Tales from the Captain’s Table (19 page)

Plin’s people controlled the stage.

Looking beneath the façade, just for a moment, I glimpsed what power these women had over the members, how vulnerable the Cardassians allowed themselves to become in this place. Plin had done a magnificent job of crafting an irresistibly seductive environment that, over time, could beguile the most hardened glinn or gul into a false sense of security.

Talk about the perfect targets for opportunistic resistance operatives.

“Before we reach your quarters, I’ll show you where you have to be disinfected at the start of shift,” Tov said, interrupting my thoughts.

“Disinfected?”

“Our clients find our odors—distasteful. Our skin secretions, our musky perspiration, our hair scent.” He scanned me perfunctorily from boot to scalp. “You’ll have to cut yours.”

I smoothed the long plait falling down my back, wondering what other indignities I would be subjected to.

“They are a fastidious people. Attentiveness to our own hygiene helps our members have a more agreeable experience.”

“The customer is always right,” I quipped, a line I’d heard from the Ferengi who ran the bar on the space station. A dazzling fountain combining lasers and morphing holographic plant life drew my attention away from my host. I almost didn’t realize he’d stopped walking.

Tov frowned, raised his index finger to halt me. “In our club, we have members, not customers. Members receive benefits, they do not transact for services. Understood?”

I understood all right. But who was Tov fooling? Prettying up the business of selling a person like one might sell a farm animal with euphemisms and nice decorating didn’t make this any less a distasteful scenario—just as calling a vole a “furry field scavenger” doesn’t make it any less a pest. I knew what this job required and I was willing to take it on. That didn’t mean I had to enjoy it.

A statuesque Bajoran woman clothed in a scanty, translucent drape wrapped around her torso glided by me, head held high, shoulders squared.

Will I have to dress that way?
I shuddered.

As I watched her cross the lobby toward the reception desk, I realized she didn’t wear her familial earring. Neither had Plin or any other Bajoran I’d met, come to think of it. Probably not allowed. Part of looking subservient to the conquerors, I reflected wryly. I wondered who she was—whether she was one of Plin’s agents—and how she’d come to be in the place. I wasn’t certain if I should be impressed by her beauty and confidence or pity her having to seduce Cardassians on a daily basis. Knowing my days at the Club were numbered gave me the fortitude to endure such humiliation for a season, but past that all bets were off.

All my life, I’d seen less glamorous variations on the women working the Club, hovering in the filthy corners of the space station or hanging around the barracks at military outposts, hoping for an extra ration of soup. Plin’s employees, though, hardly looked like they’d suffered a day in their lives with their rounded, fleshy curves, well-powdered cleavage, and rouged cheeks.

By comparison, I felt like an emaciated river rodent.

My mission’s success, though, required that I become a woman that Cardassian soldiers would admit into their private lives, thus providing a way for a clever woman—perhaps a resistance operative—to use her access to the soldiers as a way to tiptoe her way into the most vulnerable military installations on Bajor. Contemplating my new life—of opulent furnishings, plates of food filled to overflowing, comfortable mattresses, sleep uninterrupted by fire fights or explosions—I wavered between feeling that I’d made strides forward and that I’d stepped into a silken noose that would ultimately prove to be my undoing, never mind that Plin wanted me for an operation of her own. After all, as I looked at the people around me, I wondered if any of them remembered the world on the outside or if the glittering façade of the Officers’ Club had seduced them with self-indulgence and luxury. I despised people so weak. And yet, I was doing my damnedest to become one—or at least give the appearance of one.
Congratulations, Nerys. You’ve blown up ammunition depots, lied to soldiers with the power to execute you, murdered collaborators in cold blood, stolen resources, weaponry, and anything else Shakaar asked you to take, all to further the cause of Bajor’s independence. And today, you’ve fought for the privilege of sleeping with the enemy.

