Ro stepped up to the doorway and peered inside. Apparently studying one of the early architectural renderings of the new space station, which the captain had printed out and hung on her wall, her latest crew transfer stood with his back to her. Even by the back of his head, though, she recognized him. “Lieutenant Commander,” she said, emphasizing his promotion in rank since last she’d seen him.
Nog turned to face her. “Captain Ro,” he said. He stuck out his hand, and she took it in her own, but then they both added their free hands. “How soon before it’s Admiral Ro?”
“Not until the Fire Caves freeze over,” she said with a snicker. “I’ll actually be lucky if I can manage to hold on to the rank of captain for very long.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Nog said, his expression turning serious. “Word is that you saved more than fifty-five hundred lives in an almost impossible situation.”
“Thanks for saying so, Nog,” Ro told him, “but, you know . . .” She left unfinished her thought about all those who’d perished aboard DS9.
“Yeah, I know,” Nog said quietly.
Seeking to move the subject away from Deep Space 9, Ro stepped inside and closed the door behind her. She pointed to a chair in the corner—she’d had the replicator removed and placed just outside—and both she and Nog sat down. “I have to tell you how pleased I am that you accepted my request to transfer here.”
“Well, I appreciate your making it a request and not an order,” Nog said.
“I was surprised to learn that you went back to security,” Ro said. “I wasn’t sure you still wanted to be an engineer, but I thought if you did, then this might be a good opportunity for you to get back into it.”
“Actually, I only accepted a position in security to get aboard the Challenger,” Nog said. “I was hoping that the chief engineer position would become available.”
Ro didn’t mention that Nog had already achieved the same position on the station. “I guess you’d had enough of Deep Space Nine,” she said, remembering when Nog had come to her to request a transfer. She started to wonder if perhaps Nog had no longer wanted to work under her command. But then why would he agree to come back?
Nog shrugged. “At the time I decided to leave, it was an easy choice,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong; I loved my time there. I mean, I grew up there.”
“And maybe that was part of it?” Ro asked. “You weren’t really clear about why you wanted to leave.”
“Maybe that had something to do with it,” Nog said. “I’d been there as a boy, and so as a man, I suppose I wanted to get out and see more of the galaxy.” He paused and seemed to consider this. “I think I also wanted to be more than an engineer . . . not something else, like in security, but something . . . I don’t know . . . more.”
“You mean like command?” Ro asked.
“You’re joking, right?”
“Not at all,” Ro said. “I mean, I’m not offering you my job.”
Nog smiled. His skewed, pointed teeth reminded Ro of Quark. “Why would I want your job?” he said. “Commanding a space station without a space station.”
“There are plenty of land-based starbases throughout the Federation,” Ro said.
“Yeah, but none that have no orbital facilities and are housed in a barn,” Nog joked.
Ro laughed. “It does kind of look like that, doesn’t it?” she said. “Still, I’m convinced we can be effective here, at least in the short term.”
“I have no doubt of it,” Nog said. “Which I guess is the real reason I’m here. I’m happy to face the small challenges that this place will offer, but I understand that there are some leadership positions available for the engineers working on the new station.”
“When you accepted the transfer,” Ro told him, “I also assigned you to work with the Corps of Engineers. You and Chief O’Brien will be part of the lead design team.”
“That’s fantastic,” Nog said. “Thank you, Captain.”
“You’ve earned it,” Ro said. “You’re a good engineer, and you’ve shown . . . well, more. I know you can do this.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” Nog said. He lapsed into silence for a moment, then said, “You know, I think the main reason I transferred away from here was the station.”
Ro’s brow creased in confusion. “You mean the actual station?” she said. “Deep Space Nine itself?”
“I mean Terok Nor,” Nog said. “The Cardassian space station. I’m a Starfleet engineer. I wanted to work on Federation technology.”
“Well, you’ll definitely get the chance now,” Ro said. “We’re supposed to be getting a state-of-the-art facility.”
