Reconciliation 5

Author's Note: This story takes place after "Blue", but the two are stand-alone, and do not necessarily have to be read in order.

*****

"So, I hear that you won't be alone on the ship any longer?"

"I'm sorry?"

Lt. Ral Tynoc looked up from his PADD to see who it was that had just sat down at his table in the officer's lounge. It was the Tellarite woman, Lugmilla. She had something of a reputation for being difficult, although, to be fair, so did most of her race. But, since she was a pilot, he had not had much cause to deal with her since coming on board and working in the planetary sciences lab.

"You're working on the recovery plan for Capritis II, right?"

"Yes, which is what I'm working on at the minute," he told her, somewhat grumpily, "can't this wait?"

True, he was in the lounge, and supposedly off-duty, but he had just been informed of an issue relating to the very plan that she had just mentioned, and which he had been put in charge of. Apparently, his team was going to be saddled with a civilian scientist, something that he felt they really didn't need. He was trying to compose a reply to the ship's Chief Science Officer that would let him reject the offer without looking bad.

"Probably," Lugmilla replied, before charging on regardless, "but has anyone told you about this civilian you'll be working with?"

How did she know about that? He'd only just found out himself! Under the circumstances, though, the details weren't his top priority at the moment. So, instead of asking he just gave a noncommittal reply.

"Yes..." he said, "well, sort of... they didn't give me any details."

"So," said Lugmilla, leaning forward with a slight grin on her porcine features, "you didn't know she was Bajoran?"

"Oh." He sat up, paying attention for the first time, and putting his PADD down. That put a different complexion on matters. "I didn't even know she was a 'she'."

"Privileges of being on the bridge from time to time: I saw her file when the Captain was discussing it with your chief. About your age... might be pretty, although, honestly, I can never tell. But, anyway, the point is, you will no longer be the only Bajoran on the USS Endeavour."

She had a point. There were, of course, very few Bajorans in Starfleet, and he had not had the chance to talk to any in a very long time. If the Bajoran government ever got its act together and formally joined the Federation, it might be a different matter, but who knew how long that would take? He smiled, and pressed the 'delete' icon the PADD screen. No need for that letter now.

"Yes... thanks for telling me."

"My pleasure. I'm sure the fact that she's a woman can't hurt, because it must have been a while for you, right?"

"Since I have had the chance to exchange news of the homeworld? Yes. If you're referring to anything else, I believe we will have work to do."

"Of course; I meant that you can have proper discussions about the role of abstinence in the spirituality of the Prophets' message. Obviously. Because," she raised her hands in mock surrender, "what else would you do?"

--***--

"Good morning. You seem to be in a rather better mood than I was expecting."

"Why wouldn't I be, Ledzia?" asked Tynoc, as she joined him walking down the corridor to the transporter room.

"Well, you didn't seem very happy about the addition of a civilian to our team," replied the tall Trill woman, "when it was first mentioned, I mean."

"Perhaps, but I've changed my mind. We're Starfleet, and we're science officers at that, not the military. It can't hurt to have a bit of help, get a bit of perspective. I've come to the conclusion that this could be quite good."

The junior lieutenant nodded, apparently happy with his answer. He had to admit there was a bit of a spring in his step this morning. Officially, he still wasn't supposed to know that their temporary colleague was a fellow Bajoran... perhaps the Chief Science Officer had something else on her mind, and hadn't thought to mention it. So, in turn, it was best not to tell Ledzia, and let her draw her own conclusions. She would find out soon enough.

They stepped into the transporter room, where a Saurian officer was ready and waiting. He had evidently already been in communication with the ground, because as soon as he saw them, he nodded, spoke into the comm, and activated the transporter.

The familiar buzzing whine sounded as a column of light materialised on the pad to reveal their guest. Tynoc's eyes went wide and he felt an instinctive clutch of fear in his chest, finding himself frozen to the spot, speechless with the sudden shock.

After a few seconds in which neither of them said anything, Ledzia stepped forward and welcomed the newcomer herself.

"Thank you," said the civilian, in a stiff voice betraying not a hint of warmth or sincerity, her eyes fixed on Tynoc, not the Trill, "my name is Debem."

