by Diane Carey
"That means the Detepa officials are expecting us and are probably moving to escape our advancing fleet," Gowron said. "As soon as we battle down these Cardassians, you will send four ships immediately to Sector Three! If the council members try to escape, they'll head for the first friendly outpost, and that is Deep Space Nine. We must head them off!"
Alone at the railing again. Below where he sat on the second level of Quark's, the first level was boisterous and bustling. The Klingon task force was gone from the sector, the flagship was gone from the docking ring, and it seemed these people took that absence as a signal to relax, as if Gowron and the other Klingons had taken with him all their troubles.
The war, if there would be war, was happening far enough away, and any hollow became an oasis.
Yes, there would be war. There already was.
Worf looked down from his perch, wishing he could retire to his quarters without making his own absence as obvious as that of the other Klingons'. He took no comfort in the free-breathing of the people below him.
"You look like you could use some company."
O'Brien approached him with a mug in one hand, and sat down with him.
Had O'Brien been asking a question, Worf would have said no, he didn't want anyone to share in his rainy mood, but since his former shipmate didn't ask, Worf was freed from having to suggest staying alone. He was caught between the image he wanted to portray and the needs of his qualmish heart.
"Chief," he began, "do you remember the time we rescued Captain Picard from the Borg?"
O'Brien looked at him as if he had gone mad to have to ask. Then he seemed to understand it was just bar talk, just Worf's way of head-firsting into a conversation.
"How could I forget?" the engineer said. "That was touch and go for a while. Truth is, there were a couple of moments when I thought we were all going to wind up 'assimilated.'"
"I never doubted the outcome," Worf admitted. "We were like warriors from the ancient sagas. There was nothing we couldn't do."
"Except keep the holodecks working right."
O'Brien smiled, and managed to swerve away from just about the ugliest episode they had in common.
Wondering if the ancient sagas had been embellished over time, Worf thought about how that story would change as it was told and told through the ages. It needed no change at all, but it would change. Everything did.
He felt O'Brien's prodding eyes. The chief knew something was wrong. Or more wrong than before, perhaps. The silent question rattled between them, with O'Brien wise enough to know not to verbalize what he was thinking. He was getting his message across perfectly well, and Worf felt the truth slip out.
"I have decided," he murmured, "to resign from Starfleet."
He tried to speak strongly, but doubted he had succeeded.
The smile fell from O'Brien's face. "Resign? What are you talking about?"
"I have made up my mind. It is for the best."
"Look…I know how much you miss the Enterprise, but I'm sure they'll be building a new one soon."
"It will not be the same," Worf sharply told him. "The Enterprise I knew is gone. And perhaps that is for the better. Those were good years. But it is time for me to move on."
"And do what?" O'Brien pursued, as if he were not sitting in the heart of his own personal alternative to starship duty.
"I don't know," Worf confessed. "I thought I would be returning to Boreth…but now that's impossible. I have made an enemy of Gowron. And of every other Klingon in the Empire."
O'Brien offered a small shrug. "All the more reason to stay in Starfleet."
A collective howl erupted below as someone won at the Dabo table, and for a moment the two held silence. The conversation seemed simple enough, but there was a complex burden about it that they both felt intensely. O'Brien's easy face was now troubled, and Worf felt bad that he had put the trouble there. He hadn't wanted to shift his problems to the few friends he had left in the universe.
"This uniform," he continued thoughtfully, "will only serve as a reminder of how I have disgraced myself in the eyes of my people. I suppose I could get a berth on a Nyberrite Alliance cruiser…they're always eager to hire experienced officers."
"Nyberrite Alliance," O'Brien uttered, his expression crimping. "That's a long way from anywhere."
"That is my intention."
O'Brien cupped one hand around his mug and made a gesture with the other. "What about your son?"
Melancholy struck Worf full in the face, delivered to the bull's-eye by another father—one who also was separated from his wife and child most of the time.
He had hoped no one would think to speak openly of Alexander. He had hoped to banish those thoughts, of how ghostly a parent he had been nearly the boy's whole life.
"Alexander," he answered, "is much happier living with his grandparents on Earth than he ever was staying with me. One thing is certain—the sooner I leave here, the better. My continued presence on Deep Space Nine would only be a liability to Captain Sisko in his dealings with the Klingons."
O'Brien sat back and frowned, a kind of defiant frown that communicated well enough that he didn't care, and knew Sisko didn't care, what the Klingons thought. They'd deal with what came their way, and let fall the chips, without considering putting any individual off the station because it might make things one or two degrees "easier."
Worf was appreciating that silent lecture from O'Brien when a demonic face pressed between them and Worf sat back, startled out of his thoughts.
"Do you hear that, Chief? Seventy-two decibels! Music to my ears."
"I don't know, Quark," O'Brien said, also shifting back an inch or two. "I think I liked it better when it was quiet."
"You want it quiet? Go to the Replimat. This is Quark's the way it should be. The way it was meant to be. Am I glad we finally got rid of all those Klingons."
Quark took a cleansing breath, and found himself staring at Worf.
"Present company excepted, of course," he said, but the damage was done.
