"Captain Sisko would let me."

It occurred to Kira that if she had a strip of latinum for every time someone had said that to her in the last forty-eight hours, she could probably buy this station and every slavering Ferengi troll on board. Not that the prospect of owning a dozen wrinkled, bat-eared larcenists filled her with any particular glee. But at least Ferengi were predictable, and they didn't act all affronted every time you refused to jump at their comm calls or told them their problems were trivial. After all, they were Ferengi -- any aspect of their lives not directly related to money was trivial, and they did everything in their power to keep things that way.

Humans, on the other hand, thought the galaxy revolved around their wants and worries, and tended to get their fragile little egos bruised when you implied that they might be wrong. With that in mind, Kira had spent the better part of her first day in command -- a good two or three hours, at least -- placating, compromising, making every sympathetic noise Dax had ever taught her, in the theory that a little stroking (no matter how insincere) was all the crew needed to carry them through the captain's absence. Somewhere around lunchtime, though, she'd elbowed that damned leather sphere off Sisko's desk for the fourth damned time, and the fifth trivial work-schedule dispute let himself into the office while she was under the desk patting about for it, and the sixth subspace call from Bajor -- or Starfleet, or some other damned place -- started chirping for immediate attention, and it became suddenly, vitally important that she conduct the EV inspection of weapons sail two herself. She fled Ops with the ball still lost in the wilds of Sisko's office furniture, hopeful that shuffling the whining crewman off to Personnel and playing ten minutes of yes-man with a Bajoran minister would buy her enough time to get safely suited up and out into vacuum. O'Brien, bless his soul, only stammered a little with surprise when she plucked the repair order from his hands on her way to the turbolift.

Next time, she'd just have to leave the station without the environmental suit. It would make everything so much easier.

"Well?" Quark hadn't quite progressed to petulance yet, but there was something about having a Ferengi voice whining right in your ear that made even an overlarge radiation hardsuit seem small and strangling. "I'm telling you, this is exactly the sort of thing Sisko would endorse with all his heart."

Kira couldn't help blowing a disgusted snort, although it blasted an irritating film of steam across the inside of her suit's faceplate. She locked the magnetic soles of her boots onto the skin of the sail while she waited for the hardsuit's atmosphere adjusters to clear out the excess humidity. "Quark, Captain Sisko won't even let you in Ops." Which was why he'd wasted no time weaseling onto a comm channel Kira couldn't escape, no doubt. "I don't know why he lets you stay on the station at all."

She could just make out his squat Ferengi silhouette scuttling back and forth in the observation port above his bar. "Because the captain has a fine sense of the market, for a hu-man. But not so fine a sense of how to extract profit from opportunity." Kira flexed her feet, breaking contact with the station and letting the momentum of that slight movement swing her around to the front of the sail's arc, out of Quark's line of sight. I really am out here to do work, she told herself as she passed a diagnostic scanner slowly down the length of one seam. The fact that she enjoyed a certain cruel satisfaction every time Quark grumbled with frustration and ran down the corridor to the next unobstructed window was really just a perk.

"I'm still picking up some residual leakage," she reported to O'Brien. The rad counter on the far right of her helmet display barely hovered at the bottom of its range, and she scowled around a renewed twist of annoyance. "Not enough to warrant lugging out this twice-damned hardsuit, but ..."

"Sorry, Major -- Starfleet regulations." His blunt Irish brogue managed to sound honestly sympathetic for all that Kira suspected he never much considered resenting Starfleet protocol. "Anytime you send personnel to inspect a first-stage radiation hazard, you've got to send them in ISHA-approved protective gear."

"And in my case, that means a hardsuit built to fit a guy like Sisko."

"Well, they are sort of one-size-fits-all."

Kira stopped herself just before she snorted again and fogged her faceplate. "One size fits all humans over two meters tall."

"Yes, ma'am," O'Brien admitted. "Something like that."

"Major, I really don't think you're giving my proposal the attention that courtesy requires."

Kira pulled herself hand-over-hand down the outside of the sail, dreaming wistfully of pushing off toward the wormhole and letting it whisk her far away from even the slightest whiff of Ferengi. "O'Brien, isn't there some way you can cut Quark out of this channel?"

"Not without cutting you off from the station, too, ma'am. Sorry."

She wondered whether she should tell him how much that concept appealed to her.

"It's just that Captain Sisko doesn't appreciate the spiritual importance of recreation the way --"

"No, Quark!"

The squeak of pained indignation in her ear couldn't have been more poignant if someone had gone fishing for the barkeep's nonexistent heart with a spoon. "Major, you have my word that everyone will stay to my back three Dabo rooms."

