by Jeffrey Lang
“Bullock?”
“It’s a large terrestrial mammal,” O’Brien said mechanically, his smile slipping. “Domesticated. People used them on farms. For labor and transport.”
“You made animals work for you?” Nog asked. “Isn’t that considered abuse?”
“No. And I didn’t say we used bullocks. But the traces were in the barn.”
“A storage building used on farms.”
“Right.”
“All right, and I know what an eyebolt is.”
“Good thing, too, or I’d have to kick you off the station.”
“And I guessed what a head jamb is from the context, but I’ve never heard the word before. It sounds . . .” The Ferengi thought about it for a moment while checking their course. “It sounds like something you would rub on your lobes. Or have someone else rub on for you.
O’Brien winced. “I don’t want to hear about your personal life, Nog.”
“Medicinally.”
“Sure,” the chief agreed neutrally. “Can I continue with my story?”
“Of course, Chief. Please.” Nog wanted to add, “I’m riveted,” but O’Brien would know he was lying.
His fellow engineer continued his tale of a boyhood prank. Nog tuned out just a bit, just enough to recheck the course. The Amazon was not the first Yellowstone-class runabout Nog had flown, and he was well acquainted with their fussy navigational systems. As one of his shipmates aboard the Challenger had once commented, “East is east and west is west . . . unless you’re flying a Yellowstone.”
“So I rigged the cantilever so that when Cully—my older brother, remember—yanked open the door to the upstairs in that way he always did that rattled the whole house, he activated the audio playback and sent the dummy we’d dressed up in Grandma’s ratty old dress down the guide wires.” O’Brien began to guffaw at the memory. Nog had a sense he was supposed to join in, but wasn’t certain, so he held back. It didn’t help that he wasn’t sure what was supposed to be funny.
Nog asked, “And then what happened?”
“Well, then,” O’Brien continued, “after he finished thrashing around and gettin’ himself untangled, Cully started screamin’ like a banshee himself, which only seemed appropriate considering all the stories Bill had been feedin’ him for the past week . . .”
Nog knew that O’Brien was coming to the conclusion of the tale. The chief tended to lose the g at the end of his gerunds when he became excited. “Bill is your other brother . . .” Nog added.
O’Brien’s laughter stalled. “Well, yeah. O’ course. Who usually tormented me, but he was just as sick of Cully . . .” His face went slack and he dropped his hands. “Have you been listening?”
“Of course,” Nog said, very professionally staring at the sensor readouts. “This is the story of how you and one of your siblings made an alliance to chastise your other sibling because you both felt he was inconsiderably monopolizing resources . . .”
“Taking too much time in the bathroom, yeah.”
“Exactly. Monopolizing resources.”
“Cully was fourteen. We were ten and eleven and didn’t know . . .” O’Brien sighed in resignation. “Never mind. Forget it. I’m sorry I brought it up.”
“Don’t be sorry, Chief. I enjoy hearing stories of other people’s childhoods.”
“Other people’s childhoods?” O’Brien repeated. “That sounds ominous. Like you didn’t have one of your own. I seem to recall you and Jake running around the station like a couple of puppies back in the day.”
“I was already sixteen when Jake came to Deep Space 9,” Nog explained. “Hardly a puppy.”
The chief narrowed his eyes. “I guess that’s true. It’s just that you were so . . . you know.” He held his hand up so it was parallel to the deck and moved it up and down.
“Short?”
“Well, yes. Especially compared to Jake.”
“For a Ferengi, I’m above average.”
O’Brien appeared to consult a mental ledger—probably of every Ferengi he had ever met—and then nodded in agreement. “I guess you’re right.” He shrugged. “No offense meant.”
“None taken.”
“No brothers?”
“None that I know of,” Nog said, trying to sound jaunty. “Just my sister.”
“How old is Bena?”
“Five,” Nog replied. “Or, wait . . . maybe six?” It worried him that he couldn’t remember. Nog had always prided himself on his memory, but small details like remembering names and dates were beginning to elude him. He wasn’t that old yet. “Time flies,” O’Brien said absently, folding his arms over his chest, sliding down, and laying his head back against the chair. “Molly is eighteen. Eighteen! She’s going to head off for university soon.”
