CHAPTER 7. Secret Agent Man

If he were human, Data imagined that he would be feeling his eyes burning and his fingers stiffening as part of the syndrome that his biological crewmates referred to as "console coma." He'd been sitting at this terminal for about fifteen hours without a break.

The thought made him remember Deanna, who hadn't slept yet. She'd come down to headquarters directly from her overnight shift on the Enterprise bridge nearly eight hours ago. He looked up but she wasn't at the console she'd been using. Miles and Julian had gone down to the replicators for a late lunch, perhaps she'd accompanied them...then he saw her standing at the window, looking out towards the Paris skyline. He just watched her for a moment, marveling that the rush of emotion that came upon him as he did so should feel so familiar. In a way, he mourned the sense of novelty and strangeness that had been part and parcel of his emotions when he had first acquired them. Now, they felt nearly as comfortable as any other part of him.

He stood up and went to stand behind her at the window. "I'm so tired," she said, the words nearly lost in a huge yawn. She was looking upwards at the cloudless sky with a thoughtful expression. "I hope they get back safely," she said quietly.

"I am confident of their success. Odo can certainly handle himself, and Lt. Briggs seems to have...a multitude of talents." Deanna shuddered briefly, remembering her disturbing experience with the inside of Briggs' head. "What was your impression of Odo?" he asked after a short pause.

"I like him," she said immediately. "His emotions have such clarity. Like mineral water. I can see why Mother finds him so fascinating. There's nothing hidden, none of the shadows that humanoids have."

"Except me," he said.

"That's because you're special," she said with a smile and a brief glance over her shoulder at him. They stood there in silence for a few moments. "Did you hear about Worf's wife?" she said neutrally.

"Yes, I heard that Cmdr. Dax had been killed."

"Miles says that he's taking it very hard." She sighed. "Poor Worf. He was always searching for belonging. I was hoping he'd finally found it." Her shoulders slumped.

Data stepped forward and slipped his arms around her waist. She turned from the window and burrowed gladly into his embrace. "I am sorry for him," he said quietly, feeling an empathetic grief for his former crewmate that was surprisingly potent. "I cannot help but think what I would do if I were in his place, or Odo's." He paused, then plunged ahead. "I do not know how I would function if you had been killed." He found himself unable to continue, the very thought rendering him speechless. She said nothing. Data glanced down at her face...her eyes were closed and she was leaning heavily against his chest, most of the way to being asleep on her feet. As gently as he could, Data reached down and picked her up. "Computer," he whispered. "Two to beam to Suite 304." Miles had already suggested to Deanna that she take a nap in the suite that they were using, but she'd turned him down. Apparently her body had other ideas.

He laid her on the bed; as soon as she hit the mattress she turned on her side, snuggling into a pillow. He drew the blanket up over her shoulders. "Mmmm," she murmured sleepily, her eyelids fluttering open. "Sorry...so tired..."

"Just sleep for a few hours," he said in a low voice, tucking the quilt around her shoulders. "I will wake you in time for dinner." He smiled. "We would not want to keep your mother waiting."

She chuckled. "Oh no, we wouldn't want that." She reached up and touched his cheek. "Sure I can't get you to stay here with me?" she said, with a hint of a mischievous gleam in her eye.

"The offer is tempting, but I must continue the analysis." She nodded, her eyes already drooping shut again. He bent and kissed her. "Sweet dreams."

"...love you..." she whispered, relaxing into oblivion. Data watched her slow and even breathing for a moment, then straightened up and left the room, his empathy for what Worf must be going through growing by the minute.

*******

"What's our ETA?"

"Odo, relax."

"It's a simple question."

"The answer to which you can easily obtain yourself."

"Is there a point to this?"

"You're nervous. It's all right to admit it."

"Just because I asked you for our ETA?"

"Six times." Odo fetched a deep, rumbling sigh. Briggs smiled and took pity on him. "ETA six hours twenty-three minutes."

He watched her guarded face out of the corner of his eye. "You're not anxious to be back there, are you?" he said before he could stop himself. She glanced at him but didn't seem upset that he'd asked.

"No, I'm not. Bad memories." A heavy silence followed her statement. "You know what happened to my husband, don't you?" she asked. Odo nodded. "I try not to think about it...the operative word being 'try.'"

He was tempted to offer her sympathy, but had the feeling it wouldn't be welcome. "What was he like?" he asked instead.

Briggs turned towards him, a surprised expression on her face. "You know, you're the first person who's ever asked me that, after finding out how he died. Mostly they just say how sorry they are and how horrible it must have been." She smiled. "Thanks." He inclined his head in acknowledgement. She crossed her legs and leaned back, her eyes focusing on some faraway vista. "What was he like...well let me see.

"His name was Harry London...but I guess you already know that. I could tell you what he looked like, or how brave and kind he was, but that's so...I don't know, boring." She chuckled. "He collected old Earth films, and when we were in Section 31 training together we used to curl up on the sofa in his apartment under a big afghan that his grandmother knit...gosh, she must have been really bored, that thing was enormous...and we'd eat popcorn and watch those old movies even if we'd seen them a thousand times before. Our favorite was 'The Philadelphia Story' starring Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. He had all nine of the old Star Wars movies and we watched them so many times we got so we could talk along with the characters." She smiled at her memories. "I think we fell in love on that sofa under that afghan." She gave a little start and came back to the present. "Harry was my soulmate, Odo. We used to read each other's minds. He was the first man who ever wondered what I was really like, inside the marskman and the martial artist, and I loved him for it, and for everything that he was." She shook her head. "I should have known better, the kind of work we were in. Of course you never think anything like that can happen to you, or to someone that you love." Odo watched her in silence, transfixed.

"We'd been married six years when I drew the Orion deepcover assignment. I knew that he was uneasy about me taking it, but we'd agreed that our work was too important. This job especially was important. You don't want to know the things that could have happened if it had gone sour. Harry requested the middleman job so he could be part of the same operation. By that time, both our parents were dead and we had become each other's whole world." Her throat worked. "Watching when he was...executed..." She stopped and looked away for a moment. "There are no words." Odo nodded. "I don't know how I held it together until I could get away from that viewing gallery, it's all sort of a blur. I felt like I'd stepped into some kind of endless, cold black hole that rushed all around me and blocked everything else out." She met his eyes with an unguarded gaze, and Odo was struck by the desolation and grief he could still see there. "I guess part of me is still there." She turned back to the console. "I'd hoped I could avoid ever setting foot on that planet again."

"Sorry to drag you back."

"Oh, pish-posh. As I recall it was my idea."

"I hope that you..." He paused, wondering how best to phrase this tactfully. "I hope it's not too upsetting for you."

She arched an eyebrow. "Translation: you hope I won't be overcome by emotion and screw things up."

"Well, I wouldn't have put it quite like that, but..."

"Odo, I'm a professional. You don't get to be a DFA if you don't have the ability to control yourself."

"Fair enough." He let the matter drop, but wondered if her statement didn't constitute what the Chief would have called "famous last words."

*******

"Knight to Queen's Bishop 4." Dietz dutifully moved Kira's white knight to the indicated position, then began studying the board intently. She sighed and leaned back, having quickly learned not to hold her breath for Dietz' moves. "It's been awhile since I played ordinary two-dimensional chess," she commented.

"Oh, you're doing all right."

"Well, everything I know I learned from Julian. I can't believe how quickly you've learned this game."

"Chess is one of those universal constants. Slight variations on a theme, but the same basic principles." He reached forward and moved his bishop. "Not that it matters, you're still cleaning the floor with me." She just sat there, slumped against the wall. "Your move."

She jumped to her feet, frustrated. "I don't want to play chess, I want to do something!"

"I'm worried about them, too," he said evenly. "But it won't help to drive ourselves crazy."

"I'm stuck in this cell," she exclaimed, thrusting her fist against the wall of the offending room, "and it's worse than being dead!" She flopped back down onto her cot. "Bishop to King's Rook 6. You know, after the Araf Galnac thing Odo and I promised each other that we'd always face trouble together, and the first real trouble we encounter look what happens! He's off to Orion and I'm left to walk the floor."

"Nerys, I'd say this qualifies as 'extraordinary circumstances.' And it isn't a total loss," he said, moving one of his pieces. "You are helping me improve my chess game. Checkmate." He grinned up at her. Kira just stood there staring for a moment, then broke into surprised laughter.

*******

"Something on your mind?"

Briggs jumped a little and turned towards Odo, who was leaning back in the copilot's chair, reading a hardbound book. He didn't appear to be watching her. "What makes you say that?"

"By my count you've performed seven unnecessary systems checks in the last two hours."

"We-ell, look who knows so much about shuttle operations!" she said, a chiding tone in her voice.

He calmly turned the page, his eyes still affixed to his reading. "Have a look at your right foot." Briggs glanced down at the indicated appendage, flushing as she realized she'd been bouncing on the ball of her foot. It was a nervous habit of which she'd never quite rid herself.

"Anything else, Sherlock?"

He closed the book and looked at her levelly. "Just a wealth of previous observations."

"Uh-huh." She jabbed at the console keypads with a little more force than was probably recommended by the user's manual. "Now that you've got everything figured out, would you care to share your wisdom with us mere mortals?"

The corner of his mouth twitched in a half-smile. "Do you always resort to sarcasm when you feel unsure of yourself?"

"I wouldn't know, I'm never unsure of myself." He said nothing. "Boy, you sure have changed," she went on, chuckling. "There was a time when you'd rather serve drinks for Quark than ask someone about their emotional state."

"I'll not be diverted that easily."

"I never thought you would be."

"Did you think it would just go away if you refused to see him?" he said. Briggs snapped her head around to fix him with a rather penetrating stare. Odo drew back a little...her eternally composed demeanor had been loosened a bit by his abrupt question. Then she smiled and the momentary impression was gone.

"If I wanted to talk about Dietz I would have brought my punching bag," she said in a calm voice.

"As you wish," he said, reopening his book. He ticked off the passing seconds in his head. He'd gotten to seventeen when she spoke again.

"I was content before him," she said, facing resolutely forward. "I had everything I needed. I loved my job, I was in an exciting environment that provided me with frequent opportunities to exercise my skills, I was surrounded by interesting people..."

"...you didn't have to think too hard about anything disturbing," Odo finished.

She sighed. "That's exactly what he would say if he were here."

*******

"You don't look so good. Do you need to regenerate?" Kira asked, peering through the forcefield at her constant companion. Dietz had not left her cell since Odo and Briggs' departure nearly ten hours ago, and though Kira wasn't convinced of the need for his presence she couldn't deny she was glad for the company.

"No," he said. "I'm fine."

"Um...another game?" she said, nodding at the chessboard. He'd been quiet for a little too long. She never thought she'd miss his incessant chatter. He shook his head. She thought for a moment, wondering if she should bring it up. "Are you thinking about Briggs?"

He snorted. "When am I *not* thinking about Briggs?"

"I don't understand why you two have such trouble communicating."

He snorted again. "This from the woman who never noticed that her best friend was in love with her."

Kira flinched. "That was mean."

"I'm sorry, " he said with a sigh. "She seems to bring out the worst in me."

*******

"May I offer an observation?"

"Am I going to be able to stop you?"

"It seems to me that before you were reassigned, you'd settled into a mode of existence where no one could touch you, or where no one would dare to intrude."

"Pretty smug statement from a man who used to sleep in a bucket in his office."

Odo recoiled. "That was uncalled for."

Her shoulders slumped. "I'm very sorry, Odo, it's not like me to be cruel. It's just that Dietz tends to make me say things I regret."

"Because he disrupted your equilibrium...quite an achievement, I might add."

"You got that right."

"And you hate him for it."

"I hate him because he's an asshole!"

*******

"I was all in for the fighting, no problem! Let's open up a righteous can of whup-ass on the Dominion! Hail the Prophets and pass the ammunition! I never expected all this..." He stopped pacing for a moment and shuddered. "This emotional messiness."

"Emotional messiness tends to come along when you least expect it. During the Dominion occupation, I certainly didn't need all the personal upheaval I went through with Odo, but there it was."

"At least you knew where his feelings lay!"

"Oh, that's a laugh! There were times when I wondered if he remembered my name!"

"He never stopped loving you, that much I'm sure of."

"The way you love Nora," Kira said. That got his attention. He just stared at her for a moment, then slumped back into his chair.

"Let's change..."

*******

"...the subject," Nora said firmly.

Odo shrugged and picked up his book. "Very well. I just thought..."

*******

"...that you might want to talk about it."

As an answer, Dietz pulled the chessboard in front of him. "I wanna be white this time." He placed the pieces, then made his first move. As Kira sat contemplating her attack, he spoke again. "Why do you love Odo?"

She glanced at him and saw that he was serious. She reached out and moved a pawn, then sat back, thinking. "I couldn't possibly answer that question in less than several hours."

"Just give me one reason. Anything, the first thing that comes to mind."

She sighed. "He holds me when I have nightmares." She shrugged at his nonplussed expression. "You said the first thing that..."

"No, that's good. It's real." He moved one of his own pawns. "Nora had that with Harry."

"Come on, Dietz. I've seen how the two of you look at each other when you think no one can see you. There's no reason that you couldn't..."

"Oh, there's a very good reason: Harry."

"Harry's dead."

"But she doesn't really believe it. She can't, because then she'd be responsible and it already hurts too much without adding guilt on top of it."

Kira felt obtuse for about the hundredth time in the past few years. "I never knew she felt that way."

"No one does. No one knows her, not really. They only know what she lets them see. No one's ever gotten down there to where she is and saw what she hides behind that blinding smile."

"Except you."

He nodded miserably. "Except me. And she hates me for it."

*******

After a surprisingly brief wait, Sisko was bid to enter Venable's inner sanctum by her assistant. The door slid open to reveal the small Captain regarding him serenely over her immaculate desk. Though he knew she must be unbelievably busy, she always looked as if she had all the time in the world. "Captain Sisko. What can I do for you?"

"I just wanted an update on Major Kira's case."

"Ah. We're preparing the indictment papers right now. The preliminary hearing has been scheduled."

"Reschedule it. I have several motions I wish to present."

She blinked. "Motions? Captain, do you have some legal expertise of which I am unaware?"

"Does that matter? The motions are valid."

"We'll see about that." She held out her hand for the PADD he was carrying.

