The Long Mirage

by David R. George III

  “And why is that important?” Candlewood asked.

  “Because,” Nog said, holding up one of the pieces of paper and pointing at a name printed on them, “they were all executed by Vic Fontaine.”

  vii

  * * *

  The doors opened before Keiko O’Brien to reveal chaos. Some of the furniture within had been pushed aside, a chair had toppled, several articles of clothing had been strewn about, and a siren pierced the air. It looked and sounded as though a low-yield photon torpedo had detonated.

  Yeah, Keiko thought. A photon torpedo called Clan O’Brien.

  Keiko couldn’t help but smile. Where in the past she might have complained about the noise her husband and son were making, or the mess they’d made of the cabin, she instead took it in stride. She loved the bond that Miles and Kirayoshi had formed, even though the pair typically displayed it in raucous fashion. The siren belonged to a traditional Cardassian game they liked to play. Koris-tahn combined tactical and strategic thinking with physical play that rewarded dexterity and athleticism. With his experience and adult frame, Miles enjoyed a natural advantage over their son, but Yoshi, just turned thirteen, had recently come closer and closer to defeating his father.

  Keiko had initially tolerated the displaced furniture and the occasional blare of the siren because of how it brought her husband and son together. She grew accustomed to it pretty quickly, though, sometimes even watching as the two played the game. Molly despised it, but as a teenager just shy of her eighteenth birthday, she despised an ever-growing list of things.

  “I’m home,” Keiko said as she entered the cabin. Miles and Yoshi looked up from where they sat facing each other on the deck. Both of them had a wooden rod in each hand, spinning a metal hoop around it, but they set them down as soon as they saw her.

  “Hi, Mom,” Yoshi called as he jumped up and ran over to hug Keiko.

  Miles followed, though it took him longer to haul himself to his feet. He wore dark slacks and a deep-purple shirt with a stand-up collar. His shift had ended hours ago, which explained the civilian clothes he wore, but not why his uniform shirt lay draped across the back of the sofa. “Hi, honey,” he said as he embraced her. “How was your day?”

  “Long,” Keiko said. “We began studying the data the Robinson crew sent back from the first planet they visited.” Captain Sisko had departed Deep Space 9 six weeks earlier, taking his ship on an extended exploratory mission into the Gamma Quadrant. As the starbase’s chief botanist—a civilian position she began three months prior—Keiko would lead the research effort on the newly discovered flora. “We saw some interesting specimens, but our initial work involves classification and a lot of setup. It’s time-consuming and pretty tedious.”

  “Well, you’re home now,” Miles said, giving her a quick kiss on the lips. “I’ve got a meal queued up for you in the replicator whenever you’re ready to eat. A seitan wrap, cucumber salad, and brown rice.”

  “Great,” Keiko said. “I’m starving.”

  “I’ll get it for you,” Miles said. He headed across the room, toward the replicator.

  “How was school?” Keiko asked Yoshi.

  “Okay. We started learning about clouds in terrestrial science and the Federation Charter in civics.”

  “And what about that calculus test?” Keiko asked.

  “I don’t know,” Yoshi said with a shrug. “I think I did okay.”

  “Just okay?”

  “Yeah.” He motioned back toward where he and Miles had been sitting on the deck. “I’m going to go back to our game.”

  Yoshi bounded back into the living area. Keiko wanted to ask her son more about his mathematics exam, but she let him go—it really had been a long day. Instead, she moved to the dining table, where her daughter sat reading from one padd and making notes with a stylus on another. “Hi, Molly.”

  “Hi,” Molly said without looking up, her voice flat. Even after almost three full months on DS9, she hadn’t completely forgiven her mother for taking her away from Bajor for her final year of secondary education. Molly’s attitude had begun to improve recently, but she still sometimes lapsed into sullen moods.

  “How was school?” Keiko asked as she sat down at the table.

  “Fine.” Molly inserted her stylus into one of the padds, stacked one device atop the other, and stood up. “I’m going to study in my room.” She stomped away from the table.