Worf had heard such things all his life, but wasn't in the mood to tolerate them from this weasel. He got up and started away.
As he moved off he heard O'Brien say, "That's what I like about you, Quark. You really know how to make your customers feel welcome."
The scrape of O'Brien's chair followed, and behind that, faintly, Quark's voice was the last thing Worf heard as he left the bar—"Ah, what do I care. All he ever drinks is prune juice."
The settled halls of Deep Space Nine were markedly brighter without the dimming presence of Klingons, and that made Worf uneasy. That Klingons should be so dreaded, held in empty contempt because of some common behaviors—it was…shallow. But this perception was not the fault of the perceivers. The Klingons generally did behave rudely, were demanding and pushy. That was no one's fault but the Klingons' themselves.
His strides were strong and determined, almost all of the same length as he angled around people and through archways, because he knew that if he paused, he might stop.
He went straight to Benjamin Sisko's office door, and there he stared at the gray panel for nearly ten seconds before touching off the door chimes.
A few seconds later, the door slid away. He pushed himself inside.
Sisko was at his desk.
Worf stepped in about two feet, then stood at attention, not meeting the captain's eyes. "Sir, forgive me for disturbing you. May I have a brief audience?"
"Of course, Commander. Come in." When Worf moved farther in and the door panel closed behind him, the sedate governor of DS9 and its hot sector gestured at the chair in front of his desk. "Sit down."
"I would rather stand, sir."
"Oh?" Sisko could easily have pointed out how rude that was, but he seemed to instantly pick up that this wasn't just another situation report. "Go ahead, Mr. Worf."
"I believe I have reached a decision," Worf forced out unevenly. "A deck officer of my background is always in demand for merchant flee
ts, and my usefulness has served out in Starfleet, especially under these conditions."
"I see," Sisko responded. He leaned back and knitted his fingers. "Commander…as long as you're ditching your career, why don't you get it off your chest and tell me why? Go ahead. I'm a good listener."
Now Worf met the other man's dark eyes and realized that it was true. He was a good listener.
Somehow Sisko had divined that perhaps Worf would be helped by hearing out what he was thinking. Could he talk to a mirror? Could he stand on a hilltop and howl his questions to the wind?
Sisko was smart. It was better to speak, if only to provide his commanding officer a genuine panorama of why a good serviceman with experience and a clear record would break off his career just before his civilization might very well need him.
"I feel…the eyes of Federation citizens," Worf began with some effort. "They do not know whether or not they can trust me. I do not blame them…Klingons have a violent streak. It seems…I have it too."
And he lowered his gaze. Perhaps it was because he thought he was going off to the farthest reach of the known galaxy to disappear, but he suddenly didn't care who heard his thoughts. Or it might be Sisko's easy manner, one that said they were alike, men banished to deep space.
His fists curled into knots. His arms went tight. He paced away from the desk. His inner tortures bristled, and for a rare moment he opened up.
"Why must it be," he smoldered, "that Klingons are welcome nowhere but in Klingon space, on Klingon ships, among Klingon kind? What are we—what am I—that there must be hostility?"
"Genetic?" Sisko assisted softly. "Fighting genes? I'd like to see those under a microscope."
Worf snapped him a look. "It is very difficult to deny your genetics," he simmered, with a touch of irony. "My people seem not to think much about right and wrong, other than what is right is what is right for Klingons and what is wrong for them is wrong. They veil in ritual their wish not to think about any other rights or wrongs."
As he spoke he paced the office, paused at the far end, then paced to the star-scattered viewport.
"But I was not raised that way," he said. "Right and wrong are matters of thought, not of the fist."
At his desk, Sisko smiled again. "If you're looking for somebody to argue with you, I'm not it. Although I've got a raw knuckle or two of my own. . . ."
Nodding, Worf understood what Sisko meant, that he was tolerantly listening to the troubles of a subordinate, but there seemed to be more here. Worf had things in common with Sisko. They were both big men, and certain physical challenges always came to big men. They were both removed from the cores of their home societies, Worf raised in another star system, then out for years on a starship, Sisko out here on this remote station, trying to keep steady a constantly rocking bowl.
"Whenever I have met Klingons in my life," Worf said, "they have insisted that I must come back to the Klingon fold, or I will pay in the end. But why? Why must I be only with my people?"
"I don't believe that's true," Sisko said. "There's more to existence than genetics. You have nothing moral in common with those Klingons out there. So how will you fit?"
Hard words.
Worf looked at him. Sisko was giving him no quarter with those assumptions.
A rough sigh caused a circle of Worf's warm breath to form on the viewport, blotting out the stars. "Then I am lost. . . ."
Ben Sisko pressed his lips flat and got up from his desk chair. He came slowly around the desk, and crossed to the viewport where Worf was gazing rather pointlessly at the stars. He paused and looked out there also.
"There's a thinking process, Mr. Worf, a pattern of sense that every intelligent culture has to develop in order to survive. Eventually any advanced race must realize that two plus two equals four, even among Klingons. You have to decide what's more important to you…thought, or genetics."
Confused, Worf felt his brow draw tight. "But that is my point. There may not be a choice, sir."
