by S. D. Perry
Ro saw the pain in Kira’s wet gaze and immediately regretted her unkind thoughts. It was the first time she’d seen the colonel display any emotion beyond impatient irritation, at least in front of her, and it had the instant effect of making her want to leave, to allow Kira some privacy with her pain. If Ro had just lost a friend, she’d hope for the same consideration.
Kira reached out and gently touched Istani’s face with the back of her hand. Bashir’s demeanor changed abruptly, from subdued respect to open concern.
“Nerys, did you know her?”
Kira’s hand trembled against Istani’s slack cheek. “At the camps, when I was a child. At Singha. She was a good friend to my parents, and after my mother left…she was a good friend. She watched out for us.”
The doctor’s voice became even softer. “I’m so sorry. If it’s any help to you, I don’t believe she suffered.”
The three of them stood for a moment, Bashir’s words lingering in the cool, sterile air, Ro feeling out of place as a witness to Kira’s grief. She was about to excuse herself when the colonel began to speak again, almost to herself.
“I’ve been meaning to contact her, it’s been…five years? The last time we spoke, she was on her way to Beta Kupsic, for an archeological dig.”
Ro couldn’t stop herself. “Do you know when she got back?”
Kira looked up and seemed to collect herself, straightening away from the body. “Just before the Peldor Festival, I think, for the Meditation for Peace; the Vedek Assembly called everyone home. That was five months ago.”
Ro nodded, biting her tongue. She knew when the Peldor Festival was. “Did you know she was coming here? To the station?”
Kira shook her head. There was another awkward silence, for Ro, at least, and then the colonel turned to her, seeming entirely in control once more. “I expect a full investigation, Lieutenant, and I want to know what you find as soon as you find it. I’ll expect your initial report before the end of the day.”
“Yes, sir,” Ro said. Her first real case; a flutter of anxiety touched her and was gone. She was ready.
“If there’s anything I can do…” Bashir started.
The colonel managed a faint smile. “Thank you, Julian. I’ll be fine.”
She nodded briskly at Ro and walked out of the room without a backward glance, as composed as when she’d entered.
She had to admire the woman’s self-control. Ro had lived through resettlement camps, and knew something about the kinds of bonds that could be forged under dire conditions. When she was with the Maquis, too…the friends she had made and lost…
“Was there something else you needed, Lieutenant?”
Not impolite by any means, but the doctor’s voice had lost its former warmth. She supposed she should be grateful it wasn’t open hostility; her history with Starfleet wasn’t going to win her any friends among its personnel.
“No, thank you, Doctor. I’m sure your report will answer any questions I might have.”
Bashir smiled civilly and picked up a padd, turning away. Her cue. Ro started to leave, but couldn’t help a final look at Istani Reyla. Such gentle character in the lines around her eyes and mouth; to have survived the camps and the war, to have lived a life devoted to humble faith, only to die in a robbery…
What would a prylar have worth stealing? Worth being murdered for?
That was the question, wasn’t it? Istani’s bag was locked up in the security office, and Ro decided that she needed to take a closer look at its contents. She wasn’t going to give anyone a reason to doubt her appointment to DS9; they didn’t have to like her, any of them, but she would do her job, and do it well.
“Doctor,” she said, as way of good-bye, and left him to his work.
Kira was on the lift to ops when it hit her. She acted without thinking, slamming her fist into the wall once, twice, the skin breaking across two of her knuckles. No pain, or at least nothing close to the boiling darkness inside of her, the acid of sorrow and loneliness grasping at her heart. She was sick with it. Reyla, dead. Murdered.
She let out a low moan and sagged against the wall, cradling her wounded hand. For a second, it threatened to overwhelm her, all of it—Reyla; the dream, like some dark omen; the fading memory of Odo’s arms around her when she felt alone, so alone…
…deal with it. You don’t have time for this, and you will deal with it, and everything will be as it should be, have faith, have faith…
Kira took a few deep breaths, talking herself through it, letting go…and by the time she reached ops she was through the very worst of it, and prepared to bear the weight of another day.