  “Molly,” Keiko called, but her daughter didn’t stop. Miles came over to the table and set her dinner in front of her, along with dining utensils and a napkin.

  “Don’t mind Molly,” he said. “She heard from Suzanne today, so she’s feeling sorry for herself again.” One of Molly’s classmates back on Bajor, Suzanne had been one of her closest friends. “Would you like a glass of wine?”

  “How about a bottle?”

  “Now, now, it’s not that bad,” Miles said. He moved to the sideboard, retrieved a red, and peered at the label. “We’ve got a Kendra Valley varietal open already. Is that all right?”

  “That sounds perfect.” Miles collected two stemmed glasses from the sideboard and carried them over with the bottle to the table. “It’s easy for you to say it’s not that bad, because Molly doesn’t blame you for taking her away from her friends,” Keiko said. She paused and thought about that while Miles poured wine for both of them. “Why is it that she doesn’t blame you, only me?”

  “Because she knows who makes the decisions in this family,” Miles said with a chuckle. Then he raised his glass and said, “To the evil matriarch, Keiko Ishikawa O’Brien.”

  “Very funny,” she said, but she smiled anyway.

  “Don’t worry,” Miles said. “She’ll be off to university before long.”

  “That’s what concerns me,” Keiko said. “She’ll leave for some distant college, and we’ll never see her again.” She spoke the words in jest, but they reflected a genuine maternal fear: that Molly would choose to attend school on the other side of the Federation, making it impossible to see her on a regular basis.

  “Relax,” Miles said. He sipped at his wine. “The other day, I saw her looking at information for the University of Ashalla and also Brintall Provincial College.”

  “Brintall?” Keiko asked.

  “It’s somewhere in Bajor’s southern hemisphere,” Miles said.

  Keiko let out such a loud sigh of relief, it sounded comical. Miles laughed, and she joined him. Molly’s resentment still bothered her, but she had to trust that their relationship would mend with time.

  “Do you really think she’ll pick a university on Bajor?” Keiko asked.

  “Either that or one on Cardassia,” Miles said. “Those are the two worlds she knows best, and even if she’s still mad at us for bringing her here—”

  “Mad at me,” Keiko corrected him.

  “Even if she’s still mad at you, I don’t think she’d want to go to school that far from the family.”

  “I hope you’re right, Miles,” Keiko said. “I hope—”

  The boatswain’s whistle sounded. “Hub to Chief O’Brien.” The voice belonged to the beta-shift duty officer, Ensign Allasar. Miles gave Keiko a questioning look—What’s this about?—and then responded.

  “This is O’Brien.”

  “Chief, the Defiant’s shuttlecraft, Sagan, has returned to Deep Space Nine,” Allasar said. “It was carrying Odo, and you wanted to be notified when he came aboard.” Keiko felt her eyes widen at the name of the shape-shifter.

  “Has he been assigned guest quarters?” Miles asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Allasar said, and she read off Odo’s cabin identification.

  “Acknowledged. Thank you, Ensign. O’Brien out.”

  “Odo’s back,” Keiko said.

  “I was going to tell you,” Miles said. “I only just found out today.”

  “Does he
know that Nerys has come back from the wormhole?” The O’Briens had not spoken to her yet, but the vedek had apparently attempted to contact them two nights previous. She had left the starbase for Bajor the next morning, but had asked Doctor Boudreaux to let them know about her return, and that she would be in touch with them soon.

  “I don’t know if Odo’s heard,” Miles said. “I figured I’d pay him a visit when he arrived and let him know in person.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Keiko said. “You should go.”

  “I will,” Miles said, “once I’ve sat with my wife through her dinner.”

  Keiko smiled at her husband. It seemed impossible that they had been married for almost nineteen years. In some ways, it felt as though they’d just met. Of course, they had two living, growing reminders who demonstrated every day how long the couple had been together. Even after all that time, though, Keiko still loved to come home to Miles.

  viii

  * * *

  O’Brien watched Odo’s expression as the door to the shape-shifter’s guest cabin glided open. The engineer thought he might see at least a hint of surprise on the Changeling’s face. After all, Odo had been back on the starbase for less than an hour, and he probably had no expectation of any visitors. But the curiously blank features Odo wore in his guise as a humanoid didn’t change at all.

