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  Ro considered the despair that had stalked so many of her friends and loved ones. Few, if any, of her intimates had ever had such sound reasons for despondence as bond-sundered Andorians. These were people for whom complex reproductive biology was the single defining attribute of their lives. After suddenly losing that capability, how could one not succumb to hopelessness? Ro felt an uncharacteristic but irresistible urge to get a drink. Or perhaps several.

  “Now, about that report you wanted,” Dizhei said, her antennae probing forward as though sniffing the air.

  Ro shut down her padd and lowered it. A bead of sweat traced a leisurely path between her shoulder blades.

  “It will wait,” she said, suddenly overwhelmed by the enormity of Dizhei’s burden—and by Anichent’s hopelessness. Routine police work now seemed utterly trivial by comparison. “Please forget I asked. And forgive me.”

  Ro hastily excused herself, then stepped back into the cool corridor before Dizhei could see the tears she could no longer restrain.

  Halfway through her third glass of spring wine, Ro felt considerably calmer.

  “Whoa there,” said Treir, who sat across the table in Ro’s dimly lit booth. She eyed the two empty wine-glasses significantly. “Maybe you’d better consider slowing down to sublight speed, Lieutenant.”

  “I’m off duty at the moment,” Ro said, swirling her wine. This vintage was a little drier than she was used to, but still serviceable. “And sometimes the best way to handle your troubles is to drown them.”

  The Orion woman offered a wry smile, her teeth a dazzling white against her jade-green skin, much of which was displayed by the strategically placed gaps in her designer dabo girl costume. She raised her warp core breach, a beverage Ro had never been able to distinguish from industrial solvent, in a toast. Although Treir’s drinking vessel dwarfed Ro’s, in the viridianskinned woman’s large but graceful hands it was proportionally the same size.

  “To the drowning of troubles,” Treir said, and they both drank. “Or at least to taking them out for a nice, brisk swim. Let’s see, now. Which troubles are in most urgent need of drowning? There’s the Andorians that have taken up residence in Ensign ch’Thane’s quarters. And the signing ceremonies for Bajor’s entry into the Federation.”

  Ro offered a wan smile as she raised her glass to her lips. “You should talk to Lieutenant Commander Matthias about apprenticing in the counseling business.”

  Ro reflected on how much their relationship had changed since she and Quark had rescued Treir from the employ of the Orion pirate Malic a few months back. There was obviously a great deal more to Treir than her brassy exterior had initially led Ro to believe.

  Treir glanced quickly over her shoulder, then returned her attention to Ro, to whom she spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “Oh, and don’t forget the single most horrific item on the entire dreary list of troubles to be drowned—there’s still the matter of that second date my boss somehow tricked you into.”

  Ro nearly spit her wine across the table. Lately she’d been so wrapped up in station business that she’d completely forgotten.

  “I heard that!” The voice belonged to Quark, though it took Ro a moment to zero in on his exact whereabouts. Then she saw that the owner and proprietor of DS9’s principle hospitality establishment was standing three booths away, beside the small group of Terrellians whose drinks he had just delivered.

  A moment later, he stood next to Ro’s table, scowling at Treir and gesturing accusingly at the drink in the statuesque green woman’s hand.

  “Is this what I’m paying you for?”

  “Check the schedule again, Quark,” Treir said, nonchalantly sloshing what little remained of her warp core breach. “I’m off duty. And when I’m off duty, I sometimes moonlight as Lieutenant Ro’s bodyguard.” She threw Ro a wordless I-can-make-him-leave-you-alone glance.

  “Hello, Quark,” Ro said, involuntarily warming to his presence.

  Quark’s rejoinder to Treir appeared to die before reaching his lips. “I hope we’re still on for tomorrow night,” he said to Ro with an anticipatory smile. “We’ll have Holosuite Three all to ourselves, starting at 2100 hours.”

  Ro noticed Treir staring at her. No-really-I-can-makehim-go-away-if-you-say-the-word, she seemed to be saying.

  Ro smiled back at Quark, and it felt like the first time she’d done anything other than scowl in weeks. “We’re still on, Quark. I haven’t forgotten.”

