Orta stared down at Kira, then looked over at the security people. “Two years ago, Cardassians trembled at my name. Now I’m preparing ground for farming. Some would call that tragic.”
“Really?” Shabalala said. “I’d call it progress.”
“I’m sure you would, Commander. I’d think that you have never had to fight for your very survival.”
Unbidden, images from the final mission of the Fearless entered Shabalala’s head. He banished them quickly. “You’d think incorrectly. It’s true that I’ve never had to live in caves, or wonder where my next meal was coming from. I’ve never been physically tortured or mutilated. But don’t think I’ve never had to fight, and don’t think I don’t know what it means to fight for something. The question for you is, were you fighting for Bajor or against the Cardassians? If it was the former, then now you’ve got a chance to make that fight mean something.”
Orta stared at Shabalala for several seconds before turning and heading toward the security detail without another word.
“Nicely put,” Kira said, giving her fellow first officer an appreciative look.
Shrugging, Shabalala said, “I simply said what I believed—as you did, Major. We shall see soon enough if it actually meant anything. What was that?” he added, hearing some shouting in the distance.
“What was what?” Kira asked.
Closing his eyes, Shabalala listened closer. Then he sighed. “Captain Keogh is yelling at Lieutenant Dax. If you’ll excuse me, Major, I’ll leave you to make sure Orta and his people prepare the ground. I need to go save my captain.”
“Good luck,” Kira said with a chuckle.
For Shabalala’s part, he winced at his own phrasing. Save my captain indeed, he thought. You aren’t exactly overburdened with a good track record in that regard, are you, Joe?
As he got closer, the shouting coalesced from Keogh-sounding noise to coherent words from the captain’s mouth: “—and then we can fire away.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Dax’s voice was not quite as loud as Keogh’s, but she, too, had raised her voice.
“No, Lieutenant, what’s ridiculous is wasting the time it will take to prepare the ground.”
Shabalala put on his best smile and asked, “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing is ‘wrong,’ Commander—” Keogh started.
“Except,” Dax interrupted, “that your captain’s not thinking things through.” Keogh was about to say something else, but Dax overlaid him. “With all due respect, sir,” she said with no respect in her tone whatsoever, “there’s too much risk in what you’re proposing.”
“It will take time to prepare the ground and modify the phasers to the right heat and magnitude and get the irrigation system up and running before we’re ready to begin,” Keogh said. “While that’s going on, we can have the housing entirely constructed—it’ll shave a good twelve hours off the start time.”
“Except,” Dax said, “that the housing then comes under the risk of being hit by a stray phaser blast. Orbital blasting isn’t exactly what you’d call an exact science.”
“We can protect the houses with force fields.”
“Or we can protect them by not building them at all until after there’s weapons fire nearby.”
“My ship is capable of precision firing, Lieutenant,” Keogh said tartly.
Shabalala sighed. This was typical Keogh: once he got an idea into his head, you couldn’t get it out with a phaser rifle. Even though Dax was obviously right, Keogh would not easily give in on this point.
“Captain,” Shabalala said before Dax could say another word, “our timetable is such that we don’t need to rush this. Yes, we’d save twelve hours—but that would be twelve hours we’d spend sitting on our hands. We can’t go to New Bajor for another three days in any case, as the supplies won’t be at DS9 until then. Why take the chance—admittedly, a small one, but still a chance—that something will go wrong with the phasering?”
Keogh glanced at his first officer. “I suppose you’re right, Commander, but I still feel like we’re wasting time.”
With that, he turned and walked away.
Dax looked at Shabalala and said, “Thank you. Is he always this—this—”
“Single-minded?” Shabalala asked with a smile.
Chuckling, Dax said, “I was going to say arrogant, but that works, too.” She turned toward the small mess area that had been set up a few meters away. “Join me for a cup of raktajino?”
