Trials and Tribble-ations Read online

  "You'll try to explain. You'd better be prepared to do more than that. Kirk out." He climbed the three small steps to the upper deck. "Mr. Spock, I'll need your help. Mr. Chekov, maintain battle readiness. Lieutenant Uhura, see that the transporter room is standing by."

  "Aye, sir. Transporter Room, stand by."

  The space station's main office was a roomy base for its manager, generally used as a meeting hall, rumpus room, and, if necessary, additional guest quarters. The multipurpose room materialized around Kirk and Spock, and Kirk found himself standing in a relatively familiar transport cubicle of a somewhat older style. This station had been here a long time.

  Before the buzz of transportation faded from his ears, he was out of the cubicle and crossing the red carpet toward an unclelike man with snowy hair who wore the emblematic station-orange one-piece utility suit.

  "Mr. Lurry, if there was no emergency, why did you issue a Priority-One Distress Call?"

  From the middle of the room, another man, this one a buttoned-down priestly fellow with dark hair, a gunmetal-gray suit, and a stony face announced, "That was my order, Captain."

  Mr. Lurry looked instantly nervous, and motioned to the dark suit. "Captain Kirk, this is Nils Barris. He's out from Earth to take charge of the development project for Sherman's Planet."

  "And that gives you the authority to put an entire quadrant on defense alert?"

  "Mr. Barris is the Federation Undersecretary in Charge of Agricultural Affairs in this quadrant."

  "And that gives him the authority," Spock said quietly.

  It didn't, really. Kirk knew that Spock was only trying to deflate the moment before his captain embarrassed them both. Barris had authority to summon help in an emergency, but there wasn't one here. He had the authority to put the sector on alert, but not emergency defensive alert with full battle-ready status. Somehow Barris might have the authority to do parts of this, but blend the parts and things just didn't add up anymore.

  Aware of how things looked to him and how they'd look on paper later, Kirk accepted Spock's deference for the moment.

  Barris gestured to his right to a clean-cut young man with black hair and unfriendly eyes. "This is my assistant, Arne Darvin."

  Kirk tipped his head, accepting the trouble of plain courtesy. "And this is my first officer, Mr. Spock," he said, as if parrying, and with his expression he dismissed this and demanded that Barris get back to the point.

  "And now, Captain," Barris said loftily, "I want all available security guards. I want them posted around the storage compartments."

  Kirk leered at him. "Storage compartments? Storage compartments?"

  "The storage compartments containing the quadrotriticale."

  "The what, the what? What's … quadro … tritic—"

  Mr. Lurry handed him a vial of something, which Kirk spilled into his palm.

  "Wheat. So what?"

  "Quadrotriticale is not wheat, Captain. Of course, I wouldn't expect you or Mr. Spock to know about such things, but quadrotriticale is a rather—"

  "Quadrotriticale," Spock interrupted, the Gothic baritone of his voice taking over the room, "is a high-yield grain, a four-lobed hybrid of wheat and rye. A perennial also, if I'm not mistaken. Its root grain, triticale, can trace its ancestry all the way back to twentieth-century Canada, where it—"

  Kirk turned his head, partly to mask his delight. "Uh, Mr. Spock … you've made your point."

  Lurry was still trying to keep his station from being a point of embarrassment in a Starfleet report. He filled in, "Quadrotriticale is the only Earth grain that will grow on Sherman's Planet. We have several tons of it here on the station, and it's very important that the grain get to Sherman's Planet safely. Mr. Barris thinks that Klingon agents may try to sabotage it."

  With his assumptions confirmed that he and his ship had been rattled for no good reason, Kirk plowed past the station manager, advanced on the tall Federation bureaucrat and drilled a glare up at him. "You ordered a Priority-One Distress Call for a couple of tons of wheat?" he bellowed.

  "Quadrotriticale!" Darvin insisted from the side.

  Kirk speared the assistant with a glower, but didn't reward him with a comment.

  Barris was unflapped, but attempted, "Of course, Captain, I realize that we—"

  "Mr. Barris, you summoned the Enterprise without an emergency." Kirk swung away and back to Spock's side. "You'll take full responsibility for it."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Misuse of the Priority-One Channel," Spock said, "is a Federation offense."

