“What’s your name?” he asked, pulling back to see the bronze green sheen of her cheeks, the startling whites of her eyes.
“Meesa,” she breathed.
“Meesa,” he repeated, helplessly trapped by the warm scent of her, the feel of her in his arms.
Reoh shook his head, and pushed her away slightly, trying to get hold of himself. He felt like he had been fighting off Orion animal‑women ever since he got to the Beltos system, but this one was more persistent than most. He had been rejecting her advances for nearly an hour before finally giving in. It usually wasn’t difficult to hold himself back. Except for momentary lapses of pheromone‑induced lust, he mostly felt pity for them, trapped in these hellholes.
“Here,” he said, taking her hand and pressing her fingertip to his charge card once more. “There’s another dance. Now, I have to be going. No, thank you very much,” he assured her, scraping her off as he pushed into the glide lane that carried him through the bar.
He glanced back as he was leaving, but he couldn’t see Meesa anymore. He wondered if he had misread Captain Jord’s message and gotten the wrong bar. That wouldn’t be unlikely in these warrens the Pa’a called space stations.
Reoh consulted his tricorder and hitched the spectro‑analyzer more securely on his shoulder. The jostling crowds were mostly natives from Beltos IV, trading their precious minerals or trying to obtain permits from the ruling Pa’a to travel to other planets in the system, or even enter Federation space. Only two gates on each station led to the docking rings–a passenger gate and a cargo gate. Both were close‑encrypted by Starfleet personnel, running the front lines of border control. Despite the safeguards, smuggling was a big business among the various arms of the Pa’a.
At the very least, Captain Jord wasn’t going anywhere until Reoh validated her encryption pass for the cargo. He also had to give her the coordinates where her vessel could penetrate the automated sensor‑scan buoys at the edge of the system.
Reoh pressed his thumb to the sensor padd of the passenger gate, uneasily aware of the many envious eyes of loiterers on the levels above and below him, watching the traffic through the immense portal. As he phased through, a silver‑tinted Pa’a bustled up and pressed his encryption pass against the sensor padd. The high‑ranking Pa’a pushed past Reoh, heading to the upper docking ring where the better vessels were in port.
Reoh’s ancient shuttle was parked among an assortment of Starfleet ships. Because the stations weren’t under Federation rule, Starfleet officers were required to stay on their ships rather than transient quarters. Reoh preferred that anyway. He felt comfortable in his shuttle, the Dilithium Node, which had been in service in the Beltos system longer than he had been alive. A modern replicator was jammed awkwardly into one corner and the bunk was barely wide enough for him to lie down, but it was home.
There was a voice‑only message from Captain Jord, informing him that she would be delayed and would be unable to meet him until the next day–at the same dancing bar. Reoh methodically checked to make sure he had found the right one.
He really didn’t mind the delay. He had one other inspection to perform in the next couple of days, then his rotation was up and he could return to Starbase 3 for R&R before his next month of duty. He was looking forward to seeing the starbase again. It was one of the biggest in the Federation, servicing a wide variety of systems and species. He had only spent three days on board before shipping out for Beltos IV.
Reoh shook his head at the thought of this assignment. Who would have thought geophysics would be so exotic? He loved rocks, and that was really the only reason he had chosen geophysics. Rocks were safe and enduring. After his spectacular lack of faith in himself as a Vedek and in the Bajoran religion, he had desperately needed to belong to something that was as close to permanent as he could find–the planets themselves.
The Academy was also an enduring place. Stricken with sudden longing, Reoh checked the chronometer for the time at the Academy. It was late, but Jayme usually stayed up until all hours. He sent the signal.
“Hello?” Jayme finally answered, blinking sleepily.
“Did I wake you?” Reoh asked.
“Who is that? Nev Reoh?” Jayme said blearily. “Gad, almost didn’t recognize you in that uniform.”
Proudly, Reoh straightened his blue‑shouldered jacket. “I’m a level three geo‑inspector in the Beltos system.”
“Glory be,” Jayme yawned. “Orion animal‑women! Having fun yet?”
“Uh, not really,” he admitted. “It’s mostly dust and rocks, you know.”
“I can understand you’re distracted, what with everything that’s happening,” Jayme agreed.
Reoh felt like he’d missed part of their conversation. “What do you mean?”
“In the Bajoran system. They’re battening down the hatches.”
“Cardassians?!” Reoh asked, his voice rising in a frightened squawk.
“No, the Dominion.” Jayme finally seemed to wake up. “Where have you been the past few weeks?”
“In the Beltos system–”
“Yeah, I guess the rumors wouldn’t have reached you yet. Everyone here at the Academy knows, of course.”
“What’s wrong with Bajor?” Reoh demanded.
“We found out the Dominion are shape‑shifters. They’re the ones who control the Jem’Hadar, and they’re practically invading through the wormhole.”
“Invading!”
“Well, not yet. But everyone expects them to.” Jayme shifted through some clips on her desk. “I’ll send you some of the reports. I’m surprised they haven’t called you to DS9. There are so few Bajorans in Starfleet.”
“There’s not much for a geophysicist to do on a space station by a wormhole,” Reoh said numbly, thinking over the implications of Bajor being smack on the front lines of an invasion. His people never seemed to get a break.
Jayme yawned. “You could be some sort of liaison.”
“I’m no Sito Jaxa.” The thought of his Bajoran friend, a former member of Nova Squadron, still brought him near to tears. Jaxa was believed to have given her life last month by returning to Cardassia as a prisoner of war in order to protect a Federation informant. “I could never be a hero.”
“That’s nonsense. Heroes are just people who do what needs to be done.”
Reoh wasn’t sure why Jayme was smiling, but he couldn’t ask because she said she had an exobiology exam the next day. Before signing off, she sent a burst transmission of the Academy news service clippings on the recent developments.
Reoh stayed up half the night listening to the reports. He also accessed the Bajoran news on the Federation subspace channel. It didn’t look good.
He kept remembering his six months leave in the Bajoran system right after he graduated. He had never been to the homeworld before, so he had taken a complete tour of the colonies and most of the major continents of Bajor, visiting all the great historic sites he had studied during his life.
But it hadn’t felt like home. He had talked to other Bajorans who claimed to have had an immediate sense of completeness at being on Bajoran soil and among their own people. A homecoming, they all told him. Maybe it was his disenfranchisement from so much of the Bajoran spiritual life, feeling like he had no right to the comfort of his religion when he had failed his people.
It was worse when he ran into someone he knew from the resettlement colony on Shunt. Ran Sisla was married now and working in one of the fishing villages of Karor. She had been uncomfortable with him, remembering him in his former Vedek’s robes when he had acted as the spiritual leader of their tiny community in the north country of Shunt.