Chapter Two
Although he was only three minutes late, Kasidy was already waiting when Bashir got to the infirmary, sitting on the edge of one of the diagnostic tables and chatting with Dr. Tarses.
“…and I’ll want to do some planting in the spring,” Kasidy was saying, her back to Bashir as he approached. “Kava, I think. If I’m not too fat to bend over by then.”
Bashir noted the readout over the bed with a practiced eye as he joined them, pleased with the slight weight gain since her last checkup. Perfectly within normal human parameters. “In five months you’ll be big as a runabout, I imagine,” he said. “Bending over shouldn’t be a problem, though standing back up might take work.”
His listeners laughed, and Julian felt his spirits lift. Getting up early to conduct autopsies was not his idea of a pleasant morning, and for Kira’s friend to have been murdered…
Poor Nerys. Bad enough to lose someone important, but practically, the timing couldn’t be worse. Kira wasn’t always good at delegating responsibility, too often overburdening herself, and the current upgrades to the station were no exception. With the Federation and Bajor both re-organizing their resources and personnel—along with practically everyone else in the Alpha Quadrant—DS9 had been operating understaffed anyway; technical support personnel were in short supply, and even with Jast to take over arrangements with Starfleet, Kira wasn’t smiling as much as she used to. The look on her face when she’d touched her friend…
…Ezri should speak to her, professionally. Assuming she can find the time in the next year or two.
The slightly sour thought surprised him, although only until he remembered the reason. Ezri had already been gone when he’d gotten the call that woke him, off to help Nog with some engineering conundrum. Again. Funny, how quickly he’d gotten used to having her beside him when he woke. And how much he missed her when she wasn’t there.
Tarses handed over the shift report and said his good-byes, leaving them in relative privacy. Both nurses on duty, Bajorans, stayed a respectful distance away—although he would have to speak to them about the beaming glances they couldn’t seem to help shooting in Kasidy’s direction. He knew that the Emissary’s wife didn’t care much for the attention, resigned to it or no.
Julian pulled up a chair and sat, calling up Kasidy’s charts on a widescreen padd. It had been two weeks since he’d seen her last, for a topical rash she’d picked up on her last run to the Orias system. It had turned out to be an extremely mild allergic reaction to a shipment of Rakalian p’losie that had gone bad, thanks to a malfunctioning refrigeration unit.
“So. Tell me how you’re feeling these days.” He glanced at her hands. “No more bumps, I see. I assume you’re staying away from Rakalian fruit?”
Kasidy nodded, smiling. “Absolutely. In fact, I’m staying away from the cargo holds altogether. Other than that, let’s see…I feel pretty good, I guess. Still no more morning sickness. I’m a little tired, even though it seems like I’m sleeping at least ten hours a night. Oh, and I’ve recently developed a craving for anything made with ginger root, of all things.”
Julian ran the bed’s diagnostic against a hand-held tricorder’s as she spoke, careful to keep the screen away from her line of sight; Kasidy insisted on keeping to a family tradition regarding ignorance of gender prior to birth. The child’s sex was l
isted in the upper left corner, along with the series of numbers that suggested textbook normal development for the fourth month. Both she and the child were doing remarkably well.
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” Kasidy continued. “Ben loved ginger. He said…” Her smile faded slightly, her hands moving to her belly. “He said there was no such thing as a good stir-fry without ginger.”
Julian nodded, setting aside his tricorder and focusing his full attention on Kasidy. “I remember. He made it for me once, with Bajoran shrimp. It was wonderful.”
Kasidy smiled crookedly, still holding her lower belly. “I’ve been thinking I should take up cooking. I never wanted to, before, but I set up the kitchen just like he wanted. It seems a shame to let it go to waste.”
Sisko’s dream house, in the Kendra province on Bajor. He’d bought the land just before the end of the war, and Kasidy had decided to build the home he’d designed and live there until his return. Through Kira, Julian knew that she’d agonized over the kitchen, about everything from whether or not to put in a dividing wall to what kind of appliances Sisko would want.