  Barris flared—what little a gravestone could flare. "I did not misuse the Priority-One Channel. I want that grain protected!"

  "Captain," Lurry attempted, "couldn't you at least post a couple of guards? We do have a large number of ships passing through."

  "It would seem a logical precaution, Captain," Spock mentioned quietly. "The Sherman's Planet affair is of extreme importance to the Federation."

  Kirk glowered at Barris, shrugged to Spock, got a Spock-shrug back—eyebrows only—and got out the communicator. Damn it.

  "Kirk to Enterprise."

  "Enterprise here."

  "Secure from general quarters. And beam down two—and only two—security guards and have them report to Mr. Lurry. Authorize shore leave for all off-duty personnel."

  "Yes, Captain."

  Coming up on his toes, Barris knotted his fists. "Captain Kirk, how dare you authorize a mere two men for a project of this importance! Starfleet Command will hear about this—"

  Kirk swung a hand toward the man and turned away. "I have never questioned the orders or the intelligence of any representative of the Federation."

  At the last moment, he turned back.

  "Until now," he added.

  CHAPTER 1

  "HAVE YOU EVER met Temporal Investigators before?"

  "I'm three hundred years old. The older a Trill gets, the more interested Temporal Investigators are in us. They think we're keeping extra years in our pockets or something."

  Jadzia Dax smiled and shrugged at the same time. She glanced at her side, where Kira Nerys lengthened her stride a little to keep up with Dax.

  They entered the turbolift and the soft lights caught Kira's short red hair and a mischievous flash in her eyes. "When we get to Ops, let's pretend to be working and that we forgot they were coming at all."

  "This is an interesting side of you," Dax accused.

  Kira shrugged. "I don't like desk jockeys."

  "Are these two on the station yet?" Dax asked.

  "They docked ten minutes ago."

  "Then they'll be up any minute."

  "Right."

  "Now, you behave. Benjamin could be in deep trouble over this last incident with the Defiant. If these investigators get irritated, they could take it out on him."

  When the lift opened, Dax went immediately to her station at the science consoles of the big space station's technical heart.

  She felt comfortable here, with a specific job to do—science. She was content to leave command of the station and its defensive starship to Ben Sisko and Kira Nerys. They were both fighters. Dax, in her long, long life, had been a fighter before, but never in this persona of a tall young woman, a scholar and scientist. There was enough of Jadzia left in Jadzia Dax to let go of the previous Dax hosts. She was herself now, no longer the wizened trickster Curzon, or any of those who came before.

  Still, she had been in the bodies of men for a very long time, and she remembered those pugnacious drives.

  She liked who she was and where she was living and working at this moment. She was glad to be science officer and not first officer. With a glance at Kira, she noted the difference. Kira was forever caught an arm's length from each decision, having always to pause and anticipate what Ben Sisko would do in a situation, or call him up here to do it. Kira had boldly done many things in her tenure on DS9, but second-in-command could be a touchy position and Dax did not covet it.

  Th
e lift hummed behind them and she turned to look.

  Dax suddenly wished she hadn't been the voice of reason. Inside the lift were two of the most straight-laced, buttoned-up, clench-keistered stiffs she'd ever seen. They even looked alike. One carried a simple briefcase, making Dax hope there was a rubber snake inside. That might at least save the day.

  The two men came out of the lift and the Ops air chilled by two degrees.

  Steeling herself visibly, Kira went to meet them.

  "Welcome to Deep Space Nine. I'm Major Kira Nerys."

  "I'm Dulmur," one of the men said, as Dax pushed out of her seat and came to join them.

  "Lucsly, Department of Temporal Investigations," the other said flatly.

  Dax tucked her chin and gave them a teasing look. "I guess you guys from Temporal Investigations are always on time."

  Lucsly stared at her briefly, then looked at his partner. "Joke?"

  "Yeah," Dulmur confirmed. He looked at Kira. "Where's the captain?"

  Kira made an audible groan inside her throat, then turned it into "He's in his office."

