He followed Keren to the bedsides of several patients. The medical attendants—some Houseborn, some Wanderers—recognized Keren and offered her respectful greetings. Keren had personal words for every patient they encountered, all of whom suffered from different maladies. Whatever commonality brought the patients here was not readily evident in their symptoms. In Shar’s Starfleet experience and in following Thriss around the medical wards on Betazed, he’d found that patients were usually organized by diagnosis. He suspected that Keren’s agenda was the unifying thread here.
In a private moment, Shar asked at last, “What selected facts are you presenting me to prove your point, Delegate?”
“These are Yrythny rescued from Cheka research labs. All of them have undergone genetic tampering. The oldest residents were subjected to environmental research—like having limbs amputated or having their legs surgically fused together.”
A wave of nausea squeezed his stomach; his antennae tensed. Although he’d been spared much frontline participation in the Dominion War, he’d seen enough of its horrors that he’d had to learn to cope with them: death, illness, destruction. Defending one’s people or way of life, whether Federation, Klingon, Yrythny or Cheka, necessitated a degree of ugliness. But this…
Speaking softly, her voice coarse, Keren continued, “A few have been castoffs that we found by accident. That group over there”—she pointed to a number of patients suffering from orthopedic maladies—“was discovered left for dead in a damaged ship the Cheka had abandoned. Environmental systems had essentially collapsed. When we rescued them…” She inhaled deeply, sat silent for a long moment. She turned to Shar, her eyes glistening. “We can’t negotiate,” Keren said softly.
And finally, Shar thought he understood.
10
Lieutenant Commander Matthias rocked back and forth in her boots while she waited for the turbolift—in part, because her feet hurt. Never mind the progress of the last three hundred years, military bureaucracy was still incapable of designing comfortable footwear. Sore feet aside, falling asleep while standing was a real possibility considering how she’d worked through the night, managing only a few hours of sleep after she’d completed her chart notes around noon. Excited after a successful day at school, Arios had barged into her room and roused her from a satisfying dream of hiking across Vulcan’s Forge. She’d hoped to rest a bit before the reception, but Lieutenant Ro paged her, requesting an in-person consultation before Thriss could be released from custody. Work waited for no one and mental health rarely conformed to a convenient schedule. Shathrissía zh’Cheen wasn’t an easy case, though the patient wasn’t necessarily the problem.
Ro’s immovability in the face of family pressure impressed her. Councillor zh’Thane, after being told that her political standing had no sway in station security policy, had gone to Admiral Akaar. He too, had contacted Ro and she repeated her assertion that Thriss would remain in custody until she was assured that there would be no further disruptive incidents. Nudging the process along, Akaar stopped by Phillipa’s office with a request that she deliver her evaluation promptly, thus “assuring that the time of all involved parties be spent on the Federation’s business and not on personal issues.” Apparently, years of pushing her agendas through committee had forced zh’Thane to develop not only the interpersonal finesse to grease the political process, but mastery in the art of being an exquisite pain in the ass when circumstances required it. I suppose becoming a Federation councillor involves learning how to get your own way,she thought, hoping that she was never required to do more than brief zh’Thane.
To prep for the consult, she’d spent the last hour combing the Federation database for any information pertinent to Andorian psychology, going so far as to contact her mentor/professor back home on Centauri. The case wasn’t as simple as pronouncing a diagnosis and offering appropriate treatment. Thriss had been schooled by her culture to repress her personal concerns in favor of the collective needs of her betrothed partners. Trying to weed out what issues were endemic to Thriss versus what issues belonged to Thriss by way of her bondmates proved challenging. The longer she worked, however, the clearer it became that she didn’t have time to study for her meeting with Lieutenant Ro, feed the children, read them a chapter from The Adventures of Lin Marna and the Grint Hound Challengeand prepare to attend the evening’s diplomatic reception for the Cardassians.
To placate her neglected spouse, she’d brought a formal dress, secure in the packet tucked beneath her arm (side-by-side with her dress whites), ostensibly to change into after her meeting. “Just ask them, Phil,” he’d wheedled. “I’m sure this one time they won’t object to you wearing a beautiful gown instead of that stodgy old dress uniform.” Phillipa imagined that line of reasoning wouldn’t work on Admiral Akaar. Nevertheless she carried both garments with her—the uniform for the reception; the dress for Sibias, afterthe reception.
Where’s that damn turbolift?She continued to run through her mental checklist: the babysitter was supposedly on her way (once her botany final ended); Sibias, using a tricorder, had persuaded Mireh that nothing more serious than a hairbrush lurked beneath her bed; Arios had made a good start on his science project. On the frivolous front, she’d made an appointment with a stylist who had a booth on the Promenade, hoping he’d be inspired to do more with her hair than the ponytail she typically defaulted to. Tonight, she was slated to meet her new commanding officer and she wanted to make a good impression, though she doubted Colonel Kira was the type to care much about hairstyle.
Phillipa had met her share of fascinating people while warping around the quadrant studying xenoanthropology, but no luminaries in the colonel’s league. News coming from DS9 usually had focused on Captain Sisko but it had been Kira’s exploits that intrigued her. In the weeks immediately following the end of the war, she recalled watching the colonel’s tribunal testimony over the newsfeeds, trying to fathom how one crossed the gulf between Bajoran resistance fighter and consultant to the Cardassian resistance. She studied Kira’s body language, her vocal modulations, and her facial expressions, concluding only that if there were a more focused, intently devout person in the quadrant, Phillipa hadn’t heard of them. Now I’m about to serve under her command,she remembered thinking. She’d wanted to get every detail right.
I just hope my dress uniform still fits,she thought, trying to remember if she’d worn it since Mireh was born. Not much need for dress whites while doing posttraumatic stress counseling in a war zone. Maybe Ro will let me change in the security office…Focused on planning for the hours ahead, she missed hearing the approaching footsteps.
“Lieutenant Commander Matthias?”
Phillipa spun on her heel to see that Colonel Kira, striking in her dress uniform, had joined her. And me completely preoccupied and frazzled.“Yes, sir.” She snapped her ankles together and tried not to stare too obviously at the colonel. Even if she hadn’t already known what Kira looked like, she would have recognized her from the absence of her earring. To her knowledge, Kira was the only Bajoran officer on the station who didn’t wear one: even Ro wore hers, albeit on the “wrong” side.
“At ease,” Kira said with a smile. “When I saw you waiting here, I thought I’d introduce myself more informally than tonight’s reception may allow. I’m just sorry we haven’t met sooner. As you probably know, circumstances have been a bit more chaotic than normal.”