From Bajor to the Black

Just a small town girl
Livin' in a lonely world
She took the midnight train
Goin' anywhere
— "Don't Stop Believin'", Journey

How'd I get here? How did I enter Starfleet? You really want to know?

Nothing really Bajor-shaking, honestly. I didn't have any relative who died gloriously in battle. Okay, yeah, my father fought in the Resistance, and his father even died in the Kendra Valley Massacre, but Kanril Torvo made it out of the Occupation with his skin mostly intact and didn't join the Militia afterward. And it wasn't patriotism, I think, though that's one of my reasons for staying nowadays.

The lifestyle? Oh, Hell no! Let's face it, it sucks a lot of the time. The "strange new worlds" they show you in the recruitment vids are the good days; the rest of them are "woohoo, another average star with a bunch of dead rocks orbiting it". And I don't like really like killing people, although I'm very good at it.

You want to know how I ended up in Starfleet? This is how.

Satar 4, Seventh Era 943, Year of the Unseen Harp (June 8, 2397 Earth Standard)

This wasn't the reaction I expected. Anger I could deal with. Acceptance would be great. Active support? Even better.

Instead, the look of silent hurt on my boyfriend's face just bores into my soul and breaks my heart.

"Why?" That's the only word he says.

I let out a breath. "Because I want to."

"We had plans. Alhare University?"

"Dammit, Tiho, that was your plan. You got a guaranteed full ride to the temple schools because your uncle's a vedek. I don't have that luxury, and I don't agree with their politics anyway. But I do my four and get out and I get my own guaranteed full ride, any public university on Bajor. And I want to be able to look back at my life and be able to say I had an adventure."

He scoffs. "You sound like a phekk'ta recruitment ad."

"Militia's the only adventure I get paid to go on. My folks can't afford the public unis and all the temple schools around here push the Orthodox branch like it's going out of style."

"Deal with it."

"I don't have the patience, you should know that by now. It's either the Militia or I spend the rest of my life running conduit. Hell, Father's already having me help him on the job; he can't move as well as he used to. I want more than that out of my life."

"Why don't you tell me the truth? You just want to get out of Priyat, El."

"That a crime? This town's dying. Half the town just lives here because it's close to Kendra City."

"Look, just call the recruiter up, tell him you changed your mind. I'll talk to my uncle—"

"The scholarship's only for relatives, you know that. I'm going Militia, Tiho."

"Then you're going where I can't follow."

I glare at him but he's unmoved. "Sao'phekk'tel ar bekral!" I scream at him, then storm out of his bedroom and down the stairs.

His mother catches me in the parlor pulling my coat on. "Eleya, what—"

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Nas. I … I can't be here anymore." I throw the door open and run out into the snow. I struggle to keep the tears back but they flow anyway.

"Where's Tiho?" Father asks me two days later. "I thought he'd be here for this."

"He's not coming."

He pauses in the middle of loading my second suitcase into his battered old Cardassian-built groundcar, a leftover from the Occupation. "He broke up with you?"

"I broke up with him." Okay, that's a lie; I'm trying to salvage some pride here. He gives me a questioning look. "He made it very clear it was either the Militia or him. Se'phekk him."

"Language, El." He hefts the suitcase into the back of the car and closes the door, then sighs. "Look, I'll have a talk with him—"

"No, Father, just … don't. If he decides he wants to talk to me again, he'll call."

It's an hour and a half on a two-lane ferrocrete road from Priyat to Kendra City, the closest shuttleport and the only big city in the entire province. The stark brown Cardassian architecture is a sharp contrast to the mostly wood and mud-brick of my hometown. We park at the shuttleport and lug my suitcases through the checkpoints. Father sweeps me into a bear hug. "My little girl, all grown up," he says into my hair.

"When are you coming home, Big Sis?"

I break away from Father and stoop a bit to hug my thirteen-year-old sister. Even after she hit her growth spurt a month or so later she was never as tall as I was. "Not for a while, Teri."

