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IMPRESSIVE REALISM, AU2

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But in a universe in which the Cardassians made less effort to conceal what they were doing….

 

 

She was performing: dancing and singing as usual, when the four walked into the establishment. She gasped dramatically, and nearly stumbled awkwardly.

It took her longer than it should have to gather the nerve to go greet them at their table as required, and to ask if they had any specific requests.

Tain eyed her predatorily. “Not just now, but perhaps later.”

Reluctantly making the small talk customarily offered to newcomers, and even to long-time customers of the cabaret, she stammered, “What brings you gentlemen so far from your empire?”

Dukat couldn’t resist. Viciously smugly, he remarked, “We’ve entertained you, so we saw it only fitting that you should entertain us, for a change.”

She paled horribly. “I don’t understand.” She was not a good liar.

“Yes, you do,” Garak said calculatedly coldly. He followed with a deliberately savage grin, complete with the wicked eyes that only he could produce.

She began to back away from them, and forced herself to recite the prerequisite, “Enjoy your stay.”

“Oh, indeed we shall,” Damar assured her in an almost gloating, depraved manner.

They watched her have an agonizingly difficult time smiling and performing musically, and evidently greatly enjoyed her anguish.

Presently, they saw her glance offstage with a look that was simultaneously gleeful and stricken, whereupon she rushed off in the middle of a dance, reappearing mere moments later, on the arm of a uniformed Klingon, who promptly began to dance with her.

“I know him,” Garak observed thoughtfully. “His name is Leskit.”

“Of the Rotarren?” Dukat said. “He’s that doom-darer that has the nerve to wear a necklace of Cardassian neck-bones!”

“She’s friends with someone like that?” Tain’s face darkened ominously.

“I don’t see him wearing anything like that now,” Damar remarked.

“That’s probably why she dashed off briefly that way: to warn him to remove it,” Garak suggested pensively, frowning.

“And now she turns to him for protection against us,” Dukat concluded with an unsavory grin. “How interesting.”

“Does she really believe that one Klingon can defend her against four Cardassians?” Damar was exceedingly dubious.

“She’s desperate,” Garak surmised. He clearly offered her no sympathy. In addition to her provocative interest in playing the holosuite program featuring these four Cardassians, and in addition to her inflammatory choice of friends, her obvious fear of him and the others was fueling his reptilian predatory instincts. It was at times like this that the part of him that was Tain, rather than Mila, most emerged.

Tain’s thoughts were apparently running along the same lines as his son’s. “I believe that we’ll enjoy this subject even more than usual,” he said.

 

The Klingon bowed archaically before them, and stated with just as much flourish, “Milady has bade me inform you that fantasy is one thing, but reality is something else entirely. She maintains that cowards like her have their adventures in holosuites because they’re too frightened to have them in reality. She said that you would understand.”

“Where’s your necklace, Leskit?” Dukat clearly wasn’t interested in what the visitor had said.

Instead of being discomfited, the Klingon was unwisely flattered. “Ah, you know of me. It’s backstage. She didn’t think it prudent for me to wear it in present company.”

“She was right about that,” he concurred with a decidedly unpleasant tone.

 

Dizzyingly quickly, she found herself a prisoner of the four Cardassians, with Leskit nowhere in sight. And she had hastily left the establishment on his arm immediately after her performance.

Now she was seated in a plain, straight-backed chair, with Garak, Dukat, Damar, and Tain looming ghoulishly at her from all four sides. Aware as she was that Garak was the best acquainted with her species, she decided to make her appeal to him, before they could begin the torture that she knew must be imminent. Unfortunately, he was the one directly behind her.

Turning quickly, she reached her right hand up and back, and seized the top of Garak’s armor-uniform, clutching at it spasmodically. “I beg you not to; spare me!!”

“Human. Let go,” Garak said solemnly, ominously.

Somehow, the tone chilled the girl as a shout would not have done. Instinctively, she knew that many a victim had heard that same tone in a torture chamber. She released him at once, and regarded him meekly for an instant, before turning away in desolation.

“How do you do that?!” Dukat marveled admiringly. “I manage to be terrifying to many, but I’ve yet to master that tone.”

“It’s all in the delivery,” Garak said smugly.

Even not looking at him, though, she still couldn’t resist continuing to beg. “Really…! Please…! I…!”

“Human.”

It was the tone again. The commanding voice compelled the fragile female to turn helplessly. She looked Garak straight in the eyes, obediently silently, allowing her blue eyes to do her imploring for her. She stared fixedly into his, until once again the overwhelming sight of his mesmerizing eyes besieged her, and she once more looked away in fright. Muttering something about preventing a repeat of her having grabbed Garak, Damar proceeded to tie her securely into the chair.