She wasn't a Bajoran; she was Cardassian.

--***--

"She is not Bajoran!" he hissed into the communicator, as soon as he'd managed to contact Lugmilla, leaving Debem with Ledzia, just of earshot.

"Yes she is," came the Tellarite woman's response.

"No, she is not! I think I would know!"

"She was born on the planet Bajor. That's what the adjective 'Bajoran' means, right?"

"She... she..." he spluttered, trying to get himself back under control.

"I don't recall you asking about her species. Was there anything else?"

"No," he managed, "we'll speak about this later."

He could hardly refuse to work with the woman now. No wonder nobody had told him anything about her before she arrived. But... a Cardassian? They had paired a Cardassian with the only Bajoran on the entire ship? He sensed the Captain's cold logic in this. This woman was, presumably, an expert with skills and knowledge relevant to his project. That there might be personal issues would not figure into the Captain's calculations.

Of course, the Captain expected everyone to do their best, and uphold the principles of the Federation. As a Starfleet officer under her command, he had no choice but to try and meet those expectations. He would be courteous, of course he would. He had made the choice not to work for the Bajoran government, but to help bring peace on a wider scale. It was a bit late to start making exceptions now.

But still; a Cardassian. He had been brought up during the Occupation, and the grey-skinned aliens filled him with an almost instinctive dread and loathing. He knew of their pitiless efficiency, their callous disregard for the lives of others. Even their very faces looked cruel, an image of evil now surely etched into the heart of every true Bajoran.

And, by the Prophets, she had even been born on his world. During the Occupation, evidently, although she would have been too young to have done much herself. But who had her parents been? Soldiers, prison guards... scientists experimenting on his people to determine the limits of their endurance? It didn't bear thinking about.

Recovering himself as best he could, he returned to the two women, and led them through to where the rest of his team were waiting. Best get on with this, and try to put the rest of it away.

"These are the people we will be working with," he told her, indicating the other science officers standing around the table, and studiously not looking in her direction. "Ledzia and I you have already met. This is junior Lieutenant Max Dorner, meteorologist, Ensign Svetlana Nemecek, physicist, and Ensign T'Sel, botanist."

If any of the others had a reaction to working with a Cardassian, they didn't show it. Of course, for all that Cardassia and the Federation had had their disagreements, none of them had experienced the deeds of that race up close, and knew what they capable of on a personal level. Tynoc had to forcibly remind himself that Debem herself had not been responsible for any of that. The Captain had to have a good reason for assigning her here, and there was no reason he shouldn't be able to work with her, discomfort or not.

But that didn't mean that he had to like it.

"Well, we all know why we're here," he began. "Capritis II. A former colony world, abandoned following a Gorn attack. The Gorn are long gone from this area of space, and there are moves to repopulate the planet. Unfortunately, they left quite a lot of damage to the ecosystem behind. Our job is to make an assessment about how, or if, the Federation should move forward on this."

"We'll know more when we get there, but for the moment, we have plenty of remote data on conditions, so let's start working on that, and put a preliminary report together. Max, I'd like you and Svetlana to look at the physical data on the atmosphere and stellar environment. Ledzia, T'Sel and I will assess the infrastructure and the possibilities of restoring an agricultural base. All the data has been sent to your PADDs, so let's get to it."

"What should I be doing?"

He glanced across at the Cardassian, as she asked the question, meeting only cold dark eyes. Right, yes, she had to be here to do something.

"I am afraid that the data I was sent on you was surprisingly... incomplete," he said wryly, "what is your speciality?"

"Chemical warfare."

There was silence, as the junior officers in the room all turned to look at Tynoc. Apparently interpreting his own stunned look as confusion, the Cardassian clarified her own initial statement.

"Dealing with the after-effects of it," she said, "removing deliberately engineered pollutants from the soil and habitable environment."

"Right."

"It does not seem irrelevant to Capritis."

She was stiff, almost glaring at him, daring him to side-line her. Fortunately, Max came to his rescue.

"You know, that would sound helpful to our end of things," said the human meteorologist, "with the chemistry, and so on. I think we could use her expertise, if that's all right."

"Yes, of course. Good idea." He was just glad that the woman would be out of his own way. If Max was happy to do that, so be it. "See what you can do."

