“I know,” Kira said. “I’m sorry.”
Kasidy peered over at Kira. She looked sad, but Kira saw no tears in her eyes. “I know you are,” Kasidy said. “But you agree with him, don’t you?”
“It’s not my place to agree or disagree,” Kira said. She did not want to discuss the prophecy upon which Benjamin acted. Kira felt bad enough that, at the time he’d decided against going through with his marriage, she’d told him that he was doing the right thing.
“No, it might not be your place,” Kasidy said, “but that doesn’t mean you don’t have an opinion.”
“My opinion really doesn’t matter,” Kira insisted. “I just wish that the situation were different.”
“So do I,” Kasidy said. “In fact, I’m thinking of making things different myself.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Kira said. But I don’t like the sound of it.
“I mean that I’m thinking of leaving Bajor.”
“Oh,” Kira said. She immediately reacted negatively. She wanted to tell her friend that she couldn’t run away from her problems, that she shouldn’t uproot her daughter from her home, that she had friends on Bajor who loved her . . . but Kira didn’t. Because how could she presume to know what would be best for Kasidy and Rebecca?
“This place . . . Bajor . . . and Kendra . . . especially Adarak . . . this place has been mostly good for Rebecca and me,” Kasidy said. “And for Ben, when he was here, and when he comes around now. And the people have been too . . . except . . .”
“I know,” Kira said, perceiving that Kasidy didn’t want to talk about Rebecca’s abduction, and that she’d come to consider it an aberration. “You built a home for yourselves here. Literally, yes, but I mean figuratively too.”
“We did,” Kasidy said. “But with Ben gone, it’s not the same. You’re here, Nerys, and there’s Jake and Rena, and Jasmine, and Rozahn Kit and my other friends, but . . . the last couple of years here without Ben . . .” She paused, obviously searching for the right words to express herself. “It was different when Jake and I were building the house, and afterward, when I moved in. Back then, I was waiting for Ben to come back. Now I’m not waiting for anything.”
Kasidy quieted, and Kira didn’t want to say anything that would interrupt her thoughts. After a moment, Kasidy went on. “And even with the Prophets and the prophecies and the Emissary and the Avatar, even with all of that, the Bajoran people have been respectful and very kind. But without Ben, it’s beginning to be too much . . . too much, and at the same time, not enough. With the Xhosa and some of my crew gone, with Jake and Rena headed for Earth, and Ben off on the Robinson or the Defiant or some other starship . . . you know I love you, Nerys, but I really don’t have all that much keeping me here anymore.”
“I love you too,” Kira said. “Does Rebecca know you’re thinking about this?”
“No, not yet,” Kasidy said. “She loves it here, and that’s important, of course, but Bajor’s all she’s ever known. I’m sure she can be happy elsewhere too. And it might be better to relocate now while she’s still so young.”
“I’ll miss you,” Kira said.
“I’ll miss you too,” Kasidy said. “But you know, even if Ben suddenly decided to come back, and even if I could find a way to trust him again, I think I still might be considering this move.” She looked earnestly at Kira. “Do you think I’m being selfish?”
“I think you’re trying to figure out what’s best for you and your family,” Kira said. “Whatever you decide to do, I’ll support you.”
“Thank you, Nerys,” Kasidy said. “That means a lot.”
Kira smiled. “Any ideas where you might go?”
“A few,” Kasidy said. “Earth, maybe. My brother’s on Cestus Three. Oh, and I’ve been hearing some very good things about the colony on Allamegras.”
“Is that the planet with the ‘rainbow moon’ effect?” Kira asked.
“Yes, that’s the one.” Kasidy sounded genuinely excited about it.
“I bet that must be quite a sight,” Kira said. When Kasidy didn’t respond, Kira asked, “Are you close to making a decision?”
“I don’t know,” Kasidy said. “Obviously, there’s no real rush, but if we’re going to do it, I’d rather do it and get on with our lives.”
“That makes sense,” Kira said.