“Gladly,” Shabalala said, following the intriguing lieutenant toward the circular array of benches and tables, in the center of which sat a replicator. About a dozen blue-and gold-shirted individuals sat at assorted benches—mostly noncommissioned engineers and science personnel who were taking a break from either irrigation or ground-preparation duty. Shabalala was proud to realize that he knew the names of each of them—and after being on board this ship with its complement of a thousand only for three months. “In any case, with the captain it’s mostly a matter of managing him. He is a good CO.”
Dax snorted. “Never thought I’d hear that about Deco Keogh.” They arrived at the replicator. “Two raktajinos.”
Shabalala smiled as the two Klingon coffees materialized. Dax had just given him a handy opening. “All right, Lieutenant, I have to ask—why do you keep calling him that?” It had, in fact, been the real reason why he agreed to join her in the raktajino.
“Because that’s what he asked me to call him.” Dax’s smile was very small and very mischievious looking—in fact, to Shabalala’s amusement, she looked exactly like his eleven-year-old daughter when she did something she wasn’t supposed to do. She handed him his mug, and they both sat down at an empty table. “He was a brash young lieutenant when I met him—and I was a cranky old male ambassador named Curzon who didn’t suffer brash young officers gladly.”
“That can’t be all there is to it?”
The smile widened. “No.” She took a sip of raktajino. Shabalala did likewise, and was instantly reminded why he mostly avoided this particular drink. Gamely, he swallowed the bitter liquid anyhow.
“So what’s the rest of it?” Shabalala asked, realizing that Dax wasn’t about to volunteer it.
“There was this woman.”
Unable to help himself, Shabalala laughed. “Why is it that every embarrassing story about a human male in his youth starts with the phrase, ‘There was this woman’?”
“Not sure,” Dax said thoughtfully, “but you’re right, it is a universal constant. In any event, I was on the Lexington for a diplomatic assignment—they were hosting a conference with the Antedeans. Young Lieutenant Keogh was chief of security, so he and I interacted quite a bit, since the Antedeans are prickly.”
“I thought they hated travelling through space.”
Nodding, Dax said, “They do. But as long as we didn’t hit the warp drive, we were fine. Anyway, remember this was two-and-a-half decades ago. So your esteemed captain looked—well, a bit different.”
“Different how?”
“Full head of lustrous brown hair down to his middle back, which he kept tied back in a ponytail.”
Shabalala blinked. He suddenly wished he’d ordered a Saurian brandy—a real one—instead of raktajino. “Captain Keogh? In a ponytail?”
Dax nodded. “And you know, looking back, he wasn’t at all bad looking. Not really my type, but I can see why several women on the ship vied for his attention.”
Grinning, Shabalala said, “Really?”
“Oh yes. Now the opening reception was supposed to happen on the rec deck. The night before the Antedeans were supposed to beam on board, I went down there to make sure all the preparations and such were in order.
“Unfortunately,” and here Dax’s smile grew deeper without growing wider somehow, “somebody was using the room, and had forgotten to engage the privacy seal.”
Shuddering, Shabalala said, “Captain Keogh?”
“Ol’Deco himself, with a female crewmate in
a very compromising position.”
Now I really wish this was a Saurian brandy, Shabalala thought with a plaintive look at his beverage. “I believe, Lieutenant, that that mental image will haunt me until my dying day.”
“How do you think I feel? I’m stuck with that image for dozens of lifetimes.”
He raised his mug. “My sympathies.”
“You did ask, Commander.”
“Yes. Yes, I did.” He drained the bitter brew, hoping it would wash the taste of the image in his head out. At that, it failed rather spectacularly. He shook his head. “It’s funny, these days, he wouldn’t be out of place on a Vulcan ship. I wonder what happened to change him.”
“He got older—it happens to all of us. Well, most of us. Some of us get to do it all over again.”
“Lucky you.” Shabalala rose. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go wash my mind out with soap. Thank you for the drink.”
Dax’s face never lost that little smile of hers. “You’re welcome.”
Chapter Ten
“WE’RE READY TO BEGIN on your signal, Captain.”
