Taran’atar stepped onto ops. From her vantage, Kira could see the cold set of his eyes. Symbolically adjusting his weapons belt, the Jem’Hadar’s hand hovered over his sidearm as he strode past Macet without acknowledging him, a pointed gesture he clearly wanted the Cardassian to see. Because in seeing his hands ready to engage a weapon at the slightest provocation, the gul would know Taran’atar was prepared to fight. He’s laying the footings for a psychological war with Macet.
Macet responded to the Jem’Hadar with a smirk before he entered the lift. “Habitat ring,” he said, and as the lift descended, he turned his smile on Kira before disappearing from view.
“You wished to see me, Colonel?” Taran’atar said as he entered her office.
Kira was still looking thoughtfully at the turbolift doors when she got down to business. “I believe there was an incident recently involving your continued shrouding aboard the station that we need to straighten out…”
When she reached her office, Ro pushed Thriss into a chair and immediately contacted Dr. Tarses with a request that the new Starfleet counselor stop by for a consultation. Councillor zh’Thane would have concerns about privacy, but Ro didn’t give a damn. Thriss had started a bar brawl and deserved to be treated like anyone else who might have started a fight, be she common drunk or royalty.
As she began to process Thriss—taking her personal belongings and performing a general scan to assure she wasn’t carrying any hidden weapons—Ro couldn’t help thinking how ironic it was that trouble hadn’t come from where it had been expected. They’d taken massive precautions to assure that the station would be safe from the Cardassians and that the Cardassians would be safe from the station. That Ro’s biggest headaches had come from the Andorians instead of Macet’s crew was predictably unpredictable.
Thriss complied completely with Ro’s orders. She didn’t cry, offer protestations of innocence or petulant sarcasm; she stared off at nothing. Neither did she resist being led away to the holding cell and once she was there, she immediately lay down and fell asleep. Ro wrote her incident report, ignoring the semiregular pages from Councillor zh’Thane. She told the night shift corporal to take the names of anyone—meaning zh’Thane—who wanted to talk with her. Or let them make morning appointments and she would deal with their grievances then. From her monitor, she periodically checked in on the sleeping Thriss until she was satisfied this round was over. At least until Thriss woke up and then, with any luck, Ro would be back in her quarters and the counselor could manage any outbursts. Overall, Ro had guardedly optimistic expectations, though Councillor zh’Thane might still make her life a living hell in retribution for locking up Thriss.
When the therapist arrived, Ro put aside her usual distrust of counselors and shook Lieutenant Commander Phillipa Matthias’s offered hand. The counselor met her eyes directly when they exchanged names, unapologetically bypassed the usual social niceties and went straight to business. Impressive, Ro thought. If Matthias didn’t employ the usual touchy-feely, mind game hocuspocus techniques, she might look forward to involving the counselor in more of her investigations. Ro had developed a healthy dislike for mental health professionals during her incarceration. “Could this be latent anger against your sense of childhood abandonment?” had been Ro’s favorite query. Excuse me? A sense of abandonment? How about wholesale repression of your people as justification for being a little pissed off!
When Matthias asked for background information, Ro launched into the story of the bar fight and the parameters of the odd meeting with Councillor zh’Thane. Matthias halted Ro before she could get into specifics.
“Councillor zh’Thane’s perspective, while illuminating, is still her perspective. Thriss deserves an unbiased evaluation. Knowing that there’s some precedent for Thriss’ behavior is enough to get started. You have her in a holding cell. That would be…?” She gestured, inquiring at the four doors in Ro’s office that led deeper into the security station.
Before Ro could reply, a dark, bearded Bajoran man, hair threaded with gray, entered from the Promenade carrying a squirming toddler—a girl—and holding a young boy’s hand. Ro didn’t need to ask who the children belonged to: they had the same hazel green eyes she’d been looking into for the past few minutes.
“Sibias…?” Matthias said, clearly fishing for an explanation.
She nodded toward her guest. “Lieutenant Ro, station security.”
“Chon Sibias, Commander Matthias’s husband, and these are our children,” he said, shifting his daughter’s weight from one shoulder to another. “Pleasure meeting you, Lieutenant.”
