Star Trek

by Andy Mangels

  Vaughn rolled his eyes. “Word gets around, I see.”

  Kira shrugged. “You know what they say about gossip . . .”

  “ . . . It’s the only sound that travels at warp,” Vaughn finished.

  “So what does someone get a one-hundred-and-two-

  year-old human for his birthday, anyway?”

  “If you asked Girani, she’d probably suggest a few organ replacements,” Vaughn said wryly.

  Kira grinned. “Much too practical. What about dinner and a belated birthday drink at Quark’s tomorrow night?”

  “That really isn’t necessary—”

  “If it was necessary, Elias, I’d make it an order,” Kira said. “So I trust I won’t have to.”

  “Tell you what,” Vaughn said, patting his uniform jacket until he reached behind his back and produced an isolinear rod. “Quark gave me this as some sort of ‘birthday special’ he came up with. It’s supposed to be good for a couple of free drinks, at least. Why don’t we redeem it together?”

  Kira arched an eyebrow. “Top shelf?”

  “Do yourself a favor and don’t ask that when Quark’s around,” Vaughn said. “Trust me.”

  18

  Rena

  “Hey, whoa!” someone shouted. “She hasn’t done anything to hurt you!”

  Kail’s mug halted in midswing. Rena saw a brown hand wrapped around his wrist, holding it back, and a second later she realized that the hand belonged to Jacob. He started to reach for Kail’s mug with the other . . . .

  Suddenly Jacob was in motion. Kail had a lot of muscle to put into follow-through with his swing. But instead of striking Rena, Kail flipped him off his feet. Jacob cried “Whoop!” and then sailed behind the table and onto the fusionstone floor of the tavern.

  Everyone in the room—Halar, Parsh, Rena, the staff and customers—took a breath and held it. Rena saw Jacob holding the back of his head with one hand, the dripping mug with the other, and silently mouthing what Rena suspected were colorful obscenities in his native language.

  She blanched, couldn’t move. For a long moment, she had to remind her lungs to continue cycling air.

  Finally, breaking the silence, Kail slurred, “Wha’s wrong with you?”

  Mistaking the question for concern, Jacob responded, “I bit my tongue.” He set Kail’s mug down on the floor and then extended his hand to be helped up, but Kail batted it away.

  “Get away from me!”

  Rena still couldn’t move. Her eyes locked with Jacob’s, her nerves thrumming from his close proximity.

  “Kail!” Halar shouted. “What’s wrong with you?! Help him up!”

  Startled by Halar’s chastisement and (Rena sincerely hoped) contrite about what he had been thinking about doing a moment before, Kail backed away from the table, then stumbled toward the door. A moment later, Parsh rose, his hands shaking, his eyes wide. He looked at Rena and recognized that she, too, had seen what his friend had been prepared to do. Helping Jacob up, Parsh stammered, “He . . . I’m sorry, Jacob . . . His foreman . . .” Looking at Rena, he said, “Kail got cut today. His foreman . . . They didn’t like each other very much and . . . But that doesn’t mean . . . He’s normally not like this. He used to be . . . different.”

  Without looking at Rena, Jacob recovered the mug and set it down on the table. “Someone should check on him. You think you know where he went?”

  Parsh nodded shakily.

  “Then you should go. I’ll see you back at the house. We’ll plan the Yyn trip tomorrow.”

  Parsh started for the door, but before he exited, he stopped and said to Rena, “You’re really ending it with him?”

  She shrugged, nodded, threaded trembling hands behind her back.

  Parsh nodded back. “Good.” And then he was gone.

  Rubbing his head, Jacob muttered something in Standard that had the word “kwarks” in it, but Rena couldn’t make it out.

  She surveyed him quickly, determined that his wounds weren’t fatal, and found that the momentary paralysis she’d been experiencing abated upon this realization. Time to get the hell out of here. She had no desire to stay around for the next act of the performance, though she’d been positioned for a starring role.

