Текст книги "Twilight "

Автор книги: David George

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 42 страниц)

10

The door glided open, and Nog stepped off the bridge and into the corridor. Voices and the electronic cheeps of diagnostic testing followed him out, then cut off abruptly as the door closed behind him. He walked quickly forward, paying little attention to anything but the padd he held in his raised hand. He studied the tabulated readout, analyzing the data. Words and numbers, colored green and yellow and red, and arranged in rows and columns, spelled out the results of the level-one diagnostic he had just completed on Defiant’s modified library-computer interfaces.

We’re almost there,Nog thought, encouraged. Only a handful of the readings on the padd appeared in yellow, signifying marginally functional equipment, and only one—a measure of the data flow rate to a secondary interface in the stellar cartography lab—appeared in red, indicating an actual failure. He glanced up as he reached a junction, where the corridor curved back around to the left, and another stretched off to the right. Nog jogged to the right and headed toward the main corridor on the port side of the ship. Stellar cartography,he thought, shaking his head as he turned right again at the next intersection. The new lab had proven the most troublesome—

Nog barreled into somebody. The hand in which he held the padd slammed back into his own body. His other hand reached out and groped for the wall as he tried to maintain his balance, but his feet became entangled and he tumbled sideways onto the deck. Twisting his body around at the last moment, he rolled with the impact as he had been taught to do at the Academy. The other person landed next to him with a thud, and he heard the rattle of several small objects striking the deck.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Nog said hurriedly, knowing that the collision had been his fault. He had been looking at his padd and not where he had been going, so intent on his work that he had not even heard the other person approaching the intersection. And when a Ferengi doesn’t hear something,he thought, it’s their mistake.

“No, no, I’m sorry, sir.” Nog recognized the pitch and tone of the woman’s voice immediately, as well as the slight but distinct cadence of her strange accent. Nog lifted himself onto his elbows and looked over at Ensign Roness. She reached over to him, putting her hands around his left biceps, apparently attempting to help him up even as she moved to rise herself.

“Gerda, it’s all right,” he said, tapping one of her hands lightly as a signal to her to let go of his arm. She did, and they both got to their knees and then to their feet.

“Are you hurt, sir?” Roness asked. She stood considerably taller than Nog did, and she peered down at him with an expression of obvious concern, and perhaps even of fear. She had, after all, just sent a senior officer sprawling onto the deck. “I didn’t see you, I—”

“It’s all right,” Nog repeated. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.” He patted at his uniform, mechanically brushing away the dirt and dust he imagined to be there but did not actually see. He looked past Roness and down at the decking behind her, leaning first to his right and then to his left, until he finally spotted his padd. Nog stepped by her, bent, and retrieved it. “I was too busy checking diagnostic results,” he said, holding up the padd to illustrate his point.

Roness smiled at him then, displaying a mouthful of perfectly aligned, perfectly white teeth, which looked to Nog far too squarish and blunt to be of any real use. As he had so many times before, he wondered just how hew-monsmanaged to chew their way through their food. As he considered her dentition, Roness walked past him, stooped down on one side of the corridor, and picked something up. Then she moved to the bulkhead opposite and grabbed something else. She stood and turned toward him, lifting both of her hands to show him the two padds she was holding. Her wide smile had transformed into a sheepish grin, and she shrugged comically. Nog laughed, a short, loud explosion of breath.

“I guess we’re all pretty busy checking diagnostics these days,” Roness said.

“I guess so,” Nog agreed. Then, remembering that the ensign had also been knocked down, he asked, “Are you all right?”

“I am, I’m fine,” she said. “Just a little bit surprised, that’s all.”

“Me too,” Nog said with a smile. “So how’s the work going?” he asked, pointing to the two padds she still held raised before her.

“Really well,” she told him, lowering her arms. “Ensign Senkowski and his team just finished repairing the last of the hull breaches, and they’re nearly done replating the ship’s armor.”

“That’s great,” Nog said enthusiastically. “I guess we won’t need to push the launch back again.”

“No, thank goodness for that,” Roness said. Her eyes widened as she spoke, revealing the obvious importance to her of meeting the new schedule. Several of the crew, including Nog, had felt embarrassment at having to delay the start of their mission, although Commander Vaughn had lauded their efforts to refit and repair Defiantover such a short span of time.