The next half-hour was a blur of pain and screams. Then, Garak abruptly left the room. With a diabolically smug expression, he returned promptly with a fairly innocuous-looking instrument, resembling a smooth, metallic baton, and walked toward her with it.* The four Cardassians had every reason to believe that she would know nothing about it, or what it was capable of, and were therefore quite disconcerted when she shrank in horror from it, straining against her bonds, and murmuring, “No!! Oh no!!!” They were far too cunning to suspect that she merely anticipated anything as mundane as a beating from the instrument; her reaction starkly revealed a fear far beyond that.

Tain held up a restraining hand to Garak, but it was unnecessary; he had stopped in surprise anyway. “You recognize this implement?”

She had previously leaked a few tears, but this time it was a flood. “Yes!” she whispered, barely audibly.

“How?” Tain persisted. “I know for a fact that its existence is far from general knowledge in your Federation.”

Desperately, she implored, “Please! Promise not to use it on me, and I’ll tell you all about how I came by such knowledge!”

He regarded her curiously, in bemusement. “How do you know that we’ll keep such a promise, even if we make one?”

“I think it’s the only chance that I have!” she sobbed.

“Quite true,” he admitted, with a slight twinkle of humor. “All right, for whatever it’s worth, I promise. Now, tell us.”

“I’m an agent.”

His doubt was evident, along with a mild spark of resentment. “You mock me.”

“No, sir, I don’t.”

“You hardly seem the type,” Dukat pointed out disdainfully.

“Of course. What better cover could there be?”

He still appeared skeptical, but his eyes narrowed in the evident suspicion that she just might be on the level at that.

“A genuine coward is automatically presumed to be harmless,” she persisted. “But that makes the best sort of agent, doesn’t it: someone that no one would suspect of being one.”

“You work for Starfleet Intelligence,” Tain surmised, marginally accepting her claim now, at least for the moment.

“Not quite.” She paused, but then confessed, “Section 31.”

Damar, Dukat, and Garak exchanged blank looks, but Tain remained unconfused.

“Your assignment?” prompted the head of the Obsidian Order.

“This holoprogram. Trying to discover why so many stable Starfleet personnel on a wide variety of starships, space stations, and planets have been having severe psychological breakdowns because of it.”

“And that’s why you bought the program. To attract the attention of the supposed perpetrators of lethal modifications to a ‘harmless’ holosuite program. Did you suspect the truth?”

She hesitated almost sheepishly. “Yes and no.”

“Clarify.”

“We strongly suspected that members of your species were behind it. Your people fit the…personality profile required to derive amusement from such a…perversion.” Suddenly regretting her word choice, she said in a smaller voice, “Sorry.”

“Irrelevant,” he brushed it aside.

None of the Cardassians seemed offended; in fact, all four even appeared somewhat proud of what would be, to non-Cardassians, insulting terms.

Exhibiting minor relief that her demise at least wasn’t quite imminent, she continued, her voice shaking with every utterance, “But we assumed that the reprogrammers were relative unknowns. We never imagined for an instant that…the four of you…that the real four of you…could possibly be behind this. We automatically supposed that minor players amid your species might very likely wish to get their jollies pretending to be you. You: the most prominent, important – notorious if you’ll forgive me – of your people.”

Faint amusement crossed Tain’s generally grim features. “Chalk it up to…career pressure fatigue.”

She nodded firmly. “I understand that all too well. In fact, I think that I’m feeling an overwhelming amount of that at this very moment.” She allowed a brief, faint, near-smile of gallows-humor.

Tain’s nearly sympathetic return look was naturally quite fleeting; he banished it almost as soon as it appeared. “So, you personally have no prurient interest in this holoprogram?”

She shuddered. “No. This was just another assignment.” Her expression became decidedly disconcerted. “At least, it started out that way.” She eyed the four significantly.

“So, you’ve played the holoprogram through, then, as part of your mission?” Dukat was clearly taunting her.

She met his eyes, but with no attempt to suppress her horror. “In observer mode only. Not as victim.” Her nose wrinkled in abhorrence.

“And Leskit?” wondered Garak.

“Genuinely a friend. And with no knowledge of my true identity. I sincerely hope that you-all didn’t hurt him too badly when you took me away from him.”

“He’ll probably recover,” allowed Damar. “Which is better than he deserves, considering his choice in ornamentation.”

“I know that you’ll find this difficult to believe, given that necklace of his, but he really isn’t a bad sort. A bit misguided, perhaps, and obviously much too fanatical regarding your people, I’ll readily admit.” Her expression became even bleaker. “However, depending upon what you do with me after this….” She trailed off, again not wishing to risk offending them on top of her already blatant endangerment.