"That's what you promised the last time you organized a gambling tournament." She planted her feet again with a clang that she felt through her suit but couldn't hear, and pushed open the access door to the inner sail with as much violence as the microgravity would allow. "Instead, the Bajoran Trade Commission wrote up a four-page complaint about increased shoplifting on the Promenade, and Morn filed sexual- harassment charges against no less than six of your players."

The ragged puffing of another sprint along the Promenade balcony was followed by distinctive slap of Quark plastering himself to yet another window. "But this year --" Kira could just imagine the sweet-sour smell of his snaggletoothed grin. " -- I've hired an Elasian cohort to serve as exclusive door guards."

"No!" Kira watched her radiation gauge soar to an almost alarming level, and punched one fist against the interior lighting panel to brighten the room. "Now, which word of that didn't you understand?"

"Most likely the declarative negative. It's a recurrent problem with the Ferengi, I'm afraid." Even if Kira hadn't recognized the security officer's gruff sarcasm, the growl of naked animosity in Quark's muttering would have told her it was Odo who had walked in on the Ferengi's noxious attempts at charm. "Apparently the Ferengi don't have a word in their language for 'no.' "

Quark sniffed with what Kira suspected was supposed to be indignation, somehow managing to sound both obsequious and offended at the same time. "That's not true," the Ferengi countered. "We have several, depending on how much negotiation it will take to change your mind."

"Tell me you're taking the whole tournament to the Gamma Quadrant," Kira suggested.

"And never coming back," the constable added.

" -- then I might consider giving you permission to use the station as a jumping-off point. Until then ..." The diagnostic scanner flashed brilliant white, warning that enough first-stage radiation soaked the weapons sail to light most small cities for a year. Kira barely took the time to fold up the scanner before stepping backward out the door. "Chief, did you see that reading?"

"I saw it." O'Brien sounded more frustrated than upset. Kira suspected he was wishing he were here now instead of her. "I could have sworn we checked all the power units in those phaser batteries on our last external inspection. One of them must have gone bad."

"Should that be throwing off so much first-stage radiation?"

"Not usually," he admitted. "But whatever's gone wrong in there, Major, it's not something you should be tracking down with a handheld scanner and a trouble light. Now that we know where the problem is, I can have my boys start working on it."

"Leaving you more time to consider my proposal," Quark said brightly.

"No, Quark."

She'd never heard a Ferengi hiss like that before. "Fine." Out on the surface of the habitat ring again, Kira saw Quark make a short, frustrated gesture with his arms in the distant window, then pointedly return his hands to his sides with the same finality a Bajoran would have used when dusting herself of someone else's dirt. "Fine! I took you to be a generous, understanding woman with a clear sense of your duties to the people on this station." He angled a petulant glare up at the slim figure towering behind him. "Obviously, I was wrong. So if you'll excuse me, I'll go back to salvaging the economy on my own." He lifted his chin with an indignant sniff, and stalked out of sight beyond the window's frame as though he hadn't been the one trespassing on her comm channel in the first place.

"I don't know how Sisko ever gets any work done around here," she complained -- mostly to herself -- as she pulled the access door closed behind her.

"By staying in his office, I suspect."

Kira glanced over toward the window as though she could have seen any real expression on Odo's wax-smooth features even if he weren't so far away. She didn't always know how to take the constable's remarks when he wasn't being overtly sarcastic. Did he state the blatantly obvious because he meant some kind of veiled criticism, or just because it was the truth? With Odo, sometimes an answer was just an answer -- refreshing after the labyrinthine politics of the Federation and Bajor, but not always any easier to take.

"What can I do for you, Odo?" She turned to push off for the airlock, ready to shed this cumbersome, too-hot carapace and take a private meal in her quarters before falling into bed. "Please tell me Sisko called and said he'd be home for a late dinner."

"Unfortunately, no." And he sounded truly apologetic, as though Kira's lighter teasing were just as heartfelt as anything he ever said. "Although you wouldn't be the only one glad for his return." A data inset sprang to life at the bottom of her suit display, scrolling information past her chin as she walked. Kira glanced a frown toward the window, then chided herself for the uselessness of the gesture and looked away.

"So what's this?" she asked.

"Read it."

Security reports, dating back to seven days ago, all with Odo's blunt, clear signature in the corner. The first three entries looked like a hundred others that had come across Sisko's desk while Kira sat there -- the late-night break-in of a store catering to tourists who wanted to backpack their way around Bajor, a discrepancy between goods received and the bill of lading for a shipment of computer components on their way to Andor, the theft of --

Kira paused, cocking her head inside the big helmet as she glanced down at the fourth item on Odo's list, then blinked back up through the other three. "Robberies." She looked ahead, at the station laid out before her, at the wormhole, at the stars. "All of these are robberies of some kind, and all within the last week. A crime syndicate, trying to set up shop on Deep Space Nine?" In so many ways, it was the ideal location: The wormhole made for a perfect escape route, and there were no extradition treaties with the Gamma Quadrant.