  Shaking her head in incomprehension, Treir excused herself and departed, evidently having seen and heard quite enough. Let her think whatever she wants, Ro thought, amused.

  “You know, I’m really beginning to look forward to this,” Ro said, more than a little surprised to discover that she actually meant it. “I think I could really use the diversion.”

  Quark looked surprised for a moment, then quickly recovered his best tongo face. “You chose the program last time. So tomorrow night, I get to pick, just like we agreed.”

  “I remember,” she said. Then she let her smile collapse in order to make her next point with absolute crystal clarity. “Now you’d better remember: Don’t even think about running one of your Vulcan Love Slave holonovels, or else it’s going to be an extremely short evening.”

  He looked wounded, his hands raised in a don’t shoot! gesture. “I wouldn’t dream of doing anything like that.”

  “And no programs that require me to dress like Treir.” She’d had to do that once already, in the line of duty, and that was once too many.

  Quark was making quite a show of agreeing with her. “That’s fine with me. That sort of apparel wouldn’t be appropriate for Las Vegas anyway.”

  “Las Vegas?” She didn’t recognize the name. “Is that a Gamma Quadrant planet?”

  “It’s a city on twentieth-century Earth,” Quark said, cheerfully baring his snaggly teeth. “Courtesy of Dr. Bashir. Full of bright lights, indescribable sounds, and inhaled carcinogenic vapors. Harmless holographic carcinogenic vapors, of course.”

  “Sounds like a Cardassian labor camp,” Ro said with a frown. “Except for the part about the holograms.”

  “I suppose my description hasn’t done the place justice. Actually—”

  Ro’s combadge chose that moment to speak up. “Kira to Ro. I’ve got a situation on my hands, Lieutenant.”

  The sound of Kira’s voice neutralized the spring wine as authoritatively as a bucket of cold water. “Ro here, Colonel. Please tell me nobody’s hurt or dead this time.”

  “It’s nothing quite that serious. At least, not yet. But I still need to see you in my office right away.”

  “On my way.” Ro stood up and excused herself. “Tomorrow night, 2100 hours.”

  “Wear a nice evening gown,” she heard Quark say as she walked quickly away from the booth. “Something semiformal and off the shoulder would be nice. With sequins!”

  As she moved toward the bar on her way to the Promenade, she practically collided with Morn, who had chosen precisely the wrong moment to step down from his perch. Ro felt like an astronomer bearing witness to the formation of an antimatter quasar; the sight of Morn disconnected from his barstool had to be at least that rare.

  Smiling politely, she picked her way quickly past the massive Lurian before he had a chance to draw her into yet another one of his interminable family anecdotes.

  Moments later, she strode from the ops turbolift and into the station commander’s office.

  Kira rose from behind her desk. “It’s Gul Macet,” she said in response to Ro’s unspoken question. “He’s asked for immediate departure clearance for his ship. And he won’t explain why, or when he intends to return.”

  Ro frowned. “The Trager was supposed to stay at the station for at least the next few days. Macet told me he’d placed his ship at the disposal of the Cardassian delegates still on the station doing the low-echelon stuff.”

  “Yes, the people who have diplomatic meetings about whether and when Bajor and Cardassia will have mor
e diplomatic meetings,” Kira said, nodding. “My instinct is to tell Macet to just sit tight and wait his turn.”

  Ro mulled that over for a moment. With the current levels of station traffic, that would bump back the Trager’ s departure by at least six hours. Why was Macet in such a hurry?

  “Has he given you any reason to suspect anything other than an innocent internal scheduling mix-up?” Ro said.

  Kira’s smile was small and rueful. “Besides his looking so much like Gul Dukat that it’s virtually impossible to think about him objectively?”

  “Besides that.” Ro knew that Kira’s point, though made flippantly, was entirely valid. How could any Bajoran who’d endured the casual brutalities of the Cardassian Occupation keep a level head around a man who wore the face of Bajor’s most hated oppressor?

