“I said not now,” Ro told him, her tone firm. She stopped scanning the room and peered down at Quark. “The colonel is right: this isn’t your business.”
Quark staggered back as though Ro had struck him. Kira jumped back, only narrowly avoiding him stepping on her feet. Ro looked up at Kira. “Colonel, if everything’s under control here, there are other security matters I need to tend to.”
“We’re fine here,” Kira said. Ro nodded, then quickly turned and left. Quark stared after her for a moment, then started for the doors. Kira stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “I believe you were about to serve more desserts,” she said. Quark looked back at her, out of the corner of his eye, and then back at the closed doors. Kira wondered what had happened—what Quark had probably done—to cause him such anxiety with Ro. She would have to remember to ask the security chief about it later.
When Quark still did not move, Kira leaned in toward his ear. “If you don’t start serving again,” she said, “then I’m going to have to penalize your breach of contract by closing the bar down for a few days.” She noticed that she did not smell the rancid cologne that he often wore.
Quark turned and looked her in the eyes. He muttered something under his breath and moved past her, headed for the food tables.
As Kira watched him go, she saw Akaar standing by himself. He had a drink in his hand, and he seemed to be observing the rest of the guests. Kira decided that the time and place were right for her to try to establish a rapprochement with the admiral. She strode over to him. “Good evening,” she said. “I hope you’re having a pleasant time.”
Akaar regarded her in a manner to which she had become accustomed by now, with an aloofness that suggested judgment and suspicion. She chose not to react to it, instead simply continuing to smile and wait for his response. “I am having a pleasant time,” he said at last. “Thank you for inquiring.”
“You’re welcome,” Kira said. “I’m glad that you’re enjoying the reception.” She paused and debated what to say next, then plunged ahead. “I hope that your time on the station continues to be productive,” she said.
Akaar sighed, then leaned down toward Kira. “I’ll tell you something, Colonel,” he said. “I do not care at all for—” He glanced around the room. “—Cardassian architecture. However, I have so far been impressed with…Bajoran hospitality.”
As Akaar stood back up, Kira felt her mouth drop open in surprise at the echo of her own words to Ambassador Lent. She began to say something in an attempt to cover her surprise, but somebody called to Akaar from somewhere behind her. Akaar raised a hand and gestured, then looked back at Kira. “Excuse me, Colonel,” he said, and walked away.
Kira turned and watched Akaar move across the room, over to Councillor zh’Thane. She thought about her comment just a little while ago to Ambassador Lent about “Bajoran hospitality,” and she wondered if Akaar had just tried to tell her something.
53
In the full darkness of night, the soft flurry of white light stood out like a lone star in the void. The materialization sequence finished, and Prynn walked from Chaffee’s aft section and over to the site. She shined her beacon down at the small section of decking she had transported away and then back. It had been reduced to a mass of disfigured metal.
“Well, that’s it then,” she said. Throughout the day, she had managed to cobble together a working transporter, utilizing the parts of the primary system that had survived the crash, along with elements of the two backups. She had been running tests for the last hour, beaming objects in increments both toward the source of the pulse and in the opposite direction. She had ascertained now the effective ranges of the transporter in this environment: one hundred seventy-five kilometers away from the pulse, but only seven kilometers toward it. Beaming in either direction would not help them much, if at all.
Prynn returned to Chaffee’s aft section and powered down the transporter, frustrated. She had struggled with the patchwork machinery all day, not just to get it functioning, but to increase its range. But the problem stemmed from the local effects of the energy produced at the source of the pulse, not from the equipment. Even if Prynn had access to a perfectly maintained transporter, nothing short of extremely powerful pattern enhancers would—
Pattern enhancers,she thought. She raced into the shuttle’s rear compartment and pulled open the compartment doors in the port bulkhead. Several environmental suits sat within, all intact. Prynn took out two of the full-body suits, along with a pair of helmets. She could use an old test pilot’s trick, she had realized, and reconfigure the suits to function as pattern enhancers. That might increase the transporter range significantly.
Prynn spent an hour working on the suits, another idea occurring to her as she did so. She had not quite completed the task she had set herself, though, before exhaustion took firm hold of her. Reluctant to stop, but knowing that she would accomplish nothing by pushing herself too far beyond her limits, she headed back to the encampment. She considered using a stimulant from the medkit, but decided that the best thing would be to get a few hours’ sleep and then resume her work.
As she walked, Prynn swung the beacon out along her path in wide arcs. There really was little need to light her way, she reflected, considering that the ground here lay so completely flat and featureless. She wondered about the land that Vaughn’s journey had taken him across, and about how far he had gotten.
Vaughn.To Prynn’s aggravation, her thoughts had come back again and again to her father today, and not just with respect to the mission here. Her mind had continued conjuring up the image of him walking away from the camp yesterday, which in turn had inexplicably engendered feelings of abandonment in her. It made no sense. Vaughn’s attempt to reach the source of the pulse on foot had been the proper command decision, and leaving her behind to work on the transporter and to tend to Shar had also been right. And still, she could not seem to reel in her thoughts and emotions. In her mind’s eye, she repeatedly saw him deserting the camp.
Notdeserting, she chastised herself. Departing.She found it strange and disconcerting that she should be fixated on something that she did not even believe to be true. But then, the pulse, this planet, the crew’s experiences here—all of it had been nothing if not strange and disconcerting.
A memory from earlier today occurred to Prynn. While she had been working on the transporter, she had vividly recalled lying wounded on Defiant’s bridge, back during the attack by the Jarada. Except that she could not have recalled such a thing; the explosion and the extent of her injuries had knocked her unconscious, and Dr. Bashir had explained to her how it would have been impossible for her brain to imprint and retain memories of the event. And yet today, she had remembered lying on her back beside the captain’s chair, and remembered somebody touching her shoulder and midsection. That person would have been Dr. Bashir, of course, who had treated her on the bridge—except that she kept feeling somehow that it had been Vaughn there, and not the doctor. And the sense she had gotten from Vaughn had been one of intense guilt and sadness, and the memory—or daydream, whichever it had been—had left her temporarily feeling sorry for her father.