From the command center that they had set up ten kilometers from the farm site, Keogh said, “Thank you, Mr. Talltree,” to the image of his security chief on the small viewscreen. “Stand by.”
The command center included a large portable science console from which they could monitor the phasering of the future farmland. Keogh turned to look at Dax. “Are we ready, Lieutenant?”
The science officer frowned as she peered down at the readings she was getting. “Give me a minute,” she said distractedly.
The past eighteen hours had been a nightmare for Keogh. The new Dax managed to be even more irritating than the old one, and her arrogance had to be seen to be believed. She simply had to do things her way. Pulling rank was a lost cause, as she seemed to be much more the centuries-old Trill than the twenty-nine-year-old Starfleet lieutenant she appeared.
Just because she knew me when I was young and foolish is no reason—
He cut the thought off as unworthy of him.
She was a talented scientist, he gave her that much at least. But how Sisko put up with her on a daily basis was beyond him.
The operation itself was, Keogh had to admit, rather elegant. The moon was, basically, a big rock made up of solidified lava and extinct volcanoes. Talltree had modified the phasers to vary temperatures so that it would pulverize the surface layer of scoria and pumice into component minerals. Phase one would have the mineral grains heat and cool, expand and contract—the functional equivalent of several decades of seasonal weathering without having to actually wait several decades. The scoria and pumice would turn into fine-grained dust, which would then be inundated with water from the irrigation system. After that, phase two would consist of more phasering to simulate more decades of seasonal weathering, resulting in a mixture of clay, sand, and mineral grains. After that, phase three would be the simple mixing of organic matter—presently in an Odyssey cargo bay, fresh from Bajor—with the transformed lava via the transporter and, as Dax had said, “Presto-change-o-poof! We have arable land.”
Kira and Shabalala were on the runabout, monitoring the operation from there. It was one of the few recommendations Keogh had made that Kira and Dax had actually listened to. The likelihood of something going wrong on either the moon or on the Odyssey was minimal, but it was worth having the Rio Grande in reserve, both as a monitoring station, and as an armed vessel.
“Okay, we’re ready,” Dax said. “I thought there was an anomalous reading, but it was just a higher concentration of minerals. Nothing to worry about.”
“If you say so,” Keogh muttered. Then he turned to the viewer. He was about to instruct Talltree to prepare to fire, but the security chief’s image had been replaced by the standby screen. “What the hell?”
Then Gonzalez’s round face appeared. “Captain, we have a bit of a problem. There’s a civilian ship entering orbit, and her captain wants to speak to you.”
“We’re a little busy down here, Commander. Tell her—”
“I’ve already told her, sir. She insists on speaking to ‘the person in charge.’”
Dax smiled. “I say, sic Major Kira on her.”
“Very funny.”
“Sir, she’s threatening to fire on us and the Rio Grande. It’s crazy—she couldn’t put a dent in our shields, and even the runabout would probably give her a run for her money—but it would be a nuisance.”
“Firing on a lesser vessel is hardly a ‘nuisance,’ Lieutenant,” Keogh snapped.
“Of course, sir, I’m sorry, it’s just—”
“Never mind. Let’s just get this over with so we can move on. Put the captain on the viewer down here.”
“Switching.”
Gonzalez’s face was replaced by the most amazing sight Declan Keogh had seen since he first met his now-ex-wife twenty years ago.
“I’m Aidulac, captain of the Sun,” the woman said with a bright smile that seemed to light up the viewer. “I have this problem that I’m sure you could easily solve.”
“Of course, Captain,” Keogh said happily. “Anything you want.”
“Captain—” Dax started, but Keogh ignored her.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a while. We’re in the midst of an operation that requires phasering the surface of the moon we’re on. As soon as that’s done, I promise to do whatever I can to solve your problem.”
“Captain—” Dax started again, but Keogh waved her off.
“That’s very kind of you, Captain, I’m extremely grateful to you for your help—but I’m afraid I’m in a bit of a rush. Do you think I could land on the moon before you start your operation?”
