Текст книги "Catalyst of Sorrows "

Автор книги: Margaret Bonanno

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“Throughout the entire Federation?” Crusher marveled. “You have been busy!”

“And—?” Uhura prompted, glancing at the chrono. Selar’s ship would be requesting docking clearance at Spacedock in less than thirty minutes, and they’d have to terminate this meeting beforehand so the discrete would not interfere with ship-to-shore transmissions.

“Two hundred seven cases reporting symptoms such as we have just seen on the Romulan colony, on eighteen Federation worlds and two outposts along the Neutral Zone,” Selar reported. “Given the number of worlds surveyed, there are not many cases, but there have been no survivors. If in fact it is the same entity, the vector is here.”

The map rotated, and a bright red line superimposed itself over known space, connecting the dots on the Federation side. A concomitant green line connected the four Romulan colonies. The two lines stopped at the Neutral Zone, but seemed almost to be reaching toward each other. With a little bit of imagination, one could draw a dotted red and green line, connecting a scattering of inhabited worlds between the two.

“I am continuing to run the algorithm as new case reports come in,” Selar concluded. “However, as of yet I am unable to determine how this has been able to spread among these distant worlds. All persons transporting from ship to ship or ship to surface are screened for disease entities, all goods are irradiated.”

“Not all, Selar,” Crusher said. “Someone got these specimens across the Zone to Admiral Uhura.”

All eyes turned to Uhura. “Only persons or objects passing through a transporter are screened,” she said, and left it at that. “And even that’s about to be remedied.”

“Meanwhile, this thing is spreading!” McCoy voiced what they all feared. He really was too old for this. “Unchecked, it could hopscotch from every world where we’ve found it clear across two quadrants. Even if it doesn’t, it could potentially create panic, put a stop to interplanetary travel, bring commerce to a standstill, quarantine the affected worlds, turn them into charnel houses…”

“Then we’d better get busy,” Uhura said with more enthusiasm than she felt.

“If it is manufactured,” McCoy said, almost to himself. “It will have a signature.”

“A signature?” Uhura echoed him.

“Mad scientists are like mad bombers or computer hack-ers,” he explained, his eyes very far away, as if he were scanning his own personal memory banks for a datum that was just out of reach. “They leave a signature, a calling card, some little sarcastic fillip encoded into the virus that says: ‘This is mine.’ It stokes their egos, makes them feel important…”

He drifted off for a moment, lost in his own thoughts. Finally he said: “You leave this sonofabitch to me. If he’s ever done anything even remotely like this before on any scale, I’ll track him through the database, and I’ll catch him!”

Uhura said nothing, but she knew he knew this was why she’d wanted him on the team.

Crusher was off on her own train of thought. “What I wouldn’t give for one living Romulan to run some background tests on—!” she said.

Uhura’s intercom beeped again. It was Tuvok.

“Sorry to interrupt, Admiral. You said you wanted a preliminary report.”

“I did. Go ahead.”

“Our subject is sleeping at present. The first phase of our interview is concluded.”

“And—?”

“And, as discussed earlier, I believe, as you do, that either she is exactly what she says she is, or she is under such deep cover that, barring a mind-meld, I cannot further confirm her veracity.”

Uhura sighed. “All right, Tuvok. Let her sleep for now. I’d like your report on my desk by tomorrow morning.”

“It is on its way to you now, Admiral.”

Uhura suppressed a smile, seeing the tell-tale blinking on her console. “Figures. You’re off-duty for tonight, Mister. Get some shut-eye yourself. I’ll call you when I need you, and I want you sharp when I do.”

The three doctors had listened silently to Tuvok’s report, and they remained silent now. Selar’s maps, like all the previous visuals, had been terminated, and the space between them was empty, except for McCoy’s, which still held stars and crickets. Uhura drummed her fingers on the desktop for a moment, thinking.

She’d been wondering what to do with Zetha from the moment the girl appeared. She still wasn’t sure, but she was beginning to get an idea.

“Dr. Crusher, I think I can provide you with at least one healthy Romulan for your tests. You can see her tomorrow after she’s had a good night’s sleep. She’ll need a physical before we go any further, anyway.”

Crusher’s eyes widened. “You have a Romulan, here? Why wasn’t I informed before this?”

“We need to find the link between those two disease vectors,” Uhura said succinctly, adjourning the meeting without actually answering the question. “To do that, we need to look at this thing from the ground. I’m sending an away team into the Zone. Dismissed.”