  As the doors swung closed behind her, Rena stalked down the narrow wooden dock toward the mainland, her determined steps coaxing a hollow rattle from each weathered plank. The green-black seawater below slurped around the pylons, shushing and hissing with the lunar pull from the heavens. She’d crossed a quarter of the distance, shivering the whole way, when she realized she’d left her wrap on the chair back at the tavern. Nothing could persuade her to return for it. She would freeze all the way up the hill to the bakery before she willingly chose to face Jacob after the humiliating scene that had just played out. She had rejected Jacob because she felt she had an obligation to Topa and Kail. To have him witness the disastrous end of those promises was more than she could stand. Tomorrow, she would face Marja’s disappointment. Tonight, she wanted to deal with only her own.

  Behind her, she heard a treble creak coupled with a snippet of synthesized music and laughter from the tavern, followed quickly by the thud-thud-thud of footsteps racing down the walkway after her.

  She broke into a run.

  Forgetting that she wore her dress boots, Rena threw her feet out in front of her as if she were shod with her flat-soled sandals. Her heel caught in a knothole; she considered slipping her foot out of her boot but decided against it, knowing that the footful of slivers she’d end up with would make it impossible to walk home.

  Jacob slowed his gait, though with his long legs, he covered the distance to Rena far more quickly than she was comfortable with. He raised his hands out in front of him as if he suspected she might come at him with one of the ultra-fine-point writing styluses she kept in her bag. “I have your wrap. You left it on the chair,” he explained breathlessly. He bent from the waist to rest his hands on his thighs in a stretch. Taking a few deep breaths, he righted himself and took a step closer to Rena, cautiously holding the shawl out where she could reach it.

  Rena snatched it away from him, throwing it carelessly around her shoulders. “Thank you for looking out for me. Please leave me alone.”

  He shook his head. “I want to be your friend, Rena.”

  Her eyes burned with unshed tears. Damn that he could make her feel so much! Rena knotted the ends of her shawl, scrambled to her feet, and marched down the dock.

  “I’m sorry about Kail!” he shouted after her.

  She stopped, spun on her heel. “You? Sorry? You saw him in there, his boorish, bigoted behavior. Yes, that was the man I once loved. The person I was prepared to spend my life with. By comparison, you come out looking like the fine gentleman steward. You can bask in your superiority with my blessing.”

  “I’m sorry because I know how much it meant to you to honor your promise to Topa.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “I can’t seem to finish anything. First I lose the sketchbook with his memorial drawings in it in that blasted storm—I haven’t been able to re-create my last design and everything I’ve come up with since is all wrong. Now I’ve rejected the man he wanted me to marry. I’m a colossal failure.”

  “Rena,” he said gently. “You aren’t a failure.” Stepping close to her, he reached for a loose tendril of hair that had wrested free of her headband, twisted it around his finger, then with a tender half-smile, smoothed it back out of her eyes. For a long moment, they stood staring at each other.

  This time, she had no excuses to explain away his hypnotic effect on her: she craved it, tilting back her head and lifting her face to receive Jacob’s kiss.

  Another earsplitting creak announced more exits from the tavern; unidentifiable silhouettes stumbled out of the door, laughing raucously. The trio teetered toward them.

  They lurched apart.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Jacob said, reaching for her hand.

  She pulled away. If Halar saw her with Jaco
b. If Parsh returned. Prophets forbid, if Kail came back . . . “I shouldn’t be with you. Not like this.”

  “Why not?”

  “I need space to think. I can’t—I won’t feel how I’ve felt the last few days again . . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Taking a deep breath, he placed his hands on her shoulders. “I’ll walk you home. That’s all. Nothing more. Marja wouldn’t want you by yourself at this hour.”

  She shifted her shoulders, dislodging his hands and considered him. “Fine. Let’s go.”

  They kept a swift pace to preserve their privacy. When Rena was certain they were out of earshot from anyone in front or behind them, she blurted out what had been nagging at her since the day on the boat. “Why didn’t you tell me you were the son of the Emissary?”

  Jacob paused, took a deep breath. “Have you ever been asked to bless a broom?” he said earnestly.