“I suppose it’s possible,” Keogh said without even considering it. All he wanted was to make sure that Aidulac was happy.
This time, Dax pulled him away from the viewer as she bellowed, “Captain!”
“Dammit, Lieutenant, I don’t see—”
Then his head cleared.
He tried to reconstruct the last minute or so, and found that he couldn’t. “What just happened?”
“Captain Keogh, please, you must believe me, I need to come down there.” Keogh heard Aidulac’s words, but refused to look at the viewer.
“Lieutenant, what the hell is going on?” he whispered.
“She’s a Siren, Deco, and she’s trying to trick you into letting her land.”
Keogh had heard stories about the women of Pegasus Major IV who had been specially trained by the Peladon Affiliation to be irresistible to men, but he had always dismissed them as tall tales told at bars by older officers to junior officers or by junior officers to cadets.
As a Starfleet captain, Keogh had had his share of experiences with telepathy and mind control, including one rather nasty occasion last year when he’d been possessed by an energy creature that was trying to blow up a planet as a practical joke. He did not take kindly to it then, and he was out-and-out furious about it now.
“Keogh to Odyssey. Tactical specifications of the Sun, Mr. Talltree?”
“Ah, standard shields, one phaser bank, no torpedoes of any kind.”
“So in your professional opinion—”
“We could take her out with one shot, sir. Maybe two.”
“Did you copy that, Captain Aidulac? You have one minute to leave the Bajoran system, or we test to see which of Mr. Talltree’s guesses is accurate.”
“Very well, Captain. I’ll leave.” Aidulac’s tone was petulant. “But you’ll regret this, I promise you that.”
Keogh heard the viewer switch off. Only then did he trust himself to look at it. The weakness he’d shown irritated him—more so for having it happen in front of Dax, of all people.
“Gonzalez to Keogh. The Sun is leaving orbit, sir, and is now on a course for the Federation border.”
“Good,” Keogh said. “Mr. Talltree, ready phasers.”
“Kira to Dax. Is everything okay down there, Jadzi
a?”
Dax was about to answer when Keogh interrupted. “A slight delay, Major. Nothing to worry about. We’ll begin the operation momentarily.”
“If you say so, Captain. Rio Grande out.”
Smiling sweetly at Keogh, Dax said, “Don’t worry, Deco. It could’ve happened to anyone. If your Commander Shabalala had been on the Odyssey instead of Gonzalez, she might have talked him into it.”
“Still and all, Lieutenant, I would appreciate it if you didn’t bring up the details of what just happened.”
Dax looked down at her console, still with that damned smile of Curzon’s. “As I recall, Captain, those were the exact words you said to me on the Lexington twenty-five years ago.” She then looked at him. “Besides, from what Ensign Pérez told me a few weeks later, it wasn’t really worth mentioning.”
Keogh closed his eyes. I knew she was going to bring something up sooner or later, either the holodeck or Curzon’s liaison with Rosita. So naturally, she mentions both in two sentences.
Then he opened them and, pointedly not looking at Dax, said, “Mr. Talltree, you may commence firing when ready.”
And feel free to aim a shot at Dax’s head.
* * *
Aidulac set a course out of the Bajoran system. Once she was safely out of range of either the Odyssey or the Rio Grande, she pounded a console out of frustration.
Damn, she thought, now I’ve got a bruised hand to go with my bruised ego.
She had hoped that her failure with Decker and Kirk was a fluke, that when the next Instrument was revealed she would be able to convince whoever was in charge to turn the Instrument over to her.
But it was time she faced facts. Her skills had atrophied.
Of course they’ve atrophied, she admonished herself. It’s been how long? She couldn’t even remember how to keep track of the passage of time in Zalkatian terms anymore—it had been that long—but by Federation timekeeping, it had been ninety thousand years.
A long time to wait for someone to stumble across where those fool rebels had hidden the Instruments.
Things would have been so different if Malkus had never come to me. If he had never forced me to oversee the construction of the Instruments.
The Brave And The Bold Book One Page 14