"There's always a choice. We all overcome our genetics in some way or other." Doggedly Sisko cocked his head. "I understand the human couple who adopted you tried to raise you in some semblance of Klingon ways. Is that right?"
"They…tried."
"Well, I think they made a mistake. What's it given you but a struggle? It was a disservice to you as an individual to try to make you part of a group you just weren't part of."
Worf stared at him. Never in his life had he heard anything like that statement. As a child he had been teased, of course, but children tease. As an adult, he had been given only approving nods when people heard that his parents had tried to raise him in what they thought was the Klingon way. Now he was hearing something wildly else.
"Klingons can't always have been warriors," Sisko went on without apology for what he had said about Worf's parents. "A warrior mentality is a luxury of success. The fighting habit can't be instinct, or there wouldn't be Klingons. You'd have all killed each other a long time ago, or just died out because nobody bothered to grow food or build shelter. A martial culture that desires more than anything to live and die in battle is just not going to survive. Somebody has to deal with the mundane. Somebody has to grow food, somebody has to make clothing—if your whole culture's fighting, you'd better be able to steal those things from someone else. If you can't do that, you die. If you run up on a group of tough farmers and weavers, you die. Like the Vikings of old Earth…to them, the only way to make it to Valhalla in the next life was to die in battle. So they could only survive as long as they could steal from others. Eventually, the others just started saying no, and figured out ways to outsmart the power of raw strength. In case you hadn't noticed, the Vikings didn't make it into modern civilization."
"Technology," Worf murmured hoarsely. Shame brought heat to his cheeks. "That is what you are talking about. The Klingons did not develop spacefaring. We stole it from others who landed on our planet. Then we came out into the galaxy…and stole more."
Folding his arms and leaning against the viewport's rim, Sisko shook his head. "Your ancestors, Mr. Worf. Somebody else. Complete strangers. Not you. That's my point."
Worf turned away from the window now, shored himself up, and met the other man's eyes. "Thank you, sir."
"You're welcome. Now come back here and sit down. I have something I want to ask you." He pushed off the viewport and strode back around his desk.
Somewhat numb, Worf followed him. "Yes, sir."
When they were both seated, in a way a personal example of the civilized mannerisms Sisko had spoken about, the captain leaned his elbows on his desk and folded his hands again.
"Now tell me," he began, curving the subject gently, "do you have any idea why Gowron would come all the way here just for you?"
Surprised by the question, Worf frowned and mentally shrugged. "Friendship, sir."
"I don't mean to insult you, but I don't know if I believe that. I find that rather a paper excuse for the highest official of a warring culture venturing into unfriendly territory. So if I don't believe that, then there must be something else. What is it about you, Mr. Worf, that made Gowron take such a chance?"
Baffled, Worf found his mouth hanging open.
"Why," Sisko went on, "would you personally, particularly, be of value to Gowron? Why would he take such a risk to put you on his side in the middle of all this? I suspect he has an underlying motive. Maybe Kira was right. Maybe Gowron doesn't expect the Federation to be around much longer and he wants you on his side to give him information that will make the fall easier."
Stunned, Worf felt his eyes grow tight and his breathing shallow. "I…cannot answer such a question, sir. I do not have the answer."
"I didn't think you did. But I'll bet there is one, and I'm going to find out what it is. I'm sorry, Mr. Worf," Sisko said, "but I can't accept your resignation at this time."
He might as well have leaped from his place, charged the room, and plunged a raw fist down Worf's throat. Worf stared,
for he had assumed Sisko would be glad to be rid of him.
"I don't understand. . . . What further use could I be here?"
"I'm not sure yet. But as long as the fighting continues between the Klingons and the Cardassians, I need you here on this station."
In the years before this, the time of his service in Starfleet, there had always been a choice. That choice had plagued him day and night. Was he to rise above the gut instinct that made him violent and take anchorage in intellect, or give up all that he had been so graciously given by his adoptive parents and adoptive culture and surrender in to those raging drives? He had always possessed the choice, until this moment.
Now, before him, Benjamin Sisko was evicting the choice. Worf was needed. He would stay.
"If you think that is wise," he uttered, again suggesting that he could be as much liability as aid.
"I don't know if it's wise or not," Sisko said assertively. "But I do know you're a good officer and right now I can use every good officer I can get."
Abruptly deprived of his self-immolation, Worf continued to stare as if two weapons had been wrenched from his fists. It seemed he would fight after all, and the side on which he would fight had also been decided for him. He didn't know whether he was relieved or not.
He parted his lips to say something, but it was also snatched away as Kira Nerys entered the office without announcement. Her heart-shaped face was flushed with excitement, the kind of bulldog flintiness that comes to soldiers only during a war. "Captain, we just got word from Bajoran intelligence that the Klingons have routed the Cardassian fleet."
Sisko didn't seem surprised. "How long until they reach Cardassia Prime?"
"Fifty-two hours."
Worf forced his voice up. "If the Klingon Empire has reverted to its old practices, they will occupy the Cardassian homeworld, execute all government officials, and install an imperial overseer to put down any further resistance."
The captain's black eyes turned hard as rock. The outcome was unacceptable.
"I think it's time to talk to the Cardassians."