“So, yeah, I guess I am close to—”
A series of tones warbled out an insistent call. Kasidy reached down to the pocket of her jacket and withdrew a timepiece. “Oh, it’s already time for me to go and get Rebecca from school. She’s learning about volcanism, so I told her we could visit Volcano Park in the Southern Islands.”
“She’ll love that,” Kira said. “It looks like the surface of an alien world down there.”
“Well, if she could take a spaceship to get there, it would be perfect,” Kasidy said. “But since I want to get home in time for dinner, she’s going to have to settle for the transporter.”
Kasidy rose and started to collect up her dishes, but Kira told her not to bother, that she would take care of it. “Thanks,” Kasidy said. “And thanks for listening.”
“Anytime,” Kira said. She stood up and hugged her friend.
Kasidy started up a sloping walkway that led to the transporter plaza, and Kira watched her go. Once Kasidy had passed out of sight around a curve, Kira sat back down. She picked up her raktajino, but saw that she’d already finished it, so she set the cup back down.
Over the course of their time together, Kasidy had talked about many things—things important to her and to her family—but Kira found herself thinking most about something that she hadn’t said. When asked if she remembered being inside the wormhole after Deep Space 9 had been destroyed, she evaded answering—which of course managed to answer the question without the need for words. Since Kasidy had suddenly begun to consider leaving Bajor, Kira wondered if something had happened inside the Celestial Temple, something that had perhaps scared her enough to chase her from the system.
I hope not, Kira thought. She wished she could find out just what Kasidy had experienced without having to press Kasidy herself about it. Maybe then Kira would know how best to help her friend.
As she sat thinking, it began to rain.
Esperanza Piñiero, chief of staff for President Bacco, stood in a VIP passenger lounge on Spacedock and peered out through a port at Earth. Below her—she didn’t know how many kilometers away—lay the immense sweep of Europe. She saw the Americas in darkness, spied the day-night terminator tracing across western Africa, and knew that morning had come to Paris and the Palais de la Concorde not long before.
Of course, she thought. I’m here feeling like it’s after midnight—long after midnight.
As though to underscore her thoughts, Piñiero yawned widely. Alone in the lounge—her Federation Security escort, Magdalena Ferson, waited just outside—she didn’t even bother to cover her mouth. She only wanted to get back to her apartment and crawl into bed.
It had been an exhausting three days. Months ago, she had scheduled the president on a whirlwind “tour of the solar system,” something of a glad-handing trip in preparation for her reelection campaign the following year. Of course, I can’t even get her to tell me if she’s going to run for office again. President Bacco had done such a fine job as the Federation’s chief executive that Piñiero desperately hoped—for the sake of two quadrants, scores of worlds, and trillions of sentient beings—that she would place her name on the ballot.
Piñiero hoped that most of the time, anyway. But after the past three days, she fantasized about arriving back in Paris to discover that the president had tendered her resignation and returned to her home on Cestus III. After a good night’s sleep—Or two!—Piñiero would follow right behind her into retirement.
The trip would not have taken the president all that far from Earth. With the Federation still on high alert after the events at Deep Space 9 and the Bajoran wormhole, though, President Bacco had felt
that she shouldn’t leave Paris—and certainly not for something as scurrilous as a political tour. Starfleet had reinforced its presence along its borders near the Typhon Pact worlds, as had the Klingons, Cardassians, and Ferengi; not unexpectedly, the Breen, Tholians, and Tzenkethi had followed suit. The Federation had also rebuffed a clandestine appeal from the Romulans for a one-on-one summit of some kind. The president wanted peace above all, but believed that she should be in the capital, with her cabinet and the Federation Council, in case hostilities should erupt. With so many adversarial starship crews in such close proximity to one another, it would take just one errant phaser blast or disruptor bolt, or perhaps even merely a miscalculated navigational plan, to ignite the fuse in a room full of explosives.