“Well, I need to get down to the computer core,” Nog said. Then, remembering that he carried the rank of lieutenant—something that still surprised him sometimes when he thought about it—he added, “Carry on, Ensign.”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Thank you, sir.” She started down the corridor and disappeared around the corner, apparently headed to the bridge. Nog turned and resumed his own course. This time, he only peeked occasionally at the padd, keeping his head up and his eyes primarily on his surroundings.

When he reached the port turbolift at the bow of the ship, he reached up with his empty hand and touched the control plate. The door slid open and he entered the lift. “Deck three,” he said. “Port computer core.” As the car descended, he raised the padd and began studying its contents again. I’m not going to run into anybody just standing in a turbolift,he thought, smiling to himself.

Nog was pleased by what the readouts on the padd indicated, and by the other reports he had received within the last couple of hours—including what Ensign Roness had just told him. Repairs to the ship were proceeding as expected, and the last major refit work to be completed was the conversion of the library computer. That involved both a modification to the existing interfaces, and a restructuring and reloading of scientific data to the dual computer cores. In the last few days, Lieutenant Candlewood and his team had made considerable progress, finishing almost all of the interface upgrades and loading more than half of the necessary data. Only the secondary systems in the stellar cartography lab continued to give them any significant trouble, as almost all of the systems in that lab had since they had begun its installation. If he could, Nog would have locked on to the entire lab and transported it out into space—except of course that, on an exploratory mission like the one Defiantwould be embarking on, stellar cartography would see more use than just about any other system on the ship.

Nog felt the lift slow and complete its vertical descent, then felt it move horizontally toward his destination amidship. At least we’ll be able to leave the station in five days,Nog thought, as pleased as Ensign Roness had been that Commander Vaughn would not have to delay the start of the mission a second time. Of course, they could probably gain an entire day back on the timetable. Nog was scheduled to be off duty three days from now, but if he worked instead—

No,Nog thought as the turbolift eased to a stop. Commander Vaughn had been clear and firm when he had announced the one day postponement in the launch of the mission: he had required all crewmembers to take their regular time away from their duties. That’s probably the smart thing to do,Nog conceded as the turbolift door slid open. Although he would have been content to work every day until they departed for the Gamma Quadrant, he recalled how miserable Uncle Quark’s employees had been before they had formed a union and demanded, among other things, fixed time off.

Nog strode out of the lift, turned right down the corridor—and barreled into somebody, although it felt more like he had run into some thingthis time. Whoever or whatever he had struck, it sent him reeling backward. He lost his balance and fell onto his back. He let go of the padd and slapped the decking with his open hands as he landed, trying to absorb some of the impact—again, as he had been instructed to do at the Academy. He yelped as the air was knocked out of him, a high-pitched squeal that reminded him of Uncle Quark. He labored for breath, then recalled his training and tried to control his breathing. He closed his eyes and concentrated, realizing then that his head must have struck the deck, because he felt suddenly dizzy.

Slowly, air returned to Nog’s lungs, and his head stopped spinning. He struggled up onto one elbow, took a deep breath, and shook his head to clear it. Only when he had opened his eyes did it occur to him that, unlike when he and Ensign Roness had run into each other, nobody had tried to come to his aid this time. The reason became immediately apparent: Nog recognized the black boots of the figure standing in front of him even before he looked up and saw their owner.

Nog gasped. He rolled his eyes up, but did not lift his head, as he took in the boots, the black coverall, and then the hideous face of the Jem’Hadar. Instinctively, Nog listened, hoping to hear the footsteps or the voice of an approaching crewperson. But he heard nothing but the machinery of Defiant,his own shallow breathing, and the breathing of the Jem’Hadar. Nog was alone with him, he realized…alone with it.

“Don’t hurt me,” Nog whispered, and he could hear the tremors in his own voice. Fear gripped him, and all of the rationalizations he had made to himself—and that other people had made to him—about trusting this Jem’Hadar, about allowing this murderous being to remain on the station, fled from him in an instant. All at once, it was of no consequence that Odo had vouched for this thing; Odo was not here, was not on the station or even in the Alpha Quadrant, and this creature had been designed and hatched to be a killing machine. Nothing changed that, not Odo’s intentions, not the Jem’Hadar’s independence from ketracel-white, and not all of the people on DS9 who wanted to believe that peace with the Dominion meant that nonviolent coexistence with the Jem’Hadar was possible. Colonel Kira, Admiral Ross, Captain Picard, Commander Vaughn—they had all been fools, and now Nog would pay the ultimate price, as though he had not paid enough already.