“Pretty grim stuff on that visual feed,” McCoy remarked after Crusher and Selar had signed off. “And it means you’ve lost one of your Listeners. I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” Uhura said, keeping her voice level. She would grieve later. “Just when I think I’ve seen everything…Tell me, Leonard, how do you ever get used to it?”

“Who says you get used to it? It’s just as grim the hundredth time you see it as it is the first. I’ll tell you, though, it’s the sounds that get to me more. The sound of a child in pain, no matter the species…you hear it in your sleep; you never get used to it. If you do, it just means you’re too hardened to be a good doctor, and it’s time you cashed it in.”

“I’m sorry I dragged you back in for this,” she said.

“Oh, the hell with that!” McCoy dismissed it with a wave of his hand. He studied her face and didn’t like the expression he saw there. She could have terminated their transmission at the same time she’d dismissed the other two, but she hadn’t. “Nyota? Can I ask you something, just between us?”

“Sure.”

“What’re you going to do if we find out this is manufactured? And since most of the casualties so far seem to be on the Romulan side, well, what if it’s someone from our side?”

Her chin came up. The look in her eye was deadly. “I’d like to personally track them down, point a phaser between their eyebrows if they have any, and force them to inject themselves with their own disease.”

McCoy waited. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, exhaled.

“However, I probably won’t be allowed to do that. Let’s find them first. And then we’ll see.”

“I need help with this!” the voice said, cracking around the edges. “I told you we shouldn’t wait too long. There’s a delicate balance between letting this spread just so far and having it reach pandemic proportions. You promised me—!”

“If you can possibly keep your mouth shut,” Koval said icily, annoyed at being interrupted during his daily soak in his own personal hot spring, “you will hear me once again tell you that nothing will go wrong. Did you hear me? Nothing will go wrong.”

Chapter 6

“I sometimes think,” Uhura told Ambassador Dax that evening, “that there were only two events of significance in the universe, the Big Bang and Camp Khitomer. My cadets may think I’m old enough to have been present at the first, but I will admit to being present at the latter.”

“What’s the saying? ‘All roads lead to Khitomer,’ ” Curzon Dax said with a twinkle in his voice as well as his eyes. He was flirting with her as usual, for all the good it would do him. “And this one is no different. There’s something on your desk and on your mind that has you thinking of the past. Tell me everything.”

Uhura and Curzon had met for a drink in the officers’ lounge on Spacedock in orbit above Earth, a tradition whenever he was in town, and were watching the big ships going to and fro like so many gigantic stately birds, while shuttles flitted among them like dragonflies.

Uhura looked at Curzon under her eyelashes. “As if I could!”

“You know you can,” he coaxed her. “I’ve got the same security clearance you do. Over the course of several lifetimes, I’ve probably done more covert work than you. In this instance, I have a fair idea what’s going on. I just need you to fill in the details.”

Two can play at this game!Uhura thought. She smiled at him.

“Why don’t you start by telling me how much you know, so I won’t have to repeat myself?”

“I know you received a, shall we say, interesting little special-delivery package from the other side that set this whole thing in motion.”

“Well, then,” Uhura said, shaking her head “no” to the Quallorian bartender when he gestured toward her empty glass, “it sounds to me as if you know as much as you need to know.”

“I’m primarily curious how the, ah, other side—” Curzon did not say “Romulans.” Out of long experience, he knew that the noisier the locale, the easier it was for someone to be listening. “—knew to send their little gift directly to you.”

“I’m head of Starfleet Intelligence, Curzon. It didn’t exactly require rocket science.”

“But why would you accept the messenger so willingly?” he persisted. “ ‘Beware Romulans bearing gifts,’ and all that, especially after we’ve each spent nearly half a century pretending the other doesn’t exist. How could you know that the gift was genuine? How did you know it wasn’t a trap?”

“I didn’t,” she said. “I still don’t. Know whether or not it’s a trap, I mean. But I’m reasonably certain it’s genuine, considering the source…”

Oops!she thought, too much information.She waited for Curzon to pounce on it.

“ ‘Considering the source’?” Curzon pounced.

Uhura realized what he was doing and stopped. “Oh, no you don’t! That much I won’t tell you.”

“You don’t trust me.” It was not a question. He managed to look like a hurt child.