But that didn’t mean there was any reason for the chief of staff to stay close to home, Piñiero thought, even as she recognized the absurdity of her complaint. President Bacco had wanted simply to cancel the trip, but Piñiero had argued that she should go, that if anything did happen, Admiral Akaar and his staff at Starfleet Headquarters could handle it until a fast ship carried her on a quick jaunt back to Earth. The chief of staff also tried to impress upon the president the political importance of her paying a visit to New Berlin and Tycho City on Luna, of pressing the flesh in Bradbury Township and Utopia Planitia on Mars, of putting some face time in at Jupiter Station and Christopher’s Landing out at the gas giants.
And I convinced her, all right.
As soon as President Bacco agreed about the political value of such a tour, Piñiero realized that she’d made a mistake in pushing so hard. The president opted not to cancel the trip, but to send the chief of staff in her stead. At that point, Piñiero suggested postponing the entire affair, but too late; her fate had been sealed.
I really need to learn when to keep my mouth shut, she thought, even as another yawn overcame her.
So she had filled in for President Bacco, an a priori impossible task. After three days of little or no sleep, scores of holovids, hundreds of hands shaken, and several billion kilometers of travel, Piñiero made the penultimate leg of her journey, taking a shuttle from the moon to Earth Spacedock. From there, she intended to transport down to the Palais, where she would make a quick report to the president about the trip, then head home for a couple of hours’ sleep before going to her office to address all the issues that had surely piled up on her desk in her absence.
But it’s never that easy, is it?
Piñiero’s shuttle had arrived at Spacedock on time, but when she showed up with a transport pass to the Palais de la Concorde, the operator informed her that he did not see her name on the schedule. Under normal circumstances, she could just beam down to some other location and fix the issue when she got home, but once she attempted to get into the Palais without proper authorization, she became a security risk. So she would have to wait until they verified her identity, her transport pass, and the fact that a simple mistake had been made—probably by Zachary Manzanillo, the assistant chief of staff, with whom she would have to have a talk.
He’ll probably tell me that the president put him up to it, she thought. An object lesson about how hard I’m allowed to push on certain things.
“Well,” Piñiero said, her voice sounding loud in the empty room, “at least they put me in the VIP lounge instead of a holding cell.” She realized that Magdalena probably had company outside the room of at least one or two Spacedock security guards, and that Piñiero wouldn’t be allowed to leave until she’d been cleared.
Tired and frustrated, she turned from the port and examined the lounge. Not all that large, it had been appointed beautifully, with dark, elegant furniture, rich wall coverings, striking pieces of art, and just enough perfectly manicured plants. In her weariness, though, Piñiero hadn’t noticed earlier that she saw no access points to companel compartments, sleeping modules, or even replicators. “Okay, so it is a holding cell,” she said. “Just a VIP holding cell.” Rather than fret about it, she decided that she should be thankful that she saw a door to a ’fresher tucked discreetly into a corner.
“And at least I have a beautiful view,” she said, turning back to the port. Piñiero reached out a hand and leaned against the smooth, transparent surface. She felt wistful as she looked at Europe, where her bed waited for her.
And then something moved outside the port. The space before her eyes shimmered, as though she were seeing Earth through running water. Suddenly, where there had been nothing, there was something—something that should not have been there.
Piñiero turned and raced for the door as an alarm began to blare. The door didn’t open when she reached it, and so she punched the activation panel beside it. The door slid open, and she saw that two Spacedock security guards did indeed stand with her personal agent.
“Maggie,” Piñiero said, yelling to make herself heard over the sound of the alarm, “I need to speak with somebody in the Palais right now!” She looked not only at Magdalena, but at the other two guards as well. “I don’t care what you have to do, but get me to a companel.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Magdalena said, and she turned and bolted down the corridor.
No doubt trained to do their jobs even in an emergency, the two Spacedock guards moved to block Piñiero’s path, apparently just in case she chose to make a run for it. Instead, the chief of staff turned and walked back into the lounge. She paced back to the port.
Piñiero could feel her heart pounding in her chest as she stared out at the Romulan starship.