“I’ll make sure we do,” Nog said. “It’ll be great to work with Chief O’Brien again too.”
“He wasn’t here for more than two days before he started suggesting that he could use a few more engineers,” Ro said. “Particularly experienced engineers. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to find out you’ve transferred.”
“You mean he doesn’t know?”
“I just told him that I picked up another engineer,” Ro said.
“Thank you, Captain.”
“You already said that.”
“I know, but . . . we don’t even have a station yet and I already feel like I’m home,” Nog said. “I enjoyed my experience on the Challenger, and I liked the people I served with, but it never really felt like it did here. I think I like the idea of roaming around the galaxy, but there’s something about staying in one place for the long term. You can always travel, but it’s good to have a place to come back to . . . someplace . . . I don’t know . . . I guess, permanent.”
A shadow darkened Ro’s thoughts for a moment as she considered the impermanence of DS9, but she forced her way past it. “You’re going to be helping design and build a completely new space station,” she said, “so I’m sure that you can include a dedicated room for yourself.”
“And an extra holosuite or two for Uncle Quark,” Nog said.
“Don’t even suggest that to him,” Ro said. “It’ll be all he ever talks about until I promise to try and get that for him.”
“I won’t need to tell him,” Nog said. “He’ll think of it on his own.”
Ro nodded, thinking that Quark would probably mention it any day. She started to ask if Nog had spoken with his uncle lately when somebody knocked on the door. “Come in,” Ro called.
The door opened and Chief O’Brien poked his head inside. “Pardon me, Captain, but I thought you might—” He stopped when he spied Nog sitting in the corner. “Hey, Nog!” Turning back to Ro, he asked, “Is this the new engineer who’s transferring in?”
“He is,” Ro said. “Assistant chief engineer here, and co-foreman on the new station, along with you and the SCE representative.”
“That’s fantastic,” O’Brien said, and the echo of Nog’s own words underscored for Ro that she’d made the right choice. But then the chief voiced the major concern that she’d had when requesting Nog’s reassignment. “Of course, you were a chief engineer yourself. I hope that’s not going to be a problem.”
“That’s fine,” Nog said, waving a hand before him. “I just want to get back to engineering, and having the chance to help design and build a new space station . . . it’s a great opportunity.”
“Oh, I know,” O’Brien agreed.
“Besides, when I was your assistant before,” Nog said, “I always did all the hard work anyway.”
“If by ‘hard work,’ you mean hunkering down in an access conduit and eating tube grubs, I agree,” O’Brien said.
“That happened one time,” Nog protested. “And I hadn’t had any breakfast.”
O’Brien looked over at Ro, pointed a thumb in Nog’s direction, and said, “Next thing you know, he’ll be in the tool locker chowing down on a slug steak.”
“Better than that . . . what was it . . . potato casserole you had that time,” Nog said.
“Hey, that casserole was my mother’s ve
ry own recipe,” O’Brien said.
“You used a recipe?” Nog said. “I just assumed it was trial and error . . . mostly error.”
“Listen—”
“Boys, boys,” Ro said, putting an end to the playful interaction. “You two can do this when you’re in a Jefferies tube somewhere.” She enjoyed seeing the byplay between the two friends, but she still had a lot of work to do before the afternoon. “Was there something you wanted to see me about, Chief?”
“Yes, sir,” O’Brien said. “I thought you might want to see what’s going on.” He pointed outside her office.
Ro rose and followed O’Brien out of her office, as did Nog. When they all stood in the main section of the building, the chief turned and gestured up at the viewscreen. Where before there had been empty space, a half dozen ships now floated. They each had a long, flat platform, with a superstructure perched at one end. Four of the six had been maneuvered together in pairs and connected with access tubes, and runabouts currently worked to bring the remaining two tenders into position. As they watched, another runabout swept in and landed on one of the platforms, filling about a quarter of its surface area.
“Excellent,” Ro said. She turned to O’Brien. “Chief, would you show our new engineer around? We’ve only got about three hours until we open for business.”
