Trials and Tribble-ations Page 8

  The door panel slid open again and for a moment he thought the captain might be coming back, but when he looked up, he saw a young science officer whom he didn't know. The young man was of slender build and dark features.

  "Oh—I'm so sorry," the young man said when he saw McCoy. Educated in England. "I thought everyone was at lunch, sir."

  "We always keep at least one person on watch in all departments," McCoy said. How come this man didn't know that? "Do I know you?"

  "Um … no, sir, I don't believe so. I just came aboard. I'm only visiting. I should've reported to you, but with all the alerts—"

  "Visiting? From the station? You're a Starfleet officer. I didn't know there were any of us on the station."

  "Uh … no, there aren't, sir. I just came on board recently, for transport to my new assignment."

  Pretty vague, but McCoy didn't care about the details. "You a doctor? Or are you sick?"

  "Pardon me," the young man said, extending his hand to McCoy. "Dr. Julian Bashir, sir. I'm doing a study on systems-wide medical sensor functions and I thought I'd have a look about the sickbay."

  "What's that study for?"

  "Oh, someone at Starfleet wants to enhance the capability of tracking individuals by biotechnics. It's for use on stations like K-Seven and for … oh, for instance, tracking down disguised spies on ships."

  McCoy harrumphed at the idea. "Sounds like something Starfleet Medical would come up with to keep people busy."

  "Very likely," Bashir said with a tolerant and perhaps nervous smile. "About the ship-wide sensors … do you think they could pick up an individual by biotechniques? Say a Vulcan or a … oh, a Klingon?"

  "Well, we'd have to do a deck-by-deck scan," McCoy told him. "Klingons aren't that hard to detect. They hate to shave, for one. They don't like our food, for another."

  "Doctor," Bashir said with a tuck of his chin, "are you teasing me?"

  "A little. It's just a muscle reaction from not having a Vulcan around. Why don't you have some coffee and set yourself up at that terminal over there. The computer'll assist you with your sensor research. I'll clear it with the bridge."

  The other doctor, luckily, was engrossed in his study of the little clutch of furballs when Bashir's communicator let out one plaintive bleep—and he turned quickly to see whether or not McCoy had noticed, but no. The bleep blended in with the trill and purr of those little animals.

  Bashir turned and headed back for the door. "I forgot something. Back soon, sir."

  McCoy didn't even look up. "Mmm-hmm."

  The corridor was bright and bustling, but no one noticed him as he headed around a corner, trying to find a place where he could use the communicator without anyone listening. Suddenly a hand reached out and yanked him into an alcove. It was O'Brien, holding his own communicator.

  "The next bandshift in the Enterprise scan cycle will be in three minutes," Major Kira's voice flickered over the old-style device.

  "We'll be ready, Major. O'Brien out."

  Bashir got the idea quickly enough—they'd been ordered out of here for now. They'd be beaming out. That meant privacy. "We'd better get to a turbolift."

  Together they turned and headed for the nearest lift, then had to wait as the lift came to their deck. When it did, the doors slid open and they boarded, but couldn't beam out.

  Standing in the lift, a young woman looked at them both, and Bashir remembered her—he'd seen her before. He'd even spoken to her, though he didn't recall specifically when. She hadn't made much of an impression, and he was dismayed to find he'd made one on her.

  "Hello, again," the young lieutenant said.

  "Hello," Bashir responded automatically.

  O'Brien took the lift's control. "Deck Ten."

  The woman looked down at Bashir's waist. "Your flap's open."

  He blinked. "Excuse me?"

  "On your tricorder. You're draining power."

  He looked down at the tricorder—he'd forgotten he was still carrying it. Sure enough, the front flap was hanging open. He snapped it closed. "Oh—thank you."

  "He's always doing that," O'Brien teased.

  She smiled at him. "I'm coming in to the sickbay tomorrow for my physical … fifteen hundred. Lieutenant Watley."

  The lift doors opened and she started out, but then she turned in the doorway so the door panels wouldn't close and smiled again, this time infectiously.

  Bashir smiled back. Maybe he could arrange to be in sickbay about fifteen hundred tomorrow. Maybe.