"First: a motion to suppress the tachyon readings taken of Major Kira on the night of the ball. She was examined without her knowledge or consent, which constitutes an illegal search of her person without probable cause. These tachyon readings led to the forensic examination of the Major's clothing and body, therefore any evidence proceeding from such examination is also invalid as it proceeded from an illegal search. Second: a motion to suppress any and all testimony given by Major Kira without my presence, which I believe is all of it. She was denied the advice of counsel during such testimony."

Venable looked a little stunned, but latched onto his last statement. "She waived her right to counsel."

Sisko held up a finger. "Major Kira is a non-Federation citizen without foreknowledge of our legal processes, and under Federation v. McNue she cannot waive her right to counsel except in the presence of a duly designated Federation advocate, such as myself."

"She didn't have an advocate at the time!"

He shrugged. "That's not my problem, Captain."

"And she does have knowledge of our legal proceedings as you very well know."

"Well. We'll just see about that, won't we?"

Venable sighed. "Captain, why do I get the feeling you're stalling me?"

"I have no idea. What I do know is that no preliminary hearing can proceed until these legal matters are addressed. As it stands, there is no part of the evidence against Major Kira that is not questionable."

"The evidence will hold up and we both know it."

"See you in chambers, Captain." Sisko nodded to her and breezed out, pleased with himself. Well, that'll give you at least a week, Odo. Take advantage of it.

*******

"So what's the plan?"

Odo was tapping on the PADD his "old friend" had sent. "We need to find this Pelz Mauren. How hard would it be to tap into their computer net?"

"Not hard. We'll beam into a low-security area after hours and access the central net from there. With my knowledge of their computer system and the information your friend gave us, it shouldn't be a problem."

"This would be a lot easier if my old friend were here. She had a dataport, she could get any information we needed very quickly."

"Spilled milk," Briggs said, not bothering to explain this incomprehensible statement. "We can take care of it ourselves. So we find this guy..."

"...and he'll tell us how and why he set up Nerys for the assassination and hopefully who the real assassin was."

Briggs nodded. "And he'll just tell us this, you think? Odo, this guy's a Syndicate middleman. You don't get to that position without knowing how to keep your mouth shut. If he tells us so much as his favorite color they'll cut him into so many pieces he'll need a level-three decryption sequence to button his shirt. However will you convince him?"

"He won't have a choice. He'll already be as good as dead once the Syndicate finds out that our investigators have proven that Kira was set up."

"They haven't proven that Kira was set up."

"He doesn't know that. We'll just sit him down and have a little chat. I'll rant and rave and growl and wave around a PADD full of our 'evidence' that Nerys is innocent and threaten to feed him to the Syndicate myself...maybe I'll lunge at him a few times and imply that I might work him over first...then you'll come in, shocked at my histrionics and throw me out of the room. You'll sit down, offer him some raktajino and try to be as comforting and non-threatening as possible. You'll apologize for my deplorable behavior and tell him that we can protect him from the Syndicate if he'll tell us the truth. If we're sufficiently convincing he'll tell you everything."

Nora smiled at him. "Good cop, bad cop?"

Odo looked at her, puzzled. "What?"

"Odo, human law enforcers have been using that technique for centuries. They call it 'good cop, bad cop.'"

"What a shame. Here I thought I'd invented it myself."

"I'm surprised you haven't seen it in any of those mysteries you like to read."

He chuckled. "The heroes of those stories aren't that subtle. They usually just beat the truth out of their suspects...an approach which is occasionally tempting, but not often useful."

"Well, all debates on interrogation techniques aside, we'll be in sensor range of Orion shortly. I need to change. Start scanning for a suitable place to access their computer net as soon as we're close enough."

"Agreed."

*******

Julian Bashir had decided that if he could stay at his console until 2200, he could have a bowl of I'danian spice pudding. Double whipped. And a tall glass of foamy Chai. And some truffles. And strawberries. He forced his attention back to the computer DNA reconstruction he was running, listening with half an ear while Miles updated Data (who had just returned from dinner with Deanna and Lwaxana) on the proceedings during his absence.

"I'm still sorting through the embedded data layers in the sensor readings," the Chief was saying. "It's bloody time-consuming."

"I know. Gigabytes of multinodal data take a long time to extrapolate. But it could provide us with more information about the sensor readings, perhaps even reveal inconsistencies."

"Seems like a long shot."

"Chief, I am afraid that long shots are all we have left."

Miles nodded. "Admiral Korinth stopped by."

Data raised one eyebrow. "Really? What reason did she give?"

"She said she knew Kira, and was curious about her case." Julian paid more attention. This visit had occurred while he was out of the room, apparently. "She was on the station for a few weeks right after Dietz and the other changelings arrived, along with her creepy little assistant who never said a word and didn't wear rank pips. But today she was alone, and she didn't seem all that interested when I tried to tell her about our efforts to prove the setup. I got the feeling she was just checking up."

"That is strange."

"I hear she and Venable are pretty thick, maybe the JAG office wants to know if we're getting anywhere."

"All they would need to do is ask."

Julian frowned. Data was right, it was strange. Shrugging it off, he returned to his analysis, visions of spice pudding dancing in his head.

*******

"Power grid relay station?"

"Too many chances to be electrocuted."

"Waste reclamation facility?"

"Too smelly."

Odo kept scanning. "Water treatment center?"

Briggs leaned over his shoulder. "Hmm. That's promising. Pretty remote, bad neighborhood. Closed at night, nothing top-secret or valuable. Let's try that." She shrugged into her black overcoat, its opaque wool concealing her weapons.

"It's valuable enough to be shielded. We can't beam in."

"Not with conventional transporters, no."

"Let me guess. Section 31 has some special kind that will allow us to transport down."

Briggs chuckled. "No. No one can break the laws of physics, not even us...not that we haven't tried. We'll just have to beam down as close as possible and hoof it." She eyed him. "So what are you going to wear?"

Odo stood up, his exterior reshaping into that of a menacing, helmeted Breen.

"Oh, that's good. At least no one will bother us."

*******

Kira was asleep, finally. Dietz was just beginning to appreciate how stressful this incarceration was for her. She found it difficult to remain calm when all she could think of was her own inability to help Odo, Miles and Julian, or even herself. He began to wonder if Odo had asked him to stay here with her not so much to watch out for her (his stated reason) but to keep her mind occupied so she wouldn't drive herself to distraction.

Dietz almost wished her insomnia had lasted. With Kira safely inhabiting that dreamworld where people fall but never hit bottom and come to important meetings naked, he was left alone with his unsettling thoughts, which seemed to turn single-mindedly in one direction no matter how many different venues of consideration he tried to urge them along.

So he sat and tried to read. He tried to play chess against himself after determining that Ensign O'Reilly had no knowledge of the game and no interest in learning. He was finally reduced to watching the clock, so to speak. But at 0300 he got an unexpected distraction.

The door slid open to admit two gold-uniformed security drones. Dietz was surprised to note that one was a lieutenant. This officer approached him stiffly. "Nam Dietzbader?"

Dietz stood. "Who wants to know?"

"Please come with us."

Dietz glanced at Kira's slumbering form, suddenly uneasy. He glanced at O'Reilly, who appeared just as puzzled as he was. "What's this about?" he asked.

"I'm not at liberty to say, sir. I'm acting under orders."

He nodded. Implicit in that statement was that this nameless lieutenant had no more idea what this was about than Dietz himself. "All right, let's go." The two security men immediately flanked him as he walked to the door, exchanging a meaningful glance with O'Reilly and a silent agreement that the ensign would look after Kira, which was of course his job. He was escorted from the room...and was starting to feel like an accused criminal himself. "So boys," he said as they proceeded down the hall. "Nice night for a walk."

"Yes, sir," the lieutenant said neutrally.

"You realize that I could incapacitate both of you before you had any idea what was happening."

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't do that, sir."

"Where are you taking me?"

"Transport center, sir."

"And from there?"

"It's not for me to say, sir."

"I see." Dietz kept silent as they neared the transport center, aware that this line of questioning would get him nowhere. The lieutenant motioned him onto one of the transporter pads and turned to the ensign on duty.

"Beam him to the ordered coordinates, Ensign."

"Aye, sir." The transport center shimmered out of existence and for a second Dietz was dead certain that he'd been dematerialized, that his atoms had been beamed out into empty space, never to remateralize, that he'd been deemed inconvenient by some unseen force and neatly disposed of...then he rematerialized in a darkened room. It appeared to be an ordinary Starfleet office, except that it was empty of furniture. There was a single window, high enough up so that Dietz could see nothing but the night sky, with a single figure standing before it. It was only a silhouette, hooded and unidentifiable.

"Nam Dietzbader," it said. Its voice was electronically disguised. Whoever had brought him here didn't want him to know his identity.

"Yes?"

"It's a nice night for parasailing, isn't it?"

Dietz almost laughed, both at the absurdity of such a banal statement spoken in the unearthly tones of a disguised voice and with relief...the phrase was one of Section 31's identification codes. This person was a fellow agent. He scrambled for the correct response. "I prefer surfing, myself." The hooded figure nodded. Dietz took a step forward. "Criminy, you scared me half to death! You guys and your cloak and dagger stuff. You could have just called! Let's see your face!"

"No. I've brought you here under conditions of absolute secrecy for a good reason."

Dietz sobered. "What reason?"

"The things I'm about to tell you, you were not meant to hear nor I to tell."

"What is this about?"

"It's about Major Kira."

"Kira? What about her?"

"You have to get her away from here, as soon as possible."

"Why?"

"Because she will never be allowed to escape this accusation. It's already been decided. Those who set her up won't allow it. She is in very real danger."

*******

Odo, still in his Breen form, stood watch while Briggs tapped away at the console. "Come on you bastard," she muttered under her breath. So far things had gone even more smoothly than he had dared to hope. Their beamdown had been unobserved and undetected. Their hike to the water treatment center went unchallenged. The treatment center was absurdly unprotected, and the three guards they'd encountered had posed little resistance. The only hurdle left to clear was a successful intrusion into the central computer net.

"Hurry up," he hissed at her.

"Almost there...got it," she said. "I'm into the central directory. Pelz Mauren...there he is, the little son of a bitch. He's listed as a 'logistical engineer'...must be the latest euphemism...and he lives in the Kurma subdivision. Very posh. Setting up innocent Bajorans must pay well."

"Is there a visual record?"

"Coming up now." Odo leaned over her shoulder as the photo of Mauren appeared on the screen. He was pretty average-looking, for a Bolian...but Briggs stiffened as if she'd been slapped. "What is it?" he asked, alarmed.

"Oh no..." she breathed.

*******

"Come on, aren't you being a bit paranoid?" Dietz said. "How much danger can she be in locked in a Federation holding cell? The Syndicate's pretty powerful, but they're not gods, they just..." He stopped short, a horrible thought occurring to him. So horrible, in fact, that it had to be the truth. "But the Syndicate didn't do this, did they?"

The figure hesitated. "They think they did."

*******

"Briggs, what in the name of the Prophets..."

"Odo, I shouldn't have come. I'm screwing everything up."

"What are you talking about?"

"Him," she said, pointing at Mauren.

"Do you know him."

"Know him? Odo, I trained with him."

"Here, in the Syndicate?"

"No!" she said, jumping up and grabbing him by the front of the uniform. "On Earth!"

*******

Dietz felt sick. "We did this, didn't we?"

"Not you. Not me."

"Section 31. They did this."

"Yes. They engineered the setup. They arranged the assassination. And they will make sure it sticks."

"Why would they want Jaresh-Inyo dead?" Dietz demanded, his head spinning.

"That's information I'm not privy to."

"Are you a part of this somehow?" he growled, stepping forward. The figure recoiled slightly. "Did you help them do this?"

"I played a very small part. I don't know everything...but I do know this. Kira is the key. They went to great lengths to make sure she was accused. If that falls apart, everything falls apart."

"You're saying they'd have her..."

"Disappear? It's happened before. That's why you've got to get her away from here, now."

"Why do you care?"

"Perhaps I'm trying to make amends for my role, however small, in this operation. Maybe I just can't stand to see her go to prison, or worse, for someone else's crime."

"Yeah, whatever. Listen, beam me back to headquarters, I have to get moving."

"I know. Be careful. They may be expecting this."

"Then they might find out that they trained me a little too well."

*******

"On Earth?" Odo exclaimed. "You're saying this man is some kind of Starfleet defector?"

"No! Odo, that man is a Section 31 discretionary free agent, just like me! I haven't seen him in years, I had no idea he'd infiltrated the Syndicate."

Odo was in shock. "And if he arranged the setup..."

"Then Section 31 is responsible for this entire situation."

They fell silent. "How could you not have known about this?" Odo croaked.

"You've got to be kidding me! They don't tell me everything! You have no idea how many pies they've got their fingers in, I doubt there's anyone in the entire organization who knows everything they're involved in!"

"Well, this certainly complicates matters!"

"Maybe not. If I can talk to him I might be able to get him to tell me what's really going on here...because whatever we think it is, I guarantee it's something else."

"If they're determined to go through with this, somehow I doubt we'll be able to stop them."

"Well...we'll just see about that."

*******

The shimmery afterglow of Dietz's dematerialization had barely faded when the hooded figure who had summoned him was out the door of the deserted office in the old Tactical Operations section of Starfleet Headquarters. A new center for the division had been built and this complex was closed off and set to be refitted as a training facility. A nervous guard was lurking outside the door and jumped visibly when his spectral visitor appeared at his side.

"Sir, this is all very irregular..." he began, unable to keep from thinking of the figure's uncanny resemblance to the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, an image that had haunted him in many childhood nightmares.

"You are not to discuss with anyone what you saw here tonight," the figure said in its barely-human, distorted voice. "By order of Section 31, this meeting was classified top-secret." He produced an ID card, which the guard scanned.

"Your credentials are verified, sir."

"Then do you understand my orders?"

"Completely."

"Very well. Return to your post." The guard scurried away, relieved to be off the hook. The figure went back into the deserted office, removed its cloak and voice distortion collar and stuffed both items into the matter recycling unit. It strode quickly away from the closed-off section and slipped through an exterior hatch into the manicured gardens outside headquarters, where it might have been any officer taking a late-night constitutional in the balmy autumn bay breezes. Satisfied that it had reached an unsuspicious beamout location, it tapped its combadge.

"Bashir to Federation HQ...one to beam out."

