“Does what happened really have to rob you of your faith?” Ro asked. “You’ve believed in the Prophets for virtually all your life, haven’t you? And those convictions have served you well.” The captain glanced over to the corner of the compartment, to where Cenn kept a small shrine.
The shrine was no longer there.
Ro then peered over at a set of shelves where Cenn had displayed handsome hardbound editions of the complete Bajoran canon. Even as a nonbeliever, Ro could easily appreciate the artistry and craftsmanship required in the creation of the beautiful illuminated manuscripts. Like the shrine, they too were gone. She looked back at Cenn, and he started answering her questions even before she asked them.
“It’s not a matter of conviction,” he said. “It’s about faith. And faith is something that you either have or you don’t. You can’t manufacture it. Either it’s there inside you, a piece of who you are, or it’s not. I had faith. Now I don’t. I can’t pretend to believe in something that I know to be a lie any more than you can.”
“But that means that you’re taking the Ohalavaru at their word,” Ro said. “Just because they interpreted their discovery on Endalla as a falsework used in creating the Celestial Temple doesn’t mean that they’re right. And even if they are, their conclusion that it proves the Prophets aren’t gods doesn’t necessarily follow.”
“It does, though,” Cenn said. He sounded sad, even disconsolate, but also accepting. “With respect, Captain, you weren’t there. You didn’t see what I saw . . . the vastness of it . . . the incredible complexity . . . the advancement it represented, not just in technology, but in conception. I’m not an engineer, so I can’t tell you about how the construct I saw could be used to anchor a wormhole, or how a moon could be built around it and made to look naturally occurring . . . but I could feel all of that. I got so angry at the Ohalavaru . . . slammed one of them into a wall . . . because I knew the claim they were going to make about the falsework even before they made it . . . because I could see it for myself.”
“Maybe you’re wrong,” Ro ventured.
“No,” Cenn said. “I’m not. I wish I were, but I’m not.” He spoke not with self-pity, but with resignation.
Ro stood up from her chair. She wanted to go over to Cenn, take him by the arms, and shake him. Instead, she extracted herself from the sitting area and crossed the room, over to where her first officer’s shrine used to stand. When she looked back over at Cenn, she said, “I have to tell you, Desca, that the Ohalavaru discovery has me rethinking my own beliefs.”
“What?” Cenn asked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that this entire situation has had the opposite effect on me than it’s had on you,” Ro said. “The report you submitted on what you saw on Endalla . . . it’s actually moved me toward recognizing the Prophets as gods.”
Cenn didn’t say anything for a few seconds, as though he had difficulty processing what Ro had just told him. Finally, he said, “I can’t say that doesn’t surprise me, because it does. But I’m also happy for you. I truly hope that, if you reach a place of belief, of faith, that it gives you great comfort.”
“Maybe you can help me,” Ro said, though she recognized her attempt to re-engage Cenn with the Bajoran religion could not have been more transparent.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I could do that,” Cenn said. “Even if I was staying.”
“What?”
“I didn’t intend to tell you like this, but I’ve tendered my resignation from the Bajoran Militia,” Cenn said. “I was going to visit your office first thing in the morning to tell you.”
Ro paced quickly back over to the sitting area and stared down at her first officer from behind the chair she’d been using. “Desca, you can’t just run away from this.” She wanted to stop him from doing something rash, just as she had done with her chief of security a week earlier, when Blackmer had attempted to resign. But Colonel Cenn did not serve in Starfleet, and so Ro did not have the same authority. “You’ve been in the Militia since the end of the Occupation. That’s seventeen years. You’ve built a life for yourself.”
“But that life no longer suits me.” Cenn sounded certain. “I’ll just have to build another one.”
“Doing what?” Ro asked. “You’ve loved your time in the Militia.”
“I don’t know,” Cenn said. “I only know that whatever I choose to do, it will be somewhere beyond the Bajoran system.”
