by S. D. Perry
Think, think, you want this woman on your side— He hadn’t been prepared, foolishly assuming that his selfless heroism would pay off, and—as was his everlasting luck—it had backfired. But as long as she was being amenable, he should do whatever he could to further the bond between them.
—not the flowers, and the bribe window is closed—work the Kira angle. Allying himself against the colonel might help things along; any opportunity in a storm. He’d actually come to respect Kira’s shrewdness over the years, a fact that only threat of severe torture would force him to admit to the woman’s face—but she was still a headache. Besides which, she made the big decisions, but it was Ro who’d be enforcing them, and therefore Ro he wanted to side with.
“You’re probably right,” he said, sighing. “I know the colonel would love nothing more than to catch the two of us falling short of her high moral standards.”
Ro’s smile faded, and he hurried on, not wanting to be too obvious. “Don’t get me wrong—I like Kira, she’s a fine commander and all that…but her self-righteousness can be a little trying at times.”
“I don’t suppose I know her well enough to say,” Ro said neutrally, watching him carefully now. “Is there a point to this, Quark?”
“No, no, of course not. Making conversation, I suppose.” He was about to let it drop, deciding that he’d totally misread the opportunities here, but a real curiosity struck him about the two women, something he’d wondered about since the first day Ro had come to the station.
And it’s not like I have anything to lose, he thought sourly.
“If it’s not too personal, may I ask why you wear your earring on your left ear?” Every other Bajoran he’d ever known always wore it on the right.
Ro’s smile crept back. “May I ask why you’re asking?”
Quark shrugged. “Honestly, because I’ve noticed that it seems to bother some of the other Bajorans on board.”
Particularly Kira. And “bother” was a serious understatement, but he saw no point in giving her a complex.
Ro seemed almost pleased. “That is honest. All right, Quark, I’ll tell you. I wear it in memory of my father. He loved his culture, and in my own way, I suppose I do, too. But I’ve never been very religious. Not all Bajorans are, you know. Wearing my earring on the left was the best way to discourage the random vedek from wandering up to feel my pagh…which, you may know, is traditionally felt by taking hold of the left ear. For different reasons, of course, the practice was also taken up by the Pah-wraith cultists….”
“…which explains why people don’t like it,” Quark finished, and though his hopes for having the head of security in his pocket were still dashed, his romantic interest had rekindled explosively. She’d actually gone out of her way to annoy, upset, and alienate her own kind.
What a woman.
“Right.”
She didn’t continue, only sat with that amused expression on her fine face, and though he felt a sudden, wild urge to profess the seriousness of his intent, Quark decided that he’d better leave before he offered her something expensive. He needed time to work out a new strategy.
“Well, I suppose I’d better let you get back to work,” he said, standing. “Drop by the bar later, if you like. I’ll…buy you a drink.”
“Thank you, I’ll do that,” she said, and with another bright smile, she turned her attention back to whatever was on her desk monitor.
Quark walked slowly back to the bar, his heart full, his lobes tingling, Rules battling through his mind. The 94th Rule, “Females and finances don’t mix,” was one he’d ignored to his own disadvantage on more than one occasion…but the 62nd Rule was louder, drowning out his concerns by its simple, love-friendly truth:
“The riskier the road, the greater the profit.”
Oh, yes; quite a woman.
Chapter Fourteen
It had been some time since they’d made love, their lives too hectic, too rushed for anything but sleep…and since the attack on the station only two days before, Ezri had seemed distant, or at least preoccupied. Julian didn’t mind, particularly; he’d been preoccupied himself with a second wave of minor injuries, from pulled muscles to stress headaches. And although the death watch was finally, thankfully, over, he still had the incidental cases he’d discovered while treating first-wave problems. Most had already been dealt with, but there was one he couldn’t seem to “leave at the office,” as it were, and he’d woken up thinking about it.
