Dismissing thoughts of the Attainder with a shake of her head and a short, backward wave of her hand, Kira activated the computer interface and retrieved her agenda for the day. By design, she had no appointments scheduled during the morning—she had pushed the daily staff meeting back a few hours—but the afternoon would be full. After convening with her senior staff, she had the weekly meeting open to all station personnel, which typically lasted an hour or so, and after that, who knew how long it would take to listen to Quark itemize whatever requests or grievances the Promenade Merchants’Association had this month.
And speaking of Quark, she anxiously awaited the opportunity to talk with Ro about her foray with him to Farius Prime. Kira had already read the lieutenant’s preliminary report on their disruption of the negotiations for the gateways between the Orion Syndicate and the Petraw—whoever they turned out to be—but she still had numerous questions about Ro’s time undercover as Quark’s escort. That,she thought, grinning, ought to make quite a story.
Kira picked up the mug and sipped again at the raktajino.Her final appointment for the day, she saw, would also be the most important: a subspace conference with the Starfleet Corps of Engineers that would provide her with an update on their efforts to decontaminate Europa Nova. While First Minister Shakaar and Minister Asarem and the rest of the Bajoran government had immediately responded to the Europani crisis by offering their planet as a temporary harbor, the sudden influx of two and a half million people—with another halfmillion on the way—taxed Bajor’s resources. The sooner the refugees could be returned to their world, the better for everybody.
Kira keyed in her access code with her free hand and found that she had several messages waiting for her, as was often the case when she started her shift. She scanned down the list and saw that most appeared to be routine, but two caught her eye: one from Lieutenant Ro, and one, very surprisingly, from Taran’atar. Kira supposed that she was becoming accustomed to the Jem’Hadar’s presence on the station, and her confidence in him had grown well beyond the simple fact of his assignment to DS9 by Odo. He had certainly proven himself as a soldier under her command. But she could also see that, for all his strength and military abilities, he still felt awkward and unsure here, often seeming to grope for understanding in this setting—and on this mission—that was clearly so alien to him.
The readout indicated that Taran’atar’s message was audio only. Kira put down the mug of raktajino,now half empty, and touched the interface controls, which warbled in response. “Colonel Kira,”Taran’atar began. His usually resonant voice still sounded thin to her, as it had when she had visited him in the infirmary upon her return to the station. She recalled the image of him lying on the diagnostic pallet, looking as though he had been battered for hours, the greengray skin of his face unnaturally colored blue and purple and black.
Difficult as it was to credit, Dr. Tarses claimed that those hideous bruises were indications of the superior capacity of Jem’Hadar to heal. When Taran’atar had been recovered by Lieutenant Bowers and Ensign Roness after he had returned from the Delta Quadrant through one of the gateways, his face had been a mass of open wounds. Bowers had transported him aboard Rio Grandeand had managed to stem the bleeding, and by the time they had gotten back to DS9, the damage had already begun to mend.
Unfortunately, Taran’atar’s facial wounds had been the very least of his injuries. One of his arms had suffered multiple fractures, and two of his ribs had been splintered. A bladed weapon not only had penetrated one of his biceps, but had traveled within, chewing up muscle tissue and then sawing its way back out. Another, more jagged blade had been plunged into his chest, leaving a gaping hole and slicing through one of his hearts. Two other of his organs had been damaged as well. It had been worse even than when the Jem’Hadar hatched by that genetically engineered renegade—Locken—had tortured Taran’atar; they had hurt him, but in trying to extract information from their prisoner, their attentions had been designed to keep him alive. The Hirogen in the Delta Quadrant had clearly had no such constraints; he had wanted to hunt down and destroy Taran’atar. When Kira had visited the infirmary and learned the extent of his injuries, she had wondered—and she wondered again now—what the combat between the two warriors must have been like; after all, as badly wounded as he was, Taran’atar had wonthe battle.
Kira listened to the rest of the message. Like all of Taran’atar’s communications, it was succinct: he wanted to be liberated from the infirmary. Liberated,Kira thought, unable to suppress a smile, as though he were a prisoner.When she had first seen him after their ordeals, he had expressed his satisfaction that they had both reclaimed their lives. Now, she supposed, he wished to reclaim his life once more, this time from the clutches of Dr. Tarses.
Kira sympathized. She had never been much of a patient herself, had never wanted to lie about for long, even to expedite her own convalescence. She would see to it that Simon released Taran’atar as soon as medically appropriate—which, knowing the rapid recuperative powers of Jem’Hadar, would be soon, anyway.
She called up Ro’s message, a text memorandum requesting the authority to regulate the pedestrian traffic on the Promenade. Ro had listed several justifications for the request, but Kira thought that she should have foreseen this herself. As busy a place as Deep Space 9 had always been, it had never been as close to capacity as right now. Almost five months after the war with the Dominion, businesses were finally returning to normal, and the trade routes were once again being plied—although not yet through the wormhole. The station also continued to function as a staging area for relief efforts to Cardassia, and now played a similar role in the evacuation of Europa Nova. And while a substantial majority of the refugees had been taken to Bajor, several thousand remained on DS9, along with the crews of scores of ships waiting to begin resettlement of the Europani once their world had been returned to habitability.
Kira turned in her chair and gazed out the large, oval window behind her desk. She could see at least a dozen ships, no two alike, a couple of them Bajoran, but most from out of the system. With so many crews aboard the station, Ro had already posted more security officers than usual along the Promenade, a move Kira supported.
She’s been doing a good job,Kira thought as she turned back to her desk. She had not been that sure of Ro at first, but the new security chief had performed her duties seriously and well. And despite a rocky beginning, the two seemed to have developed a professional relationship of mutual respect.
Another aspect of the congestion on the Promenade, according to Ro, concerned the Bajoran temple and the Orb of Memory. As word of the Orb’s rediscovery spread, many Bajorans were apparently undertaking a pilgrimage to the station to experience it for themselves. The Orb would eventually be moved to Bajor, once a suitable location for it had been selected and prepared by the Vedek Assembly, but in recent days the number of passenger transports arriving fully loaded from Bajor had increased dramatically.
Kira glanced back across the room, over at When the Prophets Cried.She had felt the urge to consult the old book this morning, not because she sought direction for herself, but because she hoped to gain some insight into the current, tumultuous times. Dramatic events had unfolded for Bajor during the past few months—the Ascension of the Emissary, the death of the kai, the banishment of the Pah-wraiths, the unearthing of the Ohalu text—and Kira had begun to wonder if a new era might be dawning for her people. Allusions to a restoration of all the highest accomplishments the Bajoran people had ever achieved appeared in several canon sources, though conventional interpretations held that such a time, if it ever came, would be far in the future. But with the return of the Orb of Memory, Kira had started considering the possibility that the future had arrived.