DON'T KILL ME, I'M ONLY THE BARTENDER
by ardavenport
- - - Part 1
Quark arranged the glasses on the tray carefully. He certainly couldn't trust his brother Rom with this job. He poured two Spican fire waters with lots of ice into two tall glasses. From under the bar, from a hidden compartment he took out a small metal box. After glancing around to make sure that the crowd around the bar was too busy with its own business to notice what he was up to, he added a small portion of the white powder in the metal box to one of the drinks. After safely concealing the box again, he plunked a feathery green garnish into the untainted drink. He inserted a yellow sparkling flower to the other one.
"Brother!" Rom, with his pitiful drooping earlobes, shambled over, an angry Cresarian behind him. Quark sighed and went to smooth over whatever Rom had screwed up. After he had dispatched the Cresarian with a free drink (that he intended to deduct from his brother's share of the day's take) he returned to his tray.
Quark froze.
Major Kira Nerys was half way through a glass of Spican fire water. On the tray, there sat one untouched drink decorated with a green garnish.
Major Kira set the glass next to the discarded yellow garnish, sighed and sat down at the bar.
"I needed that," she declared. "You wouldn't believe what's been going on at Ops, today."
"Um, ah, I'm sure I would," Quark stammered, furiously trying to think of what kind of effect czistirine would have on a Bajoran. The drink had been intended to knock out a Tellurian ship captain for at least nine hours.
"We had four ships from Bajor today. Four. But that idiot at Central Command kept insisting that there were supposed to be five. I had to waste two hours convincing her and her supervisor that we didn't lose a whole shuttle. How's your day been?" she added as an afterthought, taking another swig of her drink.
"Uh, interesting." He grabbed the glass out of her hand.
"Hey!"
"What am I thinking?" he told her. "That's not your usual drink." He whisked away the evidence and produced a fresh glass and a bottle of synthale. "Have some of this. On the house," he added with his best cover-up smile.
"Uh, thanks." Kira accepted the drink with surprise and then suspicion. "You feeling all right?"
"Ah, couldn't be better." Quark backed away. As soon as his back was to her, his charming, jagged-toothed smile melted into a near-panicked grimace. What could he do? Call the Infirmary and casually suggest to Doctor Bashir that he come to the bar and give Kira a physical? Would Kira kill him before or after Bashir treated her for the czistirine? All of his options looked extremely expensive.
Three new people at the bar demanded service and he splashed drinks in their mugs without thinking about what they'd asked for. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Kira, but she didn't seem to be showing any symptoms as she poured the synthale into her glass. Maybe czistirine didn't affect Bajorans at all.
Rom came to him with another problem and Quark snapped at him angrily. This disaster was all his fault for distracting him and letting Kira get to the drink in the first place.
Quark turned back to the bar. Kira was sitting still, staring vacantly in front of her. Uh oh. The Ferengi came around from behind the bar and cautiously approached. Thankfully, no one was sitting next to the major. The glass in front of her was half full of synthale. The bottle was lying in a pool of the rest of it on the bar.
Well, she was still breathing fine, and her color didn't look too far off from her usual pasty tan. Tellurians weren't that different from Bajorans-except for the color of their blood and the number of arms they had. If the effects were similar, he could just hustle Kira upstairs and let her sleep it off.
"Ah, so, Major, aside from the problems at Ops, how's your day been?" Kira didn't answer; she didn't move; she just stayed hunched over her glass at the bar, the cuffs of her otherwise spotless uniform lying in the pool of ale. Bad sign.
"Ah, Major," Quark tapped her on the arm. She didn't react. "You don't look so good, maybe you should lie down for a bit." Quark took her arm just above the elbow and guided her off the bar stool. She came easily.
Kira stood staring blankly at him, her arms limp at her sides and the beauty of the situation suddenly hit the Quark right on his lobes. Her rounded, feminine features, her darkened lips, her accented eyes were relaxed and neutral, a far cry from the usual expression of threatening revulsion she gave him. Quark passed a hand before her eyes with no response. He reached up and touched the delicate ridges between the Bajoran's eyes with the same non-result.
"Hmm, I never thought I'd see you like this, Major." Quark touched the silver chain of Kira's single Bajoran earring hanging from her right ear. He admired the curves of her body in her tight fitting orange uniform, her shapely hips, buttocks and legs, her narrow waist and full bosom. He laid a hand on her breast.