  But Ro also knew that there were larger issues to consider, namely Bajor’s relationship with Cardassia during that world’s postwar reconstruction—and the Federation’s evaluation of the Bajoran government’s actions before formally accepting Bajor as a member.

  An event that now loomed only days away.

  Kira’s furrowed brow told Ro that the colonel was busy weighing those very same issues.

  Ro followed Kira from the office and down the steps into ops, where Ensign Selzner stood beside a communications console. She was clearly awaiting Kira’s instructions as to how to handle Macet.

  “Hail the Trager, Ensign,” Kira said before turning back to Ro. “Trust has to start somewhere. Even at the risk of misplacing it.”

  Absurdly, Kira’s comment reminded Ro of her upcoming date with Quark.

  “Thank you, Colonel,” Macet said, doing his best to smile in an ingratiating manner. “You’ve just made my life immeasurably easier. Macet out.”

  Kira’s image vanished from the viewer on the Trager’ s cramped bridge. Macet’s smile likewise disappeared.

  Macet turned his command chair toward the Bajoran man who stood less than two meters away, just out of range of the viewer’s visual pickup. “I am loath to do anything that might serve to undermine Colonel Kira’s trust. You have no idea how difficult it was to gain whatever small measure of it I may have squandered just now.”

  “I understand,” Vedek Yevir said. “Neither trust nor true faith comes easily to Colonel Kira.”

  “Yet you still insist on the necessity of all this…subterfuge,” Macet said as he stroked the tufts of hair on both sides of his chin and considered what Yevir was asking of him.

  “I assure you, it’s entirely necessary.” Yevir’s face was overcome with a passionate intensity that Macet had rarely seen before. “I regret these deceptions every bit as much as you do. And I assure you, if our pilgrimage fails, I alone will assume the responsibility before your superiors as well as my own.”

  Macet smiled, more than a little reassured. He’s a step away from the kaiship. He has more friends and influence in the Vedek Assembly than anyone else alive. Other than perhaps First Minister Shakaar, there are no superiors he’s obliged to answer to.

  “All right,” Macet said. “But there are considerations here that are far more important than either of our personal reputations. And I’m still not certain what I can do to assist, other than providing transportation.”

  “Oh, there’s a great deal you can do, Gul Macet, with the right help. Things that politicians and diplomats won’t or can’t do. And when the politicians and diplomats fail to do the right thing, then we must seek the help we need from others.”

  Macet could no longer hold back the obvious question: “Who?”

  “Get the ship under way,” Yevir said, his smile growing even more beatific. “And I will explain everything during the voyage.”

  8

  Bashir gathered up Ezri’s limp form and carried her toward the medical bay at a full-out run. Bowers ran alongside, using his combadge to alert Ensign Richter to the emergency as they sprinted through the corridor and into the turbolift.

  Moments later, Richter and Bowers were helping Bashir place Ezri’s feverish, perspiring body onto the table in the operating room adjacent to the main medical bay. Bashir dismissed Bowers with a curt nod. He was grateful for this room’s Earth-normal gravity as he unlimbered his medical tricorder and ran its scanner quickly across Ezri’s torso.

  The readings were grim.

  “What is it, Doctor?” said Krissten as she entered the chamber.

  “Her isoboramine levels are falling steadily.”

  As Krissten studied her own medical tricorder, apuzzled frown creased her face. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. Is her symbiont in immediate danger?”

  “It certainly will be in another hour or two, if nothing changes in the meantime.”

  “What could have caused this?”

  Afraid that he already knew the answer, Bashir chose to dodge the question for the moment. “Trill physiology can be tricky, Krissten. Run a full battery of deep-tissue scans. We’ll laser-biopsy as necessary.”

  “Aye, sir,” she said, then calmly set about her tasks. If there was one thing Krissten Richter had proved repeatedly over the past four years, it was that he could rely on her to keep her wits about her during a crisis.

  Ezri’s eyes opened and she let out a long, forlorn wail. The sound pierced Bashir’s soul to its core. Above the biobed, a monitor confirmed that she was experiencing intense neurological trauma. Her nervous system was on fire, and he had no clue yet as to why.

