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  “You didn’t buy a pretty death,” the trader said. “You bought something a bit more destructive than that.”

  “My people are getting sicker faster than the Cardassians.” Gel had to struggle to keep his voice down. Cadema was looking to make sure they were still alone on the street. They were.

  So far.

  “The disease incubates longer in Cardassians.”

  “Not good enough,” Gel said. “You owe us more than that.”

  “We owe you nothing.”

  “You lied.”

  “What are you going to do? Turn us in? Which government will prosecute us for violating the local commerce laws? What remains of the Bajoran government? Or the Cardassian warlords?”

  Cadema put a hand on Gel’s chest. She knew how close he was to killing this bug.

  “We have done what we promised,” the trader said. “You wanted to get rid of the Cardassians. We offered you a way, and now they are dying. What more do you want?”

  “The Bajoran antidote for the plague,” Gel said.

  The trader smiled. It was a cruel, empty smile.

  “What if we turn you in to the Cardassians and tell them you’re working for the person who started this plague?” Gel asked.

  “And who’s going to tell them? You, the great rebel leader killing his own people?” The trader laughed again, this time louder, his voice echoing down the empty street.

  “We have kept complete documentation of all of our dealings with you, including surveillance of all of our meetings.”

  “You have never dealt with the same person.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We have the conversations and the promises. We have it all.”

  “All except the names of the people you’ve really been dealing with,” the trader said.

  “That’s not hard to find,” Gel said. He was bluffing, but it was getting dark. He was getting desperate. He had thought this meeting would go better. “Give me the Bajoran antidote.”

  The trader smiled. “You think you are so courageous.” He crossed his arms. “You believe you are so powerful, so smart. You don’t like the idea that you’ve been tricked.”

  Cadema glanced at Gel. He knew what she was thinking, and he shook his head slightly, but she spoke anyway. “We will pay for it,” she said.

  The trader’s ridged cheeks puffed out. Gel had worked with enough Jibetians to know that to be an expression of surprise. “Really?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “You have no money. You used it all to pay us.”

  Gel felt cold. Perhaps they had been dealing out of their league.

  Cadema let go of him and grabbed the trader by his long cloak. She pulled him close. She had surprising strength in those thin hands.

  “We are losing our children, our families, the very reasons we are fighting the Cardassian dogs.”

  The trader stared at her for a moment. Cadema had let the veneer of civility drop. She had let him see their desperation. Gel thought he saw pity in the Jibetian’s eyes.

  “There is no antidote,” the trader said.

  “What?” Cadema let him go. “There has to be.”

  It hadn’t been pity Gel had seen. It had been disgust. The look intensified. The Jibetian straightened his lapels. “My boss hates weakness. If you couldn’t stomach the deaths, you should not have bought our services.”

  Gel brought out his laser pistol, aiming and firing as he moved. But he didn’t get to see whether or not his shot hit its target. The Jibetian already had his pistol out. A shot caught Gel in the chest, smashing him back against the wall. His own pistol fell out of his grasp.

  He didn’t feel any pain, not yet anyway. He knew, somehow, that wasn’t good.

  Cadema dove out of the way, but the Jibetian turned toward her. The street was still empty. Why wasn’t there anyone on the street? Why didn’t anyone see this?

  He tried to reach for the pistol, but he couldn’t move his arms.

  A second shot hit Cadema. She twitched once, and then didn’t move, arms splayed, legs at an unnatural angle. The Jibetian pushed at her with his booted foot. She didn’t respond.

  Gel couldn’t. His body wasn’t obeying his commands. It had slumped down the wall until he was lying on his back, his neck shoved uncomfortably against the brick. Odd that the only discomfort he felt was in his neck. But he really couldn’t feel much at all. And he seemed to have control of nothing more than his face. His breathing was short and uneven. He couldn’t really take a deep breath at all. The pistol the Jibetian had used had scrambled Gel’s systems. If he didn’t get help soon, he would die here, on this street, just like Cadema.

  Without the antidote. Without being able to tell his resistance cell there was no antidote.

  All those deaths, on his shoulders.

  The Jibetian leaned over him. That look of disgust was in his eyes again. He nudged Gel with his booted foot, and like Cadema, Gel didn’t move.

  “Trust me,” the Jibetian said softly. “I’ve done you a favor.”

  “No,” Gel whispered.

  “Ah, but I did,” the Jibetian said. “I gave you the only antidote to the plague.”

  And then he laughed. Gel closed his eyes, and the laugh followed him as he felt himself slip away into final blackness.

  Chapter Six

  THE BAJORAN MEDICAL SECTION of Terok Nor lacked everything the Cardassian medical section had. No quarantine fields, no biobeds, nothing except field medicine kits set up in corners, half a dozen of them, many of them without the most important equipment. Kellec Ton had been negotiating with Gul Dukat for more equipment when this plague hit, and then it became a minor consideration. Ton could barely keep up with the patients, finding them beds, making them comfortable. He couldn’t worry about the lack of equipment.

  He didn’t have time.

