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An Evening At Quark's

All too quickly, the Khazara crew’s shore leave slipped away, the reality of their impending patrol settling over them like a thick fog. First thing in the morning they would depart for the front lines, possibly never to return. As she roamed the decks of her ship that afternoon, Toreth was acutely aware that all eyes were fixed on her. Some-the recent academy graduates-looked to her for reassurance now more than ever, their eyes wide with anxiety. Others stood tall, meeting her gaze as though to tell her they were ready to face the dawn and whatever horrors it might bring. Eventually, with only a little urging from the senior officers, the majority of them filtered ashore to spend their last night of respite on Deep Space Nine’s promenade, leaving only a small shift behind on watch.

She then made her way to her ready room, settling into her chair and gazing out the porthole at the stars beyond. For a long time she sat in silent introspection, thinking of home, of family, and of the lives resting on her shoulders in the battles yet to come. She thought of her father, now long dead, and of her elderly mother, living in Mnaeha alone, fretting constantly about her headstrong only daughter.

And bless the poor old woman, Toreth thought with a pang of guilt, I’m not making life easy for her. The casualty rosters grew exponentially by the week, and during the Khazara’s last sortie, the ship had taken massive battle damage, barely managing to limp off of the line for repair. There had been several fatalities, and through the nature of circumstance, Shiarrael had seen the casualty list before her daughter had been able to send a message to her. Rather, she had been preoccupied with the unenviable task of messaging the families of the deceased, offering them a word of personal condolence.

With that thought in mind, Toreth knew that she would likely have little time for personal correspondence in the ensuing weeks, and would have to take the opportunity to write home when it presented itself. Drawing a deep, slow breath, she turned away from her view of the stars to do exactly that. Sipping occasionally from a hot mug of tarka, the riov tapped away at the PADD resting on her desk, recounting recent events in as much detail as operational security permitted. As she composed her letter, she found she had much to say, given the length of time that had passed since her last message. She spoke of crew morale, of the recent tribble infestation, of the curious ways of the Lloann’na she had met thus far, and for that matter, what it was like to work with them.

Before she knew it, afternoon had given way to evening. Just as she was wrapping up her letter, she was drawn out of her focus by a familiar chirp from her ready room door. “Enter,” she responded, glancing up from her PADD to see her first and second officers step into the room together. She raised an eyebrow at them skeptically as they approached her desk. “What are you two doing here? Shouldn’t you be enjoying your time off?”

“We have, sir. We’ve been out all afternoon,” Ejiul replied evenly. Checking the time in the lower corner of her PADD’s screen, Toreth was surprised to find that it was already growing quite late. Turning her gaze back to her officers, she knew immediately what they were up to; it was the same united front they always presented to her when they felt she was overworking herself.

“Bah, don’t even start,” she scoffed, waving a hand dismissively. “I’ll have you know that I’ve been attending to personal matters all evening.”

“You still haven’t left the ship since your brief tour of the station yesterday,” Dhael returned, hands on her hips. “There are plenty of things to do down there, and you should at least try to enjoy your leave before it’s over.”

“Shouldn’t you be visiting with your Lloann’na friends, rather than worrying about what I choose to do with my free time?” the riov demanded coldly.

“I did, in fact,” Dhael replied with a grin. “I had dinner with Lieutenant Dax and some of her colleagues. I think a few of them are still in the holosuites now, playing some sort of game Doctor Bashir referred to as ‘Dungeons and Dragons.’ I thought about joining in, but it looked awfully complicated, and I wanted to get back here early enough to call my husband. If I’d stuck around, I think I’d have missed my window before I even finished rolling out a character for the game.”

Toreth stared at her tactical officer as though she had suddenly grown a third arm. “Before you…what?”

“Long story,” Dhael replied with a soft chuckle. “You could always drop by and see for yourself.”

“I think not.”

“Riov, you really should take some advantage of your shore leave before we depart,” Ejiul insisted, gently. “Much of the crew is still on the station. It will be good for morale for them to see you down there, even if you keep it short.”

“Exactly,” Dhael agreed quickly, before Toreth could interject. “Even if you just wander around a bit to stretch your legs, or drop by Quark’s for a drink, what can it hurt?”

Toreth leveled a bone-withering glower at the pair of them, but they stood firm, Ejiul with his hands clasped behind his back, Dhael with her hands on her hips, each facing her ire with a composed stoicism. And they were right, of course. At last, she let out a sigh, shook her head, and deposited her PADD into place in her top desk drawer.

“I suppose it can’t,” she admitted reluctantly, scowling at them both as she rose to her feet. “You two are troublesome, you know that?”

____

Quark’s establishment was nothing if not uproarious, and after the peace and quiet of her ready room, Toreth found the change in environment to be quite jarring. As she passed through the doors, she scanned the room carefully, noting a smattering of romulan uniforms amongst the crowd. Many of them noticed her presence immediately, but she waved them preemptively to ease before they could react. Leaving them to their own devices, she turned instead toward the bar.

Right…I’ll stay long enough for one drink. Then I will leave, she told herself, eyeing the length of the bar and searching for a seat. Weaving carefully through the crowd, she found a single empty stool near the far end. It was slightly cramped, due to a patron leaning up against the bar on her left, but she made do.

“Sorry,” the man, a fair-haired, dark-eyed human said over the din of the crowd, “I’m just getting a drink to bring back to my table.”

She nodded wordlessly, turning away from him to study the menu on the small PADD in front of her. She felt a little silly, actually, sitting there by herself, and was just beginning to contemplate the notion of returning to her ship when the ferengi bartender appeared in front of her to take her order, sliding the man next to her the drink he had been waiting for.

“Hrm,” the romulan commander frowned, setting down the PADD, “my tactical officer suggested that I try something called an Old Fashioned, whatever that is. I suppose I’ll give it a go.” Quark nodded and set to it. As she waited, Toreth looked around, taking a curious interest in a pair of her junior officers standing at the end of the bar. They were chatting with a trio of humans who, from the look of things, were teaching them how to throw sharp objects at a board marked with some kind of scoring system.

As she watched them, the man standing next to her paid for his drink and departed for his table, revealing her seat mate to be a woman with long, dark hair, dressed in Starfleet’s science blue. Toreth was about to turn away, preferring to mind her own business, when something, a muddled glimmer of recognition, stirred in the back of her mind, forcing her to do a double-take.

A sudden, potent knot of dread and fury pulled tightly beneath Toreth’s breastbone, her breath catching in her throat as she found herself staring into the unmistakable visage of Major Rakal, or rather, the Starfleet officer who had impersonated her on that miserable day nearly ten years prior. The riov clenched her jaw, forcing herself to maintain a calm expression as she attempted to bury her anger at the woman who had nearly cost her her command, her life, and the wellbeing of her crew.

She felt a little dizzy, her head swimming with a sudden resurgence of the painful memories of that fateful afternoon. She had not been prepared to face this woman again, certainly not now, not here, and preferably never again. Yet here she was, and with the fate of the quadrant resting on the stability of the alliance, Toreth knew she must somehow find a way to reconcile her bitter feelings with the fact that they, for the time being, were standing together against a common foe.

In the mean time, she might need a little outside assistance. She turned back to Quark, who had apparently sensed something amiss, as he had halted his task to observe them. “Whatever it was I just ordered,” Toreth spoke to him in a voice of hardened steel, “double it.”

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