  She sidled away with a last glance, and O'Brien said, "You realize, of course, she was only using you to get to me."

  The lift doors closed. O'Brien activated it, made it go between decks, then stopped it.

  "Watley," Bashir said, his chest suddenly constricting. "That was my great-grandmother's name!"

  "Funny," the engineer drawled as he pulled out his communicator again.

  "I think she was in Starfleet!"

  O'Brien scolded him with a glower about not knowing his family history any better than that, then said, "It's a common name."

  "But what if that was her!" Bashir's mind raced.

  "Do you realize the odds?" The engineer quickly fingered the controls of the communicator.

  Bashir waved a panicked hand. "No one ever met my great-grandfather—this could be a predestinational paradox!" As O'Brien shook his head, the doctor insisted, "Didn't you take elementary temporal mechanics at the Academy? I may be destined to fall in love with that woman and … and become my own great-grandfather!"

  O'Brien stared. "You're being ridiculous."

  "Ridiculous? If I don't meet with her tomorrow, I may never be born!"

  Kira's voice trickled through the communicator in the nick of time. "Chief, are you ready for transport?"

  "Are we ever," O'Brien said.

  "Stand by."

  "You saw the way she looked at me?" Bashir obsessed, frantically imagining all the repercussions of his life, the people he'd saved who would now die, the tests he'd conducted that would go unsolved, and by the time the thought spread itself to its full potential, the entire universe was collapsing upon itself because he'd never been born. He caught O'Brien's look again and added, "You can't just dismiss this!"

  "I can try."

  "Fine!" Bashir insisted as the tingling rush of the transporter effect shivered all his skin hairs. "But I can't wait to see your face when you get back to DS9 and find out I never existed!"

  CHAPTER 8

  MILES O'BRIEN LED the way into the bar on Deep Space Station K-Seven. This place was like the ship—much brighter than anything they were used to. And over there were Odo and Worf, at a table just past two other tables, which were crowded with several Enterprise crewmen and another surly dark-haired group in matching silver tunics with black shirts underneath. Probably a crew from some other division.

  O'Brien and Bashir crossed the room to Odo and Worf, and O'Brien couldn't help feeling a bit odd—he caught the glances of the other table of Starfleet crew, who were probably wondering why he and the doctor were joining a pair of civilian traders instead of other Starfleeters.

  Well, some chips had to fall, anyway.

  "Chief," Bashir said, as the two of them joined Odo and Worf, "clearly we've been going about this search business all wrong."

  "You're right, Julian," O'Brien fell in. "Why bother manually searching thirty decks when you can just plunk yourself down at a bar and wait for Darvin to come to you."

  "We have reason to believe," Odo bristled instantly, "that Darvin will return to this area."

  "Ah, yes," O'Brien prodded. "For his raktajino."

  Bashir quickly added, "A vital clue others might have missed. How fortunate that vital clue has kept you glued to this bar for the past three hours—having drinks—while we're crawling through conduits."

  As they sat down, the ribbing was interrupted when the door panel parted again and three more Starfleet personnel came through. O'Brien automatically looked, knowing they
were indeed searching for someone who, in the large scheme, might come wandering back in here.

  "My God," he croaked, as he stared at the three Starfleet officers who had just entered. "There he is!"

  At the door were three officers, two in gold and one in red. The red-shirt was a man of medium build with dark hair, but that wasn't what caught his attention. One of the gold-shirts was very young with relatively long dark hair for the era, but that also wasn't what caught O'Brien.

  "Who?" Bashir asked.

  Leaning a little toward him, O'Brien continued staring at the third man. "Kirk!"

  "Where?" Worf craned to see past his crewmates.

  The three Starfleet officers strode in, glanced at the table full of silver-tunicked men, then took a table of their own.

  "Right there," O'Brien whispered anxiously. "He's just sitting those other two guys! The one in gold, on the left."

  "That's Kirk?" Bashir asked.

  "Look at him! The way he walks … that glint of command in his eye … that's him, all right!"

  His hands quivered as the piece of history took a seat mere paces from him. He wanted desperately to clamber over there like a starstruck kid and ask for James Kirk's autograph. The dubious looks in Bashir's and Odo's eyes annoyed him. Of course that was Kirk! The sandy hair, the tall stature, the muscles, the strong expression … of course, it was Kirk.