“Oh, Desca,” Ro said. She circled the chair and sat back down again. “Please don’t be rash.” She leaned forward, her manner urgent. “You should allow some time to pass before changing your life so dramatically.”
“My life has already been changed dramatically, and there was nothing I could do to stop it,” Cenn said. “Do you know when word of the Ohalavaru discovery will be made public?”
“I actually expected the kai might make the announcement today,” Ro said. Pralon Onala had departed the starbase for Bajor the previous night, after attending evening services. “I’m sure it will come sometime in the next few days.”
“I thought it might,” Cenn said. “My preference is to be far away from here when it is announced. The reaction is going to be frenzied and loud.”
Ro agreed. “I remember what happened when the Ohalu texts were released to the public.”
“That’s why, ten minutes ago, I booked passage on an Alonis freighter leaving at midday tomorrow.”
Ro shook her head. “No, Desca,” she said. “You can’t go so quickly. You might be able to get away from the furor that’s going to erupt, but you can’t just run away from what you think and feel.”
“I do want to thank you for everything,” Cenn told her. “For your leadership and your trust in me, and for your friendship.
“Desca, please,” Ro said. “I’m convinced that—”
The electronic chirp of the starbase’s comm system sounded. “Hub to Captain Ro.”
“This is Ro. Go ahead, Vel.” Lieutenant Aleco worked as duty officer on beta shift that evening.
“Captain, we’ve received a message from a Federation research facility,” Aleco said. “Priority one.”
Ro and Cenn looked at each other. “I’m on my way,” she said. “Ro out.” She stood up and told her first officer, “I urge you to reconsider before leaving Deep Space Nine.”
Cenn rose as well. “I’m sorry, Captain.”
“So am I, Desca,” Ro said. “So am I.” Then she strode purposefully toward the door, on her way to the Hub.
* * *
For once, his uncle hadn’t made him beg to use a holosuite. It might have helped that Nog had yet to tell anybody that he’d fixed Vic’s program, meaning that Quark believed it still required repair. It was more than just that, Nog thought. It almost worried him, since his uncle had seemed distracted and . . . well, forlorn. Then again, the barkeep could certainly be moody, with the typical cause being an extra slip of latinum in cost here or one fewer strip of latinum in payment there. Nog didn’t feel that he really needed to worry about Quark. Besides, the engineer had his own problems.
Nog entered the holosuite, anxious about what he would find. A major reason he hadn’t mentioned that he’d fixed Vic’s program was because it wasn’t entirely clear to him that he actually had. To be sure, it had looked vastly different when it had activated in the holosuite the night before. In the brief time he’d seen Vic, Nog thought that he sounded, looked, and acted like his old self—despite his run-down surroundings, shoddy clothing, and rushed manner—but it could be that the matrix had decayed during the two years it had been running in the simulation tester.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Nog said, and his voice produced a slight echo in the unadorned space. He set down the hologram simulation tester, which he’d brought with him as cover; he no longer needed it, since he had stored Vic’s matrix in the starbase’s memory banks. “Computer, run program Bashir Sixty-two.”
In the fraction of a second it took for the
holosuite to come to life, Nog worried that his success in finally loading Vic’s matrix would prove temporary. He needn’t have. Just as he had the previous night, he found himself in a dingy corridor, fronted by a number of closed doors. Nog quickly moved to the one marked with the number 23, where he had found Vic. He rapped lightly on the door, and when he received no response, he tried to turn the knob, without success.
Feeling as though he had loaded one of Doctor Bashir’s old-time spy programs, Nog looked both ways down the empty hall. Satisfied that he was alone, he moved close to the door and whispered his friend’s name. He still heard no reply, and when he listened carefully, his sensitive ears told him that Vic’s room was empty.
Disappointed, but committed to seeing his friend again, Nog waited. Twenty minutes passed quietly, and he considered leaving the seedy hotel to look for Vic, but he didn’t want to risk missing him. After another thirty minutes, Nog finally heard footfalls on the stairs. He waited expectantly, but as the steps shuffled upward, he knew that they did not belong to Vic.