The Jem’Hadar towered over him, like one of the docking pylons rising high above the rings of Deep Space 9. Living on the station for as long as he had, and then attending Starfleet Academy, Nog had grown accustomed to having to look up at almost all of the people he met, but not like this. From his position on the deck, he felt as though he were staring a kilometer up into the sky. The 53rd and 235th Rules of Acquisition occurred to him—“Never trust anybody taller than you,” and “Duck; death is tall”—and he understood them as he never had before. His father had first recited the rules—

Father.Nog pictured him, thinking about how he would react to the news of his son’s death: he would be devastated. Anger joined with Nog’s fear as he imagined the terrible sadness his father would feel. Quickly, vowing to battle both his fear and this monster, Nog moved, reaching his left hand up to his chest and slapping at his combadge to activate it. “Nog to security.” The words had left his mouth before he realized that his combadge was no longer pinned to his uniform. It must have fallen off, either when he had collided with Ensign Roness, or when he had collided with…this.

Nog lifted his head and looked up at the Jem’Hadar. It squinted down at him, clearly sizing up its prey. Nog hurriedly looked around, searching for something, anything, that would help him. The padd,he thought, trying to find it. He could throw it at the Jem’Hadar’s face, maybe buy himself enough time to get back into the turbolift—

Nog whirled his head around as he caught movement in his peripheral vision. The Jem’Hadar had stepped forward and now reached down to grab him. Nog thrust his feet hard against the deck, his legs acting like pistons as he scurried backward away from the monster. With one impact, pain shot through his left knee. He rolled onto his side and tried to push himself to his feet. For a moment, he thought he would make it, and then the Jem’Hadar’s hands closed around his chest and side like vises. Nog’s feet came clear of the deck as he was lifted. His anger and resolve slipped away, leaving him alone once more with his fear. He opened his mouth to scream—Starfleet officer or not, he did not want to die—but only air emerged. His ears went cold.

“We are not at war with each other,” the Jem’Hadar said as he settled Nog back onto his feet.

Nog stopped trying to scream, but he remained agape. The monster’s voice, which he had not heard in quite some time, and never at such close range, came out not as a growl, but full and rich. The sound startled Nog, and he stared up at the Jem’Hadar’s face. For long seconds, the creature’s powerful hands remained locked around his upper torso, and Nog thought that if the Jem’Hadar squeezed, it would crush the life out of him. Nog closed his eyes, waiting for the inevitable.

But the creature released him. His body now unsupported, Nog’s leg started to give way beneath him. He staggered to the left a step, his knee buckling. He reached down and wrapped his hands around it, forcing it straight and keeping himself on his feet.

“Did you hurt your leg?” the Jem’Hadar asked.

Nog stood back up and stared into the face of the enemy. Not much more than a year ago, the lower part of his leg had been destroyed by a blast from a Jem’Hadar weapon. The memory—still clear, still haunting—surrounded Nog like a toxic fog, choking him as it closed in around him. In his mind, he hunted for something to give himself air, to protect him from the suffocating closeness of his memories and his terror. What he found was hatred.

“You blew my leg off,” Nog said, his voice hissing through his clenched teeth.

The creature’s brow knotted. It cocked its head at an angle, obviously not understanding Nog’s words.

“A Jem’Hadar shot my leg off,” Nog said, his voice louder now. Why am I standing here?he asked himself. Why am I talking to this creature?He should leave, he knew, turn and escape as swiftly as he could. But he did not move. Instead, he watched as the Jem’Hadar peered down at his leg. “It’s biosynthetic,” Nog said.

The Jem’Hadar nodded. “You are fortunate to have reclaimed your life,” it told him, its voice lacking any detectable inflection, as though simply reciting a cold fact.

Itis a cold fact,Nog told himself, and then pushed the thought away. “I don’t feel ‘fortunate,’” he spat, and an image rose in his mind, vivid and real: he saw himself holding a phaser trained on this monster before him. In the fantasy, Nog did not hesitate; he depressed the trigger and fired a beam of white-hot energy into the Jem’Hadar’s chest, vaporizing it into nothingness. “Would you feel ‘fortunate’to trade your leg for a hunk of rock in the Chin’toka system.” It was not a question. Nog knew he should leave while he could, but somehow the depth of his loathing kept him there; he wanted—he needed—this creature to express remorse for what the other Jem’Hadar had done to him.