"Mother and I made you a box of jumja sticks." My mouth starts watering and I hug her again.

The P.A. system chimes and a female voice with an Ashallan accent announces, "Attention, all passengers for Samren Provincial Shuttleport Flight 323. First-class passengers, please proceed to the gate."

"That's my flight. I've gotta get in line."

Mother grabs me and kisses me on both cheeks. "You be safe."

"Mother, I'll be fine."

"You're still a seventeen-year-old girl. You be careful, understand me?"

"Yes, Mother."

"And don't take that tone. Now go on, before I start crying and embarrass us both."

The seat is in coach, all a government ticket will pay for, and it's cramped as hell. I manage to get comfortable and nod off as we take off, but it's a suborbital so it's barely twenty minutes before the overweight Boslic in the seat next to me shakes me awake and says we're there. I collect my bags and exit the airport, and a gray-uniformed Surface Arm sergeant meets me and points to a bus painted in grassland drab. It's as utilitarian as my father's truck, but the fuel cells are Federation manufacture so it runs cleaner and sounds a hell of a lot quieter. One of the male recruits in the seat in front of me starts flirting with me. He's not my type so I ignore him and pass out again.

Militia basic training is held at Camp Li, a base in the Kolharis Range named for one of the heroes of the Resistance, a man who died defending Deep Space 9 with the Emissary during Jaro Essa's coup attempt in 2370. The surrounding mountains were plundered by the spoonheads for deposits of duranium and heavy metals, and they blew the top off Mount Bahatan with a battleship's main disruptor to turn it into a landing field for orbital cargo lifters headed to Terok Nor. The effects on the terrain make it a good training ground.

My waist-length hair is the first thing to go. It's infuriating but there's a reason for it—too easy for it to get caught in something. We also have to take our earrings off when we're working. And we're technically not allowed to bring outside food on base, but I bribe Staff Sergeant Tem with a quarter of the box of jumja sticks and she lets me keep the rest. They still don't last two weeks.

Five months of frequently hellish training follows. Physical training. Hand-to-hand combat. Guns, knives. Mental conditioning techniques we learned from the Cardassians. Technical skill assessments and lessons. tlhIngan Hol and Cardassian language lessons.

I keep hoping for Tiho to call. He never does. I check my messages every day for two months, but he never does. One day I stop checking, and lose my virginity with a guy in my training platoon in the cargo compartment of an IFV. Turns out sex is a lot of fun, who knew?

Three months in, they make me a squad leader. I wonder if they're grooming me for something. Turns out they've decided I have "leadership qualities" and put me in charge of a team for Hell Week. They fly us out to Serpent's Ridge in Dakhur Province, eight days by foot away from the nearest civilization, give us compasses, guns, and four days' food and water, and tell us to hoof it to Camp Shakaar. Oh, you get an emergency beacon, too, but you press it and you lose. No real penalty other than your pride, but it affects your placement in the service.

I grit my teeth and bear it. Father somehow found time to make sure his girls could survive in the wilderness. I was twelve, she was eight. I'm one of about a dozen out of the original hundred to make it to day six but then I step in a hara cat burrow and break my ankle. Hurts like hell but the disappointment I feel hurts worse, even though Gunny Lemri says I did fine.

Graduation. My initial training company of over a thousand has been whittled down to three hundred, and of my original squad I'm the only one left. I struggle not to fidget as the graduating recruits are listed off. My royal blue dress uniform itches and doesn't fit right, too tight across the chest. I think my breasts grew a little since the start of boot camp.

"Lance Corporal Kanril Eleya!" Gunny Elwar, a one-eyed gray-hair who joined the Militia the year I was born, barks my name. "Congratulations, you're going blackside. Republic of Bajor Starship Kira Nerys, Tactical Department. You're shooting the big guns, girl."

