As Jayme left the lab, Starsa called out, "You know, holograms can be dangerous for your health if you hang around them too much."
Jayme sighed. Her transfer request had been submitted, and now the calls from the relatives were starting to come in.
"But, honey, how can you possibly get into Starfleet Medical School?" her mother asked in concern. She was so busy, as usual, that she was speaking from a station near the warp core of the U.S.S. Gandhi.
"Mom, all of my electives have been science courses. I"ll have enough credits to be accepted if I take summer courses the next two years and concentrate on biology/premed seminars."
Her mother glanced sideways, probably in the middle of some diagnostic on board the Gandhi, the Amba.s.sador-cla.s.s starship she had served on for the past six years. Jayme considered the Gandhi to be her second home, but the last time she"d been on board was at the beginning of the summer break. She had only spent a couple of weeks with her mom, as usual rotating among the starships and starbases where her favorite cousins and aunts were posted.
"I don"t know, honey, it sounds risky," her mother finally counseled. "You"re so close to graduating."
"You"re right," Jayme agreed. "But nothing else in my life has been risky, so I think I can handle this."
When Jayme got back to her quarters a few evenings later, with only one week left in her tour of duty on Jupiter Station, there was a message waiting from Moll Enor. Her dark, serious face was so beautiful that Jayme reached out and touched the screen.
"I"m sure you"ll accomplish whatever you set out to do," Moll said simply. Then she smiled, and for a moment, it was like they were talking in real-time, Jayme felt so close to Moll. Then the blue Starfleet symbol filled the screen and the transmission was over.
The other message was from her older sister, Raylin, stationed on Deep s.p.a.ce Station 2 in the Allora Prime system. Raylin had already made Lieutenant, and was third in command of engineering on DS2. Jayme remembered how their mother had cried when she found out.
"Jayme!" Raylin exclaimed, her expression horrified. "You don"t even like to get a hypospray! Remember how you screamed when I sliced open my thumb with the laser cutter-"
"Don"t listen to her, Jayme!" her sister"s husband cried out, as Raylin tried to shove him out of the viewscreen. "We need a Miranda in blue!"
Raylin pushed him from the view, holding him off as she tried to talk over his babble, trying to put some sense into her little sister.
Jayme started smiling, then giggling, holding her stomach she was laughing so hard. Her brother-in-law was right-it was about time a Miranda represented Starfleet in the blue uniform.
Chapter Eight.
NEV REOH SAT GLUMLY waiting in yet another dark and dingy bar on Station 14, in orbit around Beltos IV. This bar was just like the one last week on Station 26, and the one the week before on Station 7-a warren of narrow ledges and tables bolted to the walls around a s.p.a.ce of zero-g in the center.
The weightless center was where the Orion animal-women danced. The thrumming beat of the music vibrated from the beam supports of the bar, and tiny laser lights called the exotic green women to shadowed ledges.
What made it worse was that Reoh knew someone like t.i.tus or Jayme or Bobbie Ray Jefferson would revel in this exciting environment, while he kept trying to loosen the collar of his new Starfleet uniform, still uncomfortable after a month on active duty as a grade-three ore examiner for the Beltos IV mining colony.
Every shipment of dicosilium (and the rarer dilithium) that was sold to the Federation had to be checked for purity and radiation-contaminant levels. The Beltos IV mining settlement was near the Rigel system, in the most densely populated area of the Milky Way Galaxy, yet it was under rule of the Pa"a. The Pa"a had thus far refused to become a member of the Federation.
Hence the need for a rotating crew of ensigns with geophysics qualifications. Reoh had dragged his spectro-a.n.a.lyzer through more broken-down freighters and storage compartments than he could count while making his way among the orbiting string of transfer stations around Beltos IV.
Every one of the stations had at least a dozen dancing bars like the one he was in. It made Reoh uncomfortable to know that the Federation couldn"t do a thing about the exploitation of the Orion animal-women, except to ensure that no slaves were exported out of the solar system. Here and there, Reoh could see the Starfleet uniforms of the officers who ran the border patrols, ensuring that this pocket of Pa"a corruption was contained. Yet even the Starfleet personnel were drawn to see the Orions-who could resist their magnetic pull?