The work seemed to go well after that, all of them getting down to analysing the data, making suggestions and tapping away at their PADDs as they built up their approach. He had assembled a good team, for all that most of them were younger than he was.

To be honest, with Ledzia and T'Sel working together, all he really needed to do was take a supervisory role; between them they could easily handle all the number-crunching. You sometimes had to be careful who you paired T'Sel with; the young Vulcan was stunningly attractive, and while she might have been oblivious to that fact, it sometimes distracted her male colleagues. Tynoc wondered how many young ensigns on the Endeavour had had fevered dreams beginning with the phrase 'it is the time for the Pon Farr'. Not that those were ever likely to be fulfilled - Starfleet knew how to avoid that sort of thing.

Tynoc was not one for such fantasies, however, and found his eyes instead straying to an entirely different, and much less welcome, distraction. Max seemed to be getting on professionally with her, taking her race entirely in his stride. Svetlana... well, you couldn't tell. The petite mousy Czech woman always threw herself into whatever she did, her face a near-constant mask of serious concentration. If it wasn't for the fact that he had seen her smile once or twice, he might have wondered if the human should have been born a Vulcan instead.

But it was, of course, to Debem herself that he found himself continually drawn. She was probably about his own age, dressed in a conservative pant-suit made of some light brown tweed-like material. He had seen few female Cardassians in real life, or, indeed, civilians in general, but she looked, to his mind, no less severe than the soldiers he remembered from his childhood.

It was, most likely, the dead grey skin, with only a bare hint of normal flesh tone, and the scaled ridges across her face, that did it. Her eyes were deep set, behind those looping ridges, chin and nose sharp, somehow reminding him of a predatory bird. Her jet black hair was pulled back, plaited into two pigtails that did nothing to soften her looks. Harsh scales lined flanges of taut-looking skin either side of her neck, stretching down to narrow shoulders and a skinny body with few of the normal curves.

The only dash of colour was a splash of blue on the strange teardrop shape in the middle of her forehead. He wondered if that was makeup of some kind, or a natural feature of the female of the species, but even her lipstick was a dull greyish brown, hardly contrasting with her skin.

She was not, he had to admit, the nightmare of his childhood. Gone, at least, was the black armour and the intimidating frame that he recalled. But yet, that look, the almost demonic visage, was not one he could easily escape, and he had to struggle to restrain his natural prejudice. He was a Starfleet officer, he should know better. Surely the Captain and the Security Chief had both checked her out.

But knowing that somehow didn't make it any easier.

--***--

He felt unusually relieved when the shift ended, and he was able to call an end to work for the day. For the most part, he'd managed to avoid talking to Debem, and kept it curt and to the point when he had had to do so. For her part, the Cardassian woman seemed wary of him, which he supposed he couldn't blame her for, and he had begun to sense a distinct chill among the group as the day wore on.

It was, he had to admit, partly his fault. With the possible exception of T'Sel, everyone had to be aware of the tension he was under and his difficulty in working with their civilian guest. But he had been close yesterday to avoiding the whole thing, and there was only one person he could blame for preventing that from happening.

He took a look around the Endeavour's main lounge as he entered. The person he wanted was there, and, perhaps just as importantly, the woman he was trying to avoid wasn't. He had to work with her; he didn't want to have to socialise with her as well.

Lugmilla, as it happened, was sitting with Max and a couple of other officers at a table close to one of the big windows, looking out over an endless field of stars. They were chatting about something as he came in, but as soon as he started to walk over towards them, he saw one of the others - an Andorian woman named Sh'ree, who worked in the biology section - make a shushing gesture, and they all suddenly fell silent.

She probably thought he hadn't seen that, and he didn't want to make it obvious that he had. Had they been talking about him? He couldn't believe that Max would have been making fun of him, but that didn't mean he hadn't been the main topic of conversation.

"Uh, hello, sir," said Max, retreating into formality, "we... uh..."

"Actually, it's not you I wanted to speak to." The human looked relieved, and he noticed Sh'ree putting her hand on his, squeezing it in a gesture that looked surprisingly intimate. When had that started? Well, it wasn't his concern. "If I could take a minute of your time?" he said instead to Lugmilla.