  "It would be an honor to meet him," Worf said.

  "Let's buy him a drink!" O'Brien gushed.

  "Gentlemen," Odo drew up. "No one's buying anyone drinks."

  Glancing at Worf, O'Brien took the scolding with a blush. "He's right. We can't risk altering the timeline."

  At the bar, one of the men in silver and black poured a drink for a jovial merchant, and with great dripping contempt he asked, "The Earthers like those fuzzy things, don't they?"

  "Well, yes!" The merchant chuckled nervously, then took a drink of what had been poured.

  "Well, frankly, I never liked Earthers. They remind me of Regulan bloodworms," the bearded man said, directing his comment right at the three Starfleeters who had just come in. This antagonist had drunk too much and was giving in to the tensions already flowing in the bar. The urge to pick on humans.

  O'Brien had seen it before.

  "No!" the bearded man howled over the laughter of his own crewmates. "I just remembered! There is one Earth man who doesn't remind me of a Regulan bloodworm. That's Kirk!"

  He sidled between the chairs to just outside of kicking distance from the three newcomers.

  O'Brien felt his hand start to tremble. Insulting Captain Kirk! While Kirk was sitting right there! He started to wonder how much it would wreck the timeline if he just beat a little of the hell out of a few people. He looked around to see what others were thinking—the Enterprise crewmen were boiling in their seats, but no one moved much. In fact, they didn't move at all. They all looked frozen to their places by their very anger.

  And so was he.

  "A Regulan bloodworm is soft," the antagonist went on, "and shapeless. But Kirk isn't soft. Kirk may be a swaggering dictator with delusions of godhood," the bearded man droned on, "but he's not soft!"

  Unbelievable nerve—O'Brien felt a twitch of frustration run across his forehead.

  The ensign at the Starfleet table tensed visibly, but the red-shirt stopped him from challenging the antagonizing man.

  The waitress, looking overworked and nervous, came to them and asked, "What'll it be, boys? And don't say raktajino—if I have to say we don't carry that one more time—"

  "Who ordered raktajino?" Odo asked vigilantly.

  "The Klingons."

  "Klingons?"

  "Yes."

  O'Brien looked around, as did Odo and Bashir, but he didn't see any Klingons. He glanced at Worf, who was noticeably twitching, but Worf said nothing.

  "Right over there," the waitress said with an are-you-blind inflection.

  She nodded to the table with the silverbacks sitting around it. A little surly, maybe, but Klingons? These men were no bigger than any average muscular human, and none had the Klingon turtle-shelled browridge O'Brien had seen all his life. They had ordinary black hair. The uniforms weren't Klingon either, so far as he recognized. The only trait these had in common with Klingons was that every last one of them was bearded.

  Bashir looked at Worf. "Those are Klingons?"

  "All right," the waitress said gruffly, "you four have had enough. I'm cutting you off."

  She turned on a heel and strode away spicily.

  "Well, Mr. Worf?" Odo prodded.

  Worf looked at him, then at Bashir, then O'Brien.

  "They are Klingons," he admitted finally.

  All three others looked again at the silverbacks, then they all looked again at Worf.

  Klingons! That changed everything! Perhaps some disease had caused their personalities to migrate to the outsides of their bodies, because that man with the beard was prickling O'Brien like a cactus.

  Worf fidgeted—and that was a sight. "It is a long story."

  "What happened?" O'Brien pushed. "Some kind of genetic engineering?"

  "Viral mutation?" Bashir suggested.

  Twitching like an old lady now, Worf growled, "We do not discuss it with outsiders!"

  O'Brien was about to spear him with another remark, but across the bar came the sharp scrape of a chair being shoved back. As he turned, he saw the younger officer in gold on his feet and glaring at one of the Klingons as if ready to peel the beard off hair by hair.

  But the engineer at the table had the younger man by the arm. "Take it easy, lad. Everybody's entitled to an opinion."

  Scottish. No doubt about that. Inverness, maybe. Someplace northish. Senior officer, too. No doubt about that either.