Odo grunted in his version of grim amusement. "There really isn't room here for any more organized crime than what Quark already controls. Besides ..." He must have touched something on his own padd to brightly highlight the item currently on Kira's display. "... there isn't much of a black market for household power matrices, much less for portable thermal storage containers." A few flashes of data brought up another report from farther down on the list. "Unfortunately, tactical plasma warheads still bring a healthy profit, no matter where you plan to sell them."

Kira didn't immediately recognize the style of paperwork in front of her, but what it said was clear enough. "Six liters of weapons-grade liquid plasma, missing from a shipment to the starship yards at Okana." A little thrill of almost-panic whispered through her. "That's on Bajor."

"Which is only three hours by shuttle from Deep Space Nine." With only Odo's gravelly voice for company, Kira suddenly felt very vulnerable out here in the open. She made herself start walking again, heading straight for the airlock's neon fluorescent striping. "Anyone with this list of materials," the constable went on, "could spend a few hours in a Federation library and easily construct an explosive device powerful enough to destroy this entire station."

Not to mention vaporize a small starship, or depopulate any province on Bajor. Kira spat an angry curse, and keyed open the airlock on runabout pad F with awkward gloved fingers. "Any guess as to their intended target?" How could the Federation make this kind of information just available to any psychotic who asked? Didn't they realize that Bajor wasn't some population of doe-eyed pacifists, but, rather, a roil of scarred soldiers and ex-resistance operatives who had perfected filching the innards for bombs years before the Federation wandered onto the scene?

"That would depend on several factors," Odo said. "We don't even know who 'they' are yet."

"No ..." Kira drummed one foot impatiently inside its ill-fitting boot, watching the atmosphere readings bloom inside the airlock even as she heard the hiss and rumble of air pressure gathering around her. "But I'll bet we can guess."

She could almost read Odo's thoughts in his grim silence. The constable knew as well as Kira that the paramilitary cells who'd begun shaking their fists in the northern provinces these last few months were little more than old resistance fighters with a new bone to chew. "Oppression is oppression!" was their cry -- they claimed little difference between the Cardassians' iron bootheels and the Federation's paternal "control by example" from their lofty space-station pedestal. As far as Kira was concerned, all you had to do was look at their respective medical facilities to appreciate how unrelated their motives toward Bajor were. Still, zealots had a habit of ignoring opinions not directly in support of their cause of the week, and this latest batch seemed just as unyielding as any other; they might not have posted any official threats yet, but Kira knew these sorts of people almost as well as she knew herself. It was really just a matter of time.

"I thought that was supposed to be the difference between democracy and dictatorship," she said aloud, stepping sideways to squeeze through the airlock door as it rolled aside. "You don't have to blow up things just to have your voice heard."

Odo looked up from the other side of the bay, stroking one hand thoughtfully across the nose of an as-yet-unnamed runabout. "The humans say old habits die hard."

Which meant that humans and Bajorans had something in common, although perhaps not the best attributes of either.

A chirp from inside the hardsuit's helmet saved her from having to contemplate the question further. "Ops to Major Kira."

She popped the seals on the helmet anyway, dragging it off her head and tucking it under one arm rather than get trapped inside this suit for any longer than she had to be. "Go ahead, Chief."

"We've just picked up a neutrino flux from the wormhole, Major. It looks like someone's coming through."

Kira glanced a startled look at Odo. "Are there are any ships due back from the Gamma Quadrant?"

Odo shook his head in silent answer even as the human's voice replied, "No, sir. Nobody's due in or out for at least another three days."

She curled one hand over the rim of the helmet to muffle the comm pickup there as she commented softly to Odo, "I suppose it's too much to ask that our bomb builders chose just this moment to relocate their materials."

He scowled down at her in fatherly disapproval for such a naive suggestion, taking her comment just as seriously as he seemed to take everything. Kira decided it wasn't worth trying to explain her admittedly weary sense of humor right now, and instead withdrew her hand from the helmet and set it on the floor so she could crack the chest on the suit and squirm herself free.

"Chief, I'm still down in Runabout Pad F getting out of this damned suit. Put the station's defense systems on standby, then transfer an outside view to the runabout's viewscreen." Stepping free of the bulky trousers, she motioned Odo to follow as she let herself into the small ship's hatch. "I want to see what's going on."

"Aye-aye, Major."

The inside of this runabout was as identical to every other such craft as a Starfleet shipyard could build it. Oh, the floor plates were too bright and unscuffed, and milky sheets of protective sheeting still draped the four seats and all the stations, but the number of steps from the hatch to the helm were exactly the same, the shadows that fell across her eyes as they walked through the cabin came in exactly the sequence she expected, and the clearance between panel and seat when she slipped into the pilot's chair was so familiar that she barely even noticed the crinkle of sheeting under her hands. She certainly didn't feel any need to pull her eyes away from the newly awakened viewscreen and what it had to show.