“And you turned to him, involved him in this, because…?” Dukat urged, once again serious, ignoring her morbidly clear meaning.

She swallowed hard. “Because the moment that I saw you four, I knew that I was way, way in over my head. I needed help, and I had no real backup. Although I feared that my situation was hopeless, regardless.”

“And what shall we do with you now?” Tain seemed almost to be teasing her.

“Well, …I suppose that I don’t even need to state what it is that I hope you won’t do.” Her eyes once more filled and threatened to spill.

Garak smiled mildly down at the rod that he still held.

She shivered hard, and made no effort to conceal it.

Rather speculatively, Tain continued the thought. “Of course, you know that we can’t let you return to report to your superiors.”

“I figured that out already,” she agreed dismally.

“And that leaves…?” He seemed to be coaxing her, leading her on, instead of finishing the concept himself.

The answer was inevitable, so she decided to surprise him. “You could hire me.”

It was rather difficult to amaze Tain; even Garak could finger-count the number of times that he had seen it done, but this was one of them.

It was Dukat who found his voice first. “As what??”

“As what I am. An agent whom no one would ever suspect of being an agent, due to her sincere, bona fide cowardice. What better ‘faker’ is there than someone who is genuinely, authentically not faking?” The girl seemed almost to choke for a moment, and then regained control with supreme effort.

 The concept seemed to amuse all of them, but then Damar addressed the obvious. “How would we ever trust you??”

“You wouldn’t, at first. You’d watch me very closely, and never let me out of your collective sight. But over time, you would come to realize that my cowardice, once again, would be the very thing that would keep me loyal and obedient. Because of it, I would never dare to step out of line.”

Garak was extremely dubious. “Why should you ever come to feel any loyalty for us???”

In mock deep thought, she speculated, “Now let’s see: be slowly killed in some horrifically grisly fashion, or work for a different side for a change, delight in all new scenery, and perhaps experience exciting adventures…. Gee, what a difficult choice to have to make….” She eyed him meaningfully, showing in her expression that she intended no flippant disrespect, but rather glaringly obvious demonstration of her point.

“It might be occasionally amusing to keep you….” Tain was clearly thinking out loud. “But almost certainly impractical, pointless. I’m still rather inclined to deal with you more traditionally, more securely.”

Her eyes fixed on the deadly rod. “Not that! At least, please, not that!!”

“No, not that,” Garak agreed, sharing only the briefest look with Tain. “You’ve earned a reprieve from that, at the very least.” He turned briefly and put the monstrous object out of sight.

“Thank you!!” she babbled tearily. “Whatever happens now, thank you!!!”

“I take it, then, that Section 31 agents routinely know of ‘The Device’?” asked Tain. *

She nodded morosely. After a respectful pause, she changed the subject. “There is something that I still don’t understand,” she ventured meekly.

“You may ask.” Tain stressed the lack of guarantee of worthwhile reply.

“All of those victims who had the psychotic breaks, none of them were….” Her eyes strayed, unwillingly, in the direction in which Garak had secreted the dreaded item. “That is to say, none of them had had that…thing…done to them.”

Dukat wore a secretive smile. “We threatened each one with it, though, and explained its function. Rather vividly.”

“And that’s all it took, to render them catatonic. That’s how you did it.” She was nodding. “I quite understand.”

Damar shook his head slightly. “A few, we actually had to nick just a bit, but just that beginning traumatized even the toughest of them.” He sounded perversely proud.

“Of course. But, …so then, …you were essentially…bluffing them? Which means that you were…bluffing me??”
            “Until you surprised us with your little confession,” Tain confirmed. “Before that, we expected this session to be fairly routine.”

She nodded, unsurprised and unbothered, accepting fatalistically that she had given herself away possibly needlessly.

“In any case, my dear,” he went on, “I have indeed decided to take you with us.”

She searched his eyes steadily then, desperately hopeful. “I won’t dare to cross you, sir.” She spoke almost reverently.

“I suspect that you will not.” Tain nodded. “But my belief won’t prevent me from monitoring you closely, …very, very closely,” he concluded pointedly.

“I expect no less. And believe me, sir, there is absolutely no chance that I will ever betray you; I am brutally aware that you can always bring out that…that… thing…again on me, at any time.” Once more her eyes traveled reluctantly toward “The Device.” *

“Meanwhile….” Now, Dukat veritably smirked at her. “Some of us might just find another use for you, in the interim, until Tain decides how to assign you.” He fondled her waist-length hair suggestively. “Does that surprise you?”

“No, sir, Gul Dukat, sir. Not from you.” There was no trace of derision in her tone, just an expression of complete comprehension.

Garak and Damar joined him in his smirk. Tain, of course, did not deign to do so.

 

 

*See my story entitled “ Harsh Realities.”