CHAPTER 8. Pretty Fly for a White Guy

Kira came awake suddenly with the unpleasantly oily feeling of having slept in her clothes. Mornings in a holding cell weren't the freshest of experiences even in the best circumstances, and her sleep had been plagued with upsetting dreams that left her feeling sweaty and shaky as if she'd just been in a fight. She sat up and rubbed her hands up and down her arms, hoping that she'd be escorted out for her sonic shower soon. The ensign on duty nodded a nonverbal "good morning" to her. It was some granite-faced woman she didn't recognize. She felt mildly disappointed that it wasn't O'Reilly. Of course he couldn't be on duty around the clock, but since he'd allowed his prisoner that brief good-bye clinch with her fiancee she'd sort of developed a soft spot for the ruddy, freckle-faced security officer.

The door swished open and Kira was relieved to see the slim young yeoman who seemed to be assigned to her. Time for a sonic shower, thank the Prophets. The guard nodded to the yeoman and the force field was lowered. The yeoman (whose name Kira had never quite caught...she thought it was Hooper or perhaps Harper) took her arm and led her out of the room.

*******

Miles was in the comm room talking to Keiko and checking with his staff back on the station. He'd be there for at least an hour. Data had gone back to the Enterprise for a briefing with his captain that he hadn't been able to get out of; he was due to return at 1000 hours. Deanna had gone to visit an old crewmate who was now teaching at the Academy and wouldn't be back until afternoon. Both she and Data had been in rather poor moods all morning; an apparently ongoing argument having something to do with her mother had flared into life after seeing Lwaxana the night before and they'd been quarreling since breakfast. Everyone was feeling down and dispirited.

The immediate result was that Julian was alone in their workspace and free to monitor Dietz's movements without fear of discovery, though on some level discovery might be a relief. Being an unregistered agent was rife with intrigue and mystery, but secrecy was a heavy burden...and he'd spent too much of his life bearing huge secrets to particularly relish this new one that had been his constant companion for the past eight months. Not that he'd had much choice in the matter. Well, he thought, if I can put it to good use and help Kira now, it will have been worth it. And let them fire me for it. I'll shake their hands and send them a nice fruit basket.

He'd been staring at the security monitors outside Kira's cell for some time now, but she was asleep and nothing had happened barring a shift change. If Dietz were going to execute a prison break as per his suggestion, he'd likely just walk right in wearing some inconspicuous disguise and take her...and Julian intended to be watching when he made his move. If any security were alerted to the breakout, he could avert some of it from here. He began entering access codes that weren't supposed to exist, codes that gave him anonymous and undetectable control over most of the headquarters security systems. If only Starfleet and the Federation knew just how much control Section 31 could have over the entire system if they wished to, he thought. Good thing they practice discretion.

Kira was awake now and eyeing the door, probably waiting for the yeoman to take her to the showers. Julian clicked around the security wing, looking for Kira's yeoman. Soon enough, he found her exactly where he thought he might...unconscious in her quarters. He had no fear for her safety; Dietz would have been gentle. Probably just used a hypospray.

He clicked back over to Kira's cell just in time to see the "yeoman" enter the room. She took Kira's arm and led her out.

*******

"This isn't the way to the showers." Harper-or-Hooper said nothing, but kept a firm grip on Kira's arm. "Hey, what's-your-name, where are we going?"

"Just stay quiet and act natural," the yeoman said, barely moving her lips...but it was Dietz's voice. Kira, assessing the situation quickly, straightened and composed herself. They entered a deserted corridor and Kira glanced over at her liberator just in time to see Harper-or-Hooper disappear to be replaced by an anonymously tall and burly security officer. She jumped a little...she was used to Odo's relatively clumsy shapeshifting, but Dietz's still startled her with its eerie speed and skill. There was no intermediate liquid stage between Harper-or-Hooper and Burly-Man, just a quick wave of shimmering that passed over the form and then it was over in the time it took to blink.

"Why are we doing this?" she hissed. "We'll never get off the planet, this is insane! What the hell is going through your head?"

"I was all but ordered to break you out," he hissed back. "And the person who ordered me...whoever they were...better see to it we make it out safely."

*******

You're damn right I will, Julian thought as he watched them go down the hall. They would hit a security checkpoint before they could get to the transport center...he quickly accessed the security subroutines and inserted a set of orders for Kira to be taken to JAG headquarters, then activated a monitor just ahead of Dietz and Kira's location.

*******

Dietz was starting to worry that his confidence in his mystery contact was misplaced when a wall monitor just ahead of them flared into life. He stopped, momentarily unsure.

"What?" Kira whispered urgently. "We have to keep moving!"

"Stay here," he murmured, and went to the monitor.

Kira waited nervously, shifting her weight from one foot to another, feeling dreadfully exposed out here in the middle of an ordinary hallway. How long would it take for them to discover she wasn't where she was supposed to be? No more than ten minutes, when she'd be expected to return from her shower. Hopefully that would be enough for...for whatever. Dietz returned to her side, looking relieved. "Let's go," he whispered, taking her arm again. "Trust me."

Kira said nothing. She had to trust him, there was no way out now. Her fate was completely in Dietz's hands, such as they were. As they passed, the monitor he'd consulted went dark. A shiver ran up Kira's spine. "Someone is watching us," she breathed.

"Let's hope so," Dietz replied as he walked her unabashedly into the transport center. "Major Kira to be transported to JAG headquarters," he said to the ensign on duty. The young woman checked with the computer, then nodded.

"Confirmed." She motioned them onto the transporter pad. Kira stepped up with only a tiny glance of amazement at her companion.

"Energize," Dietz said.

*******

Julian's technologically-resequenced fingers flew over the console, rerouting their transporter beams and just as quickly erasing any trace that he'd done so. The two fugitives materialized safely inside Briggs' and Dietz's ship, and by the time they realized where they were, Julian had erased the transfer order from the computer records and transmitted the docking clearance codes to the ship's computer.

He sighed and sat back, his work finished. Very soon, it would become clear that Kira had simply vanished without a trace. It wouldn't take long for them to deduce what had become of her, with both Dietz and his ship gone, but by then the fugitives would be far away. After that, they were on their own. There was nothing else he could do.

The door slid open and Data entered. "Hello, Doctor," he said neutrally.

"You're back sooner than you expected," Julian said over his pounding heart. Couldn't have cut that any closer, could we, Jules?

"The briefing went quickly," Data said, sitting down at what had become "his" station. "Captain Picard is aware of the urgency of my task here and he gave me leave to return."

"That was good of him."

"Not altogether. It took the combined persuasive powers of both Deanna and myself to convince him of the necessity of my presence. Fortunately, we are not scheduled to leave for several days and most of the crew has been given shore leave, therefore my presence on the Enterprise is not essential."

"I thought Deanna was in San Francisco."

"She is, she spoke to us on the comm."

Julian eyed the android's composed features over the console as he picked up where he'd left off. "You and Deanna back on speaking terms?" he asked, turning back to his own research.

Data glanced up. "We were never 'off' speaking terms, Doctor. She and I have disagreed before, but we always seem to find a way to overcome our differences."

"Love conquers all," Julian quipped.

"An illogical statement that is impossible to objectively evaluate," Data said automatically...then one corner of his mouth quirked up in a smile. "Yet I do not doubt its veracity. Why do you suppose that is, Doctor?"

"Experience wins over logic every time, Data."

*******

"Oh, I have a bad feeling about this," Kira said, pacing nervously in the shuttle while Dietz' fingers fluttered over the console with practiced familiarity. "Do you have any idea how many laws we're breaking? I'm probably only making things worse for myself by going along with this."

"You're the last person I would have expected to bow to the authoritarian regime," Dietz muttered, most of his attention on his ship's computer. "Weren't you in some sort of resistance years ago or doth mine ears deceive me?"

"That was different," she said through clenched teeth. "What if Odo manages to clear me of the assassination and I get thrown in jail anyway for this little stunt?"

"Too late now."

Kira resumed her pacing, growing more anxious with every second that they remained on the planet. "Listen, I hate to be the naysayer but how the hell are we supposed to get out of dock without anyone knowing?"

Dietz' lips curled into a satisfied grin as he located a new file in the ship's nav computer. "How about with these docking clearance codes provided by our guardian angel?"

Kira looked over his shoulder and shook her head, amazed. "Who is this friend of yours, Dietz?"

"I have no idea, and that's just the way I like it." The bay doors obediently slid open and Dietz flew the shuttle out at breakneck speed, his face tense. Kira dropped into the copilot's seat and gripped her armrests out of sheer self-preservation. Dietz didn't let up on the gas for a second, deftly maneuvering the small ship through the maze of spacedocks and stations in the Terran system. If anyone got suspicious they could still be intercepted...concerns that Dietz evidently shared, for he didn't even wait till they'd cleared the solar system before jumping to warp.

Kira sat back, marginally comforted as they warped away from Earth. "Well. Not a bad prison break, all things considered," she quipped, reassured by the relative ease of their escape.

Dietz raised an eyebrow. "It went smoothly enough, didn't it? Pays to have friends on the inside...even if you have no idea who they are."

"Are you going to tell me what's going on now?"

He sighed. "I don't suppose you'd just take it on faith that I had good reasons?" Kira said nothing, just waited with an expectant expression. "Didn't think so." He took a deep breath. "Okay. Our unseen friend had me brought to see him at about three this morning and told me to get you off the planet because you were in danger, and that those who set this up wouldn't let you get free, ever."

She nodded, only a slight tightening of her jaw muscles betraying any reaction to this statement. "I guess it's too much to expect that he told you who exactly that was."

"Well..."

She leaned forward, her eyes widening. "He did tell you, didn't he?"

"The man who summoned me didn't let me see his face or hear his voice. All I know is that he was Section 31, just like me. He said..." Dietz sighed, hoping she wouldn't force him to complete the sentence. No such luck. "He said that they engineered it. The assassination, the frameup, the whole thing."

Kira just sat there for a moment, her face frozen. She stood up abruptly and resumed her pacing around the cockpit with renewed vigor, stamping a few steps in one direction and then whirling on her heel to stamp a few steps in another direction. "I don't believe it," she was muttering. "I don't fucking believe it!" she yelled, stopping to pound a fist against the wall.

"Take it easy, that bulkhead is all that's separating us from the empty void of space."

"How can you sit there so calmly? They set me up! They tried to kill their own commander in chief!" Her features hardened. "Section 31's going to have to answer to me for what they've done, and if anything happens to my Odo or to Nora because of it then I will make them pay!" she shouted, raw emotion roughening her voice.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves. We're still in the dark here, it's too early to start planning revenge schemes."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I don't think my informant was particularly high up in this operation. If I know Section 31, whatever things may look like on the outside, the reality is probably quite different."

*******

The tiny viewing slot in the door slid open and a pair of violet eyes set in the blue skin of a Bolian face peered out. "Yes?"

"Pelz Mauren?" Odo asked. He was back in his customary humanoid form. People didn't tend to respond too well to Breen appearing on their doorsteps.

"Who wants to know?"

Nora stepped into view. "I do," she said, and planted a kick next to the door handle. It flew open obediently, knocking Mauren on his ass in the living room. She and Odo let themselves in.

"Jack, what the hell!" Mauren said from the floor, one hand to his nose.

She crouched next to him and jerked him towards her by his shirtfront. "Was this an agency operation?" she demanded. "Or was this just a little side project of yours?"

"What are you talking about?"

"The Inyo thing! Were you ordered to set it up by the agency, or was it a favor for your Syndicate buddies? A little something extra just so they'd trust you?"

"Briggs..."

"Because if it was, you know I'm going to have to kill you...slowly."

Mauren just stared up at her for a moment...then, to Odo's shock, he suddenly pistoned his knee up and shoved Briggs off, leaping to his feet with catike grace. This man is an agent too, Odo reminded himself...his skills must be considerable even if he weren't trained to kill as Briggs was. Mauren's face was angry, his eyes darting pointedly around the room as if he were trying to indicate something to her.

Briggs shook her head. "I disabled the surveillance equipment before we knocked, Pelz. The Syndicate's not watching."

He relaxed minutely. "Then you mind telling me what the hell you mean barging in here? And who's your friend?" he said, nodding at Odo.

"My name is Odo," the man in question said, walking forward and crossing his arms over his chest. Mauren signed and let his arms fall. "I see it's familiar to you."

"Yeah, you could say that. Your reputation precedes you. Let me congratulate you on the DS9 file security protocols," Mauren said. "It was quite a project to access them discreetly." He smiled coldly. "Did you know you're on the Syndicate's ten most wanted list? They hate you."

"I can't imagine why."

"Maybe because they haven't gotten an operation cleanly through DS9 since you took over, think that could be it?"

"Right now that is not my concern," Odo growled. "The fact that my fiancee is charged with a crime she did not commit is my concern."

"Of course it would be, wouldn't it?" Mauren shook his head. "It's really too bad you brought her along," he said, eyeing Briggs. "I'm afraid it negates all my careful preparation."

"Then you are working for the Syndicate!" Odo rumbled, his face darkening. Briggs held him back, comprehension in her eyes.

"No, he isn't."

"But he just said that..."

"I know what he said." She gave him a stern stay-put look and stepped closer to Mauren. "It's a bunt?"

"Yeah," Mauren said miserably.

Briggs fetched a deep sigh. "How do we salvage the operation?" she murmured.

"I'm not sure we can," Mauren replied in like fashion. "He wasn't supposed to know," he said, jerking his head toward Odo.

"You could just point us in the right direction, we'll take it from there. That's how it was originally scripted, wasn't it?"

"But you weren't supposed to show up! And now he knows about..."

"Let's just keep that between us for the moment."

Odo watched this exchange, mystified. They seemed to know exactly what they were talking about...he, on the other hand, hadn't a clue. Whatever it was that Briggs was suggesting, Mauren seemed to agree. They exchanged a few more murmured phrases, then Mauren went off to his workstation and Briggs returned to Odo's side, her face grim.

"Odo, I'm going to have to ask you to do something that may be against your better judgment."

"I'm not doing a damned thing until you tell me what's going on here. The truth."

"I can't do that, not yet." She looked him squarely in the eyes. "I need you to trust me. It's not for me, it's not for him. It's for Nerys, and I really mean that. If you do as I ask we will find out who's responsible for this, because that's what we're supposed to do. It's already been decided."

Odo's eyes narrowed. "What exactly are we talking about here?" he asked.