Kira's hand shot up and jerked his hand away. Quark hissed. She started to sway.
"I knew it had to be too good to be true."
Jadzia Dax sat at a table by herself, people-watching and nursing the same drink she'd had for the past half hour. She didn't care much for dabo or most of the other gambling in the bar, but the people who did were fascinating.
Dax saw Kira come in, immediately pluck a drink from the bar and down it. It had been a hard day at Ops that had tried even Dax's Trill patience. The provisional government on Bajor was less than two years old, but they already had a good start on their bureaucracy.
Quark came around to Kira, who stood. He seemed to be chatting, but she wasn't responding. Then Quark touched Kira's face. Dax moved her chair for a better view and wondered when Kira would floor the Ferengi. She didn't react until Quark touched her breast, her movements uncoordinated and off-balance. Dax got up.
"Now I know you're not feeling like yourself, Major-" Dax heard Quark saying just before Kira grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and brought her knee up hard into the shorter Ferengi's crotch. He froze, his mouth forming a silent 'o' of indescribable pain. Kira released him, threw her arms out and swung them in, slamming into Quark's enormous and highly sensitive ears.
"Uah!" Quark started to bend forward. Kira put her hands under his chin and pushed up and away from her. Quark crashed at Dax's feet as Kira stumbled away toward the main entrance.
"Kira!" Dax yelled before she knelt beside Quark. A steadily increasing wailing rose from the wounded Ferengi, but otherwise, he was obviously going to live.
"Serves you right." Dax left him to follow Kira. She ran into Odo as he was coming in, the security chief looking for the source of the howl of pain that Quark was making.
"What's going on?" the shapeshifter asked.
"Quark tried to grope Kira," Dax explained as she scanned the crowd on the Promenade for an orange uniform.
"And?"
"She kneed him in the groin."
"And?"
"Then she boxed his ears."
"Hurph! Serves him right," Odo declared in his gravely voice, his smooth unfinished features expressing disdain with the subtlest of motions.
Dax spotted Kira by the tailor shop. Odo followed. The Bajoran was huddled next to the gray wall, her head bowed so that all Dax could see was her short, straight hair like a dark auburn skull cap. Dax couldn't imagine what Quark could have said that would have affected Kira so strongly.
"Kira?"
Kira-Kira-Kira-Kirakirakirakira.
The echo rose and fell and she covered her ears. It wasn't too loud. It was too strange. She didn't just hear it, she could feel the sound all around her body. The same thing happened when she looked at anything. The Promenade had changed to a jumble of invading color and pattern. Nothing made sense. What had happened to the space station?
Something pressed against her and she turned, her body moving in slow motion to push it away. Her muscles were sluggish and weighted and she felt as if her body was being transformed by the weird metamorphosis that had claimed her world.
I'llgetDoctorBashir.
Odo. He was a shapeshifter; if anyone could survive in this kind of chaos, it would be Odo. Kira scanned the maelstrom of shapes around her for him. She glimpsed a shadow of the right shade of tan but then it shrank, swallowed up in black and blue.
What had gone wrong? Had the station fallen into the wormhole? Slipped into a dimension where all reality didn't mean anything anymore? She made herself smaller, hoping that it would slow down the transformations she could feel building within her.
Dax crouched before Kira who cowered next to the wall. They were drawing a crowd of curious shoppers and idle ship crew members on leave. Several Bajoran station crew joined the multi-species gawkers, whispering amongst themselves about their superior's odd behavior. Dax ignored them and concentrated on calming her friend until the doctor arrived.
"Kira? It's okay. It's Dax." The major trembled, her eyes pointing toward the sound. She could smell the synthehol that dampened the cuffs of her uniform and it spotted her usually trim uniform.
"D-Dax?"
"Yes," she answered, encouraged by the recognition. "It's all right. Odo's gone to get Julian."
"Odo? Where's Odo?"
"He's gone to get Doctor Bashir. He'll be right back." Dax's scientist's mind went through the possible causes of Kira's condition. It certainly wasn't the synthehol and Dax had certainly not heard of any disease that would cause such a sudden psychosis, at least none that didn't show any earlier symptoms. And the Starfleet officer had been with Kira all afternoon in Ops, and she hadn't displayed any type of illness at all. Nor did Kira have any medical condition that Dax knew of that would cause this kind of change.