“It’s finished already?” Julian asked. “Last I heard, there was some problem finding the right kind of, ah, cooking device.”
“Quark came through,” Kasidy said. “Don’t ask me where he found it, either. Original wood stoves are hard to come by these days. As for the rest of the house, you’d be surprised how quickly things go when everyone on the planet wants you to get settled in.”
“That’s all right with you, isn’t it?” Julian asked gently.
“Most of the time. They care about him, too, in their own way.”
She seemed a bit melancholy, but not actually depressed. Under the circumstances, it was the best he could hope for. Having one’s love whisked away to fulfill his own spiritual destiny couldn’t be easy, particularly with a baby on the way. Love could be such a tenuous thing, running from emotional ecstasy to fear of loss and back again in a matter of days, hours, really. There were times he felt so connected to Ezri, so elated with what they had, that it was hard to accept the distance that could grow up between them sometimes, as sudden and strange as…
“…a robbery on board. Julian?”
He started. “I’m sorry, I’m a bit distracted this morning. You were saying?”
“I said that the station seems different now. Even dangerous sometimes. Did you hear about the robbery?”
“Yes. Two people were killed, I’m sorry to say.”
Kasidy shook her head. “There are just so many strangers here, lately. I really think this move will be good for me. For us.”
Julian smiled. “I think that anything that makes you happy will be good for you, and the baby.”
She patted the swell beneath her fingers. “Me, too. Another two weeks and we’ll be setting up house. We’ll be visiting a lot—I’m still part-time with the Commerce Ministry, at least until the big day—but Bajor will be home.”
A positive note to end on. He stood up, and was about to tell her to check in before she left, when she asked him a question he wasn’t sure how to answer.
“So, distracted, huh? How are things going with Ezri?”
“I’m—fine. Well, I think.” He felt suddenly flustered, and sat down again. Kasidy’s kind expression was inviting, and he hadn’t really had a chance to talk about his relationship since—since Miles had left.
Has it really been that long? He shared so much with Ezri, it hadn’t occurred to him to talk about her with anyone. And things were going well, weren’t they?
Julian took a deep breath, and started talking. And quickly discovered that he had more to say than he thought.
As usual, there was a lull in business as the last of the late-night drinkers straggled out and the early breakfast crowd chirped in, but there was a fifteen percent drop from the day before, which meant Quark wasn’t happy. It was those damned security guards, hassling his clientele and the staff for details about the murder. Not only had he lost half of his breakfasters to T’Pril’s—although why someone would dare Vulcan cuisine first thing in the morning was anyone’s guess—he’d had to offer several of his less reputable customers free drinks just to keep them from fleeing. So when he saw Ro Laren walk into the bar, he wasn’t nearly as charming as usual; as entirely awe-inspiring as she was, fifteen percent was enough to shrivel his lobes.
“How about you tell your people to leave my customers alone?” he snapped, in lieu of a greeting. “If I remember correctly—and I do—the incident occurred outside, on the Promenade. Not in here.”
Ro sat at the bar, her lean body bent toward him, a slight, curling smile playing across her lips. “And a good morning to you, Quark. Would you do me a favor and take a look at this?”
Still smiling, she dropped a slip of paper on the bar and leaned back, crossing her arms. Quark ignored the slip and studied her for a moment, not sure what she was up to. He’d heard a lot of interesting things about Ro, of course, practically everyone on the station had, but he hadn’t had much of a chance to interact with her on a professional level. From the stories that had preceded her arrival, he’d expected DS9’s new head of security to run around throwing tantrums, stealing Federation supplies, and shooting people—but so far she’d been a disappointment, employing almost Odo-like tactics to interfere with his less than legal enterprises. She’d already managed to re-route several contraband shipments, and with Rom gone and Nog too busy to help his own uncle, Quark had been forced to actually buy a program to further randomize his security code generator.