22
Fleet Admiral Devix stood on the bridge of the Imperial Fleet scout vessel Enderavat and gazed at the image of Earth filling the main viewscreen. Mostly a collection of deep blue, brown, and white patches, it really didn’t look all that much different from Romulus. Devix’s homeworld appeared a little more blue-green, perhaps a little paler, but from orbit, not much distinguished the two planets.
Once, long ago, Devix had envisioned himself taking in that view of Earth, as though from on high, just before he rained plasma torpedoes and disruptor bolts down on its surface. In his youth, as a newly minted uhlan, dreams of glory played through his mind: he saw himself materializing in the Federation capital to find it toppled and in flames. He wanted to revel in stilling the beating hearts of the Empire’s enemies.
Back then, Devix had known destruction and death in concept alone. In his military career, though, he would come to witness both—far too much of both—and to understand that the cold universe did not care which lives it devoured with its entropic appetite. He came to realize that survival and death, good and evil, joy and pain, did not divide people, but united them: a dead Romulan, a dead human, what difference did it make, what difference was there?
In his advanced years, Devix had become, much to the chagrin of those with hatred in their hearts, a lover of peace. He ruled the men and women of the Imperial Fleet, saw them trained to attack and kill, but in the end, sought only to have them return safely to their starships or their bases at the end of each day—and when possible, not to carry the blood of others back with them. People like Senator Durjik and Chairwoman Sela, who jockeyed and argued and pushed for war, did so from the safety of the Hall of State or Tal Shiar headquarters, perfectly content to tell others whom to fight and why, or to maneuver them to it, but unlikely to take up arms themselves. Cowards masquerading as heroes, fools asserting their thoughtless plots as wisdom and patriotism. In a career that had taken him from the lowest foot soldier to the supreme commander of all Romulan military forces, the admiral had learned to identify most of the real enemies in the galaxy: ego, arrogance, self-righteousness, a hunger for power, a lack of compassion and perspective, an unwillingness to understand. In his experience, such enemies could just as easily be found within as without.
The events of the last half-decade had worn Devix down, in a way that had left him drained. He took some solace that nobody in his position could have either foreseen or contended with some of those incidents, such as when the ma
dman Shinzon emerged from the shadows on Remus to assassinate the praetor and most of the Senate. But what had occurred more recently, the two attempts to obtain the quantum slipstream drive technology from the Federation, involved rogue actions by his own people. Looking back, he could easily distinguish Admiral Enellis Vellon, sympathizer and puppet of the Tal Shiar, as a villain, but perhaps too late—though he knew that the praetor would deal with him in an appropriate manner. Devix himself would step down soon, once his replacement had been chosen and evaluated, but until then, he would do what he had to do to lead the Imperial Fleet and keep the peace.
“Admiral,” said Subcommander D’Voral from his sensor board off to port, “two Federation starships are approaching us from orbit, and I read multiple vessels exiting the docking facility.” He spoke with utter calm, plainly not flustered by the circumstances. By order of the praetor, Devix had handpicked his crew.
“We’re being hailed on multiple channels,” said Lieutenant Terrin from her position at communications.
Devix spoke without raising his voice. “Select the one we need, Lieutenant,” he said. “Take your time to verify both the physical source of the transmission and the identity of its sender.”
“Yes, sir,” said Terrin. “We’re getting many signals from nearby starships, several from ground-based defensive emplacements . . .” When she paused, Devix glanced over to see her place a small, silver receiver in one ear. She listened for a moment, then said, “We’re hearing repeated orders to acknowledge the hails . . . more than a few threats . . . demands for an explanation of our presence.”
On the screen, Devix saw two Starfleet vessels approaching across the top of the planet. He recognized the closer one as Akira-class, the farther as a Sovereign.
“Subcommander D’Voral,” the admiral said, “confirm our offensive and defensive status.”
“Weapons are completely powered down, Admiral,” said D’Voral, “as are the shields. Additionally, the cloak has been taken off line.”
Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Raise the Dawn (Star Trek, the Next Generation) Page 31