  Lucsly frowned. "We were told he would meet us here. This recent episode with the Defiant has made us very worried. Tampering with time should be left to experts, not taken into the hands of … nonprofessionals."

  "Non," Kira broiled, "professionals?"

  "Well," Dulmur began, but Dax stepped between them.

  "The captain has a very large station to run," Dax said, "as well as a powerful fighting ship that always needs attention. People coming and going any hour of any day—Klingons, Bajorans, Terrans, Cardassians, bureaucrats … he's a busy man." She took Dulmur's arm and turned him once again toward the lift. "But he's expecting you. He's always willing to cooperate with those in the administrative arena."

  "Are you sure you don't want anything?"

  Ben Sisko heard the deep rumble of his own voice, and though he was used to the sound, he also knew there was a threatening tenor in it, give or take the situation. He didn't mean to be irritated, but these two paperwonks were already on his nerves. He had offered them a drink or coffee or anything they wanted, but in true bureaucratic convention they would accept nothing. They seemed unwilling to actually be all the way here. They weren't even entirely sitting on the furniture, but only committing to half a butt at any given moment.

  "Just the truth, Captain," Dulmur said as he studied Sisko's personal effects while Lucsly took padds and other equipment out of their briefcase.

  Sisko pulled a steaming mug from the replicator slot and turned. "You'll get it. Where do you want to start?"

  "The beginning," Dulmur said drably.

  "If there is such a thing," Lucsly added.

  Sisko started to grin, but then realized this guy wasn't being funny.

  "Captain, why did you take the Defiant back in time?"

  Almost launching into a diatribe about how he hadn't taken the ship anywhere, Sisko realized he wasn't being interviewed—he was being interrogated. They'd read the logs and they damned well knew the answers to questions like that. They were implying by their line of questioning that his logs had been if not deceptive, then incomplete.

  Wouldn't work. He felt too good about that mission. Things had gone wrong, and with a midair twist, he'd made them come out right. No desk-bound statuary could make him feel bad about that.

  "It was an accident," he said simply.

  Lucsly crossed something off on his padd. "So you're not contending that this was a Predestination Paradox?"

  Dulmur added, for any idiot present, "A time loop—that you were meant to go back into the past?"

  Unwilling to open that particular can of scorpions, Sisko said, "Uh … no."

  "Good," Dulmur said. "We hate those. So … what happened?"

  Drawing a breath, Sisko offered, "This may take some time."

  "Is that a joke?" asked Dulmur.

  Sisko was chopped in the throat by the two men's dry stares. "No," he responded, equally dry.

  "Good," said Lucsly.

  "We hate those, too," added Dulmur.

  "Two weeks ago," Sisko began, "the Cardassian government contacted me and said they wanted to return an Orb to the Bajorans—"

  "Orb?" Dulmur interrupted.

  Hurt, Lucsly looked at him. "You didn't read my report?"

  Dulmur seemed ashamed, and there was a subtle communication that this would be brought up again later.

  For time guys, these two sure had a lot of time on their hands, Sisko realized.

  Lucsly relented. "The Orbs are devices of alien origin that are considered to be sacred objects by the Bajoran people." Sisko continued. "Each has a unique property. Like the Orb of Prophecy, or the Orb of Wisdom. The one we received was the Orb of Time, although we didn't know it at first."

  Sisko gazed out the office viewport at the nearby planet of Bajor, which Deep Space Nine perpetually guarded by proximity alone. Sometimes the people of Bajor were glad the station was here. Sometimes they weren't. The station was Cardassian, and though now run by the Federation and administered by Starfleet, still the clawed ornament in the Bajoran system presented a hive of bad memories. In its throes after Cardassian occupation, Bajor wanted to stretch its wings, but kept bumping them on Deep Space Nine's vaulting pylons.