“I suppose there’s a pecking order for members. That senior officers and guls receive the companionship of someone like her.” I jerked my head in the direction of the woman who had passed by. “But the lower-level personnel would have to settle for someone like—” I took a deep breath, gave a cursory glance at my negligible cleavage and skinny limbs. “—me?”

For the first time since I’d met him in Plin’s office, a white, toothy grin split Tov’s face. Then he laughed. Hard. “Forgive my uncouth response. It is entirely inappropriate, as the misunderstanding you are laboring under is my fault.” And then he burst into another fit of laughter, collapsing forward.

While I realized that I wasn’t the most polished of the girls working for Plin, I hardly considered myself
paloku
droppings, so I mirrored a more pinched version of Tov’s smile back at him and waited for him to compose himself. The desk attendants across the reception area had begun eyeing him nervously. I wondered if I should shepherd him into a more private location.

His laughter hiccoughed to a stop. “My dear, don’t take this the wrong way, but you are not fit to provide benefits to our members.”

My smile froze. “Wait a minute—”

“Hold that thought.” He raised his eyebrows meaningfully, ordering my silence. Grabbing my arm, he pulled me beyond the lobby into a quiet service access hallway and into a turbolift.

“Speak,” he ordered at last.

“I’m not fit to sleep with a Cardassian.”

“Sleeping is such an inexact term.”

“I’m not fit to provide sexual favors to a Cardassian,” I said bluntly.

He pursed his lips together, hemmed and hawed.

I held up a finger. “Just spit it out.”

“You would be repugnant to them.”

My eyes widened in shock. “Repugnant to them? And you think it would be the highlight of my life to be pawed by those murderers? Why those cold-blooded, lizard-skinned—”

“I’d advise you to stop there if you ever want any hope of serving them.” All signs of amusement left Tov’s face.

You need this job.
I took a few deep breaths, gritted my teeth, smashed my lips together, and prayed to the Prophets for patience. “So what exactly will I be doing?”

“Housemaid.”

I wasn’t good enough to sleep with the spoonheads; I was good enough for the spoonheads’ garbage. Lucky me. I’d lived long enough to know insulting when I saw it and this situation certainly qualified. I just had to do whatever it took to elevate myself off recycler and refresher duty and into the bedroom. No matter what was required of me. I took a deep breath. “When do I start?”

Somewhere behind the illusion of the Officers’ Club, Reon laughed.

My roommate hadn’t been around when Tov brought me to my quarters. I took advantage of the down time to rest, though years of training myself to survive on a quasi-alert half-sleep proved hard to undo.

A clankety-clankety-clankety sounded across the room. I opened an eye.

My roommate was bent over her bed, shaking glinting metallic objects the size of my thumb out of the top of her leather corset. When the last object clanked onto her quilt, she reached into her bosom with her hand, fished around for any strays, and found at least two, which she tossed into the pile with the others.

“Hey,” she called over to me when she noticed me observing her. Her voice was smoky and her eyes twinkled like the gems on her corset. “Glad to meet you—”

“Nerys. Kira Nerys,” I said, scooting up against my headboard.

“Plin Teara—call me Teara, though. Everyone does.” she grabbed a couple of her “treasures” off her pile and tossed them over to me. “Let me be the first to give you a tip as your official welcome to the club. You won’t see credits like this until you become a companion. But if you play nice, you’ll quickly advance to the gambling rooms, where the money is better. It only took me a season to make it off the housekeeping staff and a season past that to advance out of dabo.”

Plin
Teara. While I was hardly naïve enough to assume that she worked in the resistance, I felt safe believing that she would be making regular reports to her mother. My initial impression was that she appeared to be a gregarious young woman with spiky purple-black hair and a penchant for a severe, dark-colored wardrobe of angular jackets and tightly fitting short tunics.

Teara jammed her fists into her waist. “Say, you want to come with me to turn these in to Mory? I can show you around the place after. I spent long enough cleaning up after the members that I know every shortcut and back way into every section of this building.”