“The Chin’toka system,” it said. “I am aware of it. The Dominion housed a primary communications relay there during the war.” For the first time, Nog thought he detected emotion in the creature’s voice: resentment, maybe even anger.

Good,Nog thought. Let it feel what I feel.

“Seventy-two Jem’Hadar were killed in that action,” the creature continued, and now Nog was certain that he heard anger in its voice.

“You were trying to kill us,” Nog said, struck by the incongruity of offering up a defense for Starfleet’s attempts to save the people of the Alpha Quadrant from the invading hordes of the Dominion.

“It was the Founders’ will,” the Jem’Hadar said.

“That doesn’t make it right,” Nog said, the volume of his voice climbing.

“Of course it does,” the Jem’Hadar avowed. “Everything done in the name of the Founders is right.”

“Shooting my leg off?” Nog’s voice had risen almost to the point of screaming.

“The Jem’Hadar soldiers you fought were trying to kill you, I’m sure,” the creature said. “Their mission was to defend the communications station. They were carrying out their duty. You fought them. Shooting you was the appropriate thing to do.”

Nog seethed, and he suddenly felt the urge to lunge forward at this monstrosity, regardless of the consequences.

“Everything done in the name of the Founders is right,” the Jem’Hadar repeated. “If that was not true, then I would not be standing here.” It leaned forward, bringing its face to within centimeters of Nog’s. “Or youwould not be standing here.” The threat carried in the words only reinforced the menace on the Jem’Hadar’s face.

Nog staggered backward, unable to stand his ground. This creature, this Dominion soldier,would one day reclaim its birthright, Nog knew; it would kill again, and it would do so soon.

Nog turned and looked at the bulkhead beside the turbolift, then reached over and touched the control plate. The door opened, and Nog backed into the car. “I’m notstanding here,” he said, mustering what little defiance he could. As he moved to the rear of the lift, he spotted his padd near the bulkhead on the far side of the corridor. His eyes were still on it as the door slid closed.

“Port airlock,” he said, and the lift started its horizontal journey to the bow of the ship. Nog would go back to the station and report to Colonel Kira what had happened, and make her understand how dangerous the Jem’Hadar was…except that he knew that she would not understand. She believed Odo—they all did—and she would ascribe Nog’s warnings to fear, and to the terrible injury he had suffered in the Chin’toka system.

Nog would still go back to the station, though. He would go to ops, work one of the sensor consoles, and return to Defiantonly once the Jem’Hadar had left it.

They were carrying out their duty,Nog thought. Which was true, he supposed, except that their duty was to kill and to conquer. These creatures, these things,had been created specifically for that purpose. They were no better than charged phaser banks, chambered quantum torpedoes, and with no more conscience or morality than those weapons. And worse than that: they likedwhat they did, every one of them.

Nog’s hands began to tremble.

“I hate them,” he said aloud, and knew that he was right to do so.

11

“I’m ruined,” Quark said. He threw an elbow up onto the bar, dropped his chin into it, and peered out at empty chairs, empty tables, and worst of all, an unmoving dabo wheel. Treir, his newest dabo girl—an Orion, tall, gorgeous, and majestically green—stood by the gaming table with her arms folded across her chest, looking painfully bored. Two of his waiters, Frool and Grimp, stood quietly in a corner, leaning against a wall and looking equally uninterested in being there. Business had been so slow tonight that Quark had sent the rest of his staff home.

The virtual night of Deep Space 9 encroached on Quark’s as it rarely had recently, sending shadows and silences into the lightly populated establishment. The festive colors reflected by the dabo wheel, and usually sent spinning around the room, instead rested statically on the walls. A dreary dimness hung between the orange and yellow stained-glass artwork on one side of the room, and the many hues of the bottles sitting behind the bar on the other. The absence of the whoops and cries of dabo players and the overlapping conversations of a large crowd left the place bereft of meaty sound, with the occasional, reedy ring of glassware a lonely underscore to the relative quiet.

“‘Ruined,’ Quark?” Skepticism filled the voice of Ro Laren, who sat across the bar from him. Quark looked over to see her eyebrows raised on her forehead, and a closed-mouth smile that he thought just might be hinting at mischief. The two were by themselves at the bar, at the end farthest from the entrance.