"I need you to forget that Mauren is Section 31. Just...put it out of your mind, and let's proceed as if he's just what we thought he was: a Syndicate middleman. That's all you were ever supposed to know."

"By whose design? Who decides what I am and am not supposed to know? And what the hell is a bunt?" he demanded.

"Please, Odo...I promise when this is all over I will tell you everything. Right now you've got to trust me." She sighed again. "I'm sorry, it's my fault you're in this position. I should have just let you come alone...none of this would be an issue if I'd stayed the hell out of it. But we can fix it if you'll just play your part."

He shook his head, slowly. "Nerys, this frameup, me, even Inyo...we're all just pawns in someone else's game, aren't we, Briggs?" She said nothing. "I can't say I trust you completely, Nora. Not when I know you're holding back...but I think you must have good reason. I'll try to do as you suggest." He stepped closer. "But when this is all over, I want to know whose chessboard we're on...and who's making the moves."

Her shoulders sagged slightly. "Thank you. This will all make sense, you have my word as...as a Starfleet officer."

He snorted. "If only that were your first loyalty, that might mean something."

*******

Miles peered in the door of Jaresh-Inyo's private hospital room. "Mr. President?" he ventured sheepishly.

The Grazerite, looking substantially smaller in the hospital bed and without his traditional headwear, turned his head slowly to assess his visitor. "Ah, Chief," he croaked. He raised a hand weakly. "Come in."

The Chief stepped uncertainly to the President's bedside. He wasn't quite sure what he would say, but he'd braved a platoon of security checks to get in here and he'd be damned if it would be for nothing. "How are you feeling, sir?" he asked. Seemed a safe enough question.

"Better, thank you. The doctors tell me I'll be quite myself again in a week or so." He shook his head, more in disbelief than anything else. "Praise heavens for your friend Dr. Bashir. They tell me that he saved my life."

"That's his job, sir. He sends his greetings as well."

Inyo's face sobered. "Chief, no one will tell me the truth. Was it really...Major Kira?"

Miles paused. "No, sir. It most certainly was not."

"But...they think it was."

"Mr. President," the Chief said, leaning closer, "someone has done this to you, and to her too. We will find out who it was."

Inyo stared into the engineer's face for a moment, then nodded slowly. "Good."

Miles straightened up. "Can I get you anything, sir?"

"That's very kind of you...perhaps some water? There's a pitcher there on the sideboard."

"Of course." Miles went over and poured a glass, glad for something concrete to do. "I hope the food here is better than in the infirmary on DS9. No matter how advanced our technology becomes, seems like no one's been able to make decent hospital food."

Inyo smiled and accepted the water. "I haven't had much of an appetite, but I am thirsty most of the time...the doctors say it's the residual poison. It interferes with the body temperature. I feel hot, then all of a sudden I'm freezing."

Miles shuddered. "Cor, that's bloody uncomfortable. I once had the Andorian flu and the same thing happened to me, my temperature was all over the...over the..." He trailed off, his own words falling on his brain with a loud "click."

Inyo blinked. "Chief?"

After a moment Miles' eyes came back into focus, and full of the blinding light of inspiration. "Mr. President, if you'll excuse me, I may have just had a breakthrough. I hope you'll be feeling better soon, sir." With a smile he turned and all but ran out the door as fast as his legs could carry him.

*******

Kira and Dietz sat wordlessly staring at the planet Orion, filling their cockpit window and looking for all the world like the hell that it was.

"What now?" Dietz asked.

"Don't you have a plan?"

"Sure. Get you out of prison and come here. I didn't get much further than that."

"We need to find Odo and Briggs."

"That's not going to be easy."

"Then we'll just have to do it the old-fashioned way," Kira said, getting up from her seat and going to the rear of the ship.

Dietz swiveled around to watch her. She was rummaging in the weapons locker, where Briggs kept her vast array of sidearms and tools of mass destruction. "And what's the old-fashioned way?"

Kira straightened up, cradling a mean-looking pulse rifle with a low-mounted grenade launcher. She chambered the first round with a loud, ratcheting click. "We ask nicely," she said, a rabblerousing glint in her eye.

*******

"What do you need to see?" Mauren asked. Odo leaned over his shoulder, peering at the monitor.

"Any and all files pertaining to the attempt on Inyo."

"Those files aren't on this system, they're encrypted at the central core."

"What? Didn't you arrange the entire thing?"

"From a practical point of view, yes! I planned it, but I'm just a middleman. All the documentation...what little there is...was in the hands of the Council. They don't trust that kind of sensitive information to just anyone."

"Who was your contact on the Council? Can you access his system?"

Mauren sighed. "If I even try it, I'm jeopardizing my cover."

"Cover? What cover?" Odo said innocently. Mauren glared up at him.

"You know what I'm talking about!"

Odo grabbed him by the front of his shirt. "Listen very carefully. I agreed to forget that you even have a cover at your insistence, so you can't now pull out the same excuse to save your own skin! Do it!" Mauren cast an uneasy glance back at Briggs, who just stood there with her arms crossed over her chest and a blank expression on her face. He finally sighed and turned back to the monitor. Odo watched as he worked his way through the system towards the Council's files. "You're good," Odo commented.

"I better be," Mauren said tightly. "If they catch me in here I'll be dead, agent or not." Briggs came up on Mauren's other side as he began the remote access to his contact's computer files. She glanced at Odo and noted his guilty expression.

"Shed no tears for our long-suffering colleage, Odo," she said. "He's not going to get caught. He's been in this file many times before and hasn't been caught yet, isn't that right, Pelz?"

The Bolian didn't appear to have heard her. His attention was on the screen before him. A few more seconds and the computer beeped softly at him, a personnel file filling the screen. The beaked face of an avian male, middle-aged, his features craggy and deeply lined with hardship. "Your contact?" Odo asked. Mauren nodded.

"His name is..."

"...Pax Donegal." Briggs' voice was flat as she finished the sentence. Odo and Mauren looked over at her. She straightened up and abruptly turned her back and walked a few steps away.

"You know him?" Odo asked. It wasn't really a question.

She barked short laughter. "Oh my, yes. He was my mentor when I was in the Syndicate. Taught me everything he knew, and he knew a lot. You might say I was his star pupil. It was with his voucher that I was able to move to a position of power so quickly." She paused.

Something in her voice... "Briggs, what is it?" Odo said.

She turned back, and Odo had to stop himself from recoiling. Her expression was as blank as before, but never in his life had he seen such hatred in a pair of human eyes.

"He's also the man who killed my husband."

*******

Sisko hesitated outside Captain Venable's door, gathering his resolve. C'mon, Ben, you've faced the Kai at her worst. This is nothing.

Feeling somewhat encouraged, he stepped forward and through into the office. Venable was just sitting there behind her desk, her fingers steepled under her nose, the picture of serenity. Then she spoke, and the picture was shattered by her icy, furious tone.

"Captain, perhaps you'd care to explain to me exactly how your first officer managed to disappear without a trace."

"Well, 'without a trace' is a strong phrase, Captain..."

She jumped up. "Of course it is. Let me restate myself! How she managed to incapacitate her tender, walk out of the security area unchallenged, and beam herself out of headquarters without anyone so much as blinking!"

"Are you asking me, sir?"

"As a matter of fact I'm not!" she shouted. "It just so happens that the Changeling, Dietzbader, who'd been with her constantly, is also missing! As, I might add, is her fiancee! He has not been in the complex for days! Dietzbader's ship is gone from spacedock having somehow acquired clearance codes without actually having clearance, and his reconnaissance partner, Lt. Briggs, is nowhere to be found." She threw up her hands. "Anyway, since we seem to be rapidly running out of witnesses, I thought I'd call you down and see if you could shed some light on these interesting events before the list dwindles down to just me and thee."

Sisko said nothing.

"Nothing to say? Fine, then I'll keep talking. This Dietzbader, I checked on his assignment. Deep survey patrols with Lt. Briggs under the command of an Admiral Fugazi, who incidentally doesn't exist, nor have they made any survey reports to the fleet in the three months they've been on the assignment! She is rated as a weapons engineer but I cannot confirm her ever having received any weaponry engineering training! I have determined that early this morning, Dietzbader was escorted out of Kira's cell by two security officers, neither of whom can or will tell me anything about where he went or with whom! It seems obvious that he impersonated her yeoman and simply walked her out of the room, but I cannot determine how he was able to get them both beamed off the grounds without arousing suspicion!" She stared at Sisko's implacable face. "And you, Captain Sisko, have nothing to add."

"Captain, I'm afraid I know nothing of any of these events." Not a helpful answer, but it had the virtue of being the truth.

"Is that so." She came around the desk and leaned on the table. "Let me tell you what I think. Just stop me if I get something wrong. I think that Odo and this Briggs went off to Orion to try and prove his frameup theory, leaving her partner to look after Kira...but something went wrong. Dietzbader's secret meeting made him think it necessary to get her away from all of us evil Starfleet types, so he broke her out of jail and smuggled her and himself off the planet, presumably to join the two already on Orion. Am I getting warm?"

Sisko said nothing.

Venable nodded. "It's all right, Captain, you needn't confirm nor deny any of this. You're too smart to know anything. You would have wanted to be as ignorant as possible about what they were planning, am I right? Saves you from having to look me in the eye and lie." She moved to the comm. "I think I'll just send a few starships to Orion and see if they can't..."

Sisko held up a hand. "Wait!" he heard himself say. Venable froze, her hand halfway to the hailing button, and stared at him. He sighed. "Don't do that just yet."

She put her hands on her hips. "Give me one good reason why not."

He stepped forward. "I'll give you two good reasons: my first officer and my chief of security. They're two of the most honorable people I've ever had the privilege to know. I'm absolutely positive that Kira is innocent of any wrongdoing, and the only thing I'm even more positive of is that Odo is only doing what he thinks is right by trying to clear her name. He's doing what any of us would in his place...whatever he has to do. If you give him just a little time..." He leaned closer to her. "I know you don't want to see an innocent woman punished, Captain. I know that because you have a very great love for justice that goes much deeper than simple duty or compliance. So does Odo. He will find whoever is responsible for all of this, I promise you that. Let him do his job."

Venable held his eyes for a moment, then her shoulders sagged. She dropped back into her desk chair. "If we don't hear from them within forty-eight hours, I'm sending in an entire squadron and they will have orders to bring all four of them back in chains. Is that understood?"

Sisko nodded, relieved. "Understood, Captain. You won't regret this." He turned and left before she could change her mind.

After the doors shut behind him, Venable moved back to the comm panel. "Computer, secure doors. Open a secure line."

"-Communications have been secured-"

"Engage scramble encryption code Venable-alpha-34."

"-Encryption engaged-"

"Open a channel to Admiral Korinth."

"-Working-"

Venable waited while the computer located the Admiral and secured her end. "Korinth here."

"It's a cold day for pontooning."

"But not too cold for ice fishing. What's up?"

"Did Nora take one of the new shuttles?"

"She sure as hell did, and if she so much as scratches it I'm gonna chew her a new asshole. How much time did Sisko ask for?"

"Forty-eight hours."

"Hm. I thought he'd ask for more."

"It should be enough. Listen...is Gamma squadron ready?"

"And how. They're champing at the bit for some action."

"Well, I think I have some for them."

*******

"This is it," Mauren said with a sigh. Odo nudged him aside and sat down in front of the console, paging through the file rapidly.

"Hmph," he grunted. "Not much to go on."

Briggs, sitting on a nearby table and swinging her legs while she idly polished one of her guns, craned her neck around to see. "What have you found?"

"A few vaguely worded personal logs of Donegal's, blueprints of Federation HQ, a few lists and rosters."

"It's not like they ask for receipts when they plan their villainy," Mauren said sarcastically. "I don't know why you're surprised."

Odo spared him a withering glance. "I never said I was. This is all circumstantial, but it's actually more than I thought we'd find."

"Nothing about the shooter?" Briggs asked, hopping down to watch over Odo's shoulder.

"It doesn't matter," Odo murmured, slipping an isolinear chip into the terminal and beginning the data transfer. "His identity is irrelevant. If he doesn't want to be found we're not going to find him."

She stared at him. "You know who fired that shot, don't you?"

"In a sense. Not so much 'who' as 'what,'" Odo said. Mauren snorted brief laughter.

Briggs shut her eyes and shook her head, amazed at her own stupidity. "Of course. Prophets, I'm an idiot."

"I've suspected since I realized that there was no way the shooter could have escaped unseen from the building and the grounds after the attempt...not unless they could slither through the cracks."

She nodded. "You need an assassin who can fire a dart in public circumstances and then vanish without a trace. Who you gonna call?"

"There's only one sticking point," Odo said, pocketing the chip. "With the new changeling detection technology we should have been able to..." He broke off and met Briggs' eyes. As one, they turned their gaze to Mauren, who was standing a few feet away.

"What?" he said.

"Unless someone gave him a disc to mask his signature," Odo finished, standing. "Did you? Did you help out your Syndicate masters by giving away classified intelligence technology?" he demanded in a rising voice and advancing on Mauren. Briggs put out a hand to stop him, a warning light in her eyes.

"Odo..."

He gaped at her. "Briggs, this man may have given the Syndicate a way to give the Founders back their invisibility! How long will it be before it spreads throughout the entire quadrant? No mission you could be on can possibly outweigh that kind of a security risk! You'd be circumventing all the advances we've made, not to mention endangering Gamma squadron!"

"You're right," she said. "And I trust Pelz has a satisfactory explanation, because if he did give them the disc technology..." She glanced at him. "You didn't, did you?"

Mauren rolled his eyes. "No, of course not." They just stared until he sighed and flopped into a chair. "The tricorders at HQ had their detectors sabotaged, it was part of the setup." He looked up at their faces. "I suppose you want to hear it all," he said in a resigned tone.

"Don't bother, allow me." Odo crossed his arms over his chest and began slowly walking the floor, his head down in thought. "The Founders like to keep their allies happy, and I'm sure that a few pet Changelings makes them very happy indeed, am I right?"

Mauren snorted again. "You got that right. They're dreaming up entirely new criminal enterprises just to have more excuses to send them out infiltrating stuff."

"So a few days before the ball, Changeling X makes his way into the crawlspace behind that wall and sets himself up in the sniper's nest. He waits, secure and unseen, watching the security precautions and avoiding the phaser sweeps. The night of the ball Nerys is called to the comm room where there is a Vulcan already on the line. She receives a transmission from Worf, which I can only assume was a holographic filter transmitted on some kind of embedded subspace carrier through the planetary sensor grid or perhaps the weather control system."