I really hate it when he calls me 'girl'.

"Balus kren!" he bellows across the field at the end.

"Balus kren!" three hundred voices shout back. It's been the Militia's war cry for thirty years. In Dakhuri dialect it means "Never again!"

That's the real story, Mr. Sisko. Nothing drew me to space specifically. I joined the Militia to get out of the town I was born in, to get a job and a college education. I was sent to space, because the Bajoran Militia in its infinite wisdom decided that's where my skills lay. As for how Starfleet picked me up? Well, back then there were already movements in the Chamber of Ministers to shut down Space Arm. "We can't afford it, it's just a silly national pride thing, and they're less effective than Starfleet anyway," the Conservative Association said. "The Feds can't be everywhere and they won't fight for us as hard as we'll fight for ourselves," the Nationalists said. Politics as usual.

In the end, like so many other things in life, it came down to money. Bajor was plundered so thoroughly during the Occupation that for several years afterward we could barely feed ourselves, never mind contributing anything to the outside world. Even nowadays most of the Republic's income comes from being a trade hub—by the terms of the Bajoran Wormhole Treaty we get a cut of everything that goes through Deep Space 9 and the Celestial Temple—so we're a lot more vulnerable to shifts in the galactic economy than other planets. With the economic recession in 2400 the money just wasn't there anymore, and the Socialists joined with the Conservatives when the shutdown bill hit the Chamber floor. Space Arm would be decommissioned, effective Ilrani 7E947, or June 2401 the way you humans write the calendar.

Ilrani 11, Seventh Era 947, Year of Ill-Timed Truth

As the Kira pulls into a parking orbit over Bajor at the end of her final voyage I'm paged to the command deck. I file through the old Breen Chok Thol-class frigate's cramped corridors, squeezing past a pair of corpsmen and stopping to let Captain Azro from Engineering past me. "Sarge," he says by way of greeting.

"Captain." I watch him leave and resist the urge to eye his backside. He's a decent guy; I've liked him since I came aboard three and a half years ago. Pretty cute, too; if he wasn't a zero I might have asked him out.

I push past a pair of armed security guys taking the stardust smugglers we bagged on our last patrol to the shuttlebay in shackles, squeeze into the turbolift next to four familiar faces, and request the bridge. The lifters squeal a bit as the car rises five decks to the top of the ship, then the door slides open on the bridge. I've seen vids of Federation starship bridges. They're huge. This is anything but: twelve people collapsed into a room not much more than five by four meters. And what passes for Colonel Karryn's ready room must've been a broom closet in a former lifetime. Lieutenant Fadil, the tactical officer, points to the door and I knock. "Enter!"

I step inside and come to attention and Karryn Retta remotely closes the door. The CO's close to Mother's age, with dark skin, graying black hair and an old scar on her jawline from the last years of the Occupation. I salute, both in deference to her rank and in gratitude for her Resistance work, but she doesn't look up. "Sergeant Kanril Eleya, reporting as ordered, ma'am."

"Have a seat, Sergeant," she says, still not looking up. About a minute in I start fighting the urge to fidget before she finally lays down a much-abused PADD and stylus and apologizes for the delay. "By some dubious work of the Prophets there seems to be more paperwork involved in shutting a unit down than in running it."

"Ma'am?"

"Never mind." She leans back in her chair and I can see the fatigue in her eyes. "I've been going down the list of my NCOs now that Bajor's handing space over to Starfleet. Same question for you as the rest, Kanril. What are you planning to do next?"

"Honestly, I'm not sure, ma'am."

"Says on your recruitment record you were interested in the Ahuar Zorn scholarship after serving your term."

"That was four years ago, ma'am."

She nods. "It's still on the table, though: You can muster out, go to college. Door number two, you ship over, go back to Mount Bahatan and get recertified in another specialty. You're a good shooter, could turn peacekeeper or infantry, or you could do another electronics route."

