Second Thoughts
By Laura Schiller
Based on: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
"Just in time, Cadet!" said Joseph Sisko, waving a dish towel in welcome. "Your tube grubs came in today. Fresh from Ferenginar by the morning shuttle."
"Thanks, sir." Nog nodded with unusual politeness as he entered the restaurant. The sign still read Closed and no other patrons were inside, but since Nog was a friend of Jake's and a protégé of Ben's, Joseph had given the little Ferengi family privileges and let him walk in whenever he wanted. (Besides, the sight of him eating those grubs tended to put the other diners, who were mostly Human, off their food.)
"So how's Academy life treating you?" Joseph asked, emptying the live grubs out of their stasis pod and into a bowl.
"Fine."
That was Joseph's first clue that something was wrong. Normally Nog would have been bubbling over with glowing reports of what he'd learned about starships and alien cultures, bitter tirades about his demanding physical fitness instructor or bigotry from his classmates, hilarious anecdotes about life in an interspecies student residence, or bewildered questions about "Hew-mon" culture. He was never this quiet.
And he never picked up a tube grub and let it squirm between his fingers without eating it, either, as he was doing now.
"What's the matter, son?" Joseph, who had been about to continue wiping tables and putting down chairs, instead flung his cloth over his shoulder and sat down opposite the boy. "You're not still worrying about Red Squad, are you?"
"Hmm? Nah." Nog snorted, sounding almost like his usual self. "Not right now, anyway. It's just … did you read Jake's article? The one in the Federation Times?"
"Sure." Joseph beamed like the proud grandfather he was. "Amazing, isn't it? I had no idea the kid was such a talented journalist. Where he gets it from is a mystery to me."
Nog ate his tube grub, slowly, to delay his answer. "Yeah … he's talented, all right," he finally said, but his obvious pride in his friend was tinged with an undercurrent of something else. "Makes you feel like you were there. You can practically hear the explosions." He rubbed one large ear as if the thought was physically painful. "And in a few years … in a few years that's going to be us out there."
Joseph, although more talented with his hands than his brain, was no fool. He could guess what was bothering Nog. When he remembered Jake's brutally honest descriptions of the hospital bombed by Klingons, the young Starfleet officer who had shot himself in the foot to escape the battles, Jake's own panicked abandonment of Dr. Bashir … well, it was more than enough to make any cadet uneasy. Let alone a Ferengi; Joseph didn't mean to be a xenophobe, but Nog himself admitted that physical courage didn't rank high among his species' ideals.
Maybe Nog would get a desk job when he graduated, or maybe by then the war would be over … but maybe not. Even the possibility of being sent into battle must be terrible enough.
"Having second thoughts about your future in Starfleet?" Joseph asked kindly. "There's no shame in it if you are."
"Oh yes there is!" Nog burst out, his high-pitched voice unnaturally loud in the quiet restaurant. "There's plenty of shame. I'm the one who pestered everyone into letting me enlist. If I quit now, Father will be like, 'But, son, I always thought you'd be the successful one in this family!'" He mimicked a deep, naïve-sounding voice that Joseph assumed was a parody of his father's. "And Uncle Quark will gloat for the rest of his life about how mixing with Hew-mons never did any good. No offense, Mr. Sisko."
"None taken."
"And Captain Sisko … " Nog faltered, as if disappointing Ben was the worst prospect of all. "He sponsored me. He invested in me – not latinum, I mean, but his word. His confidence. If I fail him, I'll never be able to repay it."
On one level, Joseph found it funny that his baby boy was now a leader who inspired such fierce loyalty in everyone who knew him. But on another level, it didn't surprise Joseph at all. He had always known Ben was special. No wonder even the newest of cadets wanted his approval.
Still, that was not the right way for an adolescent to consider his future career.
"Let's leave everyone else aside for now," said Joseph. "What do you think?" He reached across the table and tapped the boy's forehead ridge with one finger. "Stay or go? What does your head tell you is the right thing to do?"
"I don't know!" Nog snapped, batting the old man's hand away. "That's what Jake wrote. You never know 'til it's happening to you, and by then it's too late. What if I'm the guy who shoots himself in the foot? Or the one that runs away and leaves his friends to die? Makes a lot more sense to me than fighting, honestly. Uncle Quark would even be proud."
He scowled down at his bowl of grubs, scooped up a handful and chewed them viciously, as if each one represented a negative thought.