"Sensor grid," Mauren said, chagrined.

Odo nodded and continued. "She sits down, contaminating her dress and shoes with particulate matter from the sniper's nest that's been planted on the floor beneath her. While she speaks to Worf, she's flooded with tachyons from a concealed emitter beneath the console or somewhere else in the room. She leaves, never having appeared on the security recordings because the recordings have been replaced with a pre-recorded log showing the Vulcan and the Andorian, but not her. She returns to the ballroom while the Andorian removes the emitter and the particulate matter and eliminates the residual tachyons, probably with a positronic muon generator. The Changeling, after firing the dart with a dartgun he forms out of his own substance, melts into the wall after energizing a phony tachyon-shielded transporter beam to throw us off the track."

Mauren was shaking his head. "I think I know why the Syndicate is offering 3000 strips of latinum for you, dead or alive...preferably dead."

"Only 3000 strips?"

"What about the toxin found on Nerys, and her DNA on the dart?" Briggs asked.

"That's a little harder to figure. The toxin could have been planted via her contact with the console as the particulate matter was, but the DNA on the dart really gave me a few moment's thought."

"And?" Briggs asked, smiling. He was enjoying this.

"The only thing I can come up with is that it was never there."

"How does that work?"

Odo stopped and looked at Mauren. "I once arrested a Syndicate operative who had broken into the infirmary on DS9. He was tampering with medical tricorders. At first I couldn't imagine why he would do such a thing until I examined the tricorders. He was programming them to give a false reading, to indicate that a man he had been sent to murder had been poisoned when in fact he hadn't been. The simplest way to insure that her DNA would be found on the dart would be to put it into the instrument, so to speak."

"And he had her medical file from DS9," Briggs finished. "Why didn't you say any of this back on Earth?" she asked. "If you knew this much..."

"I only had theories," Odo said. "My theories aren't proof, and that's what I need. Proof. And no one was going to listen, not to me, not right then."

"Your friends would have."

He looked at her steadily. "I kept my suspicions quiet because someone on Earth, perhaps several someones, are involved in this. I don't believe that any of our friends would harm Kira, in fact I'm counting on them to prove that I'm right, but when it comes to her safety, I trust only myself."

*******

Miles burst into the lab, breathing hard and startling his three co-workers. "Good Lord, Miles! Has something happened?" Julian said, standing up.

"Yeah, it has a bit. Pull up the sensor readings taken of the crowd just after the shooting," he said, moving to Data's station. The android complied. "Do we have multiphasic variance data for this?"

Data's fingers flew over the keypads. "Which layer are you interested in?"

"See if you can get the thermal differential." A few more manipulations and the crowd scene's colors faded away to be replaced by a thermograph recording, displaying ambient temperatures for the objects in the sensor range. "Now...do we have the same data for the comm room security recording?"

"Miles, we've been through all this," Julian said gently.

"I know, I know...but we were looking for inconsistencies within a single data set. What we need is a point of reference..." Data pulled up the same thermal data for the comm room security camera.

Julian peered at the numeric output. "The Vulcan's temperature is consistent with his physiology, and the Andorian is..." He met Data's eyes, the same realization dawning in both of them at the same time.

"I will isolate the same Andorian in the sensor readings taken of the crowd," he said. The picture began to zoom closer to the faces and zeroed in on the man they were looking for. "There he is...let us see how he is reading in this data..."

Their three faces watched as the computer obediently gave them the information they were seeking. One by one their expressions turned jubilant. Deanna looked from one to the other, puzzled. "Could one of you explain this to me?" she asked.

"Andorians have a highly variable body temperature," Julian said, a large goofy grin plastered across his face.

"And consistent," Data continued. "It fluctuates based on a fixed 32-hour cycle."

Miles pointed to the Andorian as seen in the crowd. "These readings were taken just after the shooting, right after Nerys saw him leave the comm room."

"If this recording shows him in the comm room at the same time that Nerys says that she was," Julian said, "then his body temperature should be the same in both sets of readings."

"It's not?" Deanna said hopefully.

"Not by a bloody long shot." Miles said, his voice gleeful. He consulted the Andorian biorhythm charts that Data had helpfully retrieved. "According to this, the comm room readings are off by about..."

"Eight point 35 hours," Data and Julian said simultaneously.

"So these recordings were made much earlier," Deanna said.

"Call Biroc," Miles said. "She was framed!"

*******

"What now?" Briggs asked, genuinely puzzled as to what his answer would be.

Odo sighed. "I have evidence that the Syndicate engineered this setup," he said, holding up the isolinear chip.

"Circumstantial," Mauren said. Odo gave a small smile that Mauren didn't like one bit.

"Ah, but I've also got you," Odo said, grabbing Mauren's arm. "You're coming back with us. Whatever your assignment here was, it's over."

Briggs stepped forward. "You're not leaving now, are you?"

Odo blinked. "I've got what I came for. I have what I need to free Nerys. What else?"

"What about Donegal? He planned this! This frameup, this assassination was his doing!"

Odo glanced from her to Mauren and back again. "Somehow I doubt that. Anyway I don't care about Donegal. Let Starfleet come back here and arrest him. Once Mauren is debriefed they'll have more than enough reason to."

Briggs threw up her hands. "They'll never find him, Odo. He'll be long gone once he realizes we have Mauren. This has to be handled delicately or he'll go free!"

"Briggs...try to understand this. I don't care if he goes free or not. Busting Syndicate bosses is not my job. Mauren will tell Biroc that he helped the Syndicate make the attempt on Inyo's life and frame Kira for the crime. She will be released and I intend to take her on a very long vacation. If you and the rest of the fleet want to come down on the Syndicate with both feet I'll wish you luck and tell you everything I know."

She thought for a moment, then turned to Mauren. "Pelz, it's time you got the hell out of Dodge. Is your scenario in place?"

"Of course, but..."

"Then let's implement it."

"But I have more work to do here! I'm about to close a few deals...I'm close to getting some important information...and what about the bunt? It's not complete, if I'm to..."

"Do you have a death wish? I'm a DFA, I outrank you and I'm ordering you back to Earth. I will complete the bunt." She turned to Odo. "Here's what's going to happen. First of all, Pelz here is going to fake his own death. Section agents always have a death scenario ready to go when we're undercover. He'll beam up to our ship and head back to Earth, where he'll report for debriefing and hand over the chip to Biroc. He'll reveal everything he knows about the setup as an anonymous informant to preserve his identity as a Section agent."

Odo sighed. "And what are you and I going to do?"

"We're going after Donegal."

"Briggs, what part of 'I don't care about Donegal' failed to compute?"

She stepped closer. "Don't you care? Doesn't it piss you off what he did? He tried to have Inyo killed! He tried to take Nerys away from you and get her locked away for the rest of her natural life! He's the bad guy here...haven't you made a career out of catching bad guys?" She stopped and inhaled sharply, having gotten more worked up than she'd intended to.

Odo just looked at her, shaking his head slowly. "Oh, Nora. I know why you want to catch him and it has absolutely nothing to do with me or Nerys." Briggs said nothing. Odo turned to Mauren. "Are you ready with this phony death?"

He nodded vigorously. "Sure. Ready to go."

Odo stepped forward and handed him the isolinear chip. "Guard this with your life, you got it?" Mauren slipped it into his tunic. "And if you try and skip out, I will make it my mission in life to make you sorry."

Mauren chuckled. "We're on the same side, Odo, remember? I won't let you down."

"You can contact our ship with this," Odo said, tossing him a combadge. "As soon as your scenario is in place you get the hell away from here. Don't wait for us. I want you to make it safely to Earth no matter what happens here."

Briggs turned away, her shoulders sagging. Mauren chucked Odo on the shoulder. "Good luck, Odo. Now you guys better get out of here." Odo nodded and strode past Briggs out the door. She hesitated and looked back at her colleague. Mauren raised an eyebrow at her. "Ruthless to the last, eh Jack?"

She flinched. "It's Nora now, Pelz."

"Whatever. Some things never change...still using your friends as battle fodder?"

"I am not using Odo!" she hissed.

"And what about this Changeling you've been gallivanting around with? Waiting for the right time to play that trump card?"

Briggs flashed forward and punched him across the jaw before she was even aware she was going to do so. Pelz fell backwards, rubbing his jaw, but he didn't seem surprised. "Don't you mention him," she managed.

Mauren chuckled. "Well, well. If only Harry could see you now, Jack. The woman of his dreams, in love with another man...and not even a man, just a bucket of ooze."

"I'm leaving now. If you know what's good for you you'll get the hell away from here before I kill you." She stalked out of the house with Mauren's laughter ringing in her ears. Odo was waiting for her a few meters from the house.

"Are you all right?" he asked, noting her labored breathing and the odd fire in her eyes.

She nodded, her jaw tight. "Yeah. Let's get on with this. I don't want to be on this planet one second longer than I have to be."

*******

Kira strapped a phaser to her belt and slung the pulse rifle over her shoulder, affixing a combadge to her uniform.

"Kira, might I suggest a more efficient approach?"

"I don't want to waste any more time," she said hurriedly. "We've wasted enough. Odo and Nora are down there and they don't have any idea what's really going on here!"

"We can't be sure of that, and we don't know where to look!"

"I have a few ideas of where to start," she muttered.

"So have I," Dietz said, turning to the console. He leaned over the display and fixed his attention on the sensor readouts. Kira came up behind his shoulder.

"What are you doing?"

"Looking for Odo."

"The sensors can't find him."

"I can find him," Dietz said intently.

She peered at his face. "What do you mean?"

He sighed. "I mean I can sense him. Changelings have that ability, you know. Odo's only a baby, he's barely begun to scratch the surface of his own powers, but I'm almost 650 years old. If I were still in the Link I'd be considered an elder. I've had to become even more adept at sensing my own species than the Founders in order to stay one step ahead of them." He refocused on the monitors, his eyes narrowing. "I can find him."

Kira stared at him in amazement for a moment, transfixed. The Dietz she knew was a jolly, sarcastic gadabout who had the energy and high spirits of a teenager, but standing next to her was another Dietz. An ancient, almost infinitely wise being who was probably the most skilled shapeshifter in the universe by virtue of his four centuries in hiding, and his eyes were flat and powerful as he reached out with his finely honed sensations to find one other Changeling in a sea of billions of lifeforms.

"Hurry," she whispered.

Dietz' fingers flew over the sensor controls as he scanned the planet, trying to use it to help him see through the kilometers to the distant surface. After a few moments he paused, then focused his attention on the capital city. He froze, then in a flash repositioned the ship to a geosynchronous orbit above the site. He went to the window and stared down, his hands pressed to the transparent aluminum. He turned to Kira. "He's down there." He looked away, thinking. "I can find him," he repeated.

She nodded. "Then it's time we paid the Syndicate a little visit. They're gonna be so very sorry they messed with us."

CHAPTER 9. Yesterday, When I Was Mad

Consider a secluded suburban neighborhood in the northwestern section of a large and decaying urban center situated on the southern peninsula of a continent in the western hemisphere of a planet whose name was feared and hated throughout the quadrant.

A nice neighborhood. A bedroom community for the spiderweb of crime and violence that radiated from its citizens, its peace and tranquility belying the character of the sleeping minds behind its doors.

And it was quiet. Too quiet.

But, as it always seemed to be in places like this, it was a short-lived quiet. Tonight, the interruption came in the form of a rather large boom. At the far end of a cul-de-sac, a subtly stylish one-story home suddenly exploded outwards in a glut of flame and smoke, the blast shuddering through the neighboring houses like a vertical earthquake. The occupants lifted their heads, listened for a moment, and then went back to sleep with a shrug. Just another night on Orion.

********

Kira picked herself up off the ground, shaking off the shock. "Prophets, they blew up the damned house!"

"Yeah, I noticed that," Dietz said, hoisting her to her feet. He turned slowly in a circle, peering into the shadows between the streetlights.

"Well, that's just perfect!" Kira cried, running a hand through her hair.

"Perhaps Mauren wasn't in the house," Dietz said.

"If the Syndicate wants him dead, then even if he wasn't just blown to bits we're not likely to find him before they do. Even if we..." She stopped short as Dietz' hand clamped on to her forearm. She followed his gaze to an alley on the far side of the street. Just as she opened her mouth to ask what she was supposed to be seeing, she saw it. A tall and lean shadow next to a brick retaining wall, watching from the darkness. "Who's that?"

"If I'm right, it's our Pelz Mauren," Dietz whispered.

"What's he doing?"

"Watching his own death, I imagine. Come on." They hurried across the road, keeping out of his line of sight. Being carefully quiet, they crept up behind the brick wall, on the other side of which was leaning the mystery guest.

When Mauren poked his blue-skinned head around the side of the wall both Kira and Dietz jumped, the latter uttering a rather silly-sounding "eeep" noise. "Major! I've been expecting you."

The two fugitives exchanged a rueful glance and ducked around the wall to join the Bolian in the alley. Kira grabbed Mauren by the front of his shirt and slammed him up against the wall. "Are you Pelz Mauren?" she demanded.

"Depends. Pelz Mauren, as far as anyone else is concerned, just died at home in a tragic explosion. Any investigation will discover the badly charred body of a Bolian male fitting his description, and their DNA scans will confirm his identity. I, on the other hand, am now free to leave...which I intend to do as soon as possible."

"Where's Odo?"

"Well shucks, you just missed him. He and Jack went off into town about ten minutes ago."

Dietz' brow furrowed. "Who the hell is Jack?"

"Oh, sorry. You know her as Briggs, don't you? They went to find Pax Donegal."

"Your superior?" Kira asked, still holding him firmly up against the bricks.

"In a sense. It's his doing that you're spending some quality time behind force fields, Major, not mine. The assassination was his baby...me, I'm just a guy who likes jai-alai."

"Jai-alai? What the hell does that..." She stopped when her eyes fell on Dietz, who was shaking his head in disbelief. "Do you know what he's talking about?"

"I'm afraid I do." He sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. "This just keeps getting better and better."

Kira looked back at Mauren's inscrutable face, comprehension dawning. "You're one of them, aren't you? Another Section 31 stooge!" She punctuated her statement with a good hard shove, then stepped back, one hand to her forehead.