"Either way, I'll probably never be in the black again," I answer in a sad tone.

Her lips twist and her eyes smile. "Ah, a-ha-ha. So that's what you really want, Sarge. We can work with that. Door number three? An inter-service transfer order."

I stare at her. "Starfleet?"

"No, the Dominion. Of course, Starfleet."

"You think they'd take me?"

"You're qualified, and you'll skip most of the training since we read from the same manual, more or less. You could practically just change uniforms and hop the morning transport to DS9. But there's another possibility you should consider."

She picks up the PADD again, taps it a few times with her stylus, and then passes it to me. There's a form on the screen, an application to a certain service academy's Officer Candidate School program, with all my information pre-loaded. "Starfleet Academy, ma'am?" I ask for confirmation in surprise.

"Your aptitude scores are good enough you can take the quals, and I'm certain you'll pass them. Starting as an NCO you'll be an ensign in eighteen months. Hell, eight years from now you could have your own ship! Better one than this piece of crap," she adds, smacking a suddenly flickering light panel with a fist.

Badmouthing your own ship? "Colonel—"

"Well, let's face it, this is an eighty-year-old secondhand Breen frigate. I love her but I've got no illusions about it. Prophets, she wasn't exactly state-of-the-art even when she was brand-new, and all the jury-rigging we keep having to do doesn't help overmuch as you well know. Starfleet's just plain got better toys. But enough about me, let's talk about you. Where do you see yourself this time next week?"

I say nothing. I originally enlisted because I wanted to get out of Priyat and be able to say I had an adventure before I settled down. And the guaranteed full ride was a nice bonus. But being out here in space? About a year in I discovered I loved it. Sure, it's boring a lot of the time, especially in my department, but it's beautiful. I never get tired of looking at it.

I want to stay in the black.

I really want to stay.

Next thing I know I've taken the stylus, scribbled a signature on the dotted line, and pressed my thumb against the panel. I put the PADD down and the colonel smiles at me. "I thought so."

I return to Priyat older and a little wiser than when I left and visit with my parents for about three weeks while I'm waiting for the orientation session at Starfleet Academy. I find out Tiho left town for good two years after I did. Last I heard he'd joined the priesthood and was sent offworld to New Bajor.

Mother fusses over me and tries to get me to have the veterans' hospital remove the scars from where I was stabbed by that greenskin two years ago. I brush her off. They're a vivid reminder that I'm not invincible, something I still forget every once in a while.

That's the reason I give her, anyway. It's not the whole story. I may have popped my cherry in the back of an armored vehicle, but I didn't lose my innocence then. That's what the scars mark: The first time I killed, and the first time I nearly died. The first time I looked Death in the eye. The first time he blinked.

Someday he won't.

Finally I say goodbye to my family for the second time. This time I won't be anywhere near my homeworld for nearly four years. Starfleet pays my passage on a Gallant-class passenger liner headed to Sol, but I take some of my savings and splurge on an upgrade to business class. Definitely worth it: I get a private room instead of having to bunk with somebody. Transwarp still isn't available to nonmilitary vessels so it's a long trip. I have to make a connection at Trill and finally arrive in Earth orbit after almost a month of travel.

END OF PART ONE

Author's Notes: I'm not sure how much of this Eleya actually relayed to Jake Sisko and how much is just Eleya's internal recollections. Although she probably didn't tell him the part about having her first time in the back of an armored vehicle. :P As for where I got the idea for that? NCIS' Ziva David. Bajorans are basically post-Holocaust space Jews and Eleya's a badass action girl, so what the hey?

The Militia doesn't actually use literal Marine Corps lingo and ranks, of course. That was an artistic decision to draw a bit of a contrast with Starfleet. Call it Translation Convention.

We don't get much of a look at how people outside the military travel planet-to-planet in the franchise. I envisioned sort of a cross between a jet airliner and a cruise ship for the Gallant-class (which I made up).