Shar saw the beseeching expression on Zhavey’s face, and he would have done almost anything to prevent her from continuing to feel the way she must be feeling. He searched for the words to say, and more than that, he searched for some measure of coherence in all of the emotions churning within him. I love my bondmates,he thought. I love myzhavey and I love my people. And I hate what they’re all doing to themselves.
Before he could find what to say next, Zhaveyspoke. “You willdo this,” she said. It was enough to get him moving.
“I can’t,” he said, and he strode quickly across the room. He had to stop to wait for the door to the corridor to open fully, and in that second he heard Thriss call his name: “Thirishar.”
He left without looking back.
15
Not only had Kira never seen Commander Vaughn this way, she could never even have imaginedhim this way. As they ran down a list of station matters they had decided to review prior to Defiant’s departure this morning, the normally reserved Vaughn moved haphazardly about, like an escape pod being tossed about in the Badlands.
“Commander,” she said, looking up from the computer interface on her desk, “do you intend to walkto the Gamma Quadrant?”
“Excuse me?” Vaughn said. He paced from one side of her office to the other, crossing in front of her desk. When she did not respond to him, he stopped and peered over at her. “I’m sorry. What did you say, Colonel?”
“I just wanted to know if you were going to need the Defianton your mission,” she told him, straight-faced. “Because if not, then you can leave the ship here.” He stared blankly at her, apparently oblivious of either her humor or the reason for it. What she had taken for mere distraction now began to concern her. “Commander, are you all right?”
“Oh,” he said, almost as though coming out of a trance. He looked down at himself and seemed to realize the cause for her question. “Forgive me, Colonel,” he said, and he walked over to her desk and sat in one of the chairs in front of it. “I’m a little…anxious.”
“So I noticed,” she said. “It’s all right. It’s just that I’ve never seen you like this.”
“To tell you the truth,” Vaughn said, “I don’t know if I’ve ever beenlike this.” He smiled, a slight, nervous expression that lent a youthful quality to his features.
“Like what?” she asked him. “Have you got reservations about taking the Defiantinto the Gamma Quadrant? Because Odo promised that the Dominion wouldn’t interfere with peaceful exploration.”
“No, no, I’ve got no reservations,” Vaughn told her. “And I’m not concerned about the Dominion.” He paused and looked off to the side, absently brushing his hand over his beard. He appeared pensive, as though making a decision about something. The expression on his face looked familiar to Kira, and she realized that she had seen it once before: in the Bajoran temple on the Promenade, just before he had revealed the reasons he wanted to take the position as her first officer—reasons that had included his Orb experience. She said nothing now while he remained silent, and then finally he turned back to her. “I’ve wanted to do this for a very long time,” he said. “Since I was a boy.”
“A boy?” Kira asked, surprised at the revelation. In the time Vaughn had served on Deep Space 9, she had come to think of him as a man who could get things done, and who could do anything he chose to do. But she inferred from his words now that he had essentially had a yearning to explore all his life, a yearning that had gone unfulfilled, and that registered to her as uncharacteristic of him.
“Yes,” Vaughn said, leaning his forearms on the front of her desk. “When I was very young, my mother used to take me out into the wilderness occasionally. She’d make a fire and we’d sit around and talk and keep warm.”
Images came to Kira’s mind as Vaughn spoke: sitting with her two brothers and her father around a fire, either at the Singha refugee camp, or out in the rough country, on the run from the Cardassians. Despite the horrors they had all suffered during the Occupation, she recalled those times with her family fondly.
“And I remember,” Vaughn continued, “that when the fire would start to sputter, I’d crawl into my sleeping bag. As the fire continued to diminish, and my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I would be able to see more and more stars.” Although Vaughn still faced her across her desk, Kira had the impression that his eyes did not see her, but gazed back into the past. “And I remember thinking that if the universe was truly infinite, then that must mean that everything you could possibly conceive of must be out there somewhere.”
“I remember thinking that same thing when I was a girl,” Kira said, although she did not add that what she had most wished for back then had been a Bajor where her mother had not been killed, and where her brothers and her father were not always hungry…and where there were no Cardassians.
Vaughn smiled at her, his eyes twinkling, obviously unaware of the cloud that had passed through her heart. As he went on, Kira let go the dark aspect of her recollection, focusing instead on the marvels of an infinite universe. As though putting voice to her thoughts, Vaughn said, “I also thought that there must be wondrous things out there of which I couldn’t possibly conceive. Anyway, that mystery, that promise of not only the unexpected, but the unimagined…that was what filled my childhood with the desire to explore.”
“What happened?” Kira asked.
Vaughn did not answer right away, and Kira could not tell whether he was trying to pinpoint in his mind just what had happened to take him away from those dreams, or whether he was deciding if he could talk about it. “A lot of things happened, Colonel,” he finally said. “As I’m sure you know, a lot of things happen to all of us.” She could only nod her head slowly in agreement.
They sat quietly for a moment, and then Kira glanced down at the time on her desktop display. “Well, Commander,” she said, “you’ve only got ninety more minutes before you officially become an explorer.”
Vaughn lifted his arms from her desk and sat back in his chair. “If we can get through this list,” he said, pointing at the display. “Sorry for the digression. What was the next issue?”
Kira reached forward and operated the console, paging to the next item. “Personnel rotation while the Defiantis away,” she said. She scanned the duty and shift changes Vaughn had proposed and that she had approved, and she made a decision. “You know what, Commander?” She swiveled the display around so that Vaughn could see it. Then she worked the controls again and the screen went dark. “We’ve already been over these issues; there’s really no need to go over them again.”
“Are you sure, Colonel?” he asked. “I’m happy to review the list with you.”
“I trust your work on all of this,” she said. “And even if there’s a problem,” she added with a smile, “I think we can handle it.”
Vaughn smiled back. “I think so too.”
“So,” she said, rising from her chair, “why don’t you go explore the universe?” When Vaughn stood, she extended her hand to him across the desk. He took it with a strong, solid grip. “Walk with the Prophets, Elias,” she said.
He bowed his head to her. “Thank you, Colonel.”
As she released Vaughn’s hand, the door chime sounded. Vaughn turned toward the door, and Kira peered around him to see who it was: Admiral Akaar. It had surprised Kira somewhat when the admiral had returned to DS9 a few days ago. It remained unclear to her how long he would be on the station or what his exact purpose here was—he had been vague when she had contacted him in his quarters aboard Gryphonand asked him about it—though his presence here, and that of Councillor zh’Thane, supported her belief that the Federation might soon take action regarding Bajor’s admittance. “Come in,” she said, and the doors parted and slid open. The admiral entered, and Kira could not help but make note once more of his enormous size.