CH1 "Colonel," Nog gasped, as Colonel Kira Nerys' incapacitated figure appeared at his feet, he couldn't tell whether he was more shocked by her sudden appearance or her condition. She was unconscious and her skin was blistered and covered in sweat. His gasp got Ezri Dax's attention on Kira as well. Because Dax was much older and more experienced was surprised not incapacitated with shock like Nog at the sight of her colleague. She immediately commended an emergency medical transport before she let herself feel any other emotion about the situation. "What the hell?" Nog muttered. The command center of Deep Space Nine was silent for a moment as her officers let the shock of seeing their commander appear out nowhere unconscious and severely injured. "Dax to sick bay." "Dr. Bashir here." "How is Colonel Kira?" In sick bay Dr. Julian Bashir took out his tricorder and scanned her before he tried to answer the question. "She's suffering from advanced stage theta radiation poisoning, she's not breathing, her pulse is very weak and she already has an arithrazine overdose. She's also suffering from I sever dehydration, and her body temperature is nearly five degrees (C) above normal. I can try to treat her with hyronalin, and the rest is relatively easy but I have to tell you the chances aren't good. If she survives it will be days before she is released from the infirmary and longer than that before you'll see her at ops." He was to speak to Dax without letting his concentration slip much from Kira, the work of his genetic enhancements no doubt. "Do every thing you can and some. From what you just told me I should be glad as long as the next time I see her isn't her funeral. Dax out." "Doctor," one of the refuges called, the mother of the patient he had been attending to before Kira arrived. "Nurse Dina, will you attend to these people while I treat the Colonel." He turned to them for a second, not wanting to think of anything but his task at hand. "Of course." His nurse answered. "Doctor." The woman said again. He guessed she was going to insist that she needed his skills but that didn't matter, Kira needed him now, these people would live without him, Kira wouldn't. "This woman saved your life and that of all the others on your planet, the lest you can do to help save hers in show a little patience." Security chief Ro entered the infirmary; she had intended to ask Dr. Bashir about a cut on her forehead that had been bothering her since she got back to DS9 from her last mission. After seeing the line outside she had decided it could wait. "Need any help?" she asked Dr. Bashir. "Yes, can you get these people out of here? This is the absolute worst way to run a medical establishment. Tell them to make a list of who they are, what their problem is and where their quarters are and send a nurse to see each of them; unless their condition is immediately life threatening, in which case they're welcome here. It would be best for every one if Kira is the next person I talk to." He hadn't looked at her yet in the conversation because he had been too busy helping Kira but he gave himself a second to look up at her face after he said that. "Ro, that cut looks nasty, have someone look at it, will you?" "Fine, I'll do it later. How's Kira? There is a lot I need to tell her." "Her condition is critical to say the least. I really need to concentrate." "Alright." She looked at his face and saw how tense and worried he was, she wasn't the most social person but she felt compelled to say some thing. "And Bashir, she's going to be fine." he smiled at her reassurance, and she thought he mouthed the word 'thank-you' but wasn't sure she was right. She started evacuating people without any more small talk, and the doctor refocused all his attention on Kira. * * * "Kira?" Julian said softly, she should be waking up now he thought. She opened her eyes a bit, "Kira?" He asked again. "Julian?" She said coughing, he gave a medication to help her breath easier. "By the Prophets how did I..." her voice was weak and scratchy yet all her words were clear. "I'll answer that in a minute, first would you like some water?" She nodded and he handed her a glass, after how dehydrated she'd been it was no surprise that she felt thirsty, he had given her a hydration solution through the hypospray but water still was best. "Shar and Dax's theory seems to be that you stepped though a portal which led you inside the wormhole, and the Prophets or aliens which inhabit it transported you from there to Ops on the station. That's where we found you." "Europa Nova?" "All the colonist are safely on Bajor or Deep Space Nine. The evacuation was completed successfully." "Taran'atar?" "He's over there. I treated his injuries, he'll be fine. He should be regaining consciousness any time now." "How long was I out?" "About six hours, just long enough for me to stabilize you." "When can I get back to Ops?" "Seventy-two hours, but you're out of sickbay in thirty-six." "Julian, tell me you're not serious." "Oh I am." "You don't seriously think I'm going to sit in sickbay for a day and half." "That's negotiable, we'll see how you're doing in about twenty hours, but you're not on active duty for seventy-two hours. Look on the bright side, I'm sure you have tons of paperwork to catch up on once I let you out of sickbay, and there is no current crisis that requires your attention at ops." "You know how quickly that can change. They took care of the gateway phenomena or whatever they're calling it now?" "With the help of Shar and Nog, Starfleet Command found a way to counter them." "Good. Did Ro and Quark get back