Whenever Ro met a Bajoran, she peered at their earring to see if she could discern the individual’s family or geographical origins. The unique characteristics of Chon’s earring intrigued her, but before she could inquire further, the chubby-fisted girl wriggled out of her father’s arms and threw her arms around her mother’s legs, nearly tipping her backward.
“I couldn’t sleep, Mommy!” she wailed.
“The children wanted to say good night, Phillipa,” Sibias offered apologetically. His wife threw a hand against the wall to maintain her balance. The boy, about eight, shuttled behind his father, peeking out from behind his legs with shy seriousness. His rumpled pajamas and mussed hair indicated he might have been roused from bed to accompany his sister on this late-night visit.
“My room is scary. There are monsters in my closet,” she pouted, petulantly extending her lip.
Brushing the child’s tangled dark curls out of her face, Matthias dropped to one knee and refastened a crookedly done-up nightgown. “Mireh. Your father will make sure you have a wristlight so you can check under your bed as often as you like, but you need to go back to your bed. No dropping your tooth cleaner in the replicator and pretending you can’t find it. No hiding Walter in Arios’s closet. Your father will say no if you ask to sleep in our room,” she said over the child’s head, directly to her husband. “Right, Sibias?”
He rolled his eyes in mock protest. “You say that like she’s the one in charge, Phillipa.”
“Isn’t she?” Matthias said, arching an eyebrow.
“My father used to play the klavion to keep me from being afraid,” Ro interjected. She crouched down beside Matthias.
“Maybe your dad has something special like that he can do for you.”
“Hey, you have funny wrinkles like my dad and the kids in my class,” Mireh said, pointing at Ro’s nose. “And like me!” She touched her finger to her own nose and began giggling.
“Mireh has never been—I’ve never been—around a lot of Bajorans. It’s still a novelty to her,” Sibias explained.
Matthias stretched an arm toward her son. “I’d like to say good night before you leave, Arios.” The boy twisted his head into his shoulder, blushing. Sibias lifted him by the collar and pushed him toward his mother. She caught Arios’s elbow and pulled him into her arms, feathering his forehead with kisses.
Ro stood up, giving the mother and her children some room to be affectionate. Normally such scenes of domesticity pressed all the wrong buttons with Ro. Having been orphaned young and having grown up in the resettlement camps, Ro had known little of family life, the closest thing being the time she served on the Enterprise and she had more or less messed that relationship up. But this family, for some reason, didn’t annoy her so much. Maybe I’m mellowing in my old age. She stood next to Sibias, who appeared content to let his wife have some one-on-one time with their children.
“You didn’t grow up on Bajor?” she asked him.
“I was an orphan in the Karnoth resettlement camp, or so the records say,” he said matter-of-factly. “Smuggled off when I was Arios’s age. I grew up far away from here on a Federation colony. While Phillipa is stationed here, I’m hoping to find out exactly where my family comes from.” He twirled the earring chain between his thumb and forefinger, as if this piece of his heritage was at once familiar and foreign.
Ro had heard far too many stori
es like Sibias’ during her years away from Bajor. Thousands of misplaced children were spirited away from starvation and disease only to discover as adults that they lacked cultural bearings. “Start near the Tilar Peninsula in the Hedrickspool Province. These markings,” she pointed to several ridges and runes, “they’re unique to an area just outside the outback.”
He touched her arm, his eyes full of questions she knew he couldn’t ask. “Thank you.”
“If I can help…”
“I know. I’ll stop by sometime. I’d like to talk with you.”
With a reluctant sigh, Commander Matthias sent both children scurrying back to their father. “I might be all night,” she warned her husband.
Sibias nodded. “I plan on attending the first service in the morning. Will you be back by then?”
“I hope so, I—” With eyes watering, Matthias pinched her lips tightly together; she swallowed a yawn with a gulp. “So tomorrow night?”
“We’ll try to go out again.” He kissed her. “You know how much I hate sleeping without you.” They exchanged smiles and she watched as her little family departed.