What was it about him? Uhura wondered. How this frail-looking man had ever found the nerve to walk out on the Klingons at Korvat was beyond her, yet something about him made her believe that he could, and it was only one of the diplomatic ploys he was famous for. She was among the few non-Trills who knew enough about them to understand the concept of the symbiont, physically vulnerable outside of its host body but, safely joined, virtually immortal. And this immortality lent Dax a vast and deep-running wisdom. But while the Curzon part was appealing enough, by himself he was truly rather unprepossessing—bookish, white-haired, with a certain elfin twinkle, but really, he was not her type. Unless, of course, it was the spots.

Most Trills had those leopard spots, starting at the hairline and going all the way down to…where? Any non-Trill who knew a Trill always had to wonder how far the spots went. But while there was an almost overwhelming desire to connect the dots and see where they would lead, in Curzon Dax’s case it was something more. Was it the synergistic blending of the two personalities that made him all but irresistible?

“I trust Curzon,” Uhura said, wanting more than anything to soothe the little-boy pout off his face. “But I don’t really know Dax. I don’t think anyone does. Trills are like elephants; they never forget. A hundred years from now or a thousand you could let something slip—”

“My lips are sealed,” he said, still twinkling at her.

“Sorry.”

“Maybe there’s something I can do to help,” Curzon suggested.

“Not unless you can join Starfleet by tomorrow afternoon and learn how to run a ship all by yourself,” she joked.

Curzon smiled. “Maybe I can’t,” he said. “But I can recommend someone who can. I believe he’s already on your short list.”

Once more Uhura didn’t ask him how he knew, but she took his recommendation. The following evening at the reception for the senior officers of the K’tarra,Curzon found her in the crowd.

He had, as she’d predicted, been drinking blood wine with Thought Admiral Klaad all evening, but while Klaad was drowsing in a corner and the reception was winding down, Curzon managed to look as if he’d been imbibing nothing but Altair water and was ready to start a new day.

Maybe that’s the secret,Uhura thought. You don’t have to outshout a Klingon, just outdrink him.

“Well?” he greeted her. “Any luck in talking my hard-headed young protégé into joining your mission?”

“I gave him twenty-four hours to think about it,” was all Uhura would say.

“I warned you it wouldn’t be easy.”

“So you did,” she acknowledged. “But one way or the other, I did want to thank you.”

“You can do that better in private,” Curzon suggested. “I’m staying in my usual suite on Embassy Row. I have an unopened bottle of a rare aperitif from Izar that will spoil you for anything else, and some recordings of Hamalki 3D string music you’ll never see or hear anywhere else. The composer is a dear friend who wrote several pieces just for me. We could…”

At her wry look, he stopped. They danced the same waltz every time they met.

“Just as friends,” he suggested. “Two intelligent people who share the same tastes in the finer things. It doesn’t have to be anything more than that. I know you need to keep your mind occupied now that you’ve set this thing in motion.”

Uhura glanced at him sharply. She didn’t know how much he picked up through diplomatic channels, how much just on hearsay. If he asked her anything further, security clearance or no, there was only so much she could tell him. But he was right. Very soon, depending on the cooperation of the assistant engineer from the Okinawa,she would send a team on a very dangerous mission inside the Neutral Zone that, whether it succeeded or not, officially never happened. After that, there was nothing she could do but monitor the situation and wait. Shuffle documents on her desk, teach her class, give the occasional press conference, field the crisis or crises du jour,and wait. Go home at night to an empty house built into a hillside overlooking the Muir Woods, and wait.

Or spend at least one evening in good company while she waited.

“Spend the rest of the evening with me,” Curzon asked again. “I promise not to ask you anything more about the mission. Just two friends having a little private visit. Anything else is up to you.”

It wasn’t as if Uhura hadn’t considered other things. Curzon Dax was urbane, witty, and charming, and if he had been anything other than a Trill, she might not have been able to resist him all these years. But it was the thought that, however brief or extended their relationship might be, he or at least his symbiont would carry the memory—and no doubt the urge to gossip; she knew Trills—into subsequent lives, possibly forever, that put her off.

“Just as friends,” she agreed finally. “After all, I do owe you a favor.”

“Oh, you mean talking Captain Leyton into lending you young Benjamin Sisko?” Curzon waved it off. “That might not prove to be much of a favor. He can be incredibly stubborn. The lieutenant has a natural command ability, but anything beyond the theoretical scares him. He really has no idea who or what he is, so he loses himself in diagnostics and hypotheticals. But once you bring him around, he’ll give you the best he’s got.”