While cauterizing a scalp laceration on a Hupyrian freighter cook, a standard blood scan had picked up a fairly rare genetic disorder specific to the species—not lethal, but potentially debilitating at some future point, similar to what would have once been called rheumatoid arthritis in a human. The medical database didn’t have much on it, but Julian thought he saw a few possibilities, assuming he could keep the sequences in proper order.
It was early, both of them in bed, more than an hour before he had to get up. Ezri was still asleep and Julian was working through one of his sequencing ideas, staring absently at the padd with the cook’s chart. He’d gone to her quarters late the night before and they’d both been exhausted, falling comfortably asleep not long after his arrival.
Julian was just deciding that altered nucleic material re-injected into the Hupyrian’s secondary pituitary-like gland might be the answer when Ezri reached out to him. The gently playful smile on her face as she touched his arm, stroking it, suggested that she’d been awake for at least a few moments.
“And what do you want?” he asked lightly, smiling back at her, setting the padd aside. Eight days, fourteen and a half hours, give or take a few minutes, and he carefully ignored the precise thought, reorienting his focus from the literal to the feel of her hand.
Ezri grinned, snuggling closer against him, twining her fingers through his. “What do you got?”
“I hope that’s rhetorical,” he said, and slid down so that he was facing her. Still holding hands, they kissed, slowly and gently, with love more than passion—at first. With his eyes closed, he still saw her, the soft warmth of her smile, the perfume of her hair and her skin enveloping him. Ezri was a physically beautiful woman, but her looks didn’t matter, not here and now. It was her presence, it was the feel of them together that fired his senses, thrilling each part of him.
They shifted, breaking their kiss long enough to reposition themselves, Julian moving over her, looking down at her sweet, flushed face, her slightly dilated eyes, as excited by the awareness of being with her as by his own physical sensations. For so long in his life he’d only known shadows of such feelings, never understanding how much more there could be, what was even possible.
He bent and kissed her again, the thinking part of him falling further away as she closed her eyes, pulling him closer…and in another shift of limbs they were together, and it was wonderful. He watched her smile widen, heard the soft murmurings from her throat that he’d come to cherish, the tousled bangs across her brow, feeling love, feeling completely embraced by the friend he knew in her—
—and she opened her eyes, and everything changed.
For a split second, his mind couldn’t grasp what he suddenly knew, but the sound of her voice brought it all together.
“Julian,” she breathed, and her voice was deeper, sultry and languid. It matched the darker blue of her eyes, and of course she was Ezri…but she was Jadzia, too. Jadzia, gazing up at him in passion’s abandon.
When they finally displaced his shock, the feelings were complex, multilayered and overwhelming—fear and confusion, mainly, but there was also a sense of betrayal, glimmers of excitement, of nostalgia, of loneliness.
His response was much simpler. He instinctively pulled away from her, wanting to be covered, to protect himself. Trembling, he rolled over and sat up, pulling the rumpled bedclothes around his waist, his body forgetting the flush of sex as if no such thing existed. His thoughts were in chaos, his heart pounding. He felt like he’d been hit.
; A few seconds later, a tentative hand on his shoulder, and Ezri’s clear voice, gentle with concern.
“Are you okay?”
He tensed away from her, not sure how to feel about her touch for the first time since they’d become lovers.
“What just happened?” he asked, his voice harsher than he meant it to be, quite aware of what had happened, if not how. “The way you looked at me, I—what happened?”
He turned and saw Ezri, her wide, worried gaze, the curves of her face soft with compassion—
—but maybe that’s Audrid, or Emony. Or any of them.
“I’m…I was—” She frowned, her body language changing abruptly. She pulled her knees to her chest and held them, staring down toward her feet.
“I’m not sure,” she said, but it was all wrong. She didn’t sound sorry, or afraid, or unhappy. The look on her face, the tone of her voice, was deeply thoughtful.
