O’Brien shook his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so angry. Is he like this all the time?” he asked Judith.

Judith shook her head. “Usually he just withdraws into himself. You saw the way he looks, Mr. O’Brien. He isn’t eating much. He never leaves his room and hardly budges from that chair. He’s wasting away. It’s like his bitterness is eating him from the inside out.” She shook her head and covered her eyes. “I’m sorry you were brought into this. But I was desperate, and Kasidy said—”

“Shsh, Judith, it’s okay,” Keiko said gently, placing a hand on top of Judith’s. “We’re glad to have been asked to help.” She looked at her husband meaningfully. “Aren’t we, Miles?”

“What? Oh, absolutely,” O’Brien said, wondering what he could possibly say to a man who’d lost so much. And would he be any different in Joseph’s shoes? Molly and Kirayoshi were everything to him. To believe you’d outlived your own children had to be the most crushing state of mind for any parent. Or grandparent, for that matter. How does anybody recover from something like that? How do you move past it?

Move…? Wait a second!

“Ms. Sisko…”

“Judith, please.”

“All right,” O’Brien said. “But you have to call me Miles. Do you have a replicator?”

“In thishouse?” Judith shook her head. “Dad wouldn’t hear of it. To listen to him talk about it, you’d think they were the biggest threat to human creativity ever devised, especially to the art of cooking.”

O’Brien smiled. “I’m not all that sure I disagree. But I need to get access to one.”

“I know there’s a replimat a few blocks from here….”

“Perfect.”

Keiko looked at him suspiciously. “Miles Edward O’Brien, what scheme are you cooking up now?”

“Funny you should put it that way,” O’Brien said with a grin. “I’m not giving up on him, Keiko. When I was upstairs, he got mad enough to get out of his chair and slam the door in my face. I think I know how we can get him to come downstairs.”

“But what good will that do?” Judith asked.

“I’m not sure yet,” O’Brien said. “But it’s a start. Lead the way, Judith. It’s almost suppertime.”

It was the smells coming from his kitchen that finally did it.

As night fell, Joseph’s nose was accosted by a stench that had, in all the years he’d been a chef, never once darkened his restaurant. It was the smell of murdered food. Of flavors and potential boiled away to nothing. It invaded his room and assaulted his senses like a troop of marauding Klingons, filling the house with a reek.

And it was coming from the kitchen. From hiskitchen.

With thoughts of exacting painful retribution billowing behind his narrowed eyes, Joseph rose from his chair and followed the offending stench to its source. At the door of his bedroom it grew stronger. At the top of the stairs it was even worse, accompanied by the sounds of conversation and laughter. As he decended the steps, the room fell silent, but the smells only got worse.

Joseph Sisko surveyed his restaurant, the faces of his daughter and her guests staring back at him like children who’d been caught drawing with crayons on the living room wall. The father, Miles, stood in the kitchen, looking at him over the top of a huge steaming pot on the stove. The only sound in the restaurant was that of the wooden floorboards creaking as Joseph moved slowly toward O’Brien.

“What in the name of all that’s holy,” Joseph said, “do you people think you’re doing?”

O’Brien’s eyes darted to his wife and Judith, then back to Joseph. “Uh…well, I…”

“Hi!” somebody called.

Joseph looked down. There at his feet was a child, a boy no older than three. He was holding Jake’s old toy alligator and smiling up at Joseph. On the floor nearby, a little girl lying on her stomach and drawing pictures on a padd stopped and looked up.

“Hi!” the boy called again, grinning at Joseph now. He was beautiful. So was the girl. Such beautiful children…

“Mr. Sisko?”

Joseph looked up.

It was the mother, speaking quietly. “I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m Keiko O’Brien. We met a couple of years ago when you visited Deep Space 9. These are my children. That’s Molly on the floor, and that one’s Kirayoshi…”

“Well, of course I remember,” Joseph snapped. “What do you think I am, senile?” He lowered his eyes to the boy again.

“Hi!” Kirayoshi beamed, and he giggled. Joseph smiled. Kirayoshi started flexing his knees up and down in a little happy dance. When Ben was a baby, he used to do the same thing….

Joseph’s nose wrinkled suddenly. He sniffed the air and looked up again, recalling what had brought him downstairs in the first place. His eyes found O’Brien and impaled him where he stood. With slow, deliberate steps, Joseph walked into his kitchen, his gaze never leaving O’Brien.

The pot was coming to a boil, the lid rattling as foul steam billowed out noisily. Without a word Joseph reached for a pot holder and pulled the lid off, the stench at its most powerful. Joseph steeled himself and looked inside.

“Do you mind telling me,” he said after a moment, “what in the name of heaven this is?”

“Err…it’s corned beef and cabbage,” O’Brien muttered.

Joseph winced. In my kitchen…!“This,” he said quietly, “is what you feed your family?”

“What?” O’Brien said. “What’s wrong with corned beef and cabbage?”

Joseph sighed and turned off the stove. He grabbed the pot and handed it off to O’Brien, then went to the sink to wash his hands. Toweling off, he reached for an apron and tied it around his waist. “Judith, go to the cellar and get me some andouille right away. Then head down to the fish market and pick up some jumbo shrimp—about two dozen.”

Judith flashed O’Brien a smile and got up at once. “Right away, Dad.”

Taking a large sack of rice out of a cabinet, Joseph said, “Mrs. O’Brien, would you mind going into my garden and picking two large red bell peppers? They’re on the far left. We’re gonna make sure these children of yours get a proper meal.”

“I’d be happy to,” she said. “And please, call me Keiko.”

“Wait a minute,” O’Brien protested as Joseph began chopping onions. “What am I supposed to do with this?” he asked, indicating the pot he held in both hands.

Joseph glanced at him briefly and then went back to chopping. “Did you bring a phaser?”

12

For the first time in years, Kira stood among Starfleet officers and felt as if she was in the camp of the enemy.

Just after the Cardassian withdrawal from Bajor, a newly commissioned Major Kira Nerys had been standing in the prefect’s office on Terok Nor, watching as the first Federation starships docked with the station. She remembered that the sight had made her furious. Bajor’s independence was only days old, and even though the Occupation was still an open wound, Bajorans were celebrating and savoring their first taste of freedom in half a century. After decades of oppression, the Cardassians had been forced out and Bajor was standing on its own legs—ready and willing, Kira had believed, to face the future on its own terms.

The moment had been fleeting. The arrival of the Federation had felt like substituting one overseer for another—one that, like the Cardassians, came with its huge starships and vastly superior firepower to remold Bajor in its image. She remembered when the first Starfleet officers had swarmed through the airlock in their black uniforms, looking around in shock and disappointment at the disarray of the station. She felt their barely disguised pity for the exhausted Militia officers gathered to meet them. She recalled their disapproval for the civilians picking through the refuse that the Cardassians had left behind. And all at once Kira had known she was surrounded by her enemies. How dare they come here in their immaculate starships, in their impeccably pressed uniforms with their superior attitude and presume to judge Bajor?