  A blurt of laughter escaped that she promptly smothered with her hand. “Can’t say that I have.” Not what I expected as an opener.

  “The day I left my dad’s homestead, I followed a series of back roads meandering through the nearby farms on my way to the River Way. A farmer on his way to market in Sepawa asked me if I wanted a ride in his hovercart. He gave me his name. I gave him mine. My full name. That’s when he asked if I could bless his broom.”

  “But you don’t have any special connection with the Prophets.” She paused. “Or do you?”

  “In this case, the saying ‘like Father, like son’ definitely doesn’t apply. But tell that to the farmer. Apparently his wife was having difficulty keeping dust out of the house so he thought that a word from me might help her broom work better.”

  “I see,” she said, snickering. “I’m sorry, it’s just that—”

  “I know it’s ridiculous. I’d have laughed too if the guy hadn’t been so serious. Then when we reached the Shalun’s Hollow Ferry crossing, he told the proprietor about the great honor he would have transporting the Emissary’s son across the river, so of course that turned into another big scene.” Jacob shook his head, remembering. “My friend Nog would ask what good it is having a name if you’re not willing to trade on it. But that’s not my style. It took days to put the whole ‘son of the Emissary’ thing behind me, and that was only by omitting the name ‘Sisko’ from my introductions, and using the long form of my first name.” As they strolled down the pathway, he related various experiences from growing up as the Emissary’s son, his narrative continuing even after they’d passed through the Harbor Ring gate. His words evoked sympathy from Rena.

  While Rena couldn’t relate to having a relative with the Emissary’s notoriety, she did know how it felt to live in the shadow of a notable family. In Mylea, hardly a day passed without Rena being identified with or judged in relation to her grandfather or her heroic parents. “She might have Jiram’s color, but otherwise, is she not the image of Lariah?” or “Topa was dependable. Always knew you could count on him, but that Rena is always wandering off . . . .”

  Rena had considered the possibility that perhaps her lifelong compulsion to wander stemmed from an unconscious need to be known as herself, not “daughter of” or “granddaughter of.” And now, as she listened to Jacob, she heard her thoughts and feelings being verbalized by another: the simultaneous pride in family accomplishments and honor, and doubt about whether living up to the standard set by those who had gone before was even possible. She sensed she’d found a kindred soul in Jacob. Before long, they walked shoulder-to-shoulder, the tension between them dissipating into the rising Mylean mists rolling in off the sea.

  Inside the gate, they walked beside the weatherbeaten Temple Ring rampart for more than a hundred meters, from pool to pool of puddled, pale lamplight. The occasional skimmer filled with fishermen off to their predawn preparations zinged past. Within hours, the darkened storefront windows would be lively with color and light as the first catches of the day were poured into tanks or cleaned, filleted or chopped into steaks. A little light-headed from the ale, she noticed that the air was lightly scented with the perfume from the late-blooming trees that lined the street. Lovers strolled up and down the street, arms linked or hand in hand. Last year, before she had left for the university, the sight made her feel part of an exclusive club of those who had been lucky enough to find a special someone. Tonight, thinking about love made her feel like a boat cut loose from its moorings.

  Turning off before they passed the harbormaster’s station, Rena and Jacob walked up brick-paved Moonshell Road, snaking back and forth across the hill past shops and houses.

  “What went wrong tonight, with Kail, I mean? You were so determined to make it work.”

  So now it’s my turn to answer the questions, she thought. “Our relationship has been unraveling for a while now. When I came back from school . . .”

  “Everything was different,” Jacob finished for her. “I know that feeling. Something similar happened to me when I got back from the Gamma Quadrant.”

  This was new information, and Rena reeled off a fusillade of questions. “You were in the Gamma Quadrant? Really? For how long? What was it like?”

  Laughing, Jacob said, “In order, Yes, really. A few months. And, hmm, it was, in no particular order, thrilling, terrifying, informative, exhausting. In brief, just like here, but more so.”