  “Get me the delta wave inducer,” Bashir said. “I want her unconscious.”

  He pressed the wafer-thin device against Ezri’s temple, and she immediately relaxed. Her eyes closed and she grew quiet.

  Please come back to me, Ezri, he thought as he lifted an exoscalpel from the instrument tray. He found himself staring at it as though he’d never seen it before. His hand felt unsteady, and recollections of his earlier near disaster with the instrument did nothing to calm him.

  Don’t blame yourself, Julian, she had told him long ago, on a similar occasion. Back when she had been Jadzia Dax, and Verad Kalon had forced him to remove the symbiont from her body. Jadzia’s voice, weak and fading, spoke from his private citadel of memory: Don’t blame yourself, Julian. You did everything you could.

  He forced himself to place that unhappy memory back on the high mental shelf to which he normally relegated such thoughts. He concentrated instead on trying to recall the particulars of every disease agent that might cause a spontaneous separation of host and symbiont. If one of these turned out to be the cause of Ezri’s condition, then a cure might already exist.

  Hope buoyed him as he quickly adjusted his tricorder to look for particular genera of viruses and retroviruses.

  Bashir’s combadge chirped before he’d completed a single pass with the device. “This is Merimark in the transporter room, Doctor.”

  Damn!“Can it wait, Ensign?”

  “’Fraid not, sir. Incoming medical emergency on the alien ship. I’m beaming possible wounded parties directly to the medical bay.”

  “Acknowledged. Who’s coming?”

  “It’s Nog and Shar, sir.”

  When it rains, it pours, Bashir thought as he watched a pair of figures shimmer into view in the main medical bay chamber.

  Bashir glanced toward Nog, who was propping himself up on his elbows, trying to get comfortable on the biobed. From his position, he couldn’t see the nearby bed on which Ezri lay unconscious.

  Just as well, Bashir thought.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” Nog said, possibly for the hundredth time. He gritted his teeth as Lieutenant Candlewood checked the dressings on the stump of his left leg and made a quick tricorder scan of the rapidly healing—though still raw—wound that lay beneath.

  Nog’s voice was flat and devoid of emotion. “I really can’t believe this is happening.”

  Neither could Bashir. But the subject of Nog’s incredulity wasn’t his primary concern at the moment.

  Ezri is.

/>   She lay on the biobed between Nog’s and the one located in the medical bay’s farthest corner, on which the last of the convalescing aliens slumbered. Ezri’s breathing was ragged and shallow, and her pallor had increased hourly while she had drifted in an out of consciousness, confused and terrified during her few brief intervals of wakefulness. At least she was asleep at the moment, Bashir thought, without the need for the delta wave inducer. He was thankful for that one small mercy.

  Krissten stood on the far side of Ezri’s biobed. “Dr. Bashir,” she whispered. “You’ve been…hovering for hours. Why don’t you get some rest? I’ll call you the next time she comes to.”

  The medical bay doors hissed open before he could reply. Rubbing a weary eye with the palm of his hand, he turned toward the sound.

  Commander Vaughn strode deliberately into the room, his craggy features solemn. Shar was at his side, his expression even more unreadable than usual, if that was possible.

  Vaughn was first to speak. “Trying to communicate with the aliens has kept us a bit busy for the past few hours, Doctor. Sorry I haven’t had a chance to get down here before now.”

  Bashir felt slightly muddled for a moment. Aliens? Then a glance at the long, spindly figure curled awkwardly on the third biobed brought him to alertness.

  “Yes, of course, the aliens,” Bashir said at length. Now that he had released all of them except one, gravity in the medical bay had been adjusted back to its customary one gee, except for the immediate vicinity of the corner biobed. Krissten had made no secret of her delight at the return of Earth-normal gravity.

  “Has anyone managed to translate their, uh, language yet?” Bashir asked.

  Shar’s white dreadlocks, stark against his sky-blue skin, twirled slightly as he shook his head. “It’s hard to tell. But with Lieutenant Bowers and Crewmen T’rb and Cassini assisting me, I think we will manage it eventually. The alien text you downloaded may prove helpful in that regard after all.”