At the end of the hallway, a shadowy human shape appeared, barely visible in the dim lighting. Stooped over, his grubby clothes hanging about him in tatters, the man staggered forward. He carried a brown paper bag in one hand, and as he lifted it to his mouth, he finally took notice of Nog.
“Whaddaya want?” he said, his words coming out in a croak. “I ain got nuthin.” He edged to the opposite side of the hallway from Nog, lost his balance, and fell shoulder-first against the wall. Nog automatically took a step forward to help, but the man snarled at him. “Nah, I toll ya, I ain got nuthin!”
“All right, all right,” Nog said, backing away, holding his hands up to show that he meant no harm. “I don’t want anything.”
The man pushed away from the wall and lurched forward. The scent of alcohol and unwashed flesh preceded him. As he got closer, Nog backed away, wanting to avoid appearing as any kind of threat. When the man reached the door marked 22—or almost marked 22—he fumbled in the pocket of the loose jacket that hung from his shoulders like a tarp. Two rumpled tissues fell out and onto the floor. Eventually, he extracted a key, and after several abortive tries, he managed to slide it into the lock. He opened the door and nearly toppled into the room beyond, but then found his way back to slam it closed.
Frustrated, Nog walked to the end of the hallway and went down the stairway. He came to a landing halfway down, then turned a corner and descended the rest of the way. A checkered black-and-white floor filled a squarish, poorly lighted lobby. A short hallway connected to another that appeared to run beneath the one on the level above. From behind a metal grate, in what basically looked like a cage, a gruff, unshaved human peered out at him.
“Excuse me,” Nog said to the man. “I’m looking for—” He stopped, unsure Vic would want him to use his name—or if Vic himself had used his own name in that place. “I’m looking for the man in room twenty-three.”
“Yeah?” the man said. “Whaddaya want me to do about it?”
“I was just wondering if you’ve seen him?”
“I don’t see nuthin.”
Nog shook his head. He liked Vic, and he enjoyed visiting him at his casino and in his apartment, but he didn’t understand the Earth of that era. He eyed the door to the street, which stood ajar, and he thought again about going out to look for Vic. Maybe if he—
The intercom trilled. “Commander Nog,” came the voice of Ensign Zhang Suyin, who crewed the communications console in the Hub during gamma shift. “Please report to Captain Ro in the conference room in thirty minutes, at twenty-two-hundred.”
The time told Nog that gamma shift had started while he’d been in the holosuite. He wondered why the captain needed to see him—and probably other members of the command crew, since she wanted to meet in the conference room. At least he would have time to go to his quarters and change into his uniform beforehand.
Because he currently wore civilian clothes, he did not have a combadge with him. “Computer, end program,” he said, and the run-down hotel lobby disappeared, replaced by the cool, blank bulkheads of the holosuite. Nog walked to the door and tapped at the companel there. “Nog to the Hub,” he said. “Message received. I’ll be there.”
Nog picked up the simulation tester. On his way out of the holosuite, he vowed to come back later that night if possible, and if not, then to return the next night. He wanted to find Vic and make sure he was all right. At that moment, he had a bad feeling about whatever had happened to his friend.
* * *
Quark paced back and forth in his office, working on a padd to calculate his expected balance. He factored the latest interest fluctuations coming out of the Ferengi Central Reserve against the micro-compounding policies of the Bank of Luria. He checked the current time and—
And I should be having dinner with Laren right now, Quark thought. He hadn’t seen much of her in recent days, and nothing at all of her in private. It hasn’t been just the last few days, he reminded himself. It’s been ever since the new starbase opened for business.
Quark didn’t resent Laren’s position or responsibilities. He knew that she took great satisfaction in her command, probably not least of all because it had come as such an unexpected occurrence in her professional life. She’d encountered trouble in her Starfleet career on more than one occasion, and she’d made her share of enemies—including the present commander in chief of Starfleet Command, Admiral Akaar. Fortunately, Laren had also drawn other officers staunchly to her side, such as Kira Nerys and Elias Vaughn, and that, coupled with an exemplary service record since arriving at the original Deep Space 9 nearly a decade prior, had made it possible for her to move up the ranks.
