am. And maybe you'll decide to tell me the truth. You think about it, Garak. I'll be back in—eighteen hours or so."
She turned away from him again, started to leave.
Garak wrung his hands again, bit his lower lip in obvious indecision. "Major!"
Kira paused.
"All right."
She turned slowly to face him again.
"I had nothing to do with those explosions. Nothing. I don't know why my shop was targeted. Maybe it was for the reason you said, but I don't know. I wasn't told. All I know is: There is a bomb set to destroy DS-Nine. I was advised to be off the station by …" He checked his chrono. " … sixteen hours from now."
"You were advised."
"That's right."
"And the source of this advice?"
Garak said nothing.
"You didn't think of passing your advice along to station authorities? You didn't think other lives besides your own were worth saving?"
"What could I have told them that they didn't already know? There isn't a single person on this station who hasn't heard the rumors. The only thing preventing people from getting away to safety is your security!"
"All right, Mr. Garak. We'll just wait and see just how reliable this anonymous source of yours turns out to be."
"Wait! You're not going to leave me here! Major! I told you the truth! All I know! You can't keep me here! Major Kira!"
But Kira didn't turn back again.
On the monitor in the security office, Odo watched the agitated prisoner pacing in his cell.
"Good job, Major," he told Kira. "It's certainly one more piece of evidence that it's the Cardassians behind all this."
"But not conclusive proof. For what it's worth, I do think Garak was telling the truth. He wasn't involved in setting any of the bombs. So we still don't know who the Cardassian agent is. And that's the one I really want."
Odo was still looking at the monitor. "He thinks he's going to be killed by a Cardassian bomb. It's a form of justice, isn't it?"
"Let him think so," Kira said uncharitably. "Maybe he'll remember something else as the deadline gets closer. As it is, he's safe enough in that cell."
"As safe as the rest of us, at least," Odo corrected her.
Kira didn't argue.
Jake hated it when he fought with his dad. These days, they hardly seemed to see each other at all, and then there wasn't any time to really talk.
But Jake was afraid. Everybody said DS-Nine was going to explode. They were all trying to get away. But some of the ships had blown up when they tried to pull away from the station. People had been killed.
It made him remember when he was just a kid, and the Borg ship had fired on the Saratoga, and Mom had died. How it had been, with the smoke and the flames and the sirens, and the ship all broken and twisted. But it was hard to talk to Dad about all that.
Still, he was scared, and he didn't know what was going to happen. Dad said they weren't leaving. None of the Starfleet personnel were leaving—not even Keiko and little Molly.
"Dad," he'd protested, "they're gonna blow this place up! In just a few more hours!"
"Jake, you know that's just a rumor spreading around the Promenade."
"Oh, yeah, then why is everybody trying to leave? Why don't you tell them to stop?"
"If ships blowing up in their docking bays doesn't stop them, nothing I say will. Not for long. And it would cause a panic and a riot if we tried to force people to stay. These are civilians. They're free to come and go as they please. But my duty is here."
"Well, what about me? Do I have to stay and get killed just because it's your job to run this stupid station?"
Jake had been sorry the instant he said it, seeing the look of hurt in his father's face. "I'm sorry, Dad. I didn't mean it."
They hugged each other, hard. "Do you really want to go?" Dad had asked, then. "Where? Who would you go with?"
"I don't know. Nog?" But he'd had that big fight with Nog. And he wasn't sure at all he wanted to live with Nog's dad and his uncle Quark. No, he was sure. He wouldn't want that at all.
He wasn't sure just what he wanted, now.
"Look, Jake," Dad said. "Will you trust me if I tell you I have reason to believe the station isn't really in danger?"
"Really?"
"Really. Believe me, Jake, I'd never keep you here if I thought otherwise. The danger is … taken care of already. But this is confidential information. You can't tell anyone. Not Nog, not anyone. This is important. The safety of everyone on this station depends on it. So do I have your word?"
"I swear, Dad, I won't say anything."
But it was harder than he'd thought, keeping a secret like that. With Dad gone again, Jake wandered morosely through the corridors. Everywhere he went, people had packed up their things, were frantically trying to abandon the station.
A life spent growing up in Starfleet had made Jake rather an expert on moving out at short notice, and he noticed now that the same generally seemed true of the Bajorans. None of them seemed overly burdened with possessions. He supposed that spending your whole life in refugee camps kept you from getting too attached to places and things.
But now he saw so many people abandoning their businesses, their possessions, their homes. Some of them were crying. He felt terrible, watching them, knowing what he knew.
There was a crowd lined up at an airlock, waiting for a chance to get onto some ship. Somebody was yelling and screaming. Jake went closer.
A man in a purser's uniform was yelling, "No, you can't take all that onto the ship! Ten kilos per person! That's the limit!"
And someone else yelling back hysterically, surrounded by crates and boxes. Jake gathered that they were some kind of exotic imported artworks, and they couldn't just leave them here to be blown up, and they weren't even insured!
And someone else yelling that they were holding up the line …
Jake recognized that voice. He edged closer. There was a small knot of Ferengi, and among them he recognized Nog.
"Nog! Are you leaving?"
The Ferengi boy looked at him in surprise. "Are you still here?"
Jake remembered his promise. "Yeah," he said sulkily. "My dad won't let me leave. He says it's his duty. Just 'cause he's the station commander, I have to stay on this stupid place and get killed."
Nog stepped closer, hissed in a whisper, "You could come with us. We could use someone else."
"For what?" Jake asked suspiciously.
In answer, Nog took his hand and pressed it against his own midriff, where Jake felt something hard to the touch. "They have a weight limit on baggage."
Jake understood. The Ferengi were all wearing money belts, probably smuggling gold-pressed latinum off the station. They only wanted to use him. Still, Nog had thought of him, had made the offer. Even if there was profit in it.
"No, thanks," he said. "But aren't you afraid? What if your ship blows up, too?"
Nog whispered secretively, "It's all arranged."
"What's all arranged?"
"The captain made a deal with the terrorists. This ship won't have any trouble undocking."
"The captain knows who the terrorists are?" Jake asked dubiously.
"Shhhh!" Nog hissed. He looked uncomfortable, and not just from the weight of the hidden latinum. "I'll remember you, human. Jake."
And Jake had to leave, right then, before he said something he wasn't supposed to.