At least Ro doesn’t gloat about it. And unlike her predecessor, she’s not in love with Kira. Nowhere close. The friction between the two women was already well-established, a definite point in her favor; between that and her looks, Quark wasn’t quite prepared to write her off as a liability.
“Of course,” he said, picking up the slip of paper and mustering his most seductive smile. “Anything for you, Lieutenant—”
He saw what was on the slip and his smile froze; his name and a series of numbers, written by that Bajoran monk. She’d promised that she would commit her storage code to memory and destroy the hard-copy scrap, but it seemed she’d gone and died before getting around to it. Aware of Ro’s close scrutiny, he casually dropped it on the bar and shrugged, silently cursing. The woman was dead, but there was his reputation to consider.
“Doesn’t mean a thing to me. Where did you say you found it?”
“I didn’t.”
He waited, but she didn’t elaborate any further, only gazed at him serenely, ever smiling. Quark shrugged again, wondering how much she actually knew.
And to think, my nephew could have been security chief…
“I really have no idea,” Quark said finally. “Maybe she was going to meet someone here, that’s why it says my name, and those numbers—could mean a time…”
He realized his mistake before Ro could point it out, and did his best to cover. He had to start getting to bed earlier; these late nights were killing him. “I mean, I assume this is something about that murdered woman. Isn’t it?”
“Give it up, Quark. I found it in her bag and you know it, and you also know what it means.” Her dark eyes sparkled. “You already owe me for not telling Kira about that shipment of phaser scopes.”
Quark feigned innocence. “What phaser scopes? Really, Lieutenant, I don’t know—”
Ro moved so fast he didn’t have time to react, reaching across the bar and taking a firm hold of both his ears—not hard enough to hurt, but pain was imminent. Quark froze, shocked, afraid to breathe. She leaned over, so close that her soft voice tickled his left tympanic membrane, arousing in him a strange combination of excitement and terror. Her tone was as firm and unyielding as her grasp.
“Listen carefully, Quark,” she half-whispered, sweet and deadly at once. “I don’t have a problem with your petty schemes to make money, and unless you’re dealing in something dangerous or unethical, I’m often as n
ot willing to look the other way. I’m not Kira and I’m not Starfleet and a victimless crime is just that, right? But if you don’t tell me what I want to know when I ask for it, I’ll teach you new meanings of the word ‘sorry.’ And what I want to know right now is what you know about Istani Reyla. Make no mistake, this is not open to negotiation.”
She abruptly let go, leaving him stunned but unhurt, and in the time it took him to catch his breath, Quark decided two things: one, that it was in his best interests to tell her about the monk—she’d really only paid him a pittance, anyway—and two, he was halfway in love.
Kasidy walked back to her quarters slowly, thinking about Dax and the doctor. She didn’t know either of them as well as Ben had, especially Dax….
…but some things never change, and probably never will. Ah, love!
Kasidy grinned. The look on Julian’s face had been so sincere, so entirely heartfelt as he talked about Ezri, and the “problems” so normal. He worried that they thought differently about some things, and said she sometimes seemed bored by his work. He felt lonely sometimes, and didn’t know what she was thinking. He said she wanted to be alone occasionally, and that he did, too, but was afraid for them to spend too much time apart. Every now and then, he felt overwhelmed by emotion for her—and every now and then, she got on his nerves, and what did that mean?
The brilliant doctor was certainly clueless in some ways, and Kasidy suspected that Ezri, for all her lifetimes, was probably on the same ship. They were in love, that was all. In love and finding out what that meant, once the initial shine wore off. Falling in love was easy; maintaining a relationship was work, no matter how emotionally or intellectually developed the participants were, and it wasn’t always fun.
“I just want us to be happy. I don’t want things to become dull for her. Or me,” Bashir had stated, so honestly that Kasidy had been hard-pressed to keep a straight face. And he’d been visibly distressed by her advice, that there was no way to set everything up in advance, to avoid mistakes before they happened—that it would take time to learn about each other, to let things unfold.