"Of course," said the Tellarite, with a half-smile, before turning to the others, "be back in a moment." They walked to a quieter spot, near one of the ornamental plants that dotted the room. "What can I do for you, Lt. Ral?" she asked, not managing to sound even the tiniest bit innocent.

"You know perfectly well! What have I ever done to you?" The Tellarite had a mean streak if you crossed her, but, to the best of his knowledge, he had never done so. They hadn't even crossed paths very often.

"Oh, I don't know..." she said drawing it out, "but I'm just helpful that way." He was about to give her a piece of his mind when she interrupted him by adding, "Saving your back, and all that."

That stunned him. "What?" was all he could think of to say.

"Yesterday, you were about to refuse the offer of civilian assistance. Right?"

"Well, yes, and you..."

"Talked you out of it. Yes. Look, I don't get to hear what the senior officers discuss in the ready room, but I get some idea of what's going on. Take it from me that refusing to accept that particular offer would have made your chief look bad. And upsetting the Chief Science Officer of one of the largest science vessels in Starfleet? Not a good career move, I'm thinking."

She stabbed a stubby finger at him, "why do you think they didn't tell you this woman was a Cardassian? Didn't want to give you an excuse to wriggle out, I should think. Which might have actually make it worse if they thought that you had somehow found out. Which, let's be honest, is probably the conclusion they would have leapt to."

"And, seriously, what's your problem? You're in Starfleet, not the Bajoran militia. We deal with aliens all the time, most of them pretty ugly if you ask me, but we don't brush them off. If the Captain and your chief want to mend bridges with the Cardassians, suck it up. It's not like she was in the Obsidian Order or something."

She straightened her uniform, looking up at him meaningfully, somehow making him feel small even though she was about fifteen centimetres shorter than him. "Now," she said, "anything else?"

--***--

Tynoc's dreams that night were filled with a harsh, angular face, dark eyes in dead grey skin. He was on Bajor again, the restored world, after the Occupation, beautiful and tranquil architecture all around. But she was always there, wherever he went, staring at him from behind a pillar, sitting on a bench before an abbey, looking out from a bridge over a canal.

Nobody else seemed to notice a Cardassian in their midst. Whenever he tried to walk away, to turn the other direction, there she was. Silent, almost accusing, intruding into what should have been a peaceful place, thoughts of home and comfort.

Finally he walked up to her, stood face to face, asked her what she wanted, why she was there. She reached out to him, clasping cold grey hands on either side of his head, and then jerking him towards her, so that their foreheads touched.

"You," she said, and kissed him.

He woke with a start, for a moment wondering where he was, something that hadn't happened to him in years. Thank the Prophets that the dream had ended there! He certainly didn't want to look too far into his subconscious over that one, he thought, as he took a cold shower before getting dressed and heading out.

--***--

Svetlana was the first to meet him in the conference room they had commandeered for their work. She was beaming, eager to show him something about the interaction of ultraviolet light with soil contaminants. Had she been working all night? She really was like a Vulcan sometimes. He had better make sure she got some shore leave the next time the opportunity came up, or she'd work herself to death.

But soil contaminants sounded like Debem's speciality, and, however uneasy she made him feel, the Cardassian was here for a reason. This should keep her occupied, give her something to do. Yes, of course, he was helping both of them by telling Svetlana to discuss the matter properly with Debem and Max first. The fact that that meant he could put off having to deal with the civilian directly over the issue was just incidental. Let them sort it out amongst themselves.

T'Sel, at least, didn't appear to have done any extracurricular work, and he was able to continue with her and Ledzia where they had left off the previous evening. The Vulcan woman had probably taken the end of the work shift very literally, but now seemed to switch back to her task as if she had never stopped, fingers flying over the PADD as she ran crop yield projections for a number of different scenarios.

He glanced across to the far end of the room, realising that he had unconsciously sat as far away from the others as he could. Not that there was any point in moving now, of course. Max and Svetlana seemed to be deep in conversation with their 'guest', the three of them talking quite animatedly. It was good to know that Svetlana could get excited about something, even if it was only work, and if Debem was helping, so much the better; it meant that he didn't have to worry about her.