That left an external source being the probable cause. The crowd around them was growing, but none of them showed any signs of instability, just morbid curiosity; it appeared that Kira was the only person affected. Dax could hear Quark's receding howls of pain as somebody, probably Rom, took him to the Infirmary.
"All right, the show's over. I'm sure you all have other things to do." Odo's rough voice disbanded the bulk of the gathering and they broke up and wandered off.
"What happened?" Doctor Bashir laid his medical kit down on the floor next to Dax. Kira, curled up next to wall. She responded to the new presence, but her fearful eyes never focused on the doctor or Odo standing behind him.
"She attacked Quark-"
"I heard about that," the youthful doctor stated, nodding in the direction of Quark's yowls of pain.
"-and then she came out here."
"Did she look ill at all before?" Bashir held his medical scanner up to Kira with one hand and checked the readings on the tricorder he held in the other. The two Starfleet officers crouched together before the Bajoran.
"No, but when she came into the bar, she picked up a drink that Quark had poured, and I don't think he meant it for her."
"Really? I wonder what Quark will have to say about that?" Odo speculated in a predatory fashion, seeing an opportunity to undermine the Ferengi.
"It might help if you could see if you could find that drink," Bashir told him impatiently.
"Right." Odo nodded and left.
"Kira? Kira, can you understand me?" Bashir carefully moved a little closer. Kira started and he backed off.
"Kira, do you know who this is."
"B-Bashir, D-D-Doctor Bashir," she stammered back, her gaze still unfocused.
"Good. That's good." Bashir slid forward again until he was next to her against the wall. This time she didn't jump, but she edged a few centimeters away from him. He put his tricorder and scanner away, closed up the medical kit and put its strap over his shoulder. Dax slid forward as well, coming in on Kira's other side. "There's something wrong with you-"
"You're telling me," she answered back nervously. She hunched over her knees, encircling them with her arms.
"I want to take you to the Infirmary." He touched her arm and she flinched.
"No, no, I-I don't want to go there." She shook her head and covered her short, fluffed hair with her hands as if the roof were coming down on her.
"It's all right, It's all right," Bashir reassured her gently.
"Kira," Dax spoke softly, on her other side. She laid her hand on Kira's shoulder, a feather touch at first and then when she didn't object, Dax slid her hand behind her back. "You're not well. We really need to take you to the Infirmary."
"Through that?" Dax and Bashir followed her fearful gaze to the moderately busy Promenade. Except for a few lingering curiosity-seekers that one of Odo's tan uniformed security people shooed away, the collection of humanoids cluttering Deep Space Nine's main thoroughfare paid no attention to them.
"Can't you give her something, Julian?" Dax suggested.
"I'd rather not, at least not until I know what she's already had." He leaned close to Kira again.
"It's all right," Bashir repeated as he carefully slid a hand behind her back, his other hand coming under her elbow. "We'll help you." He nodded to Dax and they both got up, taking Kira with them, her legs uncurling under her as she stood. They started forward, but she resisted.
"No-no. This is not going to work." Kira pulled weakly against them. Dax and Bashir were about the same height, and both taller and broader than Kira; they gently held her in place between them.
"Yes it is," Bashir murmured into her ear. "Close your eyes, don't look. We'll help you." Kira, almost panting, tensed to flee, squeezed her eyes shut.
"That's good," Bashir encouraged her after her first trepidant steps. "You're doing beautifully. It's just a little ways." Slowly, the three of them crossed the Promenade to the open Infirmary between the shops, Odo's security people cleared the way for them.
Odo greeted them at the door.
"I found the drink that Kira got," the shapeshifter reported in his gruff voice. "And I convinced Quark to tell me what happened. Apparently he agreed to delay the captain of the Vrazao for a business deal by doctoring his drink, and Kira got it by mistake." Bashir's assistant, a blond Starfleet technician named Suzy Bylin, had Quark on one examination table, and was trying to scan the embarrassed and pained Ferengi's lower regions.
"Well, what was in it?" Bashir demanded and he and Dax crept toward an empty examination table with Kira.
"Czistirine. The captain of the Vrazao is Tellurian."
"Wonderful." The blood chemistry for the Tellurians and Bajorans was completely different.
- - - End Part 1