A green hand clasped the pole near his feet, then another appeared, as the sweetheart-face of an Orion animal-woman emerged from the darkness, pulling herself up to his perch. Her lips parted as she glided through the air, undulating as she came closer. Her dark green eyes were filled with promise as her tongue slipped between her teeth.
Horrified, Reoh forced himself to look away. He wouldn"t contribute to the degradation of these poor slaves.
"You want me," she whispered, her hand clasping his perch.
"Uh, no, thank you, Ma"am." Reoh uneasily smiled to let her know it was nothing personal. "I don"t think so."
"You are unhappy ..." she murmured.
"No, really, I"m fine, thank you. I"m waiting for my next appointment to arrive."
"I think you wait for me... ."
Reoh tried to look at her, but she was drawing herself up behind him. "No," he told her uneasily, "it"s a Pa"a captain."
Her hands slipped over his shoulders, her kneading fingers sending shivers down his spine. Her rumbling purr moved near his ear, then an icy-hot trail flashed up his skin as she licked his neck.
Reoh tried to untangle her green arms from around him. How had she managed to do that so fast?
"I think you have the wrong customer," he told her. He could barely make out the other animal-women- sometimes two or three women-twining themselves around the men resting on the nearby ledges.
"Please ..." He had to lean closer to hear her breathy little voice, which hardly penetrated the thrumming music. "I will be in trouble if you send me away."
Reoh stopped trying to hold her off, looking her right in the face. "Are you serious? You mean you"re punished if a customer doesn"t pay for a dance?"
She nodded, busy nestling closer.
"All right, give me your finger," he agreed, holding the tab so she could press her delicate hand against it. He felt bad. He had been sending women away all day, waiting for Captain Jord to let him inspect her cargo of dicosilium. From what he"d learned in the past few weeks, all business was done in the dancing bars. "Are the other girls punished for not getting dances?"
"I know only my master," she murmured, seemingly content with curling up next to him on the ledge. But he kept having to capture her wandering fingers, lulled by her gentle stroking of his hand or his chest.
"What"s your name?" he asked, pulling back to see the bronze green sheen of her cheeks, the startling whites of her eyes.
"Meesa," she breathed.
"Meesa," he repeated, helplessly trapped by the warm scent of her, the feel of her in his arms.
Reoh shook his head, and pushed her away slightly, trying to get hold of himself. He felt like he had been fighting off Orion animal-women ever since he got to the Beltos system, but this one was more persistent than most. He had been rejecting her advances for nearly an hour before finally giving in. It usually wasn"t difficult to hold himself back. Except for momentary lapses of pheromone-induced l.u.s.t, he mostly felt pity for them, trapped in these h.e.l.lholes.
"Here," he said, taking her hand and pressing her fingertip to his charge card once more. "There"s another dance. Now, I have to be going. No, thank you very much," he a.s.sured her, sc.r.a.ping her off as he pushed into the glide lane that carried him through the bar.
He glanced back as he was leaving, but he couldn"t see Meesa anymore. He wondered if he had misread Captain Jord"s message and gotten the wrong bar. That wouldn"t be unlikely in these warrens the Pa"a called s.p.a.ce stations.
Reoh consulted his tricorder and hitched the spectro-a.n.a.lyzer more securely on his shoulder. The jostling crowds were mostly natives from Beltos IV, trading their precious minerals or trying to obtain permits from the ruling Pa"a to travel to other planets in the system, or even enter Federation s.p.a.ce. Only two gates on each station led to the docking rings-a pa.s.senger gate and a cargo gate. Both were close-encrypted by Starfleet personnel, running the front lines of border control. Despite the safeguards, smuggling was a big business among the various arms of the Pa"a.
At the very least, Captain Jord wasn"t going anywhere until Reoh validated her encryption pa.s.s for the cargo. He also had to give her the coordinates where her vessel could penetrate the automated sensor-scan buoys at the edge of the system.
Reoh pressed his thumb to the sensor padd of the pa.s.senger gate, uneasily aware of the many envious eyes of loiterers on the levels above and below him, watching the traffic through the immense portal. As he phased through, a silver-tinted Pa"a bustled up and pressed his encryption pa.s.s against the sensor padd. The high-ranking Pa"a pushed past Reoh, heading to the upper docking ring where the better vessels were in port.