Light swirled against the cold backdrop, a spiral blossom of energy and quantum probability far too lovely to deserve its inelegant human name -- wormhole. From the moment she'd first seen the gateway twist into being, Kira accepted that this was something more wonderful and significant than merely what the Federation's mathematics justified. That science could touch the tip of this iceberg didn't bother her -- understanding the parts of a thing granted you no special insight into its nature, just as a meticulous description of all the biological systems making up a Bajoran gave you no true idea of the person living inside that shell. Four years of watching spaceships come and go through the wormhole's flaming mouth had done nothing to dim her convictions: the phenomenon's very existence proved there was more to life than simply what met the eye.

This time, the wormhole's gift was little more than a twinkle of reflected light, tumbling, spinning, flashing in and out just at the portal's edge, too small to really be seen. When the petals of radiant energy finally folded back in on the singularity and retreated into invisibility, only the tiny glitter of movement remained, drifting lazily, darkly toward Bajor.

"It isn't powered." Odo leaned over the console to peer at the viewscreen, his colorless eyes intent on the tumbling mite. "It's either lost its engine, or it never had one."

Kira nodded with a thoughtful frown, and tapped at her comm badge to reconnect with O'Brien in Ops. "Any idea what that is, Chief?"

He was quiet for a moment, no doubt conferring with his equipment. Kira drummed her fingers on the sheeting covering the panel and willed herself not to hurry him, even when Odo speared her with an intensely irritated glare for the noise she made.

"Iron ..." O'Brien said at last, his voice distracted and thoughtful. "Nickel ... traces of duranium and methane ice ..." He gave a little grunt of surprise that sounded ever so slightly disappointed. "My guess is a cometary nucleus. Maybe an asteroid fragment."

Nothing interesting, in other words. Kira sat back with a satisfied nod and pulled her hands away from the panel. Just as well. She didn't think she could stand much more "interest" around the station just now.

"Major?" O'Brien caught her while only half standing, mere moments before she would have thanked him for his time and gone back to her runabout inventory. "Major, the computer's listing that fragment's course as being right through Bajor's main ore-shipping lanes. We might want to take care of it before it passes out of phaser range."

With the wormhole's location, just about anything that came through under free momentum had to cross a Bajoran shipping lane eventually. "Anything in the fragment that'll react badly to our weapons?"

"No, sir. The minerals are pretty evenly distributed, through and through. It should vaporize nicely."

She straightened the covering on her chair with a flick of her hand, and suppressed a grin when Odo echoed her gesture on the draping he'd disturbed on the console. "Then go ahead, Chief. Minimum burst, though -- I don't want --"

Movement shimmered across the still-active viewscreen, and she felt a momentary sting of anger at the thought that O'Brien had opened fire without waiting for her command. Then her brain registered that there'd been no streak of phaser light even as she ducked around the pilot's chair to relocate the newly arrived fragment. The single hard spark of light was gone, replaced by a glittering cloud that drifted away from itself like puff-flower seeds when shattered by a single quick breath. What once was one was now many, and dissipating rapidly.

Kira didn't even get a chance to question O'Brien before his voice volunteered, "So much for weapons practice. It broke up."

"Broke up?" Odo parroted. He frowned a question at Kira that she wasn't sure how to answer while O'Brien confirmed, "Broke up. We've got about ten dozen pieces floating out there right now, none of them bigger than three meters across." Easily small enough to be handled by the screens on any sublight shipping vessel Bajor put out.

The constable didn't look particularly enheartened as he watched the last of the cloud evaporate. "It's deep space on the other side of the wormhole," Kira explained, personally just as glad not to have one more thing to worry about. "The methane ice probably sublimated in the solar wind from Bajor's sun, and it didn't have enough left to hold it together." She reached between the seats to clap him on the shoulder. "It happens all the time."

Odo's face thinned the way it sometimes did when he let his attention get absorbed in something outside himself. "Then why is the wormhole doing that?"

She followed his gaze to where a faint, amber corona misted the void right where the mouth of the wormhole cast its brilliant whirlpool when it appeared. The rippling haze looked like gold dust, floated on a celestial pool.

Pushing aside a corner of the material cloaking the panel, she woke up the science station and made a brief query back to the Ops computer and its adjacent sensor array. Even if the runabout's sensors were on-line, they couldn't have told her anything from inside the docking pad. What the Ops sensors told her was as elegantly unromantic as all of science's purported truths. "Minor fluctuations in the subspace membrane." She flashed Odo what was meant to be a reassuring smile as she shut down the panel again. "Probably didn't like the taste of that asteroid fragment. It'll settle down in an hour or two, you'll see."