  The stench in this area was so foul he could almost touch it. The uncomfortable Cardassian heat, combined with the poor environmental systems, made the smell even worse. He tried to do an old-fashioned quarantine field: separate the sick from the healthy by placing the sick in a large room away from everything, but he had a hunch he was doing too little too late.

  He bent over a teenage girl in the last stages of the disease. She lay on a cot he had found in one of the sleeping sections. She was moaning and clutching her stomach. All he could do was ease the pain, but even with the highest doses the pain slipped through. It was all he could do not to overdose these victims. He had to cling to some kind of hope that he would find a way to cure the disease before they all died.

  His medical assistants, also people he’d had to fight for with Gul Dukat, had all been exposed. Kellec Ton had a hunch it was only a matter of time before they fell prey to this thing too. Before he did.

  He had no idea what the incubation period was for this virus, but he knew it was longer than he had initially suspected. What research he had been able to do—mostly by word of mouth with the people who had fallen ill—revealed that they had felt fine for the last few weeks, and the illness had caught them by surprise. It was the secondary wave he was looking for, the people who had been infected by the earlier carriers. He had only spoken to a few—too many of them hadn’t come in when they first noticed they weren’t feeling well.

  All of his training in the psychology of serious illness had prepared him for that, but he hadn’t really expected it. If he knew something serious was happening on the station, and he felt poorly, he would have gone to get help immediately. Most people, however, entered a serious denial phase based on fear. Yes, the reasoning went, my best friend has this disease, and I took care of her, but I’m strong. I never get sick. I am just out of sorts, making things up. I really can’t be ill.

  By the time most of the second wave had come to him, they were so ill they couldn’t talk. In fact, someone usually carried them in. All he could do now was watch them die.

  He hated this.

  He hated it as much as he hated the thick metal walls and the dim li
ghting, as much as he hated the way the Cardassians penned the Bajorans into these sections as if they were animals instead of people. Most of the Bajorans on Terok Nor already had weakened immune systems. They had been worked so hard that they were half dead on their feet. Their rations were meager, their hygiene poor. The close quarters made the spread of easily curable disease rampant. He knew that a virulent virus, like this one, would probably have found its way through the entire population already.

  Now it was only a matter of time.

  What he wanted was all that equipment in the Cardassian medical bay. The bright lights, the quarantine fields, the chance for his people to survive. Instead of working down here in the worst possible conditions, on the worst possible disease.

  At least he had access to the station’s computer system. Not all of it, of course, not even most of it, but Narat had made the medical files—the official medical files—available to him. What Kellec wanted was the unofficial files. He had heard that the Obsidian Order had done experiments on Bajorans, and it seemed likely to him that this was one of those experiments gone awry. Not in its treatment of Bajorans, but in the fact that it had somehow spread to the Cardassians.

  Gul Dukat hadn’t eased Kellec’s mind on that, even though he had tried to. The fleeting look that had crossed his face when Kellec had accused the Cardassians of this acknowledged the possibility. If this were a Cardassian experiment to destroy the Bajorans that had gotten out of control, then Kellec needed to know. He was better at solving puzzles when he had all of the relevant information.

  He pulled a blanket across the poor girl. The disease accented her natural beauty, flushed her thin cheeks. Her hands were permanently dirt-stained and callused, but with them covered, she looked as she should have looked at this age, a young girl who had just finished flirting with a young man, a girl with no cares at all.

  Just by looking at her no one would be able to guess that she would probably be dead before the day was out.

  The comm link that Narat had given him beeped. That was the third time in less than an hour. Kellec supposed he should answer it. He had been trying to ignore it. The Cardassians believed that Kellec should be using his considerable brain power to help them, not his own people.

  He hit the comm link so hard that he hoped he’d shattered it. But no such luck. Instead Narat said, “Why haven’t you been answering my hails?”

  “Because I’ve been treating dying patients down here,” he snapped. “I got fifteen new patients in the last hour. Thirteen in the hour before that. I’ve forgotten how many came in the hour before that. So my hands are a bit full. What do you want?”

  “Gul Dukat wants you to come up here. He believes you can’t get work done down below.”

  Kellec clenched a fist, and then glanced around the room. People everywhere, holding their stomachs, rolled in fetal positions. The moans were so soft and so prevalent that he had to focus on them to hear them. And the smell. . .

  Kellec shook his head. His assistants were doing what they could. A handful of others, brave volunteers, were sitting at bedsides, holding hands, comforting, even though they knew they were staring in the face of death.

  “Work?” Kellec asked. “What kind of work?”

  “Finding a solution to this thing. We need—”

  “We need some understanding. My people are dying. Or has Gul Dukat forgotten how sympathetic he believes he is toward the Bajorans?”

  Narat was silent for a moment. A long moment. Then he said, “I presented this wrong. I know you’re working below. But you and I must solve this thing together, and that takes research, I’m afraid. I have patients too, and they’re dying—”

  “Are they?” Kellec said. “Well, they’re dying in better rooms than my people are, and so far they’re dying in fewer numbers. I don’t see what I’ll gain from working with you.”

  “Then you’re not the man I thought you were,” Narat said.

  Kellec took a deep breath. He did know what he’d gain. He had lied. It was precisely what he had been hoping for a few minutes ago. Better equipment. More access. Hope.

