by Неизвестный
their Emissary is because I already knew about nonlin-ear time."
Kasidy frowned, didn't understand.
Sisko's smile widened. "The kitchen!"
Kasidy nodded with sudden understanding. "Cook-ing does seem to carry you away," she said with an answering smile.
Sisko leaned over to give her a kiss on the forehead. "But it always brings me back to you." The light moment transformed when he did not move away.
Kasidy put down her coffee, Sisko his bowl, as Kasidy reached up to his face and kissed him as they had not kissed in weeks, in months, perhaps ever.
"I... thought I had lost you," she whispered, her breath soft against his cheek.
Sisko felt her body tremble, as if she were fighting back tears.
He knew why.
A week ago, they had been on the Defiant. Kasidy had volunteered to be a convoy liaison officer for Starfleet escort duty to Vega. So they could be together.
It had been a terrible mistake. And the mistake had been his.
In loving Kasidy, he had made her a part of his life that was separate from Starfleet and the Dominion War. In tearing down the barriers between his life and his duty, he had only succeeded in putting her in harm's way-at his side.
Once before, he had done that to the woman he loved, and it had cost her her life. Surviving the conse-quences of that mistake had taken him twelve years and the intervention of beings beyond human compre-hension.
And he had.
Yet even now he could still see Jennifer, motionless on the deck of the Saratoga, her soul forever lost to him except in memory.
As protection from the cruel uncaring universe that might still end the existence of Kasidy Yates, Sisko now took refuge behind a different shield around his heart, a shield he had begun constructing the moment he and Kasidy had found themselves in active service together on the Defiant.
If Kasidy died under his command, the only way he could be certain he could still function to save his ship and his crew was to see her already among the dead, to mourn her before the fact, to be prepared for the awful day he might lose her. But even as he tried to reduce his vulnerability, Sisko knew it was impossible. He was in love and he was loved.
He stroked her hair, knowing how wrong it all was. First to put her at risk, and then to try to remove her from his heart.
"You can't lose me. Nothing will keep me from you," he murmured. For whether it was a memory of a past dream or a memory of something still to come, at the very end of whatever pain and whatever tragedy this universe and this war held for him, Sisko knew- knew with a conviction of faith and hope and love that would outlast the stars-he would always come back to the arms of Kasidy Yates.
And somehow, through some living bond still to be formed between them, he knew that Kasidy accepted his vow.
"Does this mean you're going to make me break-fast?" she teased even as her eyes told him she knew what he felt.
"Eventually." Sisko leaned down to kiss her again.
And as their lips met, their eyes closed, and time became nonlinear once again. Until-
A discreet throat-clearing cough.
Sisko opened his eyes at the same moment as Kasidy, brought back to this moment by-.
"Hey, guys."
Sisko couldn't resist reaching out a hand to tousle his son's hair as Jake, smiling sheepishly, skirted past them to the replicator. He remembered when he had had to bend down to touch the top of his son's head. Now it seemed he had to touch the stars to do the same.
"Hey, Jake-O," Sisko said as his son ordered and retrieved and drank in one gulp a tall glass of orange juice.
"I heard you went on a treasure hunt," Kasidy said.
Sisko saw Jake's swift glance at him, but he had no recriminations for his son. He and Jake had talked at length about Jake's actions-and his lack of action- last night. And Sisko had been deeply gratified to learn that almost everything he had to say to his son had already been in Jake's mind. Jake's and Nog's omission, not telling anyone about the mysterious Cardassian holosuite, was simply a leftover piece of business from when the two young men were little more than children.
Jake knew he had been wrong, and Sisko knew that doing the wrong thing and learning from it was what the process of maturing and growing was all about. All life was about such learning. What was important to Sisko, and what made him feel so proud of his son, was that for all the missteps the boy did make-and some days their number was truly astounding-he sel-dom made the same misstep twice.
As long as Jake kept that same spirit, Sisko could never really be angry with him-or disappointed.
"Buried treasure," Sisko said, picking up the copper bowl to give the eggs a final flourish. "Buried and for-gotten." He set the bowl on the counter, cut a square of Imolian butter, and turned away to heat the empty omelette pan.
He could see that Jake heard and understood his tone of voice. The past was the past. They had moved on. They must always move on.
Jake pulled up a chair to sit down beside Kasidy at the table. "I was really surprised no one else had found that room by now."
Kasidy looked over at Sisko. "Do you think there could be other sealed-off sections in the station?"
Sisko dropped the butter into the hot omelette pan, then swirled it around to melt it evenly. "If there are, Chief O'Brien will know about them in a week. He's going to use the Defiant's tactical sensors to conduct a full survey scan of DS9, then correlate that scan with the Cardassian's blueprints to look for deviations. He says he should have done it years ago."
"Any reason why the holosuite was sealed off?" Kasidy asked.