  “Not just like here,” Rena said. “See, all those words you just used seem like the opposite of sleepy, rural Mylea.”

  “Not to me,” Jacob said. “Not to you either, I bet.”

  “I’m still here,” Rena said with a sigh, “because I have to be.”

  Jacob shook his head. “Promise or no promise, after Topa’s services, you could have gone anywhere you wanted—nothing but honor held you to your obligations. But you decided to stay here anyway. Why?”

  “I’m not sure that’s a question I’m prepared to answer for you, Jacob Sisko.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to pry. Maybe I should have just stayed with the question I really wanted to ask you.”

  She felt a slow smile bloom on her face. “Which was?”

  “What attracted you to Kail in the first place?”

  Rena laughed a little heartsick laugh. She hadn’t been expecting this. “Because he was handsome. And he liked me. And . . . he wasn’t always such a fool. Something happened to him while I was away. He became bitter.”

  “Or maybe something happened to you,” Jacob countered.

  The only appropriate response seemed to be a shrug. “Maybe. Who ever knows about those kinds of things?”

  Jacob wore an expression of mock hurt. “I do,” he said. “I pay attention to those things.”

  “But you’re supposedly a writer,” she said. “It’s your job.”

  “And you’re supposedly an artist,” he countered. “It’s your job, too.”

  Pausing for a long moment outside the door to her family’s apartments, they both looked at each other, neither certain as to what they should say.

  “I’ll talk with Parsh about Yyn—if you still want to go,” Jacob said at last.

  “As I’ve already mentioned, I’ve never been. It would be good to get away for a couple of days.”

  Silence again.

  She didn’t want to say “I’ll see you tomorrow” because she wasn’t certain she would see him nor did she feel a kiss good night was appropriate. She settled on a polite “thank you for walking me home” before letting herself inside.

  Surprising herself, Rena stood inside the foyer and watched him disappear into the night. She told herself that she was just enjoying the night air, the sounds of small night birds whirring through the air, the smell of blooming trees, but watching Jacob fade as he walked away, that was part of it, too. An idea for a new painting came to her then, and she looked forward to morning so she could start. She padded up the stairs and dropped onto her bed, falling swiftly into a dreamless sleep.

  * * *

  Morning came too quickly, though R
ena felt surprisingly rested for having slept so little. She stumbled out of bed and toward her washbasin when she noticed a large-ish drawing notebook on the floor by her door. At first she thought it was one of her old sketchpads from secondary school; the unwrinkled, clean paper said otherwise. She retrieved the new sketchbook from the floor and a flutter of hardcopy slid out from between the covers. On the top of the page she read, in familiar, spidery strokes of Bajoran characters:

  Everything old can be new again, including your art. Jacob.

  Last night, He must have returned after they parted and slipped this under her door. She scanned the hardcopy pages and quickly discerned that they were a story. Momentary gratitude that Marja hadn’t yet discovered that Rena hadn’t locked the exterior door gave way to delight as Rena realized that Jacob had taken a familiar Bajoran magic story and given it a modern twist. On wobbly morning legs, she made her way over to the window seat and, by golden pink tendrils of dawn light, read Jacob Sisko’s story. A hopeful smile crept onto her face as she scanned the words.

  Everything old can be new again.

  19

  Cenn

  Cenn Desca had never been to Terok Nor before. In fact, he’d seldom left Bajor at all, except on three other occasions, all of them Militia business. The first time was when he was still a junior officer, part of the crew on a ship escorting ill-fated colonists to New Bajor in the Gamma Quadrant, almost seven years ago. Although that voyage had involved docking briefly at the station before continuing on through the Temple, Cenn had never needed to leave his ship. For that he was grateful. The view of the hideous structure outside his viewport—an absurd assemblage of rings and arcing towers that the Cardssians seemed to think made a good design for a space station—had been enough. There were so many things wrong it, he didn’t know where to begin . . . although the arrangement of the docking pylons in such a way that the largest ships were forced to converge on the smallest possible volume of space was certainly high on the list.