“I was thinking about the time that you let Jadzia sleep in your cabin, on the Defiant,” she said slowly. “Remember? When you gave up the top bunk for her…she thought about that later, and I was—”
She looked up at him, her expression unreadable. “I felt like Jadzia would have felt, just for a few seconds,” she said intently. “I mean, it was me, but she was—it was different, it was—it wasn’t the same, it was…”
She trailed off, staring into his eyes. And still, she wasn’t a bit sorry, he could see it, as if she’d forgotten his reaction.
Or as if she doesn’t care.
“Different,” he finished, and reached down for his clothes, a rumpled heap on the floor. He stood and started to dress, not wanting to be in bed with her for where things were going.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and surely she meant it—but was there a touch of exasperation in her tone? Could he trust that there wasn’t?
“I was making love to you,” he said angrily. Scooping up his boots, he moved to the edge of the bed and sat, not looking at her. “Can you understand that I might not want to change partners in the middle of it?”
Her voice was much cooler than his, verging on cold. “You didn’t, Julian. I’m Ezri Dax. Can you understand that?”
“Right,” he snapped, jerking on his second boot and standing. “Got it. Why don’t you bring Tobin along next time, see how he feels? Or Lela, or Curzon?”
“Why don’t you grow up,” she retorted, “and try to see past yourself? I’m a joined Trill, and that’s not going to change, ever. Why can’t you see that all of me is Ezri, that I’m a whole being? That I don’t have to limit myself to some species-specific concept of individuality?”
Her tone had changed from angry to near pleading, but he was too worked up to stop, unable to believe how insensitive she was being, furious at the implications of her words.
“Sorry to be so simplistic, Dax,” he said, regretting it even as he spoke. The look of hurt that flashed across her eyes almost quenched his anger. Almost, but even if he wanted to take it back, he wasn’t sure how.
“You should leave,” she said, face pale except for two hectic spots of color, high on her cheeks.
“My thoughts exactly,” he said, and turned for the door. He didn’t look back, and as he hit the corridor and started for his own quarters, a part of him marveled at how quickly things could change, as quickly as a look in someone’s eyes.
Nog’s hands were filthy, streaked with ash and blackened bits of melted polymer. He’d just finished replacing yet another in a series of torched computer boards and found himself staring down at his hands, noting each dark, chemical smudge, knowing if he raised them to his face, he would smell burning destruction. It was mindless work, shifting boards, but responsibilities were delegated for the moment, and he couldn’t do much more with the Defiant until the shipment of parts arrived from Starbase 375. The new warhead module would have to come directly from Utopia Planitia itself, and that might take weeks. And the truth was, he’d chosen the one area no one else wanted to work in because he felt like it was the least he could do. It was the smell, he thought, that the other engineers hated so much, a reminder of what had happened. The lower core’s atmosphere had been blasted clean through stacked filters, but the burn smell was still there, coating every twisted wire, caked on every fire-blown component.
You’re not responsible, Nog, none of this is your fault…. Ezri’s heartfelt words from after the briefing echoed in his mind, words he almost believed, but her voice was far away. Down in this subsection, working with a few grim-faced and silent techs in the broken spaces where forty-six people had died, a lot of things seemed far away. He knew that nobody blamed him; earlier, after the memorial service, he’d been stopped by at least a dozen people who’d gone out of their way to tell him as much—
—but if I had organized everything better, if I’d pushed harder to get things done on time…
It was useless thinking. At the Academy, he’d taken PTP 1 along with everyone else—post-traumatic psych was a requisite course, even the Klingons had a version of it—and they’d hammered on the concept of useless thinking, and how guilt was essentially worthless beyond a certain point. But thinking about that only made him feel worse. Not only had he failed as an officer, contributing hugely to how effective the Jem’Hadar’s attack had been, now he was wallowing in worthless guilt. Even when he’d lost his leg, he hadn’t felt so terrible. At least then, he alone had been the one—
“Sir?”
Nog looked up and saw Shar standing over him, his dusky blue face uncharacteristically sober. The ensign held a tool kit.