Sisko poured the beaten eggs from the copper bowl into the pan, tilting the pan expertly to lightly coat the top of the egg mixture with the melted butter. "We don't even know that it is a holosuite," he said.
"What else could it be?" Jake asked.
Sisko reached for a handful of grated jack cheese and trailed it perfectly along one side of the gently bubbling mass of eggs. "Just because we don't know the answer doesn't mean we have to settle for a guess." Biting his bottom lip in concentration, he sprinkled in
chopped scallions, and then added a dusting of the secret ingredient in all the great recipes of Sisko's Cre-ole Kitchen-the Cajun spices his father sent him on a more or less regular basis. "That would be too easy."
The door announcer chimed.
Sisko prodded the edge of the cooking eggs and glanced at his son. "I can't leave the pan now...."
He heard the door to his quarters slide open just as he judged that the texture of his creation was perfect. With a rapid twist and a flip of the pan, he held his breath as he slid the golden disk toward the forward edge of the pan, then folded it expertly over on itself, achieving a half moon of Creole perfection.
"Uh, Dad..." Jake said.
Sisko looked up, saw Jadzia, was delighted. "Old Man! You're just in time for breakfast."
But Jadzia didn't share Sisko's enthusiasm-not today. She frowned. "Sorry, Benjamin, but... Quark's gone."
Sisko's sense of disbelief changed quickly to dis-may, betrayal. "He's left the station?"
"I can't be sure. If he did, he did it in disguise. There's a chance he's simply hiding out here. But... well, maybe you should come down to the bar and... see for yourself. I think the situation's more complicated than we first thought."
Sisko's wrist jerked as he sharply snapped the pan again and the omelette flipped over with Starfleet pre-cision. The bottom was an elegant combination of rich yellow and crispy brown. Sisko sighed. "Jake, it's up to you to uphold the family honor. You know what your grandfather always said." He slipped the omelette onto a plate already warmed by the inductor oven.
His son stepped into the alcove as Sisko stepped out. "No one leaves the table unsatisfied," Jake said.
"Do I have time to put on my uniform?" Sisko asked Jadzia.
She nodded. "This is going to be a Starfleet matter."
Sisko had been afraid of that. Somehow, when Quark
was involved, situations always became more complicated.
Quark's bar looked normal for this early in the morning. The dabo table was silent. A rambunctious group of young Starfleet fighter pilots from the Thun-derchild who hadn't yet switched over to station local time were ending their duty day around a large collec-tion of bar tables they'd pulled together. A handful of the station's Bajoran morning-shift personnel were eat-ing replicator breakfasts, a handful of night-shift per-sonnel were eating replicator suppers. And faithful Morn was on his stool-so much a part of the place that he was sometimes easy to overlook, except for the nonstop droning of his voice.
"So far so good," Sisko said to Jadzia.
She gestured to the bar. "Let me buy you a rakta-jino."
They chose stools as far away from the loquacious Morn as possible. "When did you find out Quark was gone?" Sisko asked.
"Odo told me he finished questioning Quark early this morning, around four. So I went to Quark's quarters at nine-I thought I'd let him get some sleep."
"And?"
"He wasn't there. Isn't anywhere."
"Anything missing? Signs of a struggle?"
"Nothing I could see. Odo's people are going through it now."
"That's not like Quark."
Jadzia almost laughed. "Not like Quark to run away from trouble? Benjamin, that's exactly like him."
Sisko shook his head. That wasn't what he had meant. "He and I had a deal. And... Quark usually keeps his deals. At least with me." He saw Jadzia's look of amazement. "Oh, he'll look for and exploit every loophole he can find. And just making the deal can be... an adventure in frustration. But when all is said and done, Quark, in his own Ferengi way, is one of the most honorable people on this station. Not," Sisko added quickly, "that I would ever tell him that to his face. It could undercut me in future negotiations."
"Let's hope there are future negotiations," Jadzia muttered.
A sudden worrisome thought struck Sisko. "He didn't run into trouble with the Andorian sisters, did he?"
Jadzia shook her head. "Odo has them under twenty-six-hour surveillance. They've been keeping to themselves."
"Then what is it you suspect, Old Man?"
His old friend merely answered his question with another. "Do you have your raktajino, yet?"
Sisko looked around. Though the establishment was open for business-he recognized the usual servers managing the tables-no one was behind the bar. Yet he had heard the rattle of glasses in the recycler trays, and the hum of the replicator. That was why he hadn't noticed the absence of anyone-because it still sounded as if someone was present.
"All right," Sisko said, "I'll admit it. I'm confused. Care to enlighten me?"
Jadzia nodded. Tapped on the bartop. "Barkeep! We want to order!"
Sisko blinked with surprise as a Ferengi jumped up into view from behind the bar.
A very small Ferengi.
His skull and features were the size of any other adult of his species, complete with an unusual black headskirt, but the rest of his body was dramatically foreshortened. A meter tall at most.