“Let’s go see Thriss,” Matthias said, letting Ro lead her out of the office. As they walked, Ro guessed the holding area wouldn’t be the most pleasant spot to work from; it was designed to accommodate prisoners and guards, not host therapy sessions. “The visuals can be transmitted into the conference room if you’d rather work in comfort.”
Matthias didn’t seem concerned. “All I need is a place to sit—the floor is fine. I’d like to start off with in-person observations.”
They wound through a hallway and passed through another door before arriving at the holding area. The Andorian hadn’t moved since Ro had last checked her; prostrate on a hard bench without a pillow or blankets, she slept with her knees curled into her stomach, her hands balled into fists. She failed to stir when they entered. “She doesn’t seem to be in a talking mood,” Ro pointed out pragmatically.
“Exhaustion will do that to a person,” Matthias said, walking up next to the force field where she could study Thriss at closer range. She tipped her head thoughtfully, brought a hand to her chin and gnawed on her index finger. “I’m satisfied to work from here. Thriss’ posture, her muscular tension, the length of her REM cycles—all can yield significant data about her state of mind.” She patted an equipment bag she had thrown over her shoulder. “Besides, I have a tricorder I’ve engineered to my own specs that can help out.” Matthias paused, scrutinizing Ro after a fashion that made Ro wonder if her secret thoughts were translatable via the number of times her eyes blinked or how often she pushed back her bangs. Counselors, even reasonable ones, made her nervous.
“Your cheek,” Matthias said, addressing Ro’s quizzical expression. “You might want Dr. Girani to look it over.”
“Good idea.” Still more than ready to assume the worst about people’s intentions. Nice going, Laren. Ro touched her face, feeling out the size of her bruise with her fingers; she had forgotten about her own injuries. A swipe with a dermal regenerator would likely fix the bruise on her face, but there was always the chance Thriss’s assault had resulted in a fracture or sprain. “Okay. Since I’m done here, go ahead and make yourself at home. The replicator’s over there. If you need additional help, page the corporal on duty. Don’t hesitate to contact me if the situation blows all to hell.”
“Oh believe me. If it goes to hell, you’ll be beamed here in your sleepwear.”
Ro appreciated the new counselor’s lack of faux sympathy; she hated how some counselors felt obligated to put on the “I-feel-your-pain” face. Matthias knew her job and went about doing it—without theatrics.
As Ro started for the exit, she heard Matthias move to the replicator and say, “Espresso, double and black,” before she settled in to begin her observations of Thriss.
9
Down a dim tunnel, the rattling slidewalk chugged toward the Core, periodically stalling when the grinding gears jammed, only to resume with a jerk and continue forward. Vaughn hardly noticed: he might as well have been standing still. Seething sounds receded as his thoughts consumed his attention. The dregs of the Gamma Quadrant swirled around him, hefting their tankards, negotiating sales and sharing canisters of psychoactive vapors. So preoccupied was he, that when a Knesska miner’s red horned lizard jumped off his master’s shoulder and onto Vaughn’s it took a moment to register. In the last few minutes, an inescapable sense of déjà vu had vaulted him back more years than he’d admit to.
During the summer between Vaughn’s second and third years at the Academy, he and a group of friends had heard rumors of an exotic shrine on a tropical world in the Braslota system. Supposedly, drinking the water flowing through the shrine from the underground pools endowed the partaker with potent aphrodisiac powers. Lured by the promise of decadent delights, native men and women would sneak out of their homes at night and into the pilgrim camps where they would offer themselves up for seduction. While most thinking individuals would find such a legend highly suspect, Vaughn and his classmates, looking for diversion from the rigors of academia, decided a vacation was in order. They procured passage on a Rigelian shuttle, transferred to a freighter bound for Volchok Prime and met a merchant willing to drop them off.
After three days hiking through the jungle, they found the shrine, attended by a wizened humanoid of unknown extraction, drank the water, retired to their sleeping bags and awaited their prospective encounters.
