This time, though, the stakes were too high. Q had said the Federation as she knew it would cease to exist if she failed to act. Though she loathed the possibility that she would go through all the motions of working to set things right only to find Q had been toying with her, she decided the risks of inaction far outweighed the potential embarrassment.
Upon her initial arrival, she had already noticed changes. Andorians were in abundance and they seemed to be exercising control over the other humanoid races in attendance. Though Q had told Yilaan she'd have help, the only person she recognized so far was Ensign Bradley; waiting tables and being molested by rowdy customers.
Yilaan found herself a seat at the bar of the restaurant and swivelled around in the bar stool to watch the goings on. As she was trying to pick out familiar faces, a troop of armed Andorians strode into the restaurant. They immediately began harassing non-Andorians for proof of identification and so on, shoving people over and dumping their food in their laps. When they passed Bradley, they intentionally tripped her, sending her and nice warm bowl of soup into another Andorian's lap. The man with the wet lap shouted something angrily in Andorian, and made a wide sweeping motion with his fist. Bradley was caught by it as she tried to stand and was sent sprawling backwards, where she lay motionless. Cecilia paled and went tense while giving a fleeting thought to trying to put a stop to it.
Noticing her flinch, or perhaps just on a whim, one of the armed Andorians pointed at Yilaan and strode over to her, one hand on the handle the weapon at his belt. "You!" he said in rough English, "Identification!"
Cecilia was about to stammer out some kind of an excuse as she made a show of going through her pockets, when she found something. She pulled out a leather case and opened it; inside was her identification. She handed it to the Andorian, who went through it. "You're licensed horticulturist and trader? I'll bet you deal with those scum Ferengi, don't you?" the Andorian asked, looking up at her suspiciously. She shrugged her shoulders. "Your papers are in order anyway." He thrust her identification back at her and growled, "Well, flower girl, I've got some advice for you; mind your own damn business." The Andorian then went to join the rest of his comrades who were leaving the room.
Yilaan got up and picked her way towards Bradley. "A horticulturist?" she mumbled under her breath to herself. "Q, you've outdone yourself. I feel ridiculous already." She almost felt as though a light chuckle came from somewhere around her as she knelt down next to the fallen waitress. "Are you okay?" Yilaan asked, helping Bradley up.
Bradley made a feeble attempt at brushing off all the crud that had splashed on her, finally settling for wiping some of the blood away from her lip. She eyed Yilaan suspiciously, "I'll be fine thanks. Who are you, if I may ask? No one on this station gives a rat's ass about anyone except themselves, yet you seem to. You're not from around here are you?"
Yilaan smiled at her, "My name is Cecilia Yilaan, I'm a horticulturist, and I'm not from around here."
"Julie," she replied, relaxing a little. "Julie Bradley. Where are you from, then? Somewhere nicer than here I'll bet."
"Nicer indeed. It's a long story though," Yilaan replied evasively.
"Oh well. Perhaps you can tell me sometime. For now, can I get you something on the house? It's the least I can do."
Yilaan decided to take her up on her offer, as she had no idea where or when her next meal might come from. In a few moments, Bradley brought her back a large mug of coffee, a large steaming bowl of soup, and a half a loaf of bread. "So what brings you to the station?" Bradley asked. Her soiled garments had been quickly replaced with a clean uniform, though streaks of soup still clung to her hair.
"Business," Yilaan said, inquisitively eyeing her clothing.
Noticing her glance, Bradley made a face, "We all have spare clothes in the back room; this sort of thing happens all the time here. So, did I hear that you're into plants and such?"
Yilaan nodded, "That's right."
"You might be interested in this then; I've been growing some Chalcy roots and feeding them Almaen. They're turning out really well in this artificial atmosphere," Bradley commented. "That is, when the soldiers don't smash them."
"Well I'm glad to hear it; your plants doing well, I mean. Why do you stay here in such hell, if I may ask