I can remember when we talked about leaving the old station together, Quark thought. With Bajor joining the Federation and off-world Militia operations being absorbed into Starfleet, Laren had believed her days numbered. At the time, before he had hit on the idea of incorporating the Ferengi Embassy into his establishment, Quark had also viewed UFP encroachment as the likely end to his business prospects on DS9. Maybe we should have left together.
“Stop it,” Quark told himself. Staying in the star system had actually brought him some of the business success he had sought for so long. His place on Bajor, which he’d established after the destruction of the original station, had been wildly popular when DS9’s operations had temporarily moved planetside, and, under the management of Treir, it continued to turn a healthy profit. His new bar, on the new starbase, had hit a few lulls here and there, but for the most part, it had earned him more latinum than even he had forecast.
Too bad I can’t seem to hold on to it.
Quark stopped pacing, looked at the padd in his hand, and reprimanded himself for his drifting attention. Laren—and even thoughts of Laren—had the capacity to divert him from business. He might have been able to deal with that, had she been his only distraction, but other subjects consumed his time, his concentration, and worst of all, his profits.
In the bulkhead in front of Quark, rows of muted but active monitors brought news from comnets all over the quadrant, raw material for his powerful data-mining programs. He liked to think that his system rivaled that of Yridian information merchants. The majority of the data displayed there related directly to his business, either to inventory and other items for one of his two bars, or to deals that he hoped to negotiate or had already set in motion. Several other of the displays kept him apprised of local matters—streaming in from Cardassia, Bajor, and Deep Space 9 itself. At that moment, he noticed the new Federation president, Kellessar zh’Tarash, speaking on one monitor, and Kai Pralon Onala on another.
Two of the screens, though, showed images from places in which he had no business interests, either real or prospective: the cloud city of Stratos on the planet Ardana, and the crystal city of Geopolis on Janus VI. For a while, Quark had told himself that he’d pursued the matter as diligently as he had, for as long as he had, because he believed it would res
tore a long-term asset to his balance sheet. But the hunt had taken up so much of his time, concentration, and profits that he could no longer lie to himself about it.
Quark looked away from the monitors and checked the time. He saw that several minutes had gone by since he’d completed his calculations, and so he had to start all over again. When he once again reached an expected value for the balance on his account at the Bank of Luria, he quickly moved to the freestanding companel console he used as his desk. He initiated a secure data-link to the Lurian Commerce Net, worked through the copious, complex, and critical protections, then at last accessed his account. He quickly compared the tally listed there with his own calculation. As he always did, Quark breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the figures matched, down to the last strip, slip, and scintilla of latinum.
After that, he took a deep breath. He separated out a fraction of his holdings and marked it for transfer, specifying the various routing and security data. Before he could change his mind, Quark executed the transaction.
Regardless of the reason necessitating the withdrawal of funds from any of his accounts, doing so always caused him anxiety. It also made his lobes grow cold. Allowing the diminution of his profits for any reason ran counter to every Ferengi sensibility. The very first Rule of Acquisition said: Once you have their money, you never give it back. Quark had always interpreted that as: Once you have any money, you never give it to anybody.
He quickly operated his companel to record a message. “Viray, I’ve transferred the funds you requested,” he said. “You now have enough to hire a ship to take you from Ardana to Janus Six. I’ve studied the report you sent from Stratos and . . .” Quark stopped and paused the recording, trying to formulate exactly how to phrase his apprehensions to Mayereen Viray, the Petarian private investigator he’d hired to find Morn. The loquacious Lurian had walked out of Quark’s establishment on Bajor a year and a half earlier, and he’d never returned—although he had shortly thereafter sent a courier to settle his bar tab in full. Two other detectives had failed to find Morn, but Viray had tracked him to Stratos, and from there to Geopolis.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Ascendance Page 21