Reoh"s ancient shuttle was parked among an a.s.sortment of Starfleet ships. Because the stations weren"t under Federation rule, Starfleet officers were required to stay on their ships rather than transient quarters. Reoh preferred that anyway. He felt comfortable in his shuttle, the Dilithium Node, which had been in service in the Beltos system longer than he had been alive. A modern replicator was jammed awkwardly into one corner and the bunk was barely wide enough for him to lie down, but it was home.
There was a voice-only message from Captain Jord, informing him that she would be delayed and would be unable to meet him until the next day-at the same dancing bar. Reoh methodically checked to make sure he had found the right one.
He really didn"t mind the delay. He had one other inspection to perform in the next couple of days, then his rotation was up and he could return to Starbase 3 for R&R before his next month of duty. He was looking forward to seeing the starbase again. It was one of the biggest in the Federation, servicing a wide variety of systems and species. He had only spent three days on board before shipping out for Beltos IV.
Reoh shook his head at the thought of this a.s.signment. Who would have thought geophysics would be so exotic? He loved rocks, and that was really the only reason he had chosen geophysics. Rocks were safe and enduring. After his spectacular lack of faith in himself as a Vedek and in the Bajoran religion, he had desperately needed to belong to something that was as close to permanent as he could find-the planets themselves.
The Academy was also an enduring place. Stricken with sudden longing, Reoh checked the chronometer for the time at the Academy. It was late, but Jayme usually stayed up until all hours. He sent the signal.
"h.e.l.lo?" Jayme finally answered, blinking sleepily.
"Did I wake you?" Reoh asked.
"Who is that? Nev Reoh?" Jayme said blearily. "Gad, almost didn"t recognize you in that uniform."
Proudly, Reoh straightened his blue-shouldered jacket. "I"m a level three geo-inspector in the Beltos system."
"Glory be," Jayme yawned. "Orion animal-women! Having fun yet?"
"Uh, not really," he admitted. "It"s mostly dust and rocks, you know."
"I can understand you"re distracted, what with everything that"s happening," Jayme agreed.
Reoh felt like he"d missed part of their conversation. "What do you mean?"
"In the Bajoran system. They"re battening down the hatches."
"Carda.s.sians?!" Reoh asked, his voice rising in a frightened squawk.
"No, the Dominion." Jayme finally seemed to wake up. "Where have you been the past few weeks?"
"In the Beltos system-"
"Yeah, I guess the rumors wouldn"t have reached you yet. Everyone here at the Academy knows, of course."
"What"s wrong with Bajor?" Reoh demanded.
"We found out the Dominion are shape-shifters. They"re the ones who control the Jem"Hadar, and they"re practically invading through the wormhole."
"Invading!"
"Well, not yet. But everyone expects them to." Jayme shifted through some clips on her desk. "I"ll send you some of the reports. I"m surprised they haven"t called you to DS9. There are so few Bajorans in Starfleet."
"There"s not much for a geophysicist to do on a s.p.a.ce station by a wormhole," Reoh said numbly, thinking over the implications of Bajor being smack on the front lines of an invasion. His people never seemed to get a break.
Jayme yawned. "You could be some sort of liaison."
"I"m no Sito Jaxa." The thought of his Bajoran friend, a former member of Nova Squadron, still brought him near to tears. Jaxa was believed to have given her life last month by returning to Carda.s.sia as a prisoner of war in order to protect a Federation informant. "I could never be a hero."
"That"s nonsense. Heroes are just people who do what needs to be done."
Reoh wasn"t sure why Jayme was smiling, but he couldn"t ask because she said she had an exobiology exam the next day. Before signing off, she sent a burst transmission of the Academy news service clippings on the recent developments.
Reoh stayed up half the night listening to the reports. He also accessed the Bajoran news on the Federation subs.p.a.ce channel. It didn"t look good.
He kept remembering his six months leave in the Bajoran system right after he graduated. He had never been to the homeworld before, so he had taken a complete tour of the colonies and most of the major continents of Bajor, visiting all the great historic sites he had studied during his life.
