“Computer,” Mello began. “This is Captain Elaine Mello…commanding officer, U.S.S. Gryphon….Transfer all command codes…to Commander Kira Nerys—”

“Captain, no—” Kira protested.

“Authorization…Mello…Beta…Seven-two-line…execute.”

“Transfer executed,”the computer confirmed. “U.S.S. Gryphon now under command of Commander Kira Nerys.”

“Elaine…” Kira whispered.

Mello groped for her Starfleet combadge. She pulled it off her uniform and placed it in Kira’s hand. “Stop him, Nerys,” she said through teeth clenched against the agony in her chest. “And take care of my ship.” Kira’s eyes dropped to Mello’s combadge. The silver arrowhead felt strangely heavy in her hand. She looked up again, but Mello’s eyes were already blank and lifeless.

Kira sat in silence for a moment on the floor of the Jefferies tube. Finally she reached out and closed Mello’s eyelids, slipped the captain’s hand phaser into her boot, then placed the Starfleet combadge over her left breast.

“Kira to bridge.”

“Yes, Col—yes, Commander?”

“Captain Mello is dead. I’m resuming pursuit of Montenegro.” Checking the charge on her phaser rifle, Kira continued down the Jefferies tube.

20

Judith had to hand it to Miles—he’d figured out exactly which buttons to push to draw Dad out of his isolation. She knew he wasn’t past his grief, but to see him in his kitchen again—once more conducting his unique symphony of pots and pans, food and fire—Judith was filled with hope for the first time since Ben had disappeared.

Dad had made jambalaya—a Sisko Family specialty—and from the first forkful, the O’Briens looked as if they’d died and gone to heaven. Of course, Dad always put too much cayenne pepper in his jambalaya, but Judith wasn’t about to start that old debate now. Seated around the table, they talked about life in San Francisco. Keiko was working with a team of botanists at a civilian agricultural lab, where they were innovating new varieties of fast-growing food crops for those planets hit hardest during the war. It was rewarding work, she said, but she missed not being able to see her innovations put into practice.

Miles spoke at length about teaching starship engineering to Academy freshmen, how much more sane it was than spending his days and nights trying to keep Deep Space 9 from coming apart, or trying to stay ahead of battle damage aboard his old ship, the Defiant.Keiko leaned over and told Judith sotto vocethat for all his protests to the contrary, Miles secretly enjoyed the chaos of the old days. Judith laughed, which made Miles wonder self-consciously what the two women were whispering about.

She noted that Dad seemed to take a sadistic joy in teasing poor Chief O’Brien—“You call yourself an engineer? You can barely boil water!”—and Miles played the role of the bumbling, replicator-dependent Starfleet engineer to the tee. He had correctly realized that Dad needed someone to blow off steam at, something he could never do in the same way with Judith or Kasidy, or even his loyal staff. But Miles was another matter. By lumbering his way into Dad’s life, he’d given her father something to get mad about that he could fix.

And then there were the kids, who were having precisely the effect Kasidy had hoped they would. They filled the house with laughter again. And though they must have reminded Dad about the children he’d lost, Kasidy and Judith’s hope had been that they would also make him think hard about the child still to come. Dad entertained them with yet another in a long list of tall—and contradictory—tales about the fake alligator suspended from the restaurant ceiling. The kids just ate it up.

“So what do you do in San Francisco, Molly?” Dad asked. “Lotta playing outdoors with your friends, I’ll bet. Riding your bike down those amazing hills?”

“I don’t know how to ride a bike.”

“Excuse me?” Dad said.

“I don’t know how to ride a bike,” Molly repeated.

Dad looked up at Molly’s parents in complete incomprehension.

Keiko looked embarrassed. “You have to understand, she grew up on a space station….”

Dad rolled his eyes and shook his head, then turned back to Molly. “Well, I have a solution to that. I have an old bicycle in my basement that my son used to ride when he was your age. How would you like to have it?”

Molly’s eyes lit up. She turned to her mother. “Can I, Mommy?”

Keiko grinned. “I don’t see how we can refuse,” she said.

“Yes!”

“That’s just fine,” Dad said, beaming. “You and your parents can try it out in the park, tomorrow. After a good night’s sleep and a good breakfast.”

“Sir, we wouldn’t dream of imposing any more than we already have,” O’Brien protested.

Dad’s smile fell. “So what are you saying, Chief? Are you going to deprive an old man of the company of these children?”

“No, sir. I just meant—”

“Never mind, never mind,” Dad said, brushing off O’Brien’s explanation. “I’m not taking no for an answer. You’ll all stay the night, at least, and we’ll have a fine time. And tomorrow, Molly can try her new bicycle.”

“What do you say, Molly?” Keiko prompted.

“Thank you, Mr. Sisko,” Molly said.

Dad laughed. He laughed!“You’re very welcome, Molly. Of course, you’ll need to take off that pretty necklace first. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to such a lovely thing.”

Molly touched the ornate silver chains around her neck, adorned with pendants of different sizes and shapes. Judith had noticed it when she first laid eyes on the girl. It wasn’t like anything she had ever seen before, and she had to agree, it was lovely.

“May I ask where she got it?” Judith said to Keiko. “It’s very unusual. Is it Vulcan…?”

Keiko looked at O’Brien, who decided to answer the question himself. “Actually, it’s Bajoran,” he said quietly.

Dad’s eyes darkened, but only a little. “Well, on your Molly it’s positively beautiful, Chief,” he said, then looked at him sternly. “She obviously takes after her mother.”

Miles snorted and shook his head, sipping from his beer.

“Dad, enough already,” Judith chastised him.

“Oh, I’m just kidding,” Dad said, and slapped O’Brien on the shoulder, causing Miles to choke on his beer. “Anyone with children like these is welcome in my home any time. As long as he stays out of my kitchen.”

“Noted, sir,” O’Brien gasped, coughing. After a moment he went on, “You know, the necklace was actually a gift from someone. I don’t think about it much anymore, because it happened the first year we were on the station, but it’s actually a bit of a mystery.”

“What do you mean?” Judith asked. “You don’t know who gave it to her?”

“No, I do,” O’Brien said. “It was Kai Opaka. She was the religious leader of Bajor at the time. The thing is, she was lost in the Gamma Quadrant right after that. See, she’d come to the station after spending her entire life planetside, and had asked Captain—I mean, Commander Sisko, to take her through the wormhole. I prepped the ship they took for the journey. Opaka and I passed each other in the airlock, and she was wearing that necklace. Then suddenly she looks at me—and I swear it was like she could see inside me—and she says, ‘You have a daughter, don’t you?’ Now, I want to stress I’d never met this woman before. There was no reason for her to know anything about me, and Molly was only a year old at the time. But when I told her I did have a daughter, she took off the necklace and put it in my hand, asking me to give it to Molly. Then she stepped into the ship like she never expected to come back.”