  His assistants couldn’t do the research. Only he could do that. And he was essentially useless here.

  “You’re wasting time, man,” Narat said. “And we both know how precious time is.”

  “Yes, we do,” Kellec said. He sighed. It wasn’t that he hated the Cardassians. He did, in theory, although Dukat had been right when he said that Kellec would save a life before he’d take one. Any life, even a Cardassian life. No. His hesitation was more complex than that. He feared that his work with Narat would help the Cardassians at the expense of his own people.

  “Kellec,” Narat said into his silence. “You are the better researcher.”

  How much that must have cost the proud Cardassian doctor. To admit that he was less talented at medicine—at his job—than a Bajoran. To admit he needed a Bajoran’s help.

  “I tell you what,” Kellec said. “If Gul Dukat is so set on needing my services then he must pay for them.”

  “I don’t have the ability to authorize payment,” Narat said, just as Kellec expected him to. But Kellec didn’t give him time to say anything more.

  “I want to move all of my people, both the sick and those who were exposed, to your medical area. I don’t want them held in place like prisoners, although I do want quarantine fields so that we can do proper work. I want them to die with dignity if they’re going to die, Narat, and if we find a way to save them, I want to make sure my people get treatment as fast as your people do. I also want my assistants up there, at my side, helping with all the work.”

  “Done,” Narat said. His answer was too fast. He apparently had been going to promise that anyway.

  Kellec paused. He wanted more. Some other concession, something that would make him feel like he wasn’t being pulled by the Cardassians.

  “If Gul Dukat wants to keep his prisoners alive and working in uridium processing,” Kellec said, “he needs to increase the food rations. And he can’t keep up production at its current rate. We have too many sick down here, and if he pushes the remaining people, the illness will just get worse. I want a mandatory eight-hour sleep period for all Bajorans, and a decrease in production.”

  “You know I’m not authorized—”

  “Yes,” Kellec said. “I know you’re not authorized. But Gul Dukat is. He’s the one who makes the rules. Have him make this one. If he does, I’ll come up.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Narat said. “But you’re wasting time.”

  Narat signed off.

  Perhaps Kellec was wasting time, but he didn’t think so. He needed to take care of his people first. It would only take Narat a few moments to get Dukat to agree to the concessions.

  In the meantime, he stood and stretched. He needed some nourishment himself. He had some food and vitamin supplies in the tiny room the Cardassians had allotted him. It would do his people no good if he succumbed to this disease too. He had to do what he could to fend it off, and part of that was remembering to eat.

  He slipped out of the medical area, and hurried down the corridor to his room. He suspected his room had once been some kind of storage closet. There was barely space for his bed. There was no replicator, no real bathroom—only a makeshift one with an old and malfunctioning sonic shower—and no porthole. Still, it was personal space, which was greatly lacking for Bajorans on Terok Nor.

  He reached into his kit for a supplement, and saw instead that his personal link was blinking. He felt cold. He had brought the system up from Bajor, and so far the Cardassians hadn’t tampered with it. Or if they had, they hadn’t said anything. On it, he kept all his medical notes, and an open line to Bajor itself, since he theoretically was not a prisoner here.

  His people on the surface were not to send him messages unless it was urgent. He had received several messages in the last few days about the plague, messages he had forwarded to Narat, partly as information, partly to prove he wasn’t hidi
ng anything from the Cardassians. Most of the messages requested that he return home. The plague had struck there, too, and was running through areas of Bajor the way it was running through Terok Nor.

  He had sent carefully worded messages back, saying that he would remain on Terok Nor. Gul Dukat might see that as a twisted form of loyalty when, in fact, it was prudence. Kellec had not received word that the Cardassians on the surface had been affected. They had been here. That, plus the promise of using the Cardassian medical files, was enough to keep him here, for the moment. He had a better chance of finding the solution on Terok Nor.

  With a shaking hand, he reached for the message button. It was a notification transmission. Once he responded, the person on the other end would be alerted, and they could have a conversation. He sat down and waited.

  To his surprise, Katherine’s face appeared on the small viewscreen. Her brown hair was tangled about her face, and her blue eyes were filled with compassion.

  She looked very, very good.

  And very far away.

  “Ton,” she said.

  “Katherine.”

  “I was worried about you.”

  He smiled tiredly. “You always worry about me.”

  She nodded. “I’m hearing very bad things about your part of the quadrant.”

  “We’re at war, Katherine,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “I’m hearing more than that.”

  He frowned. She was asking about the plague. Had word reached the Federation then? He didn’t dare ask her directly.

  “Why are you calling me now, Katherine?”

  “I’m surprised to find you still on Terok Nor. I would have thought they needed you on Bajor.”

  “They’ve been requesting my services on Bajor,” he said. “But I’m too busy here. I haven’t slept in two days, Katherine. I’m sorry, but I don’t have time for small talk. Otherwise I’d ask about you and the Enterprise and all your various adventures. But I’m needed desperately elsewhere. Gul Dukat has demanded that I work in the Cardassian sickbay as well. It seems that my expertise is now considered to extend to Cardassians.”