But it hadn"t felt like home. He had talked to other Bajorans who claimed to have had an immediate sense of completeness at being on Bajoran soil and among their own people. A homecoming, they all told him. Maybe it was his disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt from so much of the Bajoran spiritual life, feeling like he had no right to the comfort of his religion when he had failed his people.
It was worse when he ran into someone he knew from the resettlement colony on Shunt. Ran Sisla was married now and working in one of the fishing villages of Karor. She had been uncomfortable with him, remembering him in his former Vedek"s robes when he had acted as the spiritual leader of their tiny community in the north country of Shunt.
Reoh never did get to sleep that night, thinking over his mistakes and wishing he had done things differently. If he had never fooled himself into believing he was called as a Vedek, his life might have gone very differently. He wouldn"t have felt such a need to leave Shunt. He could have been on Bajor right now, helping his people.
Then again, nothing was what it appeared to be. In the last weeks of his vacation on Bajor, Vedek Winn had accused Vedek Bareil of being a Carda.s.sian collaborator during the Resistance. Bareil had withdrawn from the election, and Winn was now Kai.
Reoh had written his astonishment to Ro Laran- whom he wouldn"t exactly consider a friend, but she was a fellow Bajoran in Starfleet. But his communique had been returned undelivered. Soon after, he received a Starfleet notification that Ro had gone AWOL and was believed to be cooperating with the Maquis, who had recently taken a more militant stand in the Demilitarized Zone. The communique added that any information as to Ro Laran"s whereabouts should be forwarded immediately to Starfleet Headquarters, etc. etc. etc. etc.
Meanwhile, he was alone in a very strange solar system, crawling through endless storage containers and checking ore for crystalline impurities.
Nev Reoh tried to wait outside the dancing bar for Captain Jord, but the enforcers insisted he move along or pay the door fee to get in. Once inside, he was able to secure a ledge near the lit entrance. Almost immediately, he had to fend off the advances of Orion animal-women.
Then he saw Meesa slightly above him. A brutish Rigellian miner was trying to attract her attention with a purple laser light, signaling her to come to him. Reoh quickly motioned for Meesa to join him.
She was at his side in a flash, her expression so grateful and pleased that he suddenly realized how young she was-like a first-year cadet. She snuggled next to him, fitting into the crook of his arm, holding up her finger to be validated on his charge card.
Reoh nervously hoped that he could push the woman away without too much fuss when Captain Jord arrived. It wasn"t the most professional situation she could find him in, but what did she expect, asking him to meet her in a place like this?
"How long have you been dancing here, Meesa?" He was grateful that this time she seemed content to cuddle rather than try to seduce him.
She squirmed up to bring her lips closer to his ear. "This many days," she whispered, holding out all of her fingers but one.
"That"s all?" he asked, his voice cracking at her sudden closeness.
She nodded, leaning her head back against his shoulder. It was so intimate, yet they were sitting in a crowded room with a couple hundred strangers barely visible through the shifting lights of the bar. In the center, a long-limbed Orion was contorting into unbelievable positions as she spun and rolled in midair.
He cleared his throat. "You come from Beltos IV?"
Meesa nodded, her tiny chin quivering and her eyes filling with tears at the memory.
"I"m sorry!" Reoh exclaimed, fumbling for something to wipe her eyes. "You didn"t want to leave?" he asked helplessly.
"I have nothing," she murmured, looking down at her hands.
"That"s awful," he said for lack of anything better.
He sat with her for the better part of an hour, hardly speaking. She actually dozed off. He was consumed with pity for the poor woman who was obviously worked round the clock, one of thousands who were burned out in the slave trade.
When it was finally clear that Captain Jord wasn"t going to appear, again, Reoh pressed Meesa"s finger to his card a few more times, telling her, "You can get some sleep now."
Her eyes lingered on him a moment, struck by his girl of time. That made him feel even worse, that she would be so surprised and touched by such a simple thing. He watched to make sure she got through the crowd without being snared by a reveling Pa"a crewmember or vacationing Beltos miner. She disappeared through one of the little slave-holes, leading to the prophets knew where in the bowels of the place.