Pelz nodded towards his burning house. "I just faked my own death, Major. My work here is finished, like it or not. I was just doing my job."

"Your job involved trying to kill your own commander in chief and getting me blamed for it! And you act like you expect a medal!" Dietz grasped Kira's arm gently before she could really work herself up.

Mauren shook his head. "Kira, there is no lie so dangerous as a half-truth. Soon, you will know the whole truth. Until then I don't expect you to trust me. All I can tell you is that Odo gave me this," he said, producing the combadge, "and leave to take their ship back to Earth so I can be debriefed. If you value his judgment, you'll let me get on with it. Believe me, I'm not your enemy."

Kira was silent, considering. "What about this Pax Donegal?"

"He's a lovely individual, generous to a fault and committed to peace in our time. He's also quite possibly the most convincing personification of pure evil I've ever seen, and he's responsible for more deaths than I could enumerate, including one Harry London late of Section 31."

Dietz stepped forward, his eyes blazing with fury. "He killed Harry?"

"Among other things. I've worked for him for awhile. Your friends have gone to find him, I suggest you join them. She would have probably started looking at a bar called the Winchester, it's a club frequented by Syndicate higher-ups. When she was here she spent a lot of time there...and she was also, incidentally, Donegal's protege." He shook his head, chuckling.

"What's so funny?"

"Oh, I'm just picturing all their faces when Jack walks in. They all think she's dead, of course."

"I wish he'd stop calling her that," Dietz muttered.

"Here," Mauren said, tossing Kira a small metal keyring. "Take my groundcar, it'll be faster." He walked a few steps away into the gloom, then turned back. "A word of advice before I leave. You may think you know what's going on here, but you don't." His eyes fell on Dietz. "I know you think you know her. You're convinced that you can see what's going on inside her head. Just be careful. She's like a star, you know. Twinkling and warm and shining with brilliance, but get too close and you'll incinerate. However much she's let you see I promise you...you don't know Jack." He turned away and vanished into the mist like a spectre of doom.

"Well," Dietz said after a moment's thought. "That was interesting."

"Doesn't make sense," Kira mused. "Section 31 and the Syndicate, working together to get rid of Inyo. Mauren works for Section 31, yet he acts like he wants us to catch Donegal. Why would he give up his own collaborator?"

"If Nora figured out who he is, which seems clear, she might have convinced him to throw in the towel on the operation."

"You don't..." She hesitated, then plunged ahead. "You don't suppose she's in on it?"

Dietz regarded her steadily. "You don't suppose Odo's a Dominion spy, do you?" She looked away, but said nothing. "Some things we can't afford to question, or else it all goes to hell."

"I think I'm already in hell, Dietz."

********

Odo smiled wryly as he lurked in the background, easily upstaged by Briggs. She sure loves to make an entrance, he thought.

They were standing inside the double doors of the Winchester Club. Odo hung back by the doorframe, but his companion stood boldly in the middle of the doorway, a big grin on her face, her hands on her hips. "Hello boys!" she crowed. "Miss me?" The clientele sat dumbstruck, drinks halfway to their mouths and conversation dried up in mid-sentence. No one made a sound. "I didn't think so." She beckoned for Odo to follow her, and strode off towards the bar. The Ferengi bartender (who bore a rather unsettling resemblance to Quark) was standing with a glass in his hand and his eyes just about popping out of their sockets.

"Siubhne?" he whispered.

"What's shaking, Lokal?"

"But you're...you're..."

"Dead? Yeah, I know. Isn't that a bitch?" She dropped him a wink and stretched, catlike, along the edge of the bar.

"But...where've you been? They found your body! How does...what does..."

"Don't try and think too hard, you might hurt yourself. Let's just say things got a little too exciting around here, I decided it was time to seek some opportunities elsewhere."

Lokal seemed to accept this. He nodded towards Odo, who was currently wearing a tall and surly Klingon in civilian leathers. "Who's your friend?"

"Oh, just a little insurance I picked up on my last trip to TyGoKor. Say hello to the nice man, G'Kovh."

Odo produced a reasonable facsimile of a Klingon growl. Lokal twitched back a bit.

"Don't mind him," Briggs purred. "He's...cranky."

"I can see that," Lokal said. He nodded over her shoulder. "You're making quite a spectacle of yourself, Siubhne."

"Oh, let 'em stare. If what I got's so worth looking at I don't mind a few eyeballs glued to it." She reached forward and grasped Lokal by the front of the shirt, in a way that was not aggressive but that nonetheless contained the promise thereof. "Where's Pax?"

He sniffed. "What makes you think I know?"

"Don't gimme the innocent routine. You know where every councilmember is 24 hours a day, that's why you're still alive after all the things you've heard that you weren't supposed to. Now where is he?"

"Why do you care so much?"

Odo took the cue. "That...is none of your affair, Ferengi!" he growled, drawing his dagger. Lokal quavered and seemed to shrivel slightly.

"I...I haven't seen him." It had the ring of truth. Odo and Briggs exchanged a glance. "I swear!"

"The word of a blackmailing bartender," Odo muttered. "How are the mighty fallen."

At that moment, the comm unit behind the bar buzzed. Lokal drew away, eyeing both of them warily, and opened the channel. They moved a few feet away for a conference. Activity in the club had returned to normal, though most everyone in the room was keeping half an eye on this visitor from beyond the grave. "No one seems too concerned about your resurrection," Odo whispered.

"This is Orion. On a planet where you can buy a contract on someone's life along with your morning coffee, death is often a disguise for escape. No one's that shocked, believe me."

"Siubhne?" Lokal was leaning over the bar, motioning to her.

They moved back to the bar. "What is it?"

"It's for you," the bartender said, motioning to the comm circuit. His voice dropped to a whisper. "It's Pax."

"Well, whaddya know," Briggs said, her entire face tightening. "The man himself." Lokal let them come behind the bar to the comm screen. Briggs took a deep breath and reopened the channel. The smirking beaked face of Pax Donegal appeared.

"Hello, Siubhne," he said. "Of course that's probably not even your name, is it?"

"I'll let you wonder about that."

"Tut, tut. Such a tone you take with me! To think we used to be so...close."

Briggs' jaw looked like it was wired shut. "We. Were. Never. Close."

"Oh, surely you don't believe that. We were the best of friends! It only started to go sour...oh yes! It was just after I had that undercover agent executed!"

Odo gently moved Briggs out from in front of the screen. "What do you want, Donegal?"

His feathered eyeridges drew together. "Who might you be, friend Klingon?" Odo said nothing. "Ah well, not that it would mean anything. As to what I want, well. I just want to see my old friend again and ask her some...questions." Briggs gave a frustrated eyeroll and shoved her way back in front of the screen.

"You've been up to some naughty tricks recently, Pax. Assassinations, frameups...and now your little stooge has been erased."

"You mean Pelz? Oh, I know. I suspect he faked it, though, so he could escape my annoyance. Not that he'll be able to."

"You're annoyed with him?"

"Shouldn't I be? Jaresh-Inyo is still drawing breath. That annoys me, especially after all the trouble I went to." He leaned closer to the screen. "And now I get to find out the answers to some of my most puzzling questions. For example, what sort of intelligence agency do you work for? I'Danians? Celestial Intervention Agency? Starfleet Intelligence? That's probably the most likely given your species."

Briggs grinned. "I can assure you with absolute honesty that I do not work for Starfleet Intelligence," she said. Odo suppressed a smile. Well, it was true. "So what happens now?"

"Isn't this the part where we exchange meaningless veiled threats and then vow to destroy each other?"

"So you want to destroy me, do you?"

"I never said that. But you want to destroy me, though I can't imagine why. It's all over your face and in those eyes, Siubhne. It's what you do. You become death, I've seen it happen. It's the most natural thing in the world to you, isn't it?" Briggs said nothing. "You know where to find me." The channel clicked off. Briggs stared at the blank screen for a moment, then without a word turned and stalked out, Odo close behind. She didn't stop until they were back on the street.

Odo waited for her to say something, but she didn't. "Well," he began. "Interesting fellow."

"Oh yeah."

He fetched a deep sigh. "Briggs, what the hell are we doing? I don't have to tell you that I have better things to do than run around Orion stalking your old boss with Siubhne the Avenger." The words sounded harsh, even to his own ears.

Briggs whirled on him, her eyes blazing with righteous fury. "Oh really? You have better things to do? You'd rather be elsewhere? You think I wouldn't? You think I want to be here? Lemme tell you what I want," she said, her voice rising. "I want to be sitting on a beach with my husband, my husband that I had to watch die when I could have stopped it. What if it had been you? What if you'd stood there while someone chopped off Nerys' head? Wouldn't you want revenge? Wouldn't you scour the galaxy for the person responsible even if it cost you everything you had?"

"It hasn't cost you everything you have, not yet."

"Oh, but it will," she whispered. "Everything Dietz ever said about me was true. What else am I but a killer? What else do I know but death? I let my husband die and now the guilt will drive me to murder his killer in cold blood. I can't stop it anymore, and it'll burn up whatever's left of my soul." Odo stood there silent, amazed at her casual fatalism. "Let's finish this, Odo. Then we can go home, and you and Nerys can ride off into the sunset while I go back to my...whatever it is that I've been living."

Odo drew back with a nod. "So where's Donegal?"

"There," she said, pointing. He followed her gesture to the top of a tall building, cast in alternating swathes of light and shadow from spotlights below. "That's the headquarters of his front company. He spends most of this time there...and that's where we'll find him now."

"He'll be expecting us."

"Of course he'll be expecting us." She started off towards the building. "That's the idea."

********

Kira piloted the groundcar towards the city as Dietz studied the directions they'd gotten to this club from a local restaurant owner.

"Can you still sense him?" she asked after a few minutes of silence.

"Oh yes," Dietz said. "It's quite strong, actually. I think we're getting closer to them."

She sighed. "Well, if you can still sense him, then he's not dead."

"Kira, where does this attitude of general pessimism come from?"

She shot him a glance. "I guess this whole thing...just has had me spooked, that's all. I keep thinking about a conversation Odo and I had before I was arrested..."

"Lemme guess: it was about how he believes in his heart of hearts that it's too good to last."

She nodded. "That's right. He said he just keeps waiting for something to come along and screw things up for us. I told him he was being silly." She sighed, her expression grim. "Looks like I was the one being silly."

"Don't say that. Everything's going to work out, trust me."

"I'd like to believe that...but I can't shake this feeling of doom, it's like I know something terrible is going to happen but I can't see what it is and I don't know how to stop it!"

"Hey, hey! Let's try and keep some positive outlook here! We're hot on their trail, we'll all be together again within the hour, mark my words. We'll find this guy Donegal and be on our merry way, and when we get back to Earth you'll be cleared of all charges and life will return to normal."

Kira thought for a moment. "You make it sound so reasonable."

"It is reasonable. C'mon, Kira. What you and Odo have together is something special and unique and never before seen in the universe! It'll take more than a few measly Syndicate thugs and some crooked Section agents to screw it up, believe me."

She smiled and seemed to relax minutely. "Maybe you're right. I'll...I'll just feel a lot better when we're off this planet." She slowed the groundcar. "I think...yeah, this is it."

She guided the car into a parking slot and they climbed out, eyeing the building. A more or less steady stream of people of every imaginable species was flowing in and out of the club doors. Kira was about to join it when Dietz held her back. "No, wait. Maybe we can get some information with a little active listening. Wait here." He leaned up against the wall and then melted into it, flowing invisibly along the stones and through the doorway.

Kira pressed herself into the corner, wishing once again for a Changeling's knack for vanishing and feeling terribly exposed. The minutes ticked interminably by before, at long last, the wall rippled under her hand and a Dietz-sized bulge grew out of its surface, solidifying quickly into his familiar shape. "What did you find out?" she hissed urgently.

"Shh," he cautioned her. "Everyone in there is talking about them. She just barged in like nothing had happened and asked where Donegal was."

Kira nodded. "That's some nerve."

"Yeah," he agreed, with not a little bit of pride. "I heard the bartender tell someone that Donegal actually called her while they were inside."

She blinked, surprised. "How did he know they were here?"

"Who can say. He's got eyes and ears everywhere. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if he configured his personal sensors to search for her DNA patterns. However he did it, he knows and he's waiting for them."

"Oh Prophets," she breathed. "What did they do?"

"What do you think? They went to find him!"

Kira's eyes widened. "What? Are they insane?"

Dietz looked away. "Well...she might be."

"Where did they go? Where!"

"There, to Donegal's headquarters. That seems to be the consensus." They stood there in tableau, side by side, Kira's hand gripping Dietz' simulated arm, staring at the uplit stone edifice with matching expressions of dread.

********

"There has got to be a better way to do this," Odo grumbled.

"You have an aversion to bushes?"

"I have an aversion to skulking in bushes like a common thief."

"We are not skulking, Odo. We are lurking."

He grunted, looking up at the thirty-story building sitting snugly amongst others like it, stone and metal obelisks built on blood money and corruption. It was hideous. "That place looks like a fortress," he muttered.

"Oh, it is. If I were still on Pax's short list I could get in no sweat, but he'll have that place boobytrapped from here to Christmas."

He sighed. "Does this story have a happy ending?"

She thought for a moment. "If we could get to it, I think we could get access to the building from the roof. There's a shuttle landing bay up there and it's minimally guarded."

"We can get to it if we can get to the building."

"The ground is covered by about ten different alarm systems."

Odo's eyes narrowed as he contemplated the grounds around the base of the building. He could see quite a few guards patrolling and more sensor arrays than he cared to count. "I have an idea," he said quietly, eyeing a very tall b'hara tree curving from the opposite side of the road towards the building.

Briggs smiled. "I thought you might."

He took her arm and they slunk through the underbrush towards the tree. "Hang on to me," he whispered. Briggs didn't question him, just linked her arms around his neck. She gasped as he suddenly sprang for the tree trunk and began scaling it with alarming speed. Briggs clamped her legs around his waist and hung on for dear life. Her amazed eyes beheld his humanoid arms melting down into catlike paws with impressive talons with which he was gripping the tree. Within a few seconds they had climbed as far as they dared, about a hundred meters in the air and out onto a branch near the building's facade, looming in shadows about five meters away. Odo perched on the branch, Briggs clinging to his back.

"Can you make that?" she whispered.

"I guess I'll have to," he whispered back. "Listen, I can move better in my natural state so I may have to mostly desolidify to make it. Just hang on, I'll catch you."

