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NOW WHOSE FAULT IS IT?

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By now, I’m sure that it’s evident that most of my stories are AUs. Here is another.

 

 

            Accidentally left behind in the frantic, helter-skelter evacuation of DS9 by the Federation, barely ahead of the combined Cardassian-Dominion fleet that roared in to take over, Bashir and O’Brien huddled in the close-quarters of a conduit, just as they’d done while waiting to ambush Bajorans of The Circle years earlier. But unlike that long-ago time, the two were alone. This time, there was no Sisko to plan strategy, and there were no security guards to keep them secure. Tensely, the two were arguing.

            “We’ve got to trust someone, Miles! Do you want to wait in here until we starve?!”

            “All I’m saying is that I might’ve known that you’d want to contact Garak! Maybe you trust him, Julian, but I don’t! You’ve got a soft-spot, a weakness for that Cardassian turncoat!”

            “Well, whom would you suggest?? Dukat?! Damar??! Weyoun?!! At least Garak is my friend!”

            “Julian, he’s also just been reinstated by his government! Now do you really suppose that he’s going to respond kindly and protectively to two Federation officials unintentionally abandoned behind enemy lines?!! Do you honestly think that, in such a precarious position, he’ll risk everything that he’s only just regained?!!”

            “Miles, I’m asking you to trust in me! Garak won’t let any harm come to me, and I won’t let any harm come to you!”

            “Sure, I trust you, but I’m afraid to trust him! Have you forgotten that he once tortured Odo, and that another time, he tried to kill Nog and me??! Julian, you’re putting our lives into his hands!”

            “That’s better than putting them into Dukat’s, or Damar’s, or any other Cardassian’s! Let alone the Dominion’s! They’ll find us sooner or later; we can’t hide in here forever! And frankly, I’d rather choose our captor, if it comes to that, than wait for random chance to assign one! And no, Miles, I won’t put our lives into Garak’s hands, only my own. You stay here. I’ll come for you only after I’m sure that it’s safe. Meanwhile, I’ll let Garak think that I’m alone, that only I got left behind when the others left.”

 

            Days later, Bashir and O’Brien sat at a table in Quark’s, trying to pretend not to be uneasy at the sight of so many Jem’Hadar and Cardassian soldiers all around them. Not to mention the presence of Garak, Dukat, and Damar at the very next table, tolerating but ignoring the two humans.

            Dukat was boasting of when he’d been abducted by the Maquis years earlier, bragging of how ineffectual the Vulcan Maquis woman had been, in trying to interrogate him via mind meld. “You should’ve seen her frustration that she couldn’t begin to connect with my thoughts! She admitted that my mind was too disciplined to breach. Frankly, I wonder whether it was a trait of mine or of ours to be impervious to Vulcan telepathy.”

            “Likely the latter,” offered Garak. “In my time of living among the Federationists, I learned that Betazoids can’t read Ferengi. So likewise, perhaps Vulcans can’t read Cardassians.”

            “Probably.” Dukat nodded. “In any case – and you’ll love this part, Garak! – I taunted her and the other Maquis by saying, ‘You people really are not very good at this, are you? My people would’ve had the answers out of your people long ago!’ I laughed at them!”

            Garak did indeed enjoy it, but with a different slant than Dukat would have liked. “For someone who resents the techniques that I used on your father, you glorify those same methods when employed against non-Cardassians.”

            “That’s different!” Dukat countered stiffly. “Internal, personal matters among us are none of their business, but we must present a terrifying, unified front to outsiders!”

            “Granted,” said Damar, regarding the two appeasingly, and diplomatically steered the conversation back to safer ground, by adding, “Go on, Dukat.”

            “Anyway, later, when Sisko and the others had rescued me, and Odo had her in custody, and he remarked on the frustration of trying to interrogate a Vulcan, I smugly offered to do so. Unfortunately, those soft Federationists wouldn’t allow it.”

            Now Garak was the one looking smug. “How interesting. You were going to work my side of the street, Dukat! How I would’ve loved to have seen you do so! What a tragedy that the Federationists wouldn’t permit it.”

            O’Brien could no longer keep quiet. His back had been to them, his chair almost bumping up against Damar’s, so he turned around in it, missing Bashir’s sudden look of alarm. “Of course we wouldn’t allow it! Petty revenge! You just wanted to turn the tables on her, and we knew it!”

            “What difference did it make what my motive was?” Dukat countered peevishly. “It would’ve gotten the job done regardless, and provided the information that we and you wanted.”

            “We don’t operate that way!”

            “And that will be your downfall,” predicted Damar. “Your softness makes you ineffectual.”

            “Oh yeah? Were we ‘ineffectual’ when we rescued Dukat from the Maquis??”

            “No,” Dukat replied, unimpressed. “But you were when you failed to let me follow through with the Vulcan.”

            “Miles, I think that you ought to drop it,” Bashir suggested tightly.

            Garak nodded. “I think that you should listen to him, O’Brien.”

            “Now just a minute,” insisted the Irishman. “I’m making a point here. Actually, it’s a pity that your species isn’t telepathic.”

            Dukat was baffled. “Now why is that?”

            “Well, since your favorite hobby is…extracting information that’s none of your business, telepathy would enable you to do so without resorting to…savagery.”

            “Miles!” urged Bashir rather urgently.

            “What?!” O’Brien retorted defensively.

