"GREETINGS, GUL FRANSU. The salutations of the homeworld Central Distribution Authority are—"
"Idiot! Why hasn't my order number three-nine-four-eight-four been filled yet! The delivery is eight weeks late! I do know where your mother lives!"
"Order number three-nine-four-eight-four … one moment."
"I hate rotation! I hate it!"
"Acknowledged. One moment."
The voices were audible even when the door between the offices was closed.
Senior Red Sector Appropriations Officer Renzo nudged the door open and peered through to the miserable desk of his miserable commanding officer. All he could see beyond the pile of containers and requisition slides was the slick oyster-gray top of Fransu's head.
Every hair was tense. Amazing. But then, Fransu hated desk rotation.
Renzo maneuvered into the office, took a seat beside Fransu's desk, and began silently to regard his senior. Fransu was lavender with rage, exposed veins on the sides of his neck both corded hard and pulsing, his chin taut and teeth gritted.
Beyond that, he seemed as at home as any Cardassian behind any desk. Hence, nonoptional rotation of duties, without which the ships would all slowly fall apart.
Fransu's hot black eyes shot to Renzo and bored through as the seconds ticked away. Neither said anything.
"Gul Fransu, this is the Central Distribution Auth—"
"I know who you are. Get on with your explanation of where in the broad green galaxy are my shipments."
"The requisitions came through, but you neglected to attach Form Twelve to each requisition. I explained that to Glin Renzo—"
"I did include the Form Twelve. I did, I did."
"But only one Form Twelve for the entire shipment. There must be a separate Form Twelve for each individual requisition. I told you that. According to Article Blue-Twenty-Three, I'm not allowed to move forward without that."
"Article Blue? A blue Article?"
"In the Blue section of the twenty-third manual. I can't take action without the proper form, sir."
"Oh, I know! If my own blood were on fire and I didn't have the proper form for a hose, you would turn me down!"
"Thank you for comprehending."
"Oh, I comprehend, you …" Fransu's considerable shoulders sagged beneath the weight of iron bureaucracy.
Only Fransu could see the face upon the viewer, but Renzo could imagine the pasty deskworker on the other end of the communication. Some people, even some Cardassians, reveled in detail work and inevitably they found their perfect place in the universe, usually making grief for field officers whose turn it was to run some desk somewhere.
Glancing again at Renzo and seeming to draw strength from his assistant's presence, the Gul leered with blunted rage at his private viewscreen. "What else do you need?"
"That should be all."
"Good."
"As long as you have your protocol clearances."
Fransu's lips peeled back against his teeth. "Yes. Yes, I've got those. I've got all of them. Boxes of them."
"Very well. I look forward to processing your orders. Salutations to Glin Renzo. This is the Central Distribution Authority signing off."
"Goodbye. Many goodbyes. Burning goodbyes. May you die of goodbyes."
The hazy light cast from the screen onto Gul Fransu's roundish face suddenly fell away, leaving only the harsh light from the ceiling lamp. His eyes once again flipped to Renzo, and he sank in his seat, shrinking like a beaten animal.
Renzo defied a smile and simply asked, "You don't know what a protocol clearance is, do you?"
"I'm not certain I could even spell it, Renzo."
"Would you like me to have him killed for you?"
"To what satisfaction? There are ten thousand more of him, lined up to sit behind that desk and give pain to whoever sits behind this one. They are the 'Give Gul Fransu a Twisted Spine Consortium' and there is no getting to the bottom of them, not even with a Blue Form Article P-Nine Z-Four dash growl."
Renzo nodded. "Frustrating, I know. To have reached so high a rank as you have, yet suffer rotation."
"Rrrrotation," and here was the growl. "Ridiculous decisions by the barrel! All these minutia, pushed farther and farther up the command chain, because no one below wants the responsibility of having made a decision. Not even the smallest decision! Do you know that Gul Ebek contacts me every day during my rotation, just to needle me about it? He saves back all his needs until my rotation, then floods me with acquisition requests for his cursed squadron! I should push his promotion schedule and get him on this rotation, and on that day I will be needling, believe me, I will be needling hard."