  “Yes, Chief?”

  “Welcome back,” O’Brien said. “I’m glad to see that you’re all right.” He knew that Odo had been injured in an altercation with the shape-shifting Ascendant life-form, and that it had taken nearly six weeks for him to recover.

  “Thank you.”

  O’Brien waited a moment for an invitation to come inside. Odo said nothing more, though, forcing the chief engineer to speak up. “I was hoping I could talk with you privately,” he said. When it looked as if Odo might refuse, O’Brien added, “It’s important.”

  The shape-shifter sighed—a curious action for a being who didn’t actually have to breathe, but doubtless one of the behaviors he had cultivated in an attempt to fit in with natural humanoids. For a moment, O’Brien thought that Odo still might decline, but then he stepped back and gestured inside. “Please come in.”

  O’Brien walked into the living area of the guest cabin. “I won’t take up much of your time,” he said. He sat down in a comfortable chair and waited for Odo to join him. The Changeling followed him inside and took a seat across from him, on the sofa. “I’m sorry to come barging in here without contacting you first, but I thought this was something I needed to—”

  O’Brien stopped speaking. In just the few seconds since Odo had first opened the door, something in his face had changed. Not just in his face, O’Brien thought. In his whole body. He couldn’t quite identify what had happened, but Odo looked somehow less solid, as though whatever physical capacity he possessed to maintain his shape had begun to flag. “Odo, are you all right?”

  “I am fatigued,” Odo said.

  “Just fatigued?” O’Brien asked. “I hate to say it, Odo, but you look terrible.”

  “How astute of you to notice,” Odo said, not without sarcasm.

  “I’m sorry, I just meant that you look like you need medical attention.” O’Brien got up out of his chair. “I can call for an emergency transport and have you in Sector General right away.”

  Odo held up a hand. “No, please, Chief, don’t,” he said. “I’m still recovering from my injuries. I’ve been holding this form for most of the day, and I just need to regenerate.”

  “Is that all it is?”

  “Doctor Girani is satisfied that I’m in good health now, and that I’ll make a full recovery. It will just take some more time before I regain my stamina.” O’Brien stayed on his feet and continued to regard Odo, debating whether he should take action regardless of the shape-shifter’s wishes. “Please, Chief, if you could just tell me why you’ve come, then you can leave me to regenerate.”

  “Yes, of course,” O’Brien said. “Sorry.” He sat back down in the chair, took a deep breath, and started. “Three nights ago, a small ship came out of the wormhole.”

  “A Jem’Hadar ship?” Odo asked, concern evident in his tone, and O’Brien shook his head. “Was it from the Dominion?”

  “No,” O’Brien said. “It was carrying only one passenger. It was Kira Nerys.”

  “Nerys,” Odo said, rising quickly to his feet. The surprise O’Brien had searched for on the shape-shifter’s face moments earlier finally materialized. He looked thunderstruck, and as close to ecstatic as the chief engineer had ever seen him. “Is she . . . is she . . . ?”

  “She’s fine,” O’Brien said, and he stood up too. “I didn’t speak with her directly, but Captain Ro and Doctor Boudreaux did.”

  “Where are her guest quarters?” Odo asked, taking a step toward the door.

  “Hold on,” O’Brien said. “She’s not on the station anymore; she left for Bajor yesterday morning.”

  “I was just there,” Odo lamented. “The Sagan stopped at Bajor to disembark Doctor Girani. If I’d known Nerys was there . . .”

  “I’m sorry, I just found out a short time ago that you were going to be back on the starbase,” O’Brien said. “The captain is away on leave at the moment, otherwise I’m sure she would have notified you herself.”

  “Do you know where Nerys is on Bajor?” Odo asked. “Has she gone back to the Vanadwan Monastery?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know,” O’Brien said.

  “I need to contact her,” Odo said. “I need to get to Bajor.”