  "That's right," the Klingon taunted, speaking very slowly, partly because he was drunk and partly because he was enjoying the surgery. "And if I think that Kirk is a Denebian slime devil … well, that's my opinion too."

  O'Brien had seen this Klingon stalking the Starfleeters, but the order had been sent around the ship that there would be no trouble, and the Starfleet people in these bars were trying not to react to the picking and prancing of this one Klingon.

  "Don't do it, mister, and that's an order," the Scotsman said firmly, holding back the young ensign who wanted to pull the Klingon's beard off.

  "Look at the way Kirk is ignoring that Klingon," O'Brien mentioned admiringly. "He's letting the security officer handle it."

  "Chief," Bashir murmured, "are you sure that's Kirk?"

  "Absolutely."

  "Then why is he wearing lieutenant's stripes?" The doctor held up his own sleeve and noted that the slashes matched the slashes on that other man's sleeve.

  O'Brien peered across the room—and damn if Julian wasn't right. A lieutenant, not a captain! He was completely wasting a good slug of admiration!

  "Of course," the Klingon was saying now, "Captain Kirk deserves his ship! We like the Enterprise, we—" He laughed. "We really do!" He confirmed with glances to the other men in silver tunics, then turned his invective to the man in red. "That sagging old rustbucket—"

  Something inside Miles O'Brien clicked to full alert as fury boiled up from the pit. Insulting a man's ship!

  "—is designed like a garbage scow! Half the quadrant knows it! That's why they're all learning to speak Klingonese!"

  "Mr. Scott!" the ensign spat.

  Now the man in red—an engineer! O'Brien's thoughts seized on what he was seeing.

  "Montgomery Scott!" he choked. "My God … Montgomery Scott—it's Montgomery Scott!"

  "Who?" Odo asked.

  The Klingon raised his voice. "And if I think that the Enterprise is designed like a garbage scow, then that's my opinion, too."

  Cautiously, Odo broke in with "I think we have bigger problems than a case of mistaken identity."

  Across the room, the Scottish officer was involved in a slow burn. The situation was escalating, control blowing to t
he wind.

  Yep, those were Klingons, all right. Delighting in torture no matter what their skulls looked like.

  The Scot half-turned. There was a dangerous dare on his face.

  "Laddie … don't you think you should … rephrase that?"

  Tilting slightly forward, O'Brien got his feet under him and braced his legs. Strange, getting mad at something that happened a hundred-odd years ago. Oh, but wonderful, punching a few of those words back down a Klingon throat …

  And there was the Klingon, who obviously knew perfectly well just who he was insulting. Fury built brick by brick until O'Brien was seeing only red. Criticizing an engineer's own personal work—his own ship! There was a line being crossed here, by damn!

  The Klingon leaned teasingly on the bar, playing to his own crewmates as much as to the starship's chief engineer, speaking very slowly on purpose. "You're right. I should. I didn't mean to say that the Enterprise should be hauling garbage. I mean to say it should be hauled away as garbage!"

  Enjoying his chance to pinch the fine hairs of a Starfleet officer, the Klingon reeled back in laughter, knowing he was free to prowl this station and that Starfleet personnel were not allowed to cause trouble based only on words.

  But, oh, this was torture for O'Brien, this pretending not to be affected.

  Then again, he was wearing an Enterprise crew shirt! He didn't have to pretend not to care!

  Watching without a blink, he dug his fingernails into his palms. Please, oh, please …

  The famous Scotsman slowly stood up.

  Yes, yes—

  The Klingon was still laughing, too drunk to notice that Montgomery Scott was on his feet.

  When he turned, the Klingon wasn't on his feet anymore—in fact, his feet were on the table behind him, and the rest of his body was hanging over the other side.

  The man O'Brien had mistaken for Kirk now burst to his feet and shoved two chairs out of his way, squaring off with the Klingons, who also came to their feet. Chairs scratched all over the bar.

  As if propelled by some sorcerous force—for which he would've paid highly right now—O'Brien's chair flew out from behind him with Irish polite gentility, making easy room for him to dance. Worf jolted up as well, hands clenched, arms flexed.