“Not the Academy?”
“Not unless there’s a need for painters aboard starships that I’m not aware of,” O’Brien said, his tone edged with mild annoyance.
“Painters? You mean, like bulkheads? We have ’bots that can—”
“No, not bulkheads. Canvases. Specifically, very large canvases. Very, very large canvases. Molly has decided she wants to be an artist.” He added, “This week.”
“Uh, um.” Nog fumbled for the correct words. “Okay.” Or possibly not . . . ?
“I don’t know. It might be. I haven’t decided. Neither has she. That’s the point: this is something new, the big canvas thing, and it’s just come up this month and now it’s the most important thing in her life.” He shook his head dismissively. “And I don’t even understand what she’s painting. It’s all very . . .”
“Abstract?” Nog knew enough about hew-mon art to know it came in a variety of styles, some representational and some decidedly not.
Wincing, O’Brien shook his head. “No, abstract would be fine. Just swell, in fact. If anything, it’s all a bit too graphic for my tastes. Lots of flowers.” He huffed. “Blooming flowers.”
Nog decided he didn’t want to know any more. “What does Keiko think?” he asked.
O’Brien slid his eyes to the side and looked back at Nog out of the corners. “You and Rom got along well,” he said, a statement with the overtone of a question.
“I guess so,” Nog said. “Sure. We had to get along. It was always the two of us against Uncle Quark.”
“So you don’t know how teenage girls get along with their mothers, do you?”
“No,” Nog admitted, feeling a bit foolish. He thought of his father’s moogie, Ishka, and what she might do. “Do they form alliances?”
O’Brien snorted derisively. “No,” he said. “Or, wait . . . yes, briefly. Usually after some amount of crying. And then the alliance falls apart, and the yelling and throwing of breakable items starts up again.”
“That does not sound like something Keiko would do.”
“Until she had a teenage daughter.”
“You and Yoshi should form a counteralliance.”
O’Brien rolled his eyes. “Unlikely. Yoshi is not in the frame of mind to form an alliance, counter or otherwise, with his father these days. He still hasn’t decided whether he’s ready to forgive me for moving back to the station. Or, as he would put it, ‘Uprooted his life and forced him to live in an aluminum can on the edge of a forsaken void.’ ”
Nog puzzled over the statement and then asked, “I can understand forsaken, but how does a void have an edge?”
“I asked about that too,” O’Brien replied. “My son has not yet deigned to explain.” He turned to stare out at the streaking stars. “Kids!”
Nog jiggled his head in a manner that would make it appear that he neither completely agreed nor disagreed with the chief’s exclamation. He had lived among hew-mons long enough to have a general sense of the boundaries of their familial relationships, but no intimate knowledge. He understood that the circ
umstances under which Jake Sisko—his closest friend—had lived had hardly been typical (even for a Starfleet brat), but no more or less than his. In brief, Nog had no frame of reference, a circumstance that provoked very familiar (if uncomfortable) sensations.
“I miss Julian,” O’Brien murmured.
The transition to the new topic was abrupt, but Nog did his best to follow along. “Have you talked to Doctor Bashir recently?”
“No. Not directly. He must be busy, what with the adoration and reverence.” O’Brien grinned, but the smile had very little wattage. “He must be hating that.”
“Hating it?” Nog asked. “I would think Doctor Bashir would be enjoying the adulation. Forgive me, but my impression of the doctor is—”
“Oh, he probably liked it for a bit. Don’t get me wrong: Julian has an ego as big as . . . well . . .” The chief raised one of his arms and swept it past the forward port. “. . . the forsaken void.” He gritted his teeth.
Grimace? Pained mirth? Something in between the two? Nog couldn’t be sure.
“But then, around day two, it would begin to rankle him. A burr under his skin. He’d be asking himself, ‘Do I really deserve this?’ ”
“Doesn’t he?”