“I understand humans have an expression about ‘hiding your light under a bushel,’ ” was how Dax broached the subject with Benjamin Sisko once he knew Sisko had gotten Uhura’s summons. “One of these days, Benjamin, you’re going to take your head out of your technical manuals and notice the universe at large.”

“Yes, sir,” Ben Sisko remarked by reflex. At the time he’d had his head inside a reflux manifold making an adjustment. It was cramped and hot and airless, and he was feeling light-headed and not a little claustrophobic. “Whatever that means, sir.”

“It means, among other things, that you can drop the ‘sir,’ ” Dax said dryly. “This is us, Benjamin. There’s no one else down here but you and me. No one’s listening.”

“Sorry…” Sisko made the final adjustment and eased his head out, dusting off his hands, sliding the manifold back into place, activating it, and securing his tools in his belt kit. Everyone else had gone ashore, but he’d volunteered to take a tour in engineering during the layover. “…Old Man. It’s great to see you again, and I appreciate your putting in a recommendation for me, but whatever this is about, I’d really rather not. The yard crew’s going to be crawling all over this ship at 0800 sharp tomorrow. I promised the chief I’d supervise while he spends some time with his family. And there’s Jake’s first day of kindergarten…”

Just then Dax had touched his shoulder, Sisko thought, to brush some of the dust from the filters off his uniform. There was something askew in Okinawa’s environmental controls that created static and caused some of the filters to collect an inordinate amount of dust; Sisko had been puzzling over it for weeks but hadn’t solved it yet. It was one of the things he intended to work on during the refit. He was about to make some comment about the dust when he realized Dax was tapping his Starfleet insignia lightly.

“What’s this, Benjamin? Just some scraps of metal? Or do they mean something to you?”

“Oh, come on, Old Man! Don’t go all Duty and Discipline on me! Yes, I’m a Starfleet officer. A Starfleet officer assigned to this ship. And if I’m assigned to another ship, or to a starbase, I’ll go. That’s what I signed on for. And I will bring my family with me. But being recruited by Intelligence and put on standby for a ‘special assignment’ while Okinawasails without me? I didn’t sign on for that.”

“You don’t know that’s what this is about,” Dax suggested.

“Oh, yes, I do. Admiral Uhura keeps a file on everyone who ever took her communications class who showed what she calls ‘exceptional skills.’ She’s not above drafting people from those files for special missions. And you recommended me. That’s exactly what this is about.”

“And if you know that, you also know you can refuse,” Dax said quietly. “But I think you need to at least find out what it’s about first. Then talk it over with Jennifer, and—”

“Talk what over with Jennifer? How much can the admiral tell me if I don’t agree to sign on?”

Dax gave him a thoughtful look. “You’ve already got your back up, Benjamin, without knowing anything. You owe it to yourself as much as to Starfleet to keep an open mind here.”

That had given Sisko pause.

“What does that mean? Have you been reading tea leaves again, Dax? I didn’t know Trills could foretell the future. Wait, where are you going?”

Dax had turned on his heel and started to walk away. “Planetside,” he said over his shoulder. “Thought I’d do a tour of some of Earth’s wildlife preserves. I hear the bird sanctuaries are extraordinary. I’m especially interested in parrots. Expect I might have a more intelligent conversation with one of them than I’m having here.”

Sisko loped down the corridor after him. He towered over the deceptively frail-looking Trill. “Old Man, listen. Captain Leyton’s ordered me to speak with Admiral Uhura. He told me you spoke to him on her behalf. You’ve as good as seen to it that if I do refuse, it won’t sit well with Captain Leyton.”

“Benjamin—”

“Let me finish. If Admiral Uhura wants me for some special communications project on Earth or aboard ship while we’re on layover here, fine. But if it’s something that’s going to take me off the ship and away from Jake and Jennifer…”

Curzon had given him a look then that Benjamin Sisko would remember for the rest of his life. “I don’t read tea leaves, Benjamin. Why don’t you wait until you know what the assignment is? Then discuss as much as you can with Jennifer. She’s a lot more sensible than you are.”

“I always do that anyway,” Sisko said to Curzon’s departing back.

“Benjamin Sisko loves three things, in reverse order of magnitude,” Curzon warned Uhura now as he decanted the Izarian aperitif, pouring it into two balloon snifters, waiting for its inner glow to change from iridescent blue to a deep ruby-red before he placed one in her hands. “Good food, his work, and his family. You’re proposing to take him away from all three. Don’t expect that to go down easily.”

