Once the devices had been completed, they would be loaded onto a probe, along with Ezri’s account of the Inamuri and the Prentara, and then the probe would be sent down to the planet’s surface. Keyed to lock on to human and Andorian life signs, or to land beside the interface if bioscans could not locate the crew, it would reach the site about half a day before the next pulse. That left more than enough time for the away team to set the devices in place, and retreat from the site to safety, before the multidimensional explosions closed the interface.

Ezri finished her recording, then worked the padd to transfer it onto an isolinear optical chip. “Julian,” she called. With Ezri out of danger, both Richter and Juarez had left the medical bay. Now, across the room, Julian turned from a console.

“Have you finished?” he asked, walking over to her. She held up the isolinear chip, which he took from the tips of her fingers. He slapped at his combadge. “Bashir to Nog.”

“Go ahead, Doctor,”came the lieutenant’s response.

“Lieutenant Dax has finished recording her data,” Julian reported.

“All right,”Nog said. “I’ll send somebody up for it. Nog out.”

Ezri felt herself outlasting the stimulant Julian had given her, but amid all the difficulties of the last week or so, a moment of playfulness suddenly asserted itself in her. “So,” she said.

“So?” Julian asked, looking down at her, his blue eyes peering into hers.

“I told you so,” Ezri said, referring to her belief that her contact with the object might help the crew stop the pulse.

“You did indeed,” Julian said, obviously picking up her meaning. “I guess that nine lifetimes of experience trump mere genetic engineering.”

“I guess so,” she said, and chuckled.

“You know, I’m proud of you,” he told her. His intense gaze held hers. “Not for being right about this, but for fighting to do what you thought needed to be done. For being strong enough to lead this crew even in the face of your own personal troubles.”

His words touched her deeply, because they meant that he had been able to see in her what she had striven to be. “Thank you,” she said, and she could not keep from smiling. Her eyes slipped closed for a second, and she forced them back open.

“It’s all right,” Julian said. “Get some rest…Captain.”

Captain,Ezri thought, the word like a medal pinned to her chest—or a couple of extra pips on her collar. It echoed in her mind as her eyes closed once more, and she imagined Julian’s voice saying it again as she fell asleep: Captain.

58

“I’m an idiot,” Quark pronounced. The words filled the almost empty room. Quark looked around and saw the few other people here glancing in his direction. He ignored them, and turned back to the person across the table from him.

“Hey, you’d know about that better’n I would,” Vic said, shrugging. The holographic singer returned his attention to his holographic breakfast. Quark peered over at his plate, then quickly looked away; the notion of eating flaky, dried-up grain fragments immersed in cow’s milk, even when the concoction was made out of photons and force fields, turned his stomach.

Hew-mons,Quark thought, but even as he did so, he knew that his revulsion was misplaced. Nothing and nobody disgusted him right now more than himself. “Yeah, well, trust me,” he told Vic. “I’m even more of an idiot right now than my simpleton brother.”

Vic lifted a flute of a bright orange liquid that looked quite a bit like pooncheenee,though without the reddish tint. Quark knew that the drink could not have been the Bajoran beverage, since this holoprogram ran period-specific. “You mean your brother who’s now in charge of the whole shebang back home?” Vic sipped at his drink, then set it back down.

“Not to mention ruining the entire Ferengi economy,” Quark moaned. “Thanks for reminding me.”

Vic shook his head slowly as he chewed noisily on his breakfast. “So that’s why you’re upset?” Vic asked. “’Cause your brother’s wreckin’ the out-of-town books?”

“I’m upset,” Quark said, “because there’s something going on here on the station, and I don’t know anything about it.”

“Hey, you can’t know everything, right?” Vic said.

Quark leaned forward across the table. “If it happens on this station,” he intoned, “I make it my business to know about it.” He sat back in his chair. “And if there’s profit to be had, then I make it my business.”

Vic threw one hand in the air. “So you don’t know about this one,” he said. “You find out about the next one. No big thing. It’s just business.”

“‘Justbusiness’?” Quark repeated, appalled at the combination of the two words. “You don’t understand. I’m not just a businessman; I’m a Ferengibusinessman. Business is my life.”

“Yeah, I know that’s what you say,” Vic offered.

“I’m not just saying it,” Quark told him. “Business ismy life.”

Vic nodded and smiled in a way that made Quark uncomfortable. “Hey, pallie, whatever you wanna believe is fine with me.”

“I don’t just believe it,” Quark maintained. “It’s true.”

“Okay, okay, who’s arguin’?” Vic scooped up the last bit of his breakfast and shoveled it into his mouth.

“You are,” Quark said.

“Look,” Vic said. He set his spoon down in his empty bowl with a clink. “You say business is your life. I just see somethin’ different, is all. Since I’ve been back in business here at the hotel, how many times have you and Julian been in here cryin’ in your beer about one dame or another? First it was Jadzia, then it was Ezri, and then the green one. I’m tellin’ you, you can’t figure the players without a scorecard. I know the doc and Ezri have a thing now, but you…you’re still in here mopin’.”

Quark shrugged and offered a sly smile. “I like females,” he said, feeling somewhat sheepish. “I can’t help that.”

“Course not,” Vic said. “I have a fondness for ’em myself. But didn’t somebody once say that dames and dough don’t mix?” Vic’s words sounded remarkably similar to the 94th Rule of Acquisition.

“All right, so I have a weakness,” Quark allowed. “That doesn’t mean business isn’t my life.”

Vic raised his glass and downed the last of his drink. “That’s right,” he said. “Except, what about this?” He put his glass down on the table, then spread his hands out, gesturing at their surroundings.

Quark looked around. “What about what?”

“I don’t wanna bite the hand that feeds me,” Vic said, “but you’re lettin’this light show run twenty-six hours a day. I know we get our fair share of traffic in here from that floatin’ bicycle wheel of yours, but not that much.”

“I like this place,” Quark said meekly, recognizing the truth of what Vic had said.

“Hey, and that’s great,” Vic told him. He picked up his empty glass and held it up, gesturing toward the bar. “Believe me, I’m happy about that. It just doesn’t make the best business sense for a guy who claims business is the most important thing in his life. Plus…” He set his glass back down.

“Plus what?” Quark asked.

“Didn’t you risk your life to rescue your mother from a bunch of bad guys who snatched her?” Vic said. “I mean, that’s great. She’s your mom and you gotta do what you gotta do. But you said business is your life, and that ain’t exactly business.”

Quark nodded, wondering exactly how Vic had learned about Ishka’s kidnapping by the Dominion. “My mother…she had the Grand Nagus’s ear—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Vic interrupted, obviously not putting much stock in Quark’s purported justification for his actions. “Didn’t you also risk your life helping the Feds take this place back from the bad guys?”