“Ruined,” Quark maintained. “Just look at this place.” He brought his elbow up off the bar and motioned with both hands at his establishment. Ro swiveled on her stool and gazed around. “It’s not even twenty-six hundred and there are only—” Quark hurriedly scanned the room from side to side, then glanced up at the tables on the second level, aggregating the clientele with practiced precision, though tonight that did not take much of an effort. “—seven customers here.” He raised an arm and pointed across at the dabo table, where a Tellarite freighter captain sat bent over the gaming surface, her head resting on the wager board between her splayed arms. “And one of them’s not even conscious.”

Ro laughed at that, just a short chuckle, but it affected Quark as though it were music. And not that Klingon opera tripe,he thought; thanks to Jadzia and Worf, Quark had heard more than enough of that overdramatic bellowing during the last eight years. No, Ro’s laughter sounded light and lyrical, like a Betazoid dance suite.

“Well, I’m not saying you’re not having a bad night,” Ro amended, spinning back toward the bar. “But ruined?”

“I’m telling you,” Quark said, “this is the start of a downturn. I can feel it in my lobes.”

“Your lobes, huh?” Still, the impish smile remained on her face.

Quark grasped the edge of the bar and bent forward, as though about to offer Ro something in confidence. “Never,” he began, his voice conspiratorially hushed, “underestimate the lobes of a Ferengi.”

Ro leaned on her forearms over the bar and dropped the volume of her own voice, obviously playing along. “I’ll remember that,” she said.

Quark pushed back from the bar and smiled himself. “You do have to admit, we’ve got some pretty nice, pretty large ears.” He waved in the general direction of the side of his head.

Ro sat back on her stool and threw up her hands in what Quark took to be mock frustration. “What is it with men and size?” she said. “Not everything worthwhile is big.”

“Or tall,” Quark said without missing a beat. To his delight, Ro smiled widely.

“Or tall,” she agreed. They regarded each other across the bar for a moment, and Quark felt that they had made a connection beyond his flirting with her. “Still, I don’t think you’re ruined,” Ro finally said, turning her head and looking around. The moment passed.

“Listen,” Quark told her, “closing time is hours away, nobody’s gambling, nobody’s using the holosuites, and Morn’s not even here.” He peered toward the other end of the bar, where his best customer for more than a decade typically sat. The usually reliable Morn, Quark knew, had forgone the bar tonight in favor of his own quarters, where he was giving a poetry reading for anybody on DS9 who wanted to attend; Morn had sent invitations to every personal companel on the station. “Plus, I’ve got only six conscious customers, and one of those,” he said, teasingly referring to Ro, “is only drinking pooncheenee.”He reached forward and picked up the short, translucent blue glass sitting on the bar in front of Ro. “Another, Lieutenant?” he asked. Quark had no taste himself for the sweet, fruity beverage—he kept it in the bar primarily for use as a mixer—but a lot of Bajorans liked it.

Ro made a show of considering the question, the ridges at the top of her nose wrinkling together. Then she asked, “What else have you got?”

Quark turned and set the empty glass down in an area he reserved for discards, of which there were pathetically few right now; later, one of his employees would recycle the used bottles and glasses, utilizing the replicator. Then he examined the shelves at the back of the bar, and the bottles that lined them in various shapes, sizes, and colors. What can I give Laren?he asked himself, searching for something with a bit of flavor and character. Not finding anything to his liking, he checked the stock below the bar, finally pulling out an amber bottle with a distinctively curved, tapered neck. “Saurian brandy?” he asked, offering the label for Ro to inspect.

“Sure,” she said. “Why not?”

Quark bent behind the bar again and retrieved a crystal snifter. He set it down in front of Ro and removed the leather hood from the top of the bottle, letting it dangle from the cord that was attached to a strip surrounding the base of the neck. “Captain Sisko never used to come in here much,” he said as he poured out two fingers of the brandy, “but this was his favorite drink, so I used to keep it around for functions.”

“Functions?” Ro asked. She slid her upturned palm beneath the bowl of the glass, her middle and fourth fingers on either side of the stem, and lifted the brandy to her lips.

“Starfleet conferences, political meetings, the occasional party,” Quark explained. “I’ll say this for the man: for a Starfleet type, he sure knew the value of quality catering.”