alive?" "Yes. She stopped in earlier. She wants to see you." Dr. Bashir said, "How are you feeling." "My head hurts like hell, I'm dizzy and the rest of me feels distant, like a half sensation." "I already gave you medication for shock and a powerful pain reliever; that could be why you don't have full sensation. " Then she asked, "Can I go up to my quarters to clean my self up?" The last thing she remembered, she was on another planet completely drenched in sweat. She remembered sitting next to a lake filling the water bottles in the emergency survival kit and cutting her pants so that they where open to about half way up her thigh to keep cool. All her clothes where dirty from the grime of the alien ship. Her jacket had been tied around her waste now she had been wearing a tank top that was also soaked in sweat, and she was still wearing the same clothes now. All in all she was a mess. "Sure. Just check in with me in fifteen minuets. If you miss it I'll assume you're unconscious. When the pain reliever wear's off you'll feel extremely ill, I need to know immediately if you feel feverish, nauseous, dizzy, or have trouble breathing. You were on an oxygen infuser for nearly an hour before I could get you breathing on your own, and your body temperature was more than five degrees above normal I'm still monitoring that so if you feel feverish or suddenly hot or cold I need to know. Don't even try to exert your self physically, in fact it may be a good idea to beam there." * * * (20 min later) "Ro." The Colonel said. After she saw the other woman leave her office on her way back from her quarters. "Colonel. I thought the Doctor said you were stuck in the infirmary for at lest a day." The Colonel was wearing civilian clothes and she looked rather pail. "That's where I'm going now. Walk with me. Your plan worked? Or did you barely manage to get out alive?" "Both. Quark was quite cooperative." "Quark cooperative? That would be amusing." "I have a great deal of valuable current information on a good part of the Orion syndicate." "That's hard to come by. What did you do for it?" "I told you the plan. Quark was very helpful, he didn't have much trouble treating me like eye candy." That's half of why I hate him, Kira thought. "Eye candy that was scared a he s hell to get out of the sight of. If you don't mind my asking, why do you hate Quark?" "Because the first time I came to Deep Space Nine or Terok Nor as it was called then he told me that if I slept with him he'd buy me from Ducat. I gave him a small note before I left saying that one day he would pay for that remark." And I was starting to like him Ro thought. "But the fact I could pay him to give me an alibi and get me out of..." "Some time a Fernagy business man is exactly what one needs." "What do you have on the syndicate?" asked Kira. "More then Starfleet, the Tal Shiar, and every other major power in the alpha quadrant has managed to get." "How?" "I had the tailor sew a few grenades onto my dress. After I threw one into the middle of the room and it exploded, I took advantage of every ones disorientation, grabbed the pad and a gun from the ships captain. After we got back here I realized the pad has all his personal data, and lot more a data on the syndicate than even I expected." "If that's true, present it to Admiral Nechayav, she'll find it quite interesting." Ro scowled at the mention of Nechayav's name. They turned the corner and entered the infirmary where Taran'atar and the doctor both saw them. Dr. Bashir rolled his eyes at Kira for walking in with her security chief, after thinking about it though he realized there was nothing else he could have expected from the Colonel. "Colonel, you survived!" the Jem'Hadar exclaimed. "I was sure you were dead." "No Taran'atar, I lived." "Barely." The doctor added. "Kira you should lie down." Part of her wanted to yell at him for ordering her around. Another part of her knew she was too exhausted to argue with him over something so stupid, and that he was right anyway, so she climbed on the bed. "Dax to the infirmary." "Bashir here. What is it?" "Kira has a call on subspace from First Minister Shakaar, if she's well enough to take it." "Business or personal?" the doctor asked. "It was originally Business, but once I told him she was ill he said it was personal." "Kira?" Bashir asked her. "Tell Dax I'll take the call on the condition that he knows if he brings up that attainder I'm going to disconnect him." "That sounds reasonable." Dax answered. A few minutes later Shakaar's face appeared on the view screen. "Nerys, how are you doing?" "I'll be fine in day or so. Frankly this wasn't much of a price to pay for saving Europa Nova. If I had been killed my death would have been worth the thousands of lives saved." At first Ro Lauren couldn't figure out why Shakaar seemed so familiar to her. She thought all the Bajorans she had known, first in the Maquis, there hadn't been many in Starfleet the last time she was in it, that left the people she had known on Bajor as a girl. She suddenly knew whom she was speaking to, but that couldn't be right. The last time she saw him he had plans to blow himself up next to a Cardassian compound, killing himself but taking some of them with him as well. "Edon?" "Lauren?" "You didn't go through with your plan?" "With what plan? I don't remember." "Your plan to blow up the compound." "That? A friend talked me out of it, explained that there were more effective and less dangerous ways to blow things up." "What about you? The last I heard of you killed your self only days after the Cardies released you." Kira hadn't heard