“I thought we agreed you’d call me Nog from now on,” Nog said. Maybe he’d get used to it someday, but he still didn’t feel like a “sir.” Particularly not today. He and Shar had actually been at the Academy at about the same time, but had never met before Shar’s assignment to the station.
The Andorian nodded, speaking in his strangely formal way. “You’re right, Nog, forgive me. Colonel Kira thought you might be able to use me down here.”
Nog frowned. “I thought you were working on the sensor arrays.”
“I was, but only because no one else was available. I miswired the secondary cilia circuits for the short-range particle samplers. It was an accident, I knew the correct sequence, but it will take several hours to restring. The colonel said that replacing circuit boards might be easier for me.”
Nog couldn’t help a small smile. Shar was the most mechanically inept Andorian he’d ever met. “Okay. You can help me test these. I’ll trigger, you check.”
Shar crouched next to him and opened his tool kit, pulling out a diagnostic padd. Nog waited until he was situated and then started turning on the replaced boards, making minor adjustments as they went.
After a few moments, Shar broke the near-silence hesitantly. “Nog, may I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Were you a witness to Commander Jast’s death?”
Nog had been expecting a technical question, or something about the Federation’s plans, and felt new guilt crash over him, remembering that Shar had been friendly with Jast.
“Yes,” Nog said dully, feeling his ears flush.
Shar looked at him curiously. “Nog, are you all right?”
“What’s your question, Shar?” Nog asked, wishing he was a million light-years away, wishing he was at Vic’s, balancing the books and drinking two-olive martinis, wishing he was anywhere but here.
“I only wanted to ask if you thought she died without pain,” Shar said softly. “But I see now that I have upset you. I’m sorry. Were you and the commander close?”
Nog stopped working and shook his head miserably. Before he could stop himself, he blurted out the truth. “No, we weren’t, but it’s my fault she’s dead.”
Shar stared at him. “How is that possible? I thought she was killed by an electrical surge when the Defiant was under attack….”
Before Nog could say anything, Shar nodded his comprehension, answering himself. “You’re attemp
ting to assume responsibility because the upgrades were unfinished. I believe Colonel Kira feels the same way. Also, Lieutenant Bowers, Lieutenant Nguyen, and Nancy Sthili feel similarly, judging by their behavior. I’m fairly certain they all feel some measure of guilt for not performing more efficiently, either before or during the attack.”
Nog was totally surprised. “Really? Why do they feel guilty?”
“Why do you?” Shar asked. “It was the Jem’Hadar who attacked us.”
Nog opened his mouth to respond—and then closed it again, frowning. It wasn’t as though some awesome truth had dawned on him suddenly, setting him free from all self-doubt—but he thought Shar had a point. Maybe the station could have been better prepared, but the real responsibility for what had happened didn’t lay with anyone on the station.
Not with us. With them. The reminder instantly shifted his guilt, transforming it. The thought of their spiky, emotionless faces filled Nog with a powerful hatred that had become all too familiar in the last year, a mix of rage and fear unlike any he’d ever known. They were monsters, brutal, evil monsters.
“Have you ever dealt with the Jem’Hadar, face to face?” Nog asked, hardly recognizing his own voice. It was so old, so very old and wise and deadly soft. The Jem’Hadar had given him that voice.
“Not directly,” Shar said. “I know something about their chemical and genetic makeup, through some of the Vorta research we did during the war, but I’ve only ever seen them from a distance.”
“If you’re lucky, you’ll never have to get any closer,” Nog said. “They shouldn’t exist, anyway, they aren’t even a real species, they’re…” He searched for the description he wanted and found it in a single word. “They’re abominations. They’re bred to be merciless killers, murderers. The Federation should have demanded their breeding programs stop when the treaty was being negotiated.” It didn’t even occur to him to wonder how such a thing could be enforced; he was too caught up in his own rage. “Maybe it’s not so bad after all, this task force. If the Jem’Hadar attack now, they’ll get wiped out.”