“Hmmm, this is excellent,” Ro said after she had taken a sip of the brandy.

“Have you ever had it before?” Quark asked.

“I have, just not in a very long time,” Ro told him before raising the snifter to her lips again. She took a second sip, then lowered the glass to the bar. “So, you’re not all that fond of ‘Starfleet types,’ huh?”

“Well, you have to admit, they’re not always all that much fun.” He grabbed the hood and replaced it atop the brandy bottle.

“No,” Ro agreed. “But they do keep the peace.”

“Sometimes,” Quark said, the tone of his voice falling to convey his cynicism. He recalled the incident a few years ago when the Bajorans had barred all Ferengi from their system and from the wormhole, and how the Federation had refused to involve itself. He refused to dwell on the memory—some of what had happened back then remained too painful for him to think about, even now—but his estimation of the Federation and Starfleet still lingered. “When it’s in their own interests to do so,” he added.

“You know, Quark,” Ro said, her mischievous smile returning, “I was a Starfleet type.”

“Oh, you may have been in Starfleet,” Quark said, discounting the idea with a wave of his hand, “but I’m sure you were never the Starfleet type.”He bent and placed the Saurian brandy bottle back below the bar.

Ro took another sip of her drink. “What makes you say that?”

“Well, for one thing, that’s a Bajoran Militia uniform you’re wearing, not a Starfleet one, which means you didn’t stay in Starfleet. And for another, just look around.” Quark gestured to include the rest of the bar. “You’re here, but I don’t see any Starfleet types. And the Gryphon’s been docked at the station off and on for three days now, in between trips to Europa Nova, so we’ve got another few hundred of them wandering about.” Quark shook his head and rolled his eyes. “They’re probably all down in Morn’s quarters listening to him spout poetry.”

Ro laughed so hard that she nearly choked on her drink. A lilt Quark had not heard before emerged at the upper reaches of her chortles. The sound delighted him.

“What’s so amusing?” somebody asked. Quark looked away from Ro to see that Commander Vaughn—still clad in his uniform despite the lateness of the hour—had entered the bar. Quark’s attention had been so focused on Ro that he had not even heard the commander approach. Normally, Quark would have been concerned by the lapse– Ears open, eyes wide,went an old Ferengi saying to which he had always subscribed—but the truth was that his ears had been open and his eyes had been wide; they had simply been filled with the intoxicating sound and sight of Ro Laren.

“Good evening, Commander,” Quark said. “Just the old joke about a hew-mon,a Klingon, and a Romulan walking into a Vulcan embassy.”

“I know that one,” Vaughn said, and Quark recognized the commander’s graciousness in allowing him to avoid honestly answering the question. “It’s not that funny.”

“Ah, well, I guess humor is in the ear of the beholder,” Quark said, intentionally paraphrasing an old hew-monexpression.

“I guess it is,” Vaughn said. “Lieutenant, how are you this evening?” he asked, addressing Ro.

“I’m fine, Commander, thank you,” she said, and Quark noticed a sudden stiffness in her manner.

“You know, we never did get a chance to talk about your experiences in Advanced Tactical training,” Vaughn said. “I’d still like to do that.” For a horrible moment, Quark thought that the commander would sit down. He actually liked the old man—Vaughn had so far treated him with respect, even asking for his opinions about the Gamma Quadrant—but Quark did not want any intrusions into this unexpected time with Ro. Fortunately, Vaughn did not take a seat, nor did he even burden Ro with having to answer his question. “Of course,” he told her, “it’ll probably have to wait a few months until I return from Defiant’s mission.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Ro said, and while her voice and the expression on her face seemed genuine, Quark thought he detected an aspect of discomfort in her response. She raised her glass and drank more of the brandy.

“Very good,” Vaughn said. “So, Quark, did you procure that item I ordered?”

“Oh, yes,” Quark said, suddenly remembering that he had received the item earlier today. He had been paying such close attention to Ro that it had not occurred to him when Vaughn had come in. “Just a second,” he said, moving down the bar in search of the bottle. He found it quickly and hoisted it up by its neck onto the bar. “Here you are, Commander.”

Vaughn reached forward and slid his hand around the bulbous bottom of the dark-green bottle, then spun it around so that he could read the label. Apparently satisfied, he said, “That’s the stuff.”

“Glad to be of service,” Quark said. “Now, how will you be paying for that?”