She nodded, her breath coming quickly. "Did I ever tell you I hate heights?"

He chuckled. "Too late now." With no further comment, he coiled and sprang. Briggs clamped her lips shut against a cry of alarm as they flew through the air, the side of the building rushing at them with terrifying speed. She felt Odo's body rippling under her arms and his flesh going slick and liquid beneath her. She fought down nausea and vertigo as she felt gravity begin to grip them and pull them towards the ground. The thought flashed through her mind: what would happen when they reached the wall?

She shut her eyes tightly, her arms clutching at Odo's semisolid body, and then she felt the jarring impact as they hit the wall and he was suddenly solid flesh beneath her once again. She waited to begin sliding down the wall but they stayed where they were, clinging to the vertical surface like a housefly. She opened her eyes...Odo's hands and feet were gone, replaced by metal petons that dug into the stone surface of the building and anchored them firmly. "Okay?" he whispered.

She nodded, unable to speak, and glad that Odo did not require oxygen...if he did, she would surely have been choking him with her deathgrip around his neck. She hung on tighter as Odo began to climb up the wall, gripping it with his petons. She was amazed at how fast he was able to move...they'd be on the roof in no time.

"Pretty neat trick," she stammered, breathless.

"Any activity below?" he asked.

Briggs steeled herself and looked down. The guards hadn't shifted their patrol patterns, and as far as she could tell no alarm had been tripped. "So far so good," she managed, burying her face in Odo's back and trying to forget how small everything had looked.

"Almost to the top," Odo reassured his nervous passenger. "You can take out whole squadrons of thugs with your bare hands but you can't handle a little elevation?"

"Call it a character flaw," she gasped.

********

Before an entire wall of security monitors in a large office on the second floor of the building stood a tall, well-muscled man, his large and powerful wings folded against his back and his taloned feet tapping impatiently against the tiled floor. Pax Donegal's eyes, great bottomless pools of inky blackness rimmed by brilliant golden irises, missed nothing as he scanned the readouts. "Where are you, Siubhne..." he murmured to himself, tapping a finger against his long polished beak. "You should have been here by now."

The alarms were silent. The guards saw nothing. And yet his instincts told him that she was near, that she would get in...of course, she had to get in. If she didn't, they could not play out the final act of their little drama.

On a hunch he began refocusing his visual scanners, turning them away from the area surrounding the building and onto the building itself. He swept the surface, looking for any sign of...wait, what's that. His eyes narrowed as he went back. If he'd been able to smile with his rigid beak, he would have certainly done so as he spied a vague shadow scaling the side of the building. There you are, Siubhne. Sneaking up on me from above.

He moved to the comm circuits and summoned his chief of security. "Yes, sir?"

"Poldak, I've spotted the intruders."

"Where, sir?"

Donegal watched as the shadow reached the rooftop shuttle bay and vanished. "They're a few blocks away trying to get into the steam tunnels. They may be able to gain access...spread out and deploy all your men in the tunnel system. Find them and bring their bodies to me."

"Yes, sir!" the chief replied, sounding grateful to have a concrete objective. Donegal chuckled as he closed the channel, moving quickly to his weapons case. He chose a few favorite items and darted from the office towards the stairs.

********

Dietz's legs were of variable length and he was impervious to muscle fatigue, yet he was having trouble keeping up with Kira. They'd had to abandon the groundcar several blocks ago when the streets became too narrow and so now they were hoofing it towards Donegal's building...though for Kira it was more like running, despite his cautions not to do anything that looked suspicious.

They had just crossed the street into the plaza where the building stood when suddenly the front doors burst open and a flood of security guards rushed out, shouting to each other. Dietz pulled Kira back into the shadows. "Great honk, they must have found them!"

Kira shuddered. "Oh sweet Prophets...we've got to get there before they kill them both!" she cried, starting after the guards. Dietz yanked her back, his eyes fixed on the building.

"No...wait," he said, his voice low and thoughtful. "He's here."

"What?" she said, her eyes scanning what he was looking at for whatever it was that he was seeing.

"He's not there, he's here." His eyes slowly tracked upwards, far upwards to the top of the building. "He's here," he repeated quietly.

********

Briggs clambered off of Odo's back and onto the roof with a grateful exhalation, but her relief was short-lived. As soon as her feet were once again firmly planted upon a steady surface her survival instincts kicked in. She drew one of her guns from the small of her back, its solid and familiar shape reassuring her. She stayed close to the edge of the roof, tucked into a crouch, as Odo stayed perched on the wall until she gave the all-clear.

The roof was a tangled jungle of supports, conduits and bulkheads. The shuttle landing surface was suspended two meters over their heads, casting the roof below into gloom and creating a thousand shadows where guards might hide "The door to the back stairs is next to the control room, on the far side," she whispered to him. "Stay low, and not too close to me. Whatever happens, do nothing unless I ask for help, you got it?"

Odo nodded. She straightened up and walked forward with an alarming lack of caution. An admonition for her to watch herself was on his lips when a fist came shooting out of the darkness and struck her in the face. She staggered sideways, off her balance for just a fraction of a second, but it was enough for the guard who'd punched her to grab her from behind. Odo started forward, then hesitated. If she needed help she'd call for it, and if he tried to help he might screw up some plan she had.

The guard grabbed her gun and pointed it at her. Briggs stood there, her hands up in the air as he frisked her with one hand while keeping her covered. He pulled her other gun and tucked it into his waistband with a grin. "Nice piece," he grunted, admiring the weapons. He lifted his head. "I got her!"

Odo watched as another guard materialized out of the shadows to join his partner. "So," he hissed. "This is the famous Siubhne."

"Eh, she don't look so tough. Got her guns no problem."

"From the way Pax talks about her I was expecting her to be...I dunno, taller." Odo suppressed a chuckle. He could practically feel the annoyance radiating off his companion...Prophets knew it was probably testing her humility to have to stand there pretending to be held hostage by a couple of dimwitted glorified security guards.

They looked at each other with not-so-bright expressions on their faces. "So what do we do with her?"

"Let's kill her."

"Dontcha think Pax'll want to do that?"

"He said he wanted her body, not a damned circus sideshow." The first guard raised Briggs' gun and grinned. "Say goodnight, Siubhne." It took all of Odo's restraint not to leap forward to stop him...but when the man's finger depressed the hammer, there was nothing but a dry click. He flinched and stared at the gun, and in his millisecond of confusion she was on him. She knocked the gun out of his hand with a quick chop, caught it neatly with her other hand, spun and smashed her foot across the other one's face. He flew into a bulkhead and fell unconscious to the floor. She shoved the first one onto his ass as Odo came up and snaked his arm quickly behind the guard's back, retrieving her other gun.

"Thanks," she muttered, throwing him a lopsided smile. The first guard stared up at them, a fearful look in his eyes. Briggs gave him a withering smile. "Didn't anyone ever teach you?" she asked, pulling back the cylinder on her gun with a loud ratcheting click. "Never chamber the first round." She fired the gun casually in his direction. The man flinched and yelped as the bullet embedded itself in the bulkhead next to his ear.

"You're insane!" he squeaked.

"Oh, quit whining. I missed on purpose." She rummaged in her coat pocket and pulled out a small, compact hypospray. The guard eyed it warily. "Relax, it's just knockout drops. I can't have you running about underfoot. You'll wake up in twelve hours with a helluva hangover but none the worse for the experience." She crouched next to the guard, who just gaped up at her in disbelief.

"You're not gonna kill me?"

She blinked. "Why would I?"

"But...aren't you some sort of killing machine?" Odo watched her, curious about her reaction...but he was disappointed. A shadow crossed her face and then was gone.

"Sorry to disappoint," she whispered, and pressed the hypo to his neck. He slumped sideways and lay still. She repeated the procedure on his buddy to insure his continued slumber and then straightened up, pocketing the hypo.

"That went smoothly," he commented neutrally.

She nodded. "Beat the bushes and flush out the geese." She met his eyes briefly and turned to face the shadowy rooftop again. "C'mon, let's go. The best bet for access to the building is probably..."

A slow, slithery bump froze them both in their tracks.

"Didja hear that?" she breathed. He nodded as the bump recurred, louder and more pronounced, accompanied by some urgent and brief whispering.

"It's up on the shuttle landing pad," Odo murmured. They slunk forward as one, Briggs leading with her gunbearing hand. Both of them could sense...someone...watching from the darkness. He could feel her body thrumming with tension as he cast his senses as far away from himself as possible, trying to sense their unseen guest...or guests. They reached the stairs that led up to the pad and started slowly up. He stopped halfway, considering.

"What are you..." Odo slapped his hand over her mouth.

"Shh," he said. He stamped his foot as hard as he could with a loud "bang." A flurry of bumps and whispers greeted this sudden noise. He held Briggs back and waited.

What came down from above was the last thing either of them expected. Just one word.

"Odo?"

********

"What are you telling me, gentlemen?" Captain Venable said in a low, flat voice. She was standing behind her desk, flanked by Biroc on one side and Sisko on the other, holding several PADDS and staring levelly at the three men and one woman standing before her bearing what could be good or bad news, depending on one's point of view.

Julian stepped forward. "We're telling you that this security recording, which you'll note does not show Major Kira, was faked and deliberately planted to destroy her alibi and implicate her in the assassination."

Venable sat down with a sigh. "Commander?" she said quietly, addressing Biroc, who looked simulataneously chagrined and relieved.

"I've reviewed their findings, Captain, and I agree with their assessment."

"This does not exonerate Major Kira completely," she added.

"Perhaps not," Data said. "But at the very least it casts serious doubts upon this case."

"At no time did I ever sense any guilt from her," Deanna said. "She has no history of crime and no discernible motive."

"What about the Syndicate's money, found in her accounts?"

"I don't believe it," Biroc said evenly. They all stared at him. "It's too convenient."

Venable sat examining the PADDs while the room's occupants held their breath. Finally she stood again with the air of an officer coming to a command decision. "Biroc, I want all this evidence re-examined. Work with the doctor and his team here. I want to be doubly damned sure about this...if Major Kira has indeed been framed, then I will personally see that whoever's responsible ends up with a few less body parts!" She slammed the PADDs down on her desk and dismissed them all with a curt wave.

Miles, Julian, Data and Deanna sprinted from the room back to their workspace. "I never thought I'd see it," Miles exclaimed.

"What?"

"An admiral who sees reason!"

********

Odo and Briggs froze at the sound of that voice. "My God," she breathed.

He moved a few more steps up the ladder. "Nerys?" he ventured. It could not possibly be her, the very idea was ludicrous. She was secured in a cell on Earth, locked behind a forcefield and Starfleet's misconceptions. But that voice...one word was more than he needed to identify it. It was more familiar to him than his own; her well-loved voice, the one with which she had finally said things that he had previously only heard her say in his deepest and most secret imaginings. Her voice that had said "I love you," her voice that had asked him to be her husband, her voice that had reached him even through the Link and had broken him free of its spell. It could be no one but her.

Odo and Briggs stepped out onto the flat and empty surface of the shuttle landing pad, bathed in the reflected light from Orion's three moons. No one was there...but the voice had come from the shadows surrounding the docking control booth on the far side of the pad. More scufflings and some hurried footfalls, and then his perceptions were confirmed as her slim figure detached itself from the shadows and stepped into view. The flat silver light cast her face into angular shadows and her skin into smooth white alabaster, her hair blazing in the moons' cold brilliance. Her mouth hung speechlessly open but her body suffered no such reticence. Her arms rose and reached out towards him, a silent and powerful entreaty that he could not have ignored even had he wished to.

Odo wasn't sure how he crossed the distance between them, he surely could not remember his feet touching the ground or taking any steps. He was just suddenly there, and then she was in his embrace and her arms were clutched around him, her breath warm on his cheek. "Nerys, sweet Prophets," he murmured, drawing back so he could look at her amazed face. "How did you get here? What are you doing here?"

She took his face between her hands. "We promised to face trouble together, remember? We have to stick together, Odo...all we have is each other. I'm not complete, not without you," she stammered, her lower lip trembling slightly. He managed to nod, half-paralyzed by the realization that for all the power of the feelings for her that he'd lived with and grown into over the last seven years, they were but a drop in the ocean of what he was feeling for her now. His voice failed him, all he could do was draw her back into his arms and hold her as tightly as he dared and kiss her until she understood that he hadn't known what complete was until there was her.

Wrapped up with each other as they were, neither paid more than peripheral attention to the conversation that was being held mere feet from where they stood.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Umm..."

"And it better be good."

"Well..."

"Because you just aided and abetted the alleged assassin of the President and assisted a jailbreak, you know that, don't you?"

"But I..."

"We're neck deep in some kind of political crisis like the goddamned Kennedy assassination and the last thing we need is more of your grandstanding heroics."

He waited.

"Well?"

"Oh, you're finished. Well, the thing is, I had a rather interesting and quite involuntary meeting with one of our colleagues back on Earth."

"Who?"

"No idea. He went to a lot of trouble to keep his identity a secret. He told me that they had set this whole thing up and that I should get Kira off the planet as soon as I could because they'd make sure she took the fall, or worse."

At that, Kira managed to draw back from Odo. "We came here to warn you about their involvement...but I guess you already know, don't you?"

Briggs nodded. "As soon as we identified Pelz Mauren I recognized him. When we got to his house he admitted his involvement."

Fury was sliding back over Kira's features. "Briggs, your colleagues set me up and would have let me rot in jail for the rest of my life. They tried to have Jaresh-Inyo killed and Prophets know who else. I have to believe that you had nothing to do with all of this, but what I want to know now is what we're going to do about it!"

"Nothing," came a new voice from above, deep and booming. They looked up just in time to see a huge and ominous winged shape swoop down from the sensor array tower that stood beside the landing pad and stuck up into the hazy sky like an accusing finger. Donegal landed with a thud, the floor trembling beneath their feet with the impact of his talons. He looked from one to the other of his intruders. "You'll not do a thing about it."

"Shit," Kira muttered.

Briggs stepped forward. "Hello, Pax."

"Siubhne. How nice of you to bring guests." He was holding a mean-looking phaser in one hand, deceptively relaxed but pointed more or less in their direction. "No one move, please. This is a prototype and I'd hate to ruin its collectible value by actually firing it." His eyes glittered with gleeful malice as he beheld their faces. "Mr. Odo. What a pleasure to meet my most formidable unseen enemy. And this must be the villainous Major Kira." He bent to examine her. "You're the best that Pelz could do for a scapegoat? How disappointing."