“‘Open for business’?” Nog said. “Captain, I think you’ve been spending too much time around my uncle.”
“Maybe so,” Ro said with a smile. “Chief, find Desca and make sure that we’re still on schedule. I need to contact Captain Euler on the Canterbury to talk with him about getting some of her crew onto the tenders.”
“Yes, sir,” O’Brien said, and he and Nog started toward the workspaces.
Ro turned back to her office so that she could contact the Canterbury, but before she reentered her office, she glanced back up at the viewscreen. She watched as a pair of runabouts—Brahmaputra and . . . Is that the Rubicon?—guided one of the free tenders toward the other. Then she headed back into her office, energized about the prospect of really getting back to work.
21
“It is beautiful up here,” Kasidy said.
Kira sat with her friend beneath a broad umbrella on one of the many terraces at the Vanadwan Monastery. The afternoon had turned misty, and a light fog had begun to drift across the lower elevations. From their lofty vantage, it looked almost as though they had taken a trip to the legendary cloud city of Stratos.
On the glass-topped table between the two women spread the remains of the lunch they’d shared. Amid the mostly empty plates, Kasidy had her hand wrapped around a mug of deka tea, while Kira sipped at a raktajino. A piece of half-eaten tuwaly pie sat in front of Kasidy.
Kira followed her friend’s gaze out over the encroaching haze. “This place always seems to inspire tranquillity,” Kira said. “That, and a lot of daydreaming.”
“We’re at a monastery,” Kasidy said. “Aren’t you supposed to call it ‘meditation’?”
“Oh, right,” Kira said, smiling. She felt a bit of a chill in the air, and thought she’d been right to don her traditional vedek’s robe, with its heavier, russet-colored material. She looked over to check on Kasidy, but she also seemed comfortable, wearing a dark blue jacket over her gold blouse. Kira hadn’t seen Kasidy since they’d been rescued by the Enterprise crew, and it felt good to just relax and talk. “I’m really glad to hear that Rebecca’s doing so well in school.”
“She loves it,” Kasidy said. “And at least so far, she’s a much better student than her mother ever was.”
“Is she still insisting that she’s going to be a ‘space captain’?” Kira asked.
“Oh, absolutely,” Kasidy said. “She loves all those spaceship models that Ben and I got for her, but at this point, I think the thing she’s most enamored of is being able to order people around.” Kasidy leaned forward across the table, as if about to reveal something in confidence. “Rebecca had a few friends over at the house the other day, and I couldn’t help doing a little eavesdropping. They were playing ‘spaceship,’ and Rebecca was Captain Sisko, while the others were all just crewwomen. When she gave them orders, there was no name, it was just ‘Crewwoman, do this’ and ‘Crewwoman, do that.’”
“Thank goodness she hasn’t found out about admirals yet,” Kira said. Kasidy opened her eyes wide in mock horror, and then laughed. Kira took a swallow of her raktajino, then asked, “So how about you, Kasidy? You haven’t said much about yourself. How are you doing these days?”
“I’m all right,” Kasidy said, in a manner that sounded far from convincing. “Life’s certainly been . . . interesting.”
“Is that good?” Kira wanted to know.
“I don’t know,” Kasidy said. “It may be ‘interesting’ as in the old human curse, ‘May you live in interesting times.’”
Kira tried to process that, because at first, the statement didn’t seem like an expression of ill will. “You mean . . . ‘interesting’ like the Occupation was ‘interesting’?”
Kasidy nodded. “Like the destruction of Deep Space Nine was ‘interesting.’”
The station, Kira thought. “How are you handling all of that? It was all pretty traumatic.” Kira knew, because her life had for so long been defined by such events.
“It was difficult,” Kasidy agreed. “I’m all right, I guess. I mean, I’m not waking up screaming in the middle of the night or anything. I’ve seen a counselor a few times . . . mostly dealing with my grief about losing my friends on the Xhosa. But overall, I’m doing well. I have Rebecca to keep me grounded and focus my attention.”