“Curzon, he’s a Starfleet officer,” Uhura said quietly, but not without a bit of steel. “He’ll go where he’s ordered. But one of my weaknesses, and unfortunately one that I’m known for among the younger generation, is my inability to force a junior officer to accept a commission he doesn’t want. I’ve found out the hard way that an unwilling agent makes a careless agent. And careless agents cost unnecessary loss of life.”

Curzon made himself comfortable on the deeply cushioned divan beside her and waited for her to taste the Izarian nectar.

“Curzon, this is exquisite!” she said, smiling for the first time since she’d arrived. She sipped again and settled back among the cushions, the sleeves of her flowing kikoy,with its red-brown-black pattern known as Footsteps of Fire, arranged like the folded wings of some exotic butterfly.

“So are you,” Curzon replied.

As if on cue, the Hamalki string music began its appearance on the small holopad built into the low table between them, filling the air with sounds and visuals that dopplered softly off the walls and wrapped around the two listeners in innumerable pastels and sprightly sparkles, guaranteed to soothe the soul and stimulate conversation and, perhaps, other things. Curzon touched the rim of Uhura’s glass with his own.

“To Benjamin Sisko’s greater enlightenment,” he suggested. “And to no unnecessary loss of life.”

Earlier that day, Uhura had kept Lieutenant Sisko waiting while she pretended to peruse his service record, aware of the impatience all but oozing out of his pores as he sat at attention on the other side of her desk.

Yes, sitting at attention was the only way to describe what he was doing, because when he’d first arrived and she’d told him to take a seat he’d said he preferred to stand. When she advised him he might be here longer than he’d want to be standing he’d sat, but reluctantly and on the edge of his seat, as if ready at the slightest provocation to spring out of it.

It’s all about communication!Uhura reminded herself. She’d been about to start communicating when Lieutenant Sisko jumped the gun on her.

“Permission to speak candidly, sir?” he said in that soft, almost musical voice.

“That’s why you’re here, Lieutenant,” Uhura said, closing the file she’d had memorized before he stepped through the door and folding her hands on her desk expectantly.

“Admiral, I’m assuming you asked me here to take part in a special assignment.”

“And why would you assume that?”

“Because I know you keep a file on each of your students who show exceptional ability, and I know I was one of them.”

Uhura suppressed a smile. “Humility doesn’t seem to be one of your problems, Mr. Sisko. And your communications skills will be an asset to this mission. But it’s your all-around ability to handle multiple stations and situations that I’m more interested in.”

“So you intend to commandeer me from Okinawaand assign me—temporarily—to another ship?” Sisko said quietly. “May I ask where?”

“You may not. If I decide to use you, once you’re sworn in, you’ll have sealed orders fed into your vessel’s conn. Essentially the ship will tell you where to go.”

“You’re giving me command of my own ship?” Sisko asked, puzzled. This was the last thing he’d expected.

“Temporarily,” Uhura said. “Just for the duration of this mission. And it’s a very small ship.”

“May I ask what ship?”

“Not at liberty to tell you that yet, either,” Uhura said.

“But I can safely assume the mission will be covert, and it would mean leaving my family behind. With all due respect, Admiral, I’d prefer you found someone else.”

“I wasn’t asking, Mr. Sisko,” Uhura said, her voice even quieter than his.

She saw his jaw working, knew he was trying mightily not to let his temper get the better of him. Like many a big man, he had learned very young that he didn’t need to shout or threaten; his mere presence was usually enough to get him his own way.

He stood up to his full height, not intending to intimidate, simply prepared to refuse the assignment and leave. He hadn’t counted on having the wind knocked out of his sails by The Look.

“I want to tell you, Commander, it was the expression on your face more than the phaser that backed me into that closet,” Lieutenant Heisenberg had told her a lifetime ago, Spock’s lifetime to be precise, when she had volunteered to man the most remote transport station in the Sol System in order to help Kirk and company steal Enterpriseout of Spacedock and bring Spock’s katrahome.

“What are you talking about?” she’d said, suppressing a chuckle, though she knew darn well.

She’d been hoping to have the station to herself that night, but not a half hour before Kirk and Sulu broke McCoy out of the loony bin and stormed out of the turbolift onto the transporter pads, this big galoot had shown up.

“Heisenberg, Scott, here to assist you, ma’am,” he’d said, fuzz-faced, tall, and gangly, with a knack for putting his foot in his mouth.