"I'm glad you think so," she growled.

"Is that spunk? I was never sure." He straightened and regarded Dietz, who returned his gaze with a flat contempt in his eyes that was unmistakable. "And who are you that you can look at me as if I were a new species of slime devil?"

"No one of consequence," Dietz said, his tone even.

Donegal shrugged. "No matter. None of you matter." He stepped closer to Briggs. "You, Siubhne. You matter. You made me a fool."

"You made yourself a fool, Pax. And my name is Nora Briggs."

"What was he to you?" Donegal said without preamble. "That agent, the one I had killed. A friend? A partner?"

"Both," she said through clenched teeth. "Also my husband."

Donegal almost seemed shocked...almost. "Oh, my dear. You were a better actress than I gave you credit for. As I recall you cheered just as loudly as the rest of us when his head and his neck parted company." He shrugged, walking idly in small figure eights. "This operation is quite a spectacular failure, I must say. Jaresh-Inyo is alive and well, it seems that my adjutant who was in charge was an undercover intelligence agent, and the woman who was supposed to be blamed for it is here in my fortress rather than behind bars where she belongs. No doubt that had he lived, the legendary investigative skills of Security Chief Odo would have found some flaw in the carefully constructed fallacy that implicated her and she would have been exonerated."

"You don't sound too concerned about it," Odo said, trying not to think about that "had he lived" part.

"Should I be? I take risks for a living, Mr. Odo. Big risks. And they always pay off...just not always in the way you'd hoped, or in ways that are immediately evident. True, my plans for Jaresh-Inyo will have to be shelved for now. But there will come another time for that...and in the meanwhile I've been delivered a lovely surprise. You, sir, have now thwarted my DS9 operations for the last time. You, madam, will die while a fugitive from Federation justice. While not exactly what I was going for, it's nonetheless somewhat satisfying. Best of all, my most notorious black sheep has come back to the flock," he said, glaring at Briggs. His tone was light, even jovial, but the fury in his eyes was scathing. "And she will know what it means to betray me."

"No!" Dietz exclaimed, stepping between Donegal and Briggs. Exasperated, she pushed him out of the way.

"Whoever you are, sir, spare me your righteous indignation. I've heard it all before." He looked around at their faces. "Aren't you in the least bit curious what I'm going to do with you?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Kira said.

"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Donegal said, rubbing his hands together. "But there's so much more to it than just killing you. Endless creative opportunities and mathematical possibilities." He glanced significantly at Briggs. Odo got the feeling that all these theatrics and veiled torture-threats were somehow for her benefit.

Kira glanced up at Odo, her expression bleak. How are we going to get out of this one? her look telegraphed to him. I'm open to suggestions, said his answering look.

"You're not fooling me, Pax," Briggs said quietly. He just looked at her. "You don't care about them. Not even Odo, though Lord knows he's caused you enough trouble. Right now, you only care about one thing." She slowly reached under her jacket and brought out her guns, then deliberately dropped them on the ground and kicked them away. "Well, you've got it."

His eyes narrowed. "What are you doing?"

"I'm giving you your protege, your best pupil, your most trusted lieutenant. The one you trained and nurtured and guided to a position of power. The one who betrayed you and brought your most important operation down into a flaming ruin all around you. That failure cost you the leadership of the Council and sole control over the entire Syndicate. If not for her, you would own all of this, and the quadrant would be yours for the taking." She withdrew her dagger and dropped it on the ground. "I'm giving you Siubhne. You and me, Pax. Let them go, and you get me."

He watched her for a moment, considering. "You'll give yourself up, willingly?"

Her lips curled into a sneer. "That's not what you want and don't pretend that it is."

He nodded slowly. "How well you know me. Very well. I agree. I will allow them to leave...but only afterwards. I'm afraid you'll have to take my word on that, because you'll not be there to make sure I do as I say."

"I will accept your word. No weapons?"

"Agreed." He reached behind him and drew two scimitar-shaped swords from a pair of crossed scabbards over his back. He handed them to a stunned Kira, who had no choice but to take them. He flicked off his phaser; Kira got that too. He held out his open hands. "I am disarmed."

She nodded. "A moment, please?"

"Of course." He moved a few steps away, and the four travelers drew into a huddle.

"What do you think you're playing at?" Dietz hissed urgently, grabbing her by the forearm. She yanked it away.

"This isn't a game, Dietz."

"You can't fight him, look at him!" Kira said. "He's two meters tall and he's got talons!"

"Do you have a better idea? This way at least you three will be safe."

"Even granting that I accept that tradeoff, which is totally out of the question," Dietz said, panic evident under the surface of his voice, "if he kills you there's no way he'll just let us go."

"Yes, he will. Absurd as it sounds, Pax is a man of his word. If he tells me that he will let you go, he'll do it."

"I'm not letting you do this!" he rejoined.

She looked at him for the first time. "None of this would be necessary if it weren't for you! Odo and I could have snuck downstairs and taken him into custody if you hadn't shown up here and distracted us!"

"That's a lot of targ-turds and you know it. He knew you were here, he was up here and he was waiting for you. Did you see him fly up to that tower while we were up here? Of course not! He was there before you even made it to the roof!"

Odo put out his hands. "This is not the time for this discussion," he said, his authoritative tone cutting through their argument. He looked at Briggs, his expression serious. "Can you defeat him?"

"No!" Dietz interrupted before she could answer. "I can't believe you're even considering letting her do this!" he said, gesturing to Odo.

"No one's letting me do anything," Briggs said tightly. "I do this because it's the only way. We'll never get off this roof, now that he knows we're here. Even if we could somehow take him out quickly enough that he couldn't call for backup, he'll have the whole building on full intruder alert by now. We'd die in one of a thousand boobytraps. We can't beam away, the security systems include a dampening field. Nothing is left to chance. We're stuck."

"There's got to be a way!" he said, his voice jacking up half an octave. "You can't do this, Nora."

She just looked at him, her eyes blankly lifeless. "But this is what I do, Nam. This is what I am. I'm a killer. You said it yourself."

He grasped her by the upper arms. "No, you're not," he said with sudden urgency. "Don't you get it? It's just another mask for you to hide behind! Just say you're a killer and nothing matters, nothing's important and you shut your eyes tight and do it until it destroys you. But it's not what you do, it's not what you are!" She stared fixedly at some point over his left shoulder. He gave her a brief shake. "Goddam it, if you never listened to me ever before then listen to me now!" Surprised, her eyes focused on his face. "You're the toughest person I've ever met, Nora. You could face it, yourself and all your inner selves, but you don't. It's easier just to dismiss yourself as a killer and not worthy of feelings. When I first met you I was amazed, I couldn't believe that you'd actually prefer to live in that secret world of darkness and guilt while you hid behind that sunny smile and that cheery disposition, so I tried to shock you out of it. You fought me, every step of the way, and so help me God you made me hate you but somehow at the same time you made me love you."

Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open. Kira pressed one hand to her mouth as Odo studiously examined the deck plating beneath their feet. "Wha...?" Briggs breathed.

He nodded. "That's right, Nora, I said it out loud. I love you, so much that I could never just sit by and let you go on thinking that all your worth was for a few campfire songs and for your ability to take lives. Why do you think I was always after you to stop doing terminations? I died a little every time you did one, because I saw the look in your eyes when you made a successful kill. That look that said that you thought it was all you were, and all that you had left. I'd rather let Donegal kill me right here, right now, than let you take that last step."

He fell silent. No one breathed or moved for a few seconds. Her hand rose slowly to touch his cheek. "If you..." she began, then stopped and cleared her throat. "If you really love me," she whispered, "then let me save you. Let me try and atone for what I let him do to Harry...and maybe we can all leave this place together." Dietz was speechless. "Please, Nam. Promise me you won't interfere." She looked into his eyes. "I can beat him," she said, almost too softly for them to hear. "I can beat him if I know you're safe."

He held her gaze for a few long moments, then let go of her arms. "I hope you know what you're doing."

"Promise me," she said, more urgently.

"I promise. I won't interfere."

She nodded, smiled at Odo and Kira, then turned around to face Donegal. "Get back," she murmured to her companions. They drew back to the edge of the landing pad as Briggs and Donegal began to slowly circle each other. As they drew close and closer they both tensed visibly, each one waiting for the other to make a first move.

Suddenly, Pax's hand flashed out and slapped her backhand across the face, hard. His talons left angry red lines across her cheek and the side of her neck. Her head rocked back but she recovered quickly, glaring at him. His eyes gleamed in triumph. "I've marked you, Siubhne," he said smugly.

"It's Briggs," she said, and it began.

She spun and her leg whipped around. Donegal caught her foot neatly before it could strike him. Using that momentum and his grip on her as an anchor, she leapt upwards and flipped her body around her own leg, her free foot crashing into the side of his head. He let her go and staggered backwards, blood flowing down his face. Briggs thumped to the ground and rolled back into a crouching position. He lunged at her and threw a punch with his huge fist, but she sidestepped it at the last minute and slammed her elbow into his throat as he went by her, unable to stop himself in time.

He staggered a few feet away, clutching at his neck with blood running into his eyes. "Prophets," Kira breathed. "She's winning."

"A guy like him trusts that his size and strength will be enough," Dietz whispered, never taking his eyes off the two combatants. "She's tricking him into using them to help her win instead. It's an old technique that smaller fighters have to become very, very good at."

Donegal chuckled. "It's been a long time since I've seen you fight," he said, his voice sounding like his throat was full of gravel. "I'd forgotten."

"So I see," she said, calm and cool.

He reached into the depths of his voluminous wings and drew a short sword from a concealed scabbard. "Oops, I forgot this one."

"That's a cheap trick," she muttered, shrugging out of her jacket. She wound one sleeve around each hand and held it before her like a shield.

"The cheap tricks work the best," he said, and rushed her, sword raised. As he brought it down to run her through, she whipped her jacket forward and twisted it around the blade. With a mighty yank she pulled the sword down towards the ground, then stepped forward and turned. She bent and pistoned her shoulder into Pax with another yank upwards on her twisted jacket. He crashed to the ground, leaving her holding the sword.

"You were saying?" she said, tossing the knotted jacket aside. He started to get up, but at the last second crouched and swept her feet out from underneath her with one leg. The sword went clattering to the ground as Briggs landed on her back with a thud. She quickly flipped herself back onto her feet but no sooner had she done so than his fist plowed into her stomach. She staggered backwards, gasping, and Donegal bent and picked up the sword.

"Do you recognize this sword?" he grunted. "You should. Your husband's blood is on it." Her eyes widened as she stared at the gleaming blade, her breath rasping in and out of her chest. "That's right. It's the executioner's sword. How fitting that it will send you to join him." He lunged at her.

Briggs turned towards their captive audience and held out a hand. Dietz was one step ahead of her. He tossed her one of Donegal's scimitars. She caught it neatly and swung it towards her attacker, where it met his sword with a loud clang. The clamor of metal against metal was loud in the stillness as their blades flashed out again and again in a blur of clashing swords. Briggs' feet danced on the sheet metal as she parried and thrust. After a few moments it became clear that swordplay was not Donegal's strongest skill. He handled the weapon like a club, wielding it heavily and stamping around. He soon began to tire, and eventually left his chest wide open. Briggs planted her foot squarely in his solar plexus and he flew backwards. She backed off. With a grunt of frustration, Donegal rose and flung the sword at her. It whipped end over end through the air, heading straight for her chest. She watched it closely, her eyes narrowed, then her hand shot out and plucked it out of the air as it reached her. She ran at Donegal and crossed the swords over his chest, his neck caught in an X of two sharp blades. She forced him to his knees and stood staring down at his contorted face as she slowly scissored the blades together until they bit into the skin of his throat.

"No!" Dietz cried.

The blades paused, vibrating with the tension running through her hands. Her entire body was shaking. "He killed Harry," she whispered. "I let him kill Harry..."

"Finish it," Donegal rasped. "Have your revenge, then."

The air sobbed in and out of her throat and her face writhed. With a burst of effort she stepped away and flung one of the swords to the ground, holding the other one up to his chest. Her entire body sagged weakly. "No," she sighed. "I won't."

Donegal shook his head. "You must. It's in your nature."

"No," she said, more emphatically, her voice rough with emotion. "I'm not a killer, Pax. I'm a soldier, and you're not the enemy that my government needs me to fight. I won't take your life when I've already beaten you. I won't let you make me kill you, do you understand? You'll pay for what you've done, but not with your life and not by my hand."

Kira stared at her friend, her heart swelling as she gripped Odo's hand tightly. Dietz looked like he might burst into tears at any moment. Donegal, on the other hand, looked almost disappointed. "After all I taught you, Siubhne," he said. "I thought I knew you."

She shook her head, drew the hypospray out of her vest pocket, then bent and injected him. Donegal fell in a boneless heap. "I told you my name is Briggs, Pax...and you never knew me," she said faintly, turning away and dropping the scimitar. She put her hands to her face and stumbled towards her companions, her shoulders beginning to shake. Dietz stepped forward and caught her up in his arms.

"Shh," he said, stroking the back of her head. "It's over, it's finally over." He meant more than just this fight and they all knew it. She clutched at him so tightly that if he'd been humanoid, he'd have been significantly bruised.

"No one knows me but you," she sobbed into his shoulder.

Kira had one hand on Briggs' shoulder, near tears herself. Odo stood by watching them and wondering how long it'd be before they were at each other's throats again. A few moments passed and Briggs began to calm. Odo was about to suggest vacating the premises as soon as possible when a movement caught his peripheral vision. He turned just in time to see Donegal, on his feet and appearing quite conscious. "No!" Odo exclaimed, but by the time the word had left his mouth it was too late. He saw Donegal's arms flash forward and something fly through the air.

There was a wet thud and Briggs gave a strange jerk in Dietz' arms, sucking in a choked breath. Odo, standing behind Dietz, was stunned to see the curved and lethally sharp tip of Donegal's scimitar protruding from his back and dripping with...blood?

"Oh sweet Prophets," he heard Kira gasp. He stepped around to see the hilt of the scimitar sticking out of the middle of Briggs' back, its blade run through her and then through Dietz. He stared at it, shocked, as he heard Donegal's heartless laughter and Dietz' cry of horror while her blood pooled at their feet.

Ahead to Part 4

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