Instead, Chloe came down with dysentery, Vaughn’s tricorder was swiped from his backpack and everyone awoke with a profusion of deter-fly bites. The experience taught him the wisdom of the old adage: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
This humiliating moment from his youth replayed in vivid detail as he listened to Minister M’Yeoh explain that for all their painstaking efforts during the last day, the desperately needed matter load eluded them. Everything M’Yeoh and Runir had said indicated that success was guaranteed; Vaughn hadn’t even conceived a contingency plan. Yes, there was something to be said for enjoying the journey, as he’d learned from his encounter with the Inamuri but with each passing day, he wondered how long the mission would be permanently bogged down in this region. If there was quicksand in the Gamma Quadrant, they’d flown into it.
As he half listened to M’Yeoh’s quasi-intelligible explanations about how and why the trade might have failed, Vaughn reviewed the day, from the beginning, and tried to figure out where he mis stepped.
Early in the Consortium’s thirty-hour day, Vaughn and Minister M’Yeoh obtained the proper permits for trading on the Exchange, the forum where loads were traded. M’Yeoh took Vaughn to meet the broker—a mild-mannered Legelian named Runir—who would represent them on the Exchange floor. Runir handled the Yrythny accounts. From the plush divans to marbled-glass light fixtures, he appeared to successfully manage the accounts of other clients as well. Maybe this is where we fell down—all the documentation we signed off on had to be translated into Federation standard. If our translators missed cultural nuances… He shook his head, knowing they had to solve this problem quickly.
“Can we resubmit our bid tomorrow?” Vaughn asked, loathing the prospect of wasting more days attempting to devise an alternative defense to the web weapons.
M’Yeoh pushed his hands up into caftan sleeves, pinching his mouth into a tight line. “I think not. We start over.”
“Runir must earn profit by the word,” Nog groused. “But the thing that doesn’t make sense…” He twisted his lobe between his thumb and forefinger as his voice trailed off. When he realized Vaughn, Prynn and M’Yeoh waited for him to complete his sentence, he grinned broadly. “Never mind. It’s nothing. I still say we should reuse the contract.”
Vaughn recognized that look. Nog was on to something. Thankfully, his chief engineer knew when not to finish a sentence.
And Nog was right. It had been a perfectly decent contract. He had examined it with an eye to every possible
deceitful angle and found nothing. Initially, Nog had been invited to join Vaughn and M’Yeoh to evaluate the metallurgical quality of available matter loads. His radiant face as he’d watched Vaughn and Runir wheeling and dealing proved that you can take a Ferengi out of commerce, but you can’t take the commerce out of the Ferengi. The femtobot simulations back on the Avaril were all but forgotten as Nog had hung on Runir’s explanations, constantly interrupting the trader with nitpicky questions: “What are the currency units?” “Who sets the exchange rates?” and the finer points of the Exchange’s bartering protocols. Nog’s willingness to do most of the talking had allowed Vaughn to keep his eye on M’Yeoh, look for any hint of impropriety. He hadn’t forgotten the tactics employed by the Yrythny back on Luthia, or discounted the fact that the Defiant had been illicitly boarded within hours of the Avaril’ s launch. Surrendering the acquisition issues to Nog served both of their causes. Even the needs of their other companion, Prynn, appeared to be met as she enjoyed every hour away from Avaril.
Cabin fever had started taking root when the relentless engineering repairs, disrupted routine, and being caged aboard the Avaril began to wear on the crew. Morale had steadily declined since leaving Luthia and he sympathized. As a goodwill gesture, Vaughn had offered the “break” as a poker bet in last night’s game. Prynn rode a lucky streak to a win. Who’d have guessed my own daughter would turn out to be a card sharp? For the others, mini-shore leave would come after business was taken care of.
Except now it appears business won’t be taken care of, he thought. Shoulder to shoulder, aliens blocked Vaughn from being able to see how much distance separated them from the Core’s Central Business District. He leaned off to the side only to have his view obstructed by clouds of chemical coolants bursting from cracked conduits.
Behind him, M’Yeoh muttered a question that Vaughn couldn’t hear over the racket. “Excuse me, Minister, but would you repeat that?”
This Gray Spirit Page 19