Joseph couldn't agree more. Fighting didn't make sense to him either, never had. He thought of Jennifer, his beloved daughter-in-law, a civilian casualty of one of the most infamous battles in Starfleet history, and a shiver went down his spine. But on the other hand, if the Saratoga and all those other Starfleet ships hadn't fought at Wolf-359, would they all be Borg drones today?
Did this young man in front of him, who looked like a child in spite of the uniform, have that kind of courage?
There was no way to tell.
"If you're not sure whether Starfleet's right for you," was all Joseph could think to say, "What made you enlist in the first place?"
He was so sorry for Nog and his dilemma that he tried not to show it, and his voice came out more brusque than he intended. No doubt it was the same voice Ben used with his subordinates, because Nog sat bolt upright in his chair.
"Not for profit, that's for sure." The boy let out another snort. "You folks don't even have a currency. Still makes my head hurt when I think about it."
Joseph gave him a commanding Sisko look, and Nog ducked his head and became serious.
"I guess … in a way, it started when the Jem'Hadar took Uncle Quark and Captain Sisko prisoner."
"When was this? He never told me!" Joseph's hand hit the table, making the bowl rattle. He was going to have words with Ben during their next comm session, for getting into danger and keeping his old dad in the dark about it.
Nog flinched, looking more like a guilty schoolboy than ever. "Uh, about a year ago? Don't be mad, Mr. Sisko, we all came out safe. Obviously. Except the Jem-Hadar, I mean."
"Tell me everything."
"Right. Okay. So … the Captain and Jake wanted to go camping in the Gamma Quadrant. Jake invited me, and Uncle Quark sort of … invited himself." Nog made a face at his uncle's bad manners, although in Joseph's opinion that was the least of the problems.
"We couldn't have known there was a Jem'Hadar base on that planet," the boy continued. "It didn't show up on any of our scans. Those huge guys just showed up out of nowhere, shooting at us … " He broke off and shook his head. Instead of launching into a wild adventure story as he usually would have, he appeared lost for words to describe the terror of that scene.
"The Captain yelled at Jake and me to get back in the shuttle. We were supposed to stay there and wait, but … "
"Let me guess," Joseph broke in with a sardonic smile. "You didn't."
"No. We, uh … we took the shuttle back through the wormhole and called DS9 for help. Although," with a breathless laugh, as if Nog couldn't believe his own idiocy, "Neither Jake nor I had any clue about how to fly the stupid thing."
Of course. Teenagers thought they were all immortal. Still, Ben had to admit that didn't sound like the act of a coward. The boys had effectively saved their father and uncle, even if Nog – with most uncharacteristic humility – didn't see it that way.
"Sounds to me like you've already been through the trial by fire Jake wrote about," Joseph pointed out. "And you could've done a lot worse."
"I just did what Jake told me to," Nog admitted.
"Like any officer in a chain of command."
"Yelling my head off the entire time."
"Nothing beats a good yell for getting your blood pumping. You've never heard me when I'm understaffed on a Friday night."
They shared a tension-relievng laugh, and Nog's skinny shoulders finally relaxed. He polished off his remaining tube grubs with obvious relish, sucking the juice from his fingers and leaning back in his chair.
"Anyway," he wound up, "I remember thinking, By the Vault, where's a Starfleet officer when you need one? And even after my uncle and the Captain came back safe, the thought wouldn't get out of my head. I didn't want to be that useless next time an emergency came around. I want to be the one people count on - like the Captain."
Nog's crinkled little face glowed with hero-worship, all his doubts vanishing, if only for the moment. Joseph couldn't decide if it was beautiful or disturbing.
"'By the Vault?'" he inquired, mostly to change the subject.
"Sorry, Mr. Sisko. Forgot to turn on my profanity filter." Nog tapped his combadge with its universal translater.
"As long as you don't start swearing in English." He waved his bottle of cleaning fluid in mock menace. Nog squeaked and pretended to dodge.
The boy really didn't look or sound like anyone's ideal soldier. But at his age, Joseph had learned how contrary people could be, no matter what their species. Almost nobody saw themselves clearly. Look at Ben, insisting for so long that he wasn't religious, when the Bajorans called him Emissary and their gods spoke to him on a regular basis.
The more Nog worried about being a coward, the more likely he was to surprise everybody by doing something brave.
But not too brave, Joseph prayed – not to the Bajoran Prophets with their cryptic, alarming ways, but to the God he sang for in his old neighborhood church. Just as long as he comes back to his dad in one piece.