“Of course he does,” O’Brien said, rallying to his friend’s defense. “He just wouldn’t believe it deep down.”
“Why not?” The helm signaled that they would reach their coordinates soon. The Amazon’s autopilot dropped them down to warp one.
O’Brien shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he thinks that everything comes too easy, so he hasn’t earned it.”
Nog thought about the doctor’s now well-known augmentations. If I could be genetically modified, what would I want? Greater intelligence? Bigger lobes? Sharper teeth? He dismissed the ideas as both petty and unnecessary. Nog was content with his physical and mental attributes. So, what did he really want? The thought came unbidden and all too easily: To not feel so alone. The idea surprised him. It was silly, wasn’t it? Nog knew he wasn’t alone. He had his crewmates and his colleagues. He had his work . . .
“Anyway,” O’Brien continued, “if Julian were here, this would be just about the time we’d log some holosuite time.”
“Alamo?”
“No, Siege of Bastogne, I think.”
“I don’t think I know that one,” Nog confessed. He knew about the Alamo, but only because he had installed the holoprogram in his uncle’s bar on the first Deep Space 9.
“Oh, it’s glorious,” O’Brien said, sitting up straighter in his seat. “ ‘Nuts!’ ”
“What?”
“I said, ‘Nuts.’ It’s a famous quote from the siege.”
Nog looked at O’Brien from the corners of his eyes, uncertain if he was being mocked. “If you say so.”
O’Brien settled back down into his chair. “Julian would get it.”
“Approaching destination coordinates,” the computer announced. “Scanning. No anomalies detected. Exit warp?”
Nog took the helm back from the computer and, with practiced ease, disengaged the warp engines and slipped into impulse, the stars shifting from streaks of light to bright pinpricks. He checked the scanner readout. “Nothing,” he said. “Except what you told me to expect.”
O’Brien rose and leaned forward to get a closer look at the only noteworthy object in nearby space as it rolled slowly beneath the runabout’s bow. “Not much to look at, is it?”
Nog hadn’t wanted to say, especially as their outing had not been his idea. “But this is where you wanted to be, isn’t it?”
O’Brien nodded.
“Why?” The Ferengi tried to put as much emphasis into the word as he could without sounding insulting.
“We needed to get away,” O’Brien offered.
“We did?”
“Well, I did. And Captain Ro thought you did too, so she asked me to bring you along.”
“Captain Ro thought I needed to get away?” Nog asked, his voice going an octave higher at the end of the question.
“She said you’ve had a rough few weeks,” O’Brien offered. “I had to allow as that might be true, so . . .” He lifted his hand and waved it generally in the direction of their destination. “. . . change of scenery. If only barely.”
The station—a Helios-class hub—rolled into view. Compared to the glory that was the new Deep Space 9 or, frankly, even the former Terok Nor, this waypost in space looked like an indifferent first-year engineering student had designed it on the morning the assignment was due.
“Looks like a mushroom,” O’Brien said, which is exactly what Nog had been thinking.
“I didn’t know that Starfleet used these anymore,” Nog said.
Seventy or eighty years ago, just as it was beginning its second great age of exploration, the Federation had constructed scores of Helios stations and dropped them off as pickets where the newly commissioned fleet could stop and refuel and resupply. The upper decks, or the mushroom’s cap, housed the bridge and officer quarters, while the thick stalk was comprised of anywhere from four to ten decks of quarters, labs, work space, and stowage. A bulb at the base of the stalk contained the station’s reactor and, just below, the hangar deck. As one of Nog’s professors at the Academy had explained, “Every expense was spared.” And then she had added mysteriously, “Spam in a can.” Nog had always remembered that comment.
“They don’t,” O’Brien said. “This is privately run.”
“By whom?”
The Amazon’s comm chirped. The station was hailing them. “This is the Federation runabout Amazon. I’m Lieutenant Commander Nog. Please identify.”
“No,” a male voice replied. “Or, wait, yes. This is the Robert Hooke. Who are you again? No, wait. Don’t answer. We don’t care. Just go away. We’re busy. We don’t want any. That’s all you need to know. Go.”