"What do you want?" he snarled.
"Benjamin," Jadzia said, "meet Base. Base, meet Captain Benjamin Sisko, commander of Deep Space 9."
"Yeah, yeah, right, whatever," Base snapped. "You want to order? Or you want to stop bothering me?"
'Two raktajinos, please," Jadzia said.
"You actually drink that crap?" Base gargled in dis-gust, then whirled around and dropped below the level of the bar again.
Sisko couldn't suppress his curiosity. He stood up and leaned over the bar to see that a series of stools had been arranged behind it, presumably so the small barkeep could jump up to serve-if that's what such an unwelcoming manner could be called-the customers.
Sisko sat back down. "Base?" he asked Jadzia.
"Rom says he's an old friend of the family, helping look after the family's interests during... Quark's troubles."
"Does Rom know where Quark is?"
Jadzia rolled her eyes. "Here's where it gets inter-esting. Rom claims that he didn't know Quark had been released. Odo, on the other hand, says that Quark told him he was going directly here after he was released. And all the servers say that Rom sent them home early last night."
"Ah," Sisko said, rubbing the fingers of one hand against his temple to forestall the headache that Quark could so easily provoke. "So Quark could have come here, and the only witness would have been Rom."
"Exactly."
Sisko sat up straighter with a sigh. "All right. I see how this might complicate matters. But why do you think it might be a Starfleet matter?"
"Base isn't your ordinary Ferengi."
Sisko gave Jadzia a look of mock surprise. "No."
"Settle down, Benjamin. He's a smuggler."
"A Ferengi smuggler. That is unusual."
"Who operates in the Klingon Empire."
Sisko toned down his skepticism, recalling that the dismemberment and vivisection penalties Klingons assessed on captured smugglers tended to keep most Ferengi from becoming involved in illegal shipping in that region of space. "That makes him either the bravest Ferengi I've ever heard of, or the stupidest."
"Or," Jadzia added, "the most desperate. He has a number of warrants outstanding among the Ferengi Alliance, so by law he can't conduct business with any other Ferengi."
"Yet he's here," Sisko said, drumming his fingers on the bartop. There was still no sign of the raktajinos. "Presumably working for Quark."
" 'Helping Quark,' is what Rom said."
Sisko saw Jadzia staring at his fingers and forced himself to stop fidgeting. "Helping him do what, is the question. Clearly, he's not experienced in bartending. Is there any connection between Base and the Andorians?"
"Odo's working on it," Jadzia said. "Though I think he has other things on his mind." She nodded for Sisko to look down the length of the bar.
Sisko did, and this time he did not have to pretend to be surprised.
"Vash?!"
"The one and only."
The calculating archaeologist, known for her ques-tionable ethics as much as for her beauty, was seated at the last stool at the bar, leaning forward and having an intense conversation with Quark's diminutive replace-ment.
"I bet she's not ordering raktajino," Sisko said.
"Shall we?" Jadzia asked as she rose to her feet.
Sisko followed Jadzia down to the end of the bar, until they both stood behind Vash. At that same instant Base looked up and saw them. A fierce scowl darkened his face. "Go away, go way. I'll get your stupid drinks when it's your turn. I have other customers, y'know."
Her conversation interrupted, Vash turned around on her bar stool to see the cause of Base's displeasure.
Sisko caught the naked look of shock that illumi-nated Vash's pale face before she turned on her spec-tacular smile. "Captain Sisko, what a pleasure. I heard you'd been promoted."
His return smile equalled hers in sincerity. "And I'd heard the Siladians had put a price on your head for desecrating their burial moons."
"A misunderstanding," Vash said airily. "All the arti-facts were returned."
"I'd heard that as well. Counterfeits, every one."
"They were counterfeits when I... retrieved them, Captain. The Siladians have been looting their own burial moons for generations, and replacing what they steal with replicas so they can keep the tourists com-ing. It's a rather clever operation."
"Or a rather clever story," Sisko said. He knew bet-
ter than to trust a word she said. "Are you here on your own this time? Or... ?"
"No Q, if that's who you mean. He did come back a few times." For a moment, her face took on a strange expression, as if she were remembering things that were inexpressible. "But... I haven't seen him for... centuries, it feels like."
Sisko studied the wayward archaeologist thought-fully. The way Vash said it, it sounded as if she really did mean centuries. He wondered what other types of adventures the s
uperbeing known as Q had taken her on.
"Then what can we do for you?" he asked.
"I said, go away!" Base thumped the base of a glass tumbler on the bartop for emphasis.
"Why don't you look after your other customers?" Jadzia said with an easy smile.
"Why don't you and the captain take one of those barstools and-"
"Base!" Vash interrupted. "Captain Sisko is in com-mand of this station. He can shut Quark's down any-time he feels like it."