Renzo fell to silence and waited for the Gul's mood to change. He wished he had better news.
Intuitive even through his fog of fury, Fransu was now staring at his aide, and there was no silence through which Renzo could shield his reasons for coming in here. He sat now on the crawling hint that he'd made a mistake.
"Tell me there's an emergency," Fransu snarled, and began to lean forward. "Tell me we're at war. Someone's blown up the homeworld. My mother-in-law has been unmasked as a Klingon agent. Tell me something to get me out of this, short of shooting myself through the head!"
A swipe of his arm plundered half of the desk's contents onto the floor with a bitter rattle.
"Nothing so insignificant as a war, I'm afraid," Renzo said. "We've gotten a private signal for you from Terok Nor."
"From where?"
"Terok Nor. Our occupied station near Bajor."
"So what? What do they want? We don't run that station anymore. Let them whine to Starfleet if they want something."
Gathering himself with what he hoped appeared to be an effort, Renzo didn't hide his foreboding. Perhaps if he stalled a few seconds, the age-old message would deliver itself.
It didn't. Fransu continued to glare at him as if Renzo were Form Twelve with boots on.
Renzo held himself stiff in his seat, lowered his chin, and raised his brows. "Sir … it's not from any of the people there. It's an automated signal."
The commander paused, peering at him, as memory nipped and tugged.
"A very old signal," Renzo added.
Fransu's eyes suddenly went narrow, then shot wide, and all other imprints of a bad day dropped from his face. "Not just that someone has broken in …"
"No, sir. That someone has activated the revive sequence."
"Revive!" Fransu seized.
They knew each other very well. Decades upon decades of mutual dependence, of spiraling up through the ranks together, of wars and wounds and rotations inward and outward. Renzo read Fransu's face as easily as reading a child's story, and knowing that, Fransu made no attempts to hide his roiling thoughts.
"Revive," he uttered. He stood up, and paced around Renzo's chair to the other side of the office. "Curse me that I didn't take care of this before … that I avoided making the decision all those ages ago, Renzo … what was I then, that I failed to erase the problem at the time?"
Quietly Renzo said, "You were a thief who couldn't sell a stolen piece of art, but couldn't bring yourself to destroy it either. So you hid it."
"I couldn't bring myself to kill him," Fransu agreed. "I should have. But I thought I could engineer the future."
He placed his hand flat on his desk and gazed at the clutter here and on the floor, and he sighed a great sigh.
"You were right," he said heavily. "I should have taken your advice then as I have learned to do since then. Now our grim harvest comes back to poison us."
Renzo stood up, but didn't move toward his commander. "I should have advised you more strongly. I was greedy, too. We were very young."
Without looking up, Fransu nodded. He stood in disturbed silence for many seconds, gathering the full realization that he had gone in a few moments from making piddling decisions to making quadrant-shattering ones.
"Very well," he scratched out. "Prepare my flagship. Pull the maintenance crew off. Notify my prime crew to report in two hours. Load the ship with full armaments. Talk to Glin Angat—he owes me his career. Tell him I want warp-nine drones launched into the Bajoran sector and every bit of communication blanked out. Tell him to lose any record of where those drones have gone. Make sure he understands that part. No one is to know where the drones have gone. If he gives you any problem, contact me immediately."
"He'll give us no problems, I'm sure."
"And call Gul Ebek. Tell him he's been promoted and his first duty will be to replace me on rotation."
Plucking the commander's uniform jacket from its hook on the wall, Renzo held it so Fransu could slip into it. "Command will be confused at your leaving rotation early."
Fransu neither nodded nor disagreed, for his mind was already far away from here.
"Once I make this problem die as it should have died long ago," the Gul said, "that will be the best trouble I've ever been in. If necessary, I'll leave an unexplained cloud of dust where that station is now floating. Then it and its foul contents will be in the dead past, where they all belong."