“I don’t need any assistance, Lieutenant.” She’d frowned. The duty roster had indicated this to be a one-man station. Did someone upstairs suspect something? All of Kirk’s crew had felt Command’s eyes on them since leaving Spock behind on Genesis. Had Heisenberg been sent to keep an eye on her? “I’m supposed to be assigned here alone. There must be some mistake.”

Heisenberg, meanwhile, had been sizing up his new assignment. “Oh, this is great, just great! I wonder whose toes I stepped on to get relegated to this dump?”

“Do you frequently step on people’s toes, Mr. Heisenberg?” Uhura pretended to busy herself with a Level-1 diagnostic, probably the first one these battered controls had had in ages. She wished the big lunk would sit down and stop prowling around. Everything depended on timing. If Scotty and Chekov had infiltrated Enterpriseby now, if Kirk and the others showed up on time, every second she spent trying to sidetrack her unwanted assistant could put the mission in jeopardy.

She’d secreted a phaser under the edge of her console when she came on duty, just in case. Just in case of what, she hadn’t been sure, but anyone trying to stop Kirk from getting to Enterpriseonce he was here would have to get through her first. She contemplated the back of Heisenberg’s head and wondered if she could just stun him while he wasn’t looking. Just then he finished scowling at the charred and battered walls and swung around toward her.

“Yeah, that’s me. Open mouth, change feet. Bad enough they used to call me Uncertainty back in the Academy—you know, as in Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle?” he’d explained, and this time Uhura almost did burst out laughing. “—but bad luck follows me everywhere. Not that I mind being here with you, ma’am, a Starfleet legend and all that, but—”

“Well then, why don’t you light somewhere before you trip over those feet as well?” she asked him. Nothing made her feel older than when the younger generation started that Starfleet legend nonsense. “Since you’re here, you may as well help me with this diagnostic.”

He’d parked himself in the empty chair at the duty station, but made no effort to assist her. Then he’d made that remark about her career winding down, and she’d frozen him in his tracks with what would become known as the Uhura Look.

It wasn’t much. Just a pause for about the length of a breath while she stopped whatever she was doing and slid her eyes sideways under those long eyelashes, fixed her victim with them, and raised her head slightly, as if to say “I know you didn’t say what I just heard you say.”

She’d sworn she could hear Heisenberg’s jaw snap shut. She would have liked to see how long that would last, but then Jim Kirk had burst through the door, giving Heisenberg something else to think about.

Months later, after Spock had been restored, and they’d saved the whales and Earth in the bargain, and the flood waters had receded and the “Trial of the EnterpriseSeven,” as the media dubbed it, was over, she’d run into Heisenberg in a corridor at HQ. That was when he’d told her about the Look.

“It’s like lasers,” Heisenberg said. “You turn those high-beams on a man, you can cut his heart out.”

“Best you remember that next time you have dealings with me, young man,” Uhura had said, poking him none too gently in the shoulder. “How long were you in that closet, anyway?”

“Couple of hours. I thought my kidneys were going to give out. Earned a nasty reprimand from my CO for letting you get the better of me, too.”

“I’m sorry, Heisenberg,” she’d said sincerely. “I’ll have a word with your CO about that. After all, we both know you were defenseless against The Look.”

Many a junior officer had felt the power of that look in the intervening years. Every time she had call to use it, Uhura thought of Heisenberg and resisted the urge to smile.

She turned the Look on Sisko now, and he felt his ears starting to singe. He opened his mouth and nothing came out, found himself shifting his feet, something he only did when he didn’t know what else to do. Uhura, barely masking her amusement, let him stew for a few seconds longer, then relented.

“As you were, Mister,” she said very quietly, and Sisko returned to his seat. “Liya na tabia yako usilaumu wenzako.”

“Sir?”

“ ‘Don’t blame others for problems you have created yourself.’ I didn’t think you spoke kiSwahili. But now that I have your attention…”

She cleared her throat, folded her hands on the desktop once again, and began communicating.

“I’m not going to flatter you by telling you’re the best theoretical engineer or the most versatile young officer in the fleet, because you’re not. What you are is the most versatile young officer in the fleet who has also excelled at my Special Communications course, and who happens to be available in this sector at this time. There are at least three other people I could tap who qualify on the first two counts, but you’re here, they’re not. And I don’t have the luxury of waiting for someone halfway across the quadrant to rendezvous with the rest of my team, which is here, in place, and good to go on a mission where time is of the essence, because lives are being lost with every minute’s delay. Am I getting through to you, Mr. Sisko?”