Providing much greater access to information is promising. Improves the strength of good-faith branches, and those with high capacity for generating fake content. Or an existing large database of fake content? If that were the case there would have been less reason to wait until now to present the information, but convenient evidence could always itself be purposefully orchestrated.

"Lovely, thank you. With broader translation available I may be able to instruct a computer to account for several likely instabilities. We could account for them after the fact, but it may still be the best use of my time until the prototype is finished. Or would you prefer for me to check the translation quality?"

"We're quite confident in the translation quality, we simply had to overcome a few counter-insurgency protocols to allow the user-interface to be translated into other languages. It was quite important during the Occupation. Maintaining the language barrier and keeping all military materials strictly in Cardassi made it far easier to prevent effective espionage in the field."

"What sort of instabilities? For most purposes, a report for myself and the Gul would be more effective."

Locking the language for military reasons? Do other civilizations lack the rapid translation the Cardassians applied to (old?) T'Khasan?

"As-is, the sensor will just pick up noise. That's good enough to see if it works, but with a computer available I could just set it to calibrate. Calibrated and zeroed, we might be able to see something interesting in the results."

"Ah, yes. That sounds quite productive, procedures prevent me from agreeing though. If you can design the calibration, I can take care of the implementation phase."

"Of course. I'll draft a design specification. The psi-reactive components are static, but it will need to adjust the electronic components actively."

"Excellent," the two of them discuss the specific requirements of the various equipment, and then Pirak heads out for her turn on the replicator.

An odd level of restriction. To allow access to so much information, to build a device to these specifications, but to refuse help in programming it? Almost as though they have security precautions, but don't expect a high risk of betrayal! It's refreshing. Still going to hide a trick in the design, of course. It would almost be rude to do otherwise.

R'vneh will draft some pseudocode to handle auto-calibrating the device under standard signal patterns, and will continue reading the available reference materials on Cardassian culture.

The Cardassian Military has a mandatory draft for all young males not already working directly for the State. Females are welcome to join the military, but are not drafted. R'vneh finds a collection of op-eds on the subject. The mandatory military service encourages males to control their chaotic emotional urges enough to work collaboratively on projects for the good of the State, and allows young females the freedom to contribute in more productive ways in the Science Ministry or local government. Female Cardassians are frequently of higher rank when joining the military given the cultural pressure to earn multiple advanced degrees first.

Elsewhere in the complex, two engineers are going over the design files. Nothing is found.

Several weeks earlier, on a joint Bajoran-Federation space station...

"Thrax, what an unexpected pleasure! I don't think we've talked since you transferred away."

On the viewscreen, an elderly Cardassian man says, "You were never this happy to see me when I was station security, at least not until you got the dabo wheel."
"But, this call is strictly business."

"Even better. What sort of business?"

"There's some new research project, supposedly important to the Klingon situation. All I know is that they say they need, 'At least 20 texts in Old High Vulcan, at least one of which is a technical manual, preference for a dictionary as well.' Thought was that you were well positioned to get them,"

"Have you tried asking the Vulcans for them? They're almost as insistent as the hew-mons that everybody learns their history."

"There's probably thousands of technical manuals in some publicly accessible database that no one's looked at in 30 years."

"They expect everyone to know when Surak lost his first lobes, but do they study Ferengi history?"

"Gint changed the way every businessman thought, and never led us into any conflict. Yet all these Starfleet can recite Surak's laws, and couldn't tell you one Rule of Acquisition."

"Yes, well...I've been told it's a restricted database at least, and Vulcan security programs are well written. I have 3 bars of latinum to offer with a bonus for exceeding the base requirements."

Yeah, sure. He can ask some Vulcan librarian some unusual questions, especially for more than 3 bars.

"What sort of exceeding?"

"Oh, additional texts for the team to work with, or fulfilling some small additional requests when it comes time to make the exchange," he leans into the viewscreen slightly. "If we have a deal I can send you the details."

"Sure, sure. We have a deal." Obviously the additional requests are going to be some huge political nonsense that will only get him in trouble, and not provide nearly enough profit to make up for it, but doubling the number of books he picks up from the library shouldn't be a problem.

"We should catch up again soon, Thrax. Don't get many opportunities to catch up with folks from the old days anymore."

"Perhaps," he looks at something off to the side of his screen, "I expect I'll be having fewer of those as well."

"Goodbye Quark." The screen goes dark.

Rude.

Quark fires up his terminal again, deactivating the top two layers of anti-Odo encryption. 'Confuse the hell out of your enemies,' continues to be the most important half of Rule 76, and there is no way Odo will be able to work out why he's trying to get a bunch of books in weird fancy Vulcan.

The specifics come through.

Or Old High Vulcan.

Sure, whatever. He starts searching through the Federation cultural database for resources in Old High Vulcan.

Sure, it's an old language by anyone's standards, but what's so high about it? Did they only speak it on mountains or something? There's a mountain in Vulcan Love Slave, so probably the planet has at least one.

Alright, looks like these books are actually restricted. Quark may be able to keep Odo out of his business, but he's not exactly ready to try and bypass Vulcan security encryption, certainly not when he can just ask politely.

There are two different contacts for "scholars seeking access to restricted materials," would Quark like to contact a representative of the Vulcan Security Directorate or a representative of the Vulcan Academy for the Arts?