He wondered if the incoming regime would deprive him of Ro as well. A determination rose within him to prevent that from happening, though he hadn’t the faintest idea of how he might go about it.
It seemed hopeless on the face of it.
“So have you decided what you’re going to do after the Federation comes in?” he asked, taking the liberty of refilling both their glasses.
“As a matter of fact,” Ro said, throwing back a hefty quantity of the Dom Pérignon, “I think I’ve finally come to a decision.”
On the stage, Vic and his ensemble launched into a rendition of a centuries-old Earth standard that repeatedly asked the question “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”—and continually presented “I don’t” as the only acceptable answer. According to Vic, someone named Porter had written the song for a show called High Society,which apparently had starred this Sin-Ah-Trah person whom Vic seemed to regard so highly. But how a disdain for the acquisition of money equated with any so-called high society made absolutely no sense. Quark struggled to ignore the song’s patently offensive lyrics, while Ro didn’t seem to mind them. Or perhaps she hadn’t even noticed, having lived among impecunious Starfleet hew-mons for as long as she had.
Quark watched her throughout Vic’s performance, wondering if she intended to tell him what decision she’d made. He suspected it lay along lines similar to his own. “I suppose neither of us is considered a pillar of the community around here,” he said. “And under the Federation, it’s only going to get worse for us both. The new regime is never going to feel right for either one of us. Not as long as we’re outsiders.”
“It’s been made pretty clear to me today that I can never wear a Starfleet uniform again,” Ro said, as though talking to herself. “Not that I’d want to.”
“But the Bajoran Militia is going to be part of Starfleet soon,” Quark said. Your choices look pretty much the same as mine. But where will yours take you?
Ro took another drink and nodded. “Once the ministers sign those entry documents, home won’t be a refuge from the Federation anymore. At least, not for me.”
“And the Bajorans will become just like the hew-mons,” Quark said. “Flat broke, but too well fed to realize it.”
“To outsiders,” Ro said, raising her glass in an ironic toast. “So the next big question is, What do we do next?”
We?
Even as his despair about his personal financial prospects deepened, Quark allowed himself to nurture the hope that he was finally connecting with Ro on some level deeper than mere infatuation. But if she, too, was planning to leave the station, would he ever get the chance to capitalize on that?
Quark was suddenly terrified that the wrong word from him right now might drive her away from him forever. “Don’t go,” was all he could think of to say.
He realized a moment later that Vic had returned, his entrance evidently obscured by the gathering Dom Pérignon haze. “Let me guess,” Quark said. “You heard everything we just said.”
Vic grinned. “I heard enough, pallie, to make one thing as clear as where Goldwater stands on JFK: You two gloomy Guses are made for each other.”
Ro’s nearly empty drink slipped from her fingers and tipped over. She ignored the stain that was slowly spreading across the tablecloth. “Come again?”
“Listen, those ancient Chinese cats might have really been onto something when they decided to make ‘danger’ and ‘opportunity’ into the same word.”
“I don’t follow you,” Quark said, wondering if his holosuite was beginning to malfunction. That would be damned inconvenient, with Nog over ninety thousand light-years away at the moment.
“Neither of you can see a way of making a go of it under the Federation flag,” Vic said, looking first at Ro, then at Quark. “Which means that you’re both going to have to get out of Dodge. Away from Starfleet. And away from a cashless Promenade.”
“Right,” Quark said. So far, Vic was only stating the obvious. Where was this leading?
“Dodge?” Ro said, obviously perplexed.
Vic sighed and shook his head in an exaggerated display of patience. “Okay, let me spell it out for you in great big letters, like the Sands’ marquee: You two need to gallop off to the frontier and go into business together.”
After a parting wink at a nonplussed Ro, Vic returned to the stage and began to sing “Fly Me to the Moon.”
A moment later Quark realized that Vic was, yet again, uncannily right. He looked at Ro and saw the same realization beginning to dawn in her eyes as well.
“I think we need to talk,” he said as he righted her glass and filled it again, emptying the bottle in the process.
Ro smiled. “Later,” she said, and held out her hand to him. “Dance with me.”
Quark felt a grin spreading across his face and took Laren’s hand. They stepped onto the dance floor together.
Seated behind the large desk in the station commander’s office, Kira didn’t bother to look up from the security report she had been reading until after the door had hissed open and admitted her latest visitor.
She was surprised to see Colonel Lenaris Holem—no, she corrected herself, GeneralLenaris Holem—striding toward her desk.
The general’s broad smile belied his mock-chiding tone. “Working this late is a bad habit, Colonel.”
“Occupational hazard,” she said, returning the smile. “I’m going to have a very busy day tomorrow.” Tossing the padd aside, she rose from her chair in deference to Lenaris’s superior rank.
His lips curled in a good-natured scowl. “Please. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing colonels leaping to attention in my presence. Especially not you.”
Kira felt her own smile increase in wattage. She had always genuinely liked the large, blunt-featured Militia officer. “Well, if you won’t take a salute, then I hope you’ll accept my congratulations on your promotion.”
He touched the month-old general’s pin on the collar of his gray uniform tunic, as though he thought a Vayan hornfly had just lit there. Kira knew that Lenaris had been promoted from colonel to general in recognition of his accomplishments as commander of the Lamnak fleet during the evacuation of Europa Nova, a non-Federation Earth colony whose population had been threatened by theta radiation a few months earlier. It also hadn’t escaped her notice that she, the overall commander of that extremely complex mission, had received no promotions or commendations whatsoever.
So goes Militia politics,she thought. For the Attainted.
But she knew that Lenaris wasn’t responsible for her shabby treatment, either at the hands of Yevir Linjarin’s plurality in the Vedek Assembly, or from his sympathizers within the Bajoran Militia. She knew that both groups bore little love for her after her official excommunication from the mainstream of Bajor’s religious life. Yet, on the eve of the planet’s entry into the Federation, neither group seemed able to muster sufficient courage to fire her on purely religious grounds.
Still, Lenaris’s promotion served as a depressing reminder to her of how far she had fallen in the eyes of so many influential Bajorans.
“What can I do for you?” she asked, gesturing toward the sofa in the meeting area of her office. She moved over to the replicator, from which she extracted two cups of alva nut tea, the general’s favorite beverage. “And why didn’t you let me know you were coming?”
“I didn’t call ahead,” said the general as he sat, “in case you already knew the answer to your first question. You might have found some convenient excuse not to see me.”
She handed one of the two steaming mugs to Lenaris. “My door is always open to you, Holem. You know that.”
“I do. And I’m grateful for it.” He took a careful sip of the hot, fragrant liquid. Settling back into the sofa, he said, “You know, I nearly turned down this promotion. After Europa Nova, it felt like the High Command was deliberately snubbing you by offering these general’s bars to me.”