  "When the Defiant arrived at Cardassia Prime, we weren't sure if we were dealing with a genuine Orb or one of the many fakes that have cropped up through the years. So we were going to bring it back to Bajor for authentication. In the meantime, I had secured it in one of the crew quarters and we prepared to leave. We used an antigrav palette to move it, and I placed two Bajoran deputies to stand over it, so the Bajorans could have their own witnesses that we hadn't tampered with the device in any way. Major Kira, whom you met, is also Bajoran. She and my chief of security, Odo, escorted the Orb and its two deputies to an isolated quarters aboard the Defiant. Everything seemed fine. But at the last minute before leaving Cardassia, we also took on a passenger, a Terran commodities trader who had been caught on Cardassia when the Klingons invaded. We didn't know it, but this passenger was not what he appeared to be."

  "Humans! I never thought I'd see a normal face again!"

  Not a particularly pleasant voice, despite the convivial words. In fact, the old man's voice was strained and scratchy.

  At least so it sounded to Lieutenant Commander Worf. To his Klingon ears, many things sounded grating which to others were nothing. Perhaps he paid too much attention.

  Such was the fallout of working in the field of security. He had drawn the duty of taking charge of this Federation national from Cardassian custody and transferring him to Deep Space Nine. The first thing the old man had asked for was "real food."

  Now they came into the mess hall of the battleship Defiant, a compact muscle of a ship commandeered by Captain Sisko to offset the frustration of immobility on the big space station. The ship had turned out to be an advantage and a powerful presence in the sector, but at the moment Worf was wishing there were some convenient treaty between Cardassia and the Federation that would allow him to refuse transport of civilian passengers. Then this tattered old man would be riding on some merchant barge.

  He certainly appeared to belong on one.

  The old man toddled straight to a table where Dr. Julian Bashir and Engineer Miles O'Brien sat.

  Worf followed, and mentioned, "This is Mr. Waddle."

  "Barry. Call me Barry," the old man said, pumping O'Brien's hand.

  "We are taking him back to the Federation," Worf explained, by way of claiming he wasn't responsible for him. "He was trapped on Cardassia when the Klingons attacked."

  "I'm a trader," Waddle claimed. "Dealing in gemstones, kivas and trillium, mostly." He pointed at the replicator. "May I?"

  "Help yourself," O'Brien said.

  Like Rip Van Winkle awakening, Waddle approached the replicator. "Raktajino," he requested, a little more clearly than necessary.

  A few moments later, the replicator produced a mug fu
ll of hot liquid. The old man removed it and drew a long breath over the steam.

  "Mmmm … do you know what Cardassians drink in the morning? Fish juice. Hot fish juice. After six months, I was hoping the Klingons would invade. At least they know how to make coffee! Even if they are foul-smelling barbarians." He took a sip, then realized what he'd said and glanced at Worf. "Sorry."

  With a gleam of satisfaction in his eye, the old man shuffled off to another table to sit by himself.

  "Don't take it personally, Worf," O'Brien soothed.

  The doctor also offered sympathy. "I rather like the way you smell."

  O'Brien nodded. "Kind of a peaty, earthy aroma."

  The doctor held up a descriptive hand. "With just a touch of lilac."

  Worf sensed he was being teased, but without comment or farewell, he turned and headed for the exit. As he left, he heard the last shards of the conversation.

  "Always makes me remember an English garden when I'm around Mr. Worf. Just like the lovely gardens around Cambridge while I was in college. And I'm sure it reminds you of the fields of Ireland, doesn't it, Miles?"

  "Ireland in spring, Julian, near me old granny's bungalow. Ah, yes."

  * * *

  So happy to be Bajoran. Such a long time since he'd felt this way. The occupation by Cardassia had shamed him in childhood, stripped him of family and home, made fear and inadequacy a daily meal.

  No longer. Today he was the guard of a sacred Orb, resting just steps away in its protective tabernacle. He would be one of the two men who would carry the Orb back onto Bajoran soil. People would want to touch him, shake his hand, interview him, ask him how he felt.

  His chest swelled as he gazed at the Orb and remained at attention as if it were gazing back.

  There were those who said this Orb was a fake. Why else would the Cardassians give it back?

  He didn't believe that. The Cardassians had been systematically shedding everything Bajoran, giving back all kinds of people and things they'd confiscated as if now those people and things were dirty. Fine.

  He was anxious for Nevis to return from the mess hall so they could talk together about how proud they were. They'd been a security team for nearly a year now and were almost family.