the first minister use the derogatory slang term for Cardassians in a long while, and after what just happened to their planet it just didn't seem appropriate. What ever they had done to Ro Lauren it had been bad enough that he was still sickened by it even now. "I had my phaser pointed at my head, but a friend of my father's explained to me that as a Bajoran agnostic I had plenty of people who wanted me dead without having myself on the list. She said my father wouldn't want it. I listened to her, and then the Cardassians put me in another camp on the other side of the planet. I'll tell you the rest the story later." "Where have you been all these years? You were in the resistance right?" "No. I've been in both Starfleet and the Maquis though." "You got off Bajor." He said sounding pleased by that idea. "Yes. You first minister? When I saw you last you were quietest kid anyone ever met. If there were more than two other people in the room you'd barely talk at all. A politician?" "Do you know of Kai Winn?" "Of course I know of the woman." Ro said with obvious disdain in her voice. "She was the other candidate for the first mister's seat. Let me say no more." "Oh. I take it you didn't have much of choice. We have a lot of caching up to do. I'll let you and Kira talk first." She said and left, giving them Kira and Shakaar some semblance of privacy. "Nerys, there is some thing you need to know; she's your cousin. Your mothers sisters daughter." "Wait a minuet, how do you know any of this?" "When we where both vary young our parents knew each other. I barely remember her mother; she used to help my father run our resistance cell when I was very young. After she died a lot of things fell apart slowly. Before the cell was destroyed, the two of us were often left alone together while the rest of the adults in the group went of raids or other missions. She's three years younger than I am, at first I used to baby sit her a lot, and trust me Nerys that's not a job you want." I was just starting to figure that out she thought to herself. "Around the time she turned six I quit doing that, we were just together a lot. She was as close as a sister to me, or at lest she was one of the closest friends I ever I had. When I was ten, and she was seven something terrible happened. The adults didn't come back when they where supposed to. We waited a day, and then Lauren decided we had to go after them. I told her to wait, that it was suicide, but she didn't listen to me. She never listened to me. So she left and went after them on her own. She was caught, and I thank the Prophets I don't know what happened to her after that." "Why didn't you tell me before?" "It was a subject I'd rather avoid." "I never knew my mother had a sister." "It's complicated. I didn't know how to tell you, and I thought she was dead and Lauren had killed herself." "After she left you never saw her again until now?" "No. I saw once, right after word. I looked into her eyes and saw the pure agony she was in. It was that day I realized how much I hate the Cardassians. What they did to her..." "Edon, she's all right now, there's no need to be so upset." "No, look in her eyes Nerys, you'll see the same thing I did so many years ago. She use to be so optimistic and cheerful despite the times, and now..." "At least she got off Bajor. And I was wondering; was she ever religious?" "No. Neither was her father." "Why weren't they?" "I don't know, and frankly it's not my business anyhow. But I'll tell you this if you're going to pity her don't pity her for that." "Why?" "How would you feel if I pitied you because you're a woman?" "I'd rip off your head." "That's how you make Lauren feel if you pity her because she's not religious." "Point taken." Kira said, Shakaar had done a good job explaining, before she hadn't been able to grasp why it bothered Ro so much, now she understood. "Speaking of religion, if you don't mind my asking, why did you do it?" "They killed Istani Reyla." "What? Istani Reyla?" Kira nodded. "I am so sorry, Nerys. I know what she meant to you." "She was like a mother to me." "I heard a vedek was killed, but not her. Why didn't you tell me earlier?" Shakaar asked. "You were being such an ass that I didn't see why my personal relationship with the victim was your concern." "I'm sorry, if I'd known..." "You would have found a gentler way to get your point across." "I would have understood. I've known you long enough to know that you couldn't sit by, watch Reyla killed and do nothing. I want you to know you have my deepest sympathy, but politically that doesn't change anything, you know that." "I wouldn't expect it to." She said. "Profits." "Edon, I'd really like to get some rest." "You don't look well, Nerys." I don't feel well either, she thought but didn't tell him. "You going to be OK?" "I'll be fine in a few days, don't worry about me, Edon. End transmission." The screen suddenly went black, and Kira turned to the doctor. "Now I'm nauseous." "After the amount of radiation you were exposed to that doesn't surprise me at all. Here, this will make you feel better." He said and gave her a hypospray. "You need to get some sleep." "As long as you promise to wake me if anything important comes up that can't wait." "Like?" "Rouge Jem'Hadar attack or any other immediate threat to the station." "Of course." He said because if they were in trouble I'd want her at ops whether or not she was ill he thought. And he knew that she would never be able to forgive herself if anything happened to the station while she was asleep, and if I don't wake her up she'll never forgive me either he thought.