            But this time the Cardassians were amused, especially Garak.

            Dukat countered blandly, “Does this human always speak so offensively?”

            Garak was grinning. “Only to us. Or about us.” He evidently decided to taunt O’Brien. “You seem to forget how much we enjoy our form of…savagery.”

            Damar remarked pointedly, “Perhaps we three should…give him a demonstration.”

            O’Brien whirled in his seat, abruptly facing away from them again, barely in time to conceal how dramatically he’d paled. He tried to ignore Bashir’s I-told-you-so expression.

            What was even harder to ignore was the round of derisive laughter from the Cardassians.

            Damar teased, “What’s the matter, O’Brien? Aren’t you the least bit curious what we do?” When he received no response, he lightly kicked the human’s chair.

            O’Brien turned, gaze filled with trepidation. “No,” he said quietly, and his eloquent blue eyes sent a fearful, silent plea to Garak, who regarded him knowingly, and perhaps ever-so-slightly dangerously. The human whispered to him, “I’m sorry. Please….”

            But oddly, Bashir was now growing excited. “Wait a minute! There is a good, practical solution here! Why don’t you-all hire Vulcans to do your interrogations for you?! Even if the mind probe doesn’t work on Cardassians, I can assure you that it works on most species! It would be so much more expedient; it would save you so much time! That alone might make it worth it to you, to make such a fundamental change in your approach!”

            Dukat stared. “Vulcans, as members of your Federation, would not be willing to work for us.”

            “Sure they would! A few would! And a few are all that you’d need!”

            O’Brien eagerly took up the cause. “There are always a few unscrupulous members in any species who are willing to work for the wrong side.” Then he paled again. “Oops. I mean, the other side.”

            The Cardassians cast him a look, but it was not too threatening; O’Brien had not made too fatal an error.

            Oblivious to their renewed byplay in his exuberance, Bashir went on enthusiastically, “And think of all the times that a victim doesn’t break, no matter how hard you try! But he wouldn’t ever be able to resist a mind probe!”

            “We don’t fail that often, actually,” Garak replied pridefully, but it was clear that he was considering the concept.

            Bashir was on a roll. “Come to think of it, some Vulcans might rally to your cause even if for no other reason than to render your tactics more humane, to eliminate your procedures of which they disapprove!”

            Garak was apparently working to curb any skepticism in his evident affection for his human friend’s boyish excitement, judging from his slightly smothered smile.

            When O’Brien turned back to Bashir, the latter whispered hopefully, “We just might’ve made an important difference, Miles!”

 

            But the doctor’s attitude had changed profoundly when he burst into the Prefect’s office the next morning to confront the three Cardassians.

            “How could you do such a thing?!”

            “You forget your place, Bashir,” Dukat countered sternly. “We generously agreed to tolerate your presence in the name of past mutually-exchanged favors, and because we’re convinced that your abandonment here was indeed unintentional, and provided that your presence remains unobtrusive. But this outburst crosses the line.”

            “You also agreed not to harm us as long as we behaved ourselves! So why did you break your word regarding O’Brien?!”

            The three stared. Damar said stiffly, “I would hardly call last night’s insignificant banter ‘harm.’”

            Garak said resentfully, “So we teased him a little, Julian….”

            “He’s not just teased, and not just a little! You three hurt him, Garak! And after you promised me…!”

            Garak stared in disbelief. “Julian, you were there…!”

            “I’m not talking about that silly business in Quark’s!” Bashir lost patience.

            “That’s all that there was!” countered Dukat.

            Now Bashir stared, disbelieving. “Then why is O’Brien lying injured in my infirmary, screaming that you three tortured him?!”

            “What?!” exclaimed Garak.

            The human muttered bitterly, “I should’ve known better than to dismiss as idle threat Damar’s taunting that you three might demonstrate for him what you-all do, and that he should be curious!”

            The Cardassians’ shocked expressions looked sincere, but still the brunette mused, “Although I am curious about where you did it. In a room that even O’Brien didn’t recognize. Admittedly, your people undoubtedly know the station even better than he, having created it yourselves….”

            “Julian, nothing happened!” Garak insisted.

            “Come and see!” Bashir retorted.

 

            None could deny the presence of an injured O’Brien on a biobed, nor the sadistically, deliberately-inflicted nature of his injuries, nor the convincing screams that he unleashed instantly upon sight of Garak, Dukat, and Damar. But neither could Bashir fail to acknowledge, however reluctantly, the convincingly baffled expressions of the three Cardassian leaders as they examined the wounds of a hastily-sedated O’Brien and admitted in utter bewilderment that the torture-style was indeed authentically Cardassian in nature.

            It didn’t take the Cardassians’ underlings too long to identify the holosuite Obsidian-Order-training-program that must have been used, to confirm its use by matching its environmental appearance to O’Brien’s description of the unknown room, or to see how easily and convincingly the three Terok-Nor-rulers’ images had been substituted for those of the unknown operatives standard to the program.

            It took only a bit longer to trace the program’s latest user as having been the juvenile delinquent nephew of the bar’s owner. “I was just having fun!” Nog cried as he was dragged off to a holding cell. “I heard them arguing in Uncle Quark’s last night, and thought it would be funny!”

            Even Bashir didn’t try to intervene when the Prefect ruled that it would be “even funnier” to give the incorrigible Ferengi boy his own firsthand demonstration of the program.