Gateways 07_ What Lay Beyond - Diane Carey [59]
So seeing her jump up, scream, and drop the padd she was holding when Kira walked into ops made for a fairly amusing sight.
As usual with the gateways, there was no feeling of transition from one point to the other. It was as if ops had been the next room over from the extragalactic outpost. The only change was that the Iconian outpost’s gravity was a bit lighter than that of DS9, so Kira stumbled a bit upon her arrival.
Dax blinked several times. “Colonel?”
“Yes, Lieutenant, it’s me.”
Gan said, somewhat redundantly, “You’re alive.”
Kira resisted the obvious rejoinders. “Report.”
“Europa Nova has been completely evacuated. Most of the refugees are on Bajor. The station’s also filled almost to capacity. Lieutenant Ro, Sergeant Ychell, and Quark have returned, and Ro says she’s got some good news regarding the Orion Syndicate. And Taran’atar’s in the infirmary.”
Kira’s eyes widened. “He’s all right?”
Dax winced. “I wouldn’t go that far, but he’ll recover. Whatever he fought gave him quite a beating.” Then she smiled. “Apparently enough to cause delusions, since he reported that you were dead.”
Probably didn’t read my life signs on the planet and made assumptions, Kira thought. Given the radiation levels, I can’t really blame him. “Let’s just say I was able to make the gateway technology work for me. Go on.”
Dax continued with her report, including the fact that the Defiant had gone off to rendezvous with the Marco Polo to help implement a plan to deal with the gateways; that the Trager was attached to Upper Pylon 1, Gul Macet having been invited to stay for a bit by Vaughn; the continued presence of Councillor Charivretha zh’Thane on board the station; and the fact that Lieutenant Bowers had taken the Rio Grande back to Europa Nova to keep an eye on the gateway there.
“It’s been taken care of,” Kira said. “There won’t be any more anti-matter waste in orbit of Europa Nova at all. Send a message to Bowers; tell him to do a full sensor sweep to determine how much contamination is still there. If we’re lucky, it’s little enough that we can work on repopulating sooner rather than later.” She smiled. “And tell Bowers when he’s finished to tow the Euphrates back. It should be in orbit.” With, she recalled, remembering the shield enhancer she had salvaged from the tanker, a nice piece of new technology.
“Yes, sir,” Dax said, moving toward a console. Then she stopped, and smiled. “It’s good to have you back, Nerys. I don’t think this place could’ve taken losing another commanding officer.”
“Good to be back, Ezri. Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. I’ve still got too much work to do.”
Chapter 12
Kira sat in her office, looking over the historical records she had been able to scare up from the Perikian region. There was distressingly little from as long as thirty thousand years ago. She had found no record whatsoever of the Lerrit, aside from some archaeological indications of some kind of empire from that time period that looked Lerrit-like to Kira.
Kira had taken care of a variety of administrative duties not to mention assuring everyone from station personnel to First Minister Shakaar that she was, in fact, alive, contrary to reports and also been sure to visit Taran’atar in the infirmary. He was fairly weak, but recovering quickly, though Julian had made noises about even laboratory-bred supersoldiers needing their rest when they have the stuffing beaten out of them. For his part, Taran’atar had only one thing to say: “It is good that we have both reclaimed our lives.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Kira had said.
Afterward, she returned to her office and tried to find out what she could about the Perikian region thirty thousand years ago.
The name of Torrna Antosso did come up in several texts, as did that of others with that family name. Historians had debated just who Antosso was and what form his apparently tremendous influence had been in the peninsula, but given the number of landmarks and streets and such that had been named for him or other members