“She does do that,” Kira said.
Kasidy drank some of her tea, then asked, “What about you, Nerys? How have you handled what happened to us?”
Mindful that Kasidy, given her history with Benjamin, didn’t much like hearing about the Prophets, Kira said, “I just feel grateful that we survived.”
“You don’t feel that maybe the Prophets had something to do with that?” Kasidy asked, surprising Kira.
“I didn’t say that,” she told Kasidy. “I think the Prophets have to do with a great many things.” Kira paused, and then in an attempt to provide a little lightness, she said, “I mean . . . look at me.” She ran a hand down the front of her vedek’s robe.
Kasidy smiled, but only thinly. “Right,” she said, “but . . . we ended up in the wormhole.”
Kira held up her open hands, palms skyward. “Sometimes the intervention of the Prophets is more obvious than at other times.”
“I guess so,” Kasidy said, a response that also surprised Kira. “So do you remember anything while we were in there?”
“No,” Kira said. “The last thing I recall is being in the docking ring with you when the emergency bulkheads closed.” She recalled telling Benjamin the same thing not that long ago. “The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the sickbay aboard the Enterprise.”
Kasidy nodded, but her eyes looked faraway. Kira gave her a moment. When she didn’t continue, Kira asked, “Why? Do you remember being in the—” Naturally inclined to say Celestial Temple, she didn’t, for Kasidy’s sake. “—wormhole?”
“Me?” Kasidy asked, almost as though shocked out of a trance. “I was just asking about you because . . . you know, because of your beliefs and all.”
“Oh, okay,” Kira said, though she noted that Kasidy hadn’t actually answered her question. “So how are things with Benjamin?”
“He’s on the Defiant at the moment, waiting for the Robinson to be repaired,” Kasidy said. “He plans on spending some time with Rebecca here on Bajor next week.”
“Good,” Kira said. “That’s good.” She knew that Kasidy thought it very important that Rebecca grow up knowing her father and having his influence in her life, even if he couldn’t stay with them. Kira believed the same thing, and so it pleased her that Benjamin made sure he spent time with his daughter.
With a slight lull in the conversation, Kira once
again drank from her raktajino. She finished it and set her cup down on the table. The mist had stopped, she saw, leaving everything covered with just a thin layer of moisture.
Suddenly Kasidy looked over at her with a very serious expression. Kira suspected what she would say. “I signed the petition to dissolve our marriage.”
“I didn’t want to say anything,” Kira told her, “but Benjamin mentioned it to me. He was here just before he headed up to the Defiant.”
“Right, I remember,” Kasidy said. “How is Elias?”
“As of this morning, his body was still breathing,” Kira said. She hesitated to use the word alive. “He may last a few more days, maybe even a week, but it’ll be soon now.”
“Ben thought a lot of him,” Kasidy said.
“Quite a few people did,” Kira said. “But I’m glad his daughter’s finally able to let go. For his sake, but mostly for hers.”
Again, Kasidy fell silent, obviously with her own thoughts, perhaps about Vaughn. Kira recalled the first time she’d met him. He’d come aboard from Enterprise just after a renegade Jem’Hadar force had attacked the station. Strong, intelligent, and confident, Vaughn later ended up helping save Deep Space 9 and its crew from those same Jem’Hadar, and then asked if he could stay on as her executive officer. For all his self-assuredness, though, he also possessed a vulnerability that—
“He hasn’t filed the petition,” Kasidy said. “I checked the courthouse in Adarak on my way here.”
Kira didn’t know what to say. “I know Benjamin’s been busy aboard the Defiant . . .” A statement without much value, she chided herself. As she thought about it, though, she didn’t understand why Benjamin would delay in making official something he’d been seeking for quite some time.
“I don’t even know why I checked, or why I’m thinking about it,” Kasidy said, but plainly it had been on her mind. “Ben’s been very clear about why he can’t be with me.”
Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Raise the Dawn (Star Trek, the Next Generation) Page 30