  “Pardon me for saying so, but don’t you need to regenerate before you do anything else?” In just the time they’d been speaking, O’Brien perceived a degradation in Odo’s . . . cohesion.

  Odo regarded the chief engineer, and O’Brien could tell that he didn’t want to regenerate; he wanted more than anything else to see Kira. In an attempt to prevent the shape-shifter from taking any unnecessary chances with his health, O’Brien said, “I’m sure that Commander Blackmer will be happy to schedule a pilot to take you on a runabout to Bajor in the morning.” Under normal circumstances, Odo wouldn’t require a ship to make the journey from DS9 to Bajor—he could take on the form of a spaceborne life-form—but the Changeling’s compromised stamina clearly dictated that he choose another mode of travel. “I can look into that for you right now, if you’d like.”

  Odo appeared to consider the offer. O’Brien knew that the shape-shifter preferred to do things on his own whenever he could, but now was obviously not one of those times. “Thank you,” Odo said. “I’d appreciate that.”

  “Good, then,” O’Brien said.

  “And Chief,” Odo added, “if you could possibly find out Nerys’s location on Bajor.”

  “Of course,” O’Brien said.

  “Thank you.”

  O’Brien headed for the door and left. He immediately walked to the nearest turbolift, which he ordered to the Hub so that he could check on the runabout and pilot rotation for the next day. He knew that Odo had waited a couple of years for the wormhole to reopen after it had collapsed with Kira inside it, and then had waited months longer once it had reopened, still plainly hoping for her return. Since that had finally happened, O’Brien could just imagine how sweet their reunion would be.

  Thinking about it put a spring in his step.

  Five

  Reinvestment

  i

  * * *

  Candlewood finished dressing, putting on beige pleated slacks and a green aloha shirt, one of the casual outfits he, Nog, and Ulu had purchased at a shop off the lobby of the Shining Oasis hotel. The science officer had slept well the previous night. After sharing a sometimes-awkward evening meal with Nog and Ulu, the three of them had returned to the Silver Lode, where one of them had staked out the parking lot, one of them the hotel lobby, and one of them the casino’s main entrance. They al
l kept watch for any sign of Vic. None of them espied the singer, but Nog did spot the vehicle in which he’d seen Vic kidnapped, identifying the Eldorado by the number-and-letter code on plates mounted on the rear. The sighting provided further confirmation of Bugsy Calderone’s involvement in the abduction.

  Candlewood didn’t know what to make of Ulu Lani. Her presence in the holoprogram, and her efforts to spy on them, seemed suspicious at best. Her easy admission that she worked for Quark sounded reasonable, but it also felt convenient. Moreover, she hadn’t fully explained the legal documents she’d produced—where she’d gotten them, when, how—at least not to Candlewood’s satisfaction.

  Despite all of that, Nog’s behavior around Ulu suggested that he actually liked her, though Candlewood could only imagine that any romantic feelings he harbored had been tempered by her covert actions. Still, the operations chief had not demanded that she exit the program, a decision he later justified by claiming that he thought she could be of assistance to them. From the way that Ulu spoke to Nog, and from the way she looked at him, it also appeared that she felt her own emotional connection. That made her willingness to invade his privacy confusing.

  Candlewood quietly pulled open the bedroom door and stepped into the main living area of the suite. Nog had insisted that Ulu sleep in his room, while he would stay on the sofa. Candlewood expected to see him there, but he saw only a rumpled sheet and blanket. Nog instead sat at a large, round table by the window, a sprawl of papers spread out before him.

  “Did you get any sleep at all?” Candlewood asked. When he’d gone to bed last night, he’d left Nog studying the documents provided by Ulu.

  “I managed to lie down and get a few hours rest.” Despite the declaration, Nog looked and sounded tired.

  Candlewood strolled over to the table and peered down at the pages covering it. “Have you learned anything from all these records?”

  “From what I can tell, Vic went from singer to financial mogul,” Nog said. “According to these documents, he owned water rights across considerable swaths of real estate in and around Las Vegas.”