Not wanting to appear too excited about the prospect of a guided tour, I swung my legs over the edge of my bed and walked over to Teara. “Mory?”

“He’s the cashier, accountant—all-around money guy. Issues you your weekly pay credits. Invests your tips if you want.”

“Definitely someone you want to be your friend.”

She grinned. “You learn fast, Nerys. You might not have to wait a season before you’re working dabo or
tongo
.”

Teara was as good as her word. Within days I knew my way around the Club better than some of the maids who’d been working for two or three seasons. My supervisor noticed too and quickly promoted me out of the casino and into the private suites where the companions took the members.

A maid servicing the suites had one adage to live by: Above all else, avoid disturbing the member dates. When a yellow notification light appeared on the grid in the service hallways running behind the suites, it indicated a suite was ready to service. I’d come in with my supplies to sterilize and straighten and quickly vacate the premises. Once the yellow light was cleared off the grid, the companions would know that the suite was available for use.

I quickly realized that my initial frustration at being rejected for a companion job was misdirected. I suspected that Plin had known what she was doing when she directed Tov to start me at the bottom. Being a housemaid suited my needs much better than companionship did minus the nasty requirement of sex with the members. My job provided me with daily opportunities to learn everything a good operative needed to know about her target. Who had what job and worked what shift. How to access the public areas without being seen. Even better, I had almost limitless access to gadgets. Oh sure, to the uneducated eye, my cleaning tools appeared to be effective ways of repairing upholstery, eliminating stains from our fine
amra
-skin rugs, and removing microparticles of skin and hair from upholstery in an effort to prevent our Bajoran stink from offending our members. To a resourceful resistance fighter, I finally had access to up-to-date submicrotransistors, photonic power cells, sensor chips, and all the quatranic tubing I’d ever need to split a line off a transmitter. I quickly learned who among the members held high enough rank to be in the know at the base and where the companions hosted those officials. I made mental notes, knowing that as soon as I acquired my target, I’d be able to move quickly to accomplish my mission. So far, none of the companions had mentioned Gundar and I hadn’t seen his name on the schedule. Plin and I talked from time to time, but she didn’t offer any details about what she needed from me. I remained equally closemouthed.

Though I had access to almost every Club area, I had yet to meet my brother, who’d apparently advanced as high as Plin’s second-in-command. I heard his name murmured in the same reverential tones as Plin’s wherever the Club’s employees gathered. Half the staff was trying to get into his good graces for promotions or salary increases, the other half was trying to get into his bed. Ten years hadn’t lessened his charms.

My curiosity about my brother’s new life grew by the day, fueled by my knowledge of a resistance cell operating out of the Club. I spent part of every day studying my coworkers, wondering who among them was a sister in Bajor’s cause, so it was natural that I wondered the same about my brother. But Plin ran a tightly controlled operation and there was nothing she controlled more than information, especially personal information. Employees talked at length about the day-to-day goings-on at the Club, but offered little or nothing about who they were beyond the roles they played. Weaknesses had to exist in Plin’s carefully constructed illusion. I probed diligently to find them, but had yet to make inroads.

I wasn’t without hope, though. I like to believe that if you’re following the Path, the Prophets give you a nudge now and then to help out.

I felt such a nudge when I was awakened a few hours before my shift started to finish the work of a casino maid who had abruptly taken ill. Why I had been chosen didn’t make much sense, considering that I hadn’t worked in the casinos for weeks, but I accepted the request without question, pulled on my uniform, and stumbled down to housekeeping to be dispatched to my post.

Being unobtrusive in the gaming rooms was easy because of the lowered lights, the noise, and the single-minded focus of the gamblers. Keeping members under surveillance could be done without them ever noticing. My extra shift passed without anything notable happening until I unexpectedly saw him slip out from behind a velvet curtain over by the
tongo
pits to resolve a conflict between a member and a table attendant.