Nog muted the feed. “Friendly,” he said. “Do you want to reply? Or just turn around and go home?”
O’Brien made a sour face. “Not exactly what I was expecting.” He tapped the companel. “This is Chief Miles O’Brien of Deep Space 9. I filed a flight plan for these coordinates earlier today. Is there a problem?”
Whoever was manning the comm board either didn’t know or didn’t care to use the mute button. “They say they’re from Deep Space 9. What should I say?”
A second voice, deeper, but muffled, answered, “Ask them why they’re here. Politely.”
“All right,” the male sighed, and then cursed, perhaps realizing he hadn’t muted his pickup. “No problem, Amazon. We’re just not used to visitors. Sorry, but I don’t know anything about a flight plan. Is there something I can help you with? You understand this is a private station, right?”
“I’m aware of that,” O’Brien replied. “This isn’t Starfleet business. I’m just, that is, we’re just here to visit a friend.”
“We are?” Nog asked sotto voce.
“We are,” the chief replied.
“A friend?” Hooke asked. “Who?”
“Yeah,” Nog asked softly. “Who?”
“Benjamin Maxwell,” O’Brien said. “I believe he’s employed here.”
“Benjamin Maxwell?” Clearly, he no longer cared that he didn’t know how to use a mute button. “Who’s that?”
The second, deeper voice said, “Ben. He means Ben.”
Realization took its sweet time. “The janitor? Ben the janitor?”
“Yes,” the second voice drawled. “Ben the janitor.”
Chapter 2
Three Years Earlier
Starfleet Penal Colony
The giant strode across the island. With every step, its wide feet compressed the topmost branches of the olive trees, which sprung back again as the giant marched on.
Doctor Clark cupped his hands around the top half of his face to protect his eyes from t
he bright midmorning sun and laughed appreciatively as the behemoth strolled down the shoreline. Above the waist, the giant was nothing more than a bare armature, a sketch of a torso: just enough structure to hold the sensor array and the tiny antigrav engines. The legs were the magic, each one over forty meters high, and, though massive in appearance, constructed of superlight materials that didn’t have more than a couple hundred kilos of mass.
At the last minute, just before unleashing it, Maxwell had thought to clothe his creation in loose trousers, which flapped merrily in the steady breeze off the water. Next time, he thought, I’ll use colored cloth. Something really bright. Rainbow patterned. But, for the apparatus’s first real run, white cloth seemed appropriate.
Clark asked, “How do you keep it from crushing anything?”
Maxwell winced, unsure whether the doctor was merely woefully ignorant of any principles of modern engineering or was simply being a good therapist and giving his patient plenty of room to reply. In either case, he decided, the reply would be the same. “It’s pretty simple,” Maxwell said. “Microsensors are slaved to the antigravs, and the main processor makes sure the structure maintains enough buoyancy to not come down too hard.”
“The feet actually do make contact?”
“Yes,” Maxwell explained. “So, the treetops bow a little. There are footprints in the sand. Otherwise, it would look odd. You might not be able to spot exactly why, but some part of your brain would tell you it was all a trick. This way—”
“It looks like a giant pair of legs walking around the island.”
“Strolling around the island. I worked hard to make sure the gait was correct.” He shaded his own eyes with his hand. Stupid to have forgotten his sunglasses. “He’s taking it easy. Not in any hurry. He’s just . . . taking it all in.”
“And isn’t that a lesson for us all?”
Down on the beach road, Maxwell watched pedestrians and cyclists stop short as the legs came into view. The rolling landscape, even down by the muddy shoreline, meant it was difficult to spot the giant legs coming from more than a couple hundred meters away. He couldn’t see the people’s expressions (he should have sent out some probes), but their posture signaled their reactions: awe, confusion, wonder, amusement. No one appeared to be frightened, which was good. It meant Maxwell had correctly calibrated the timing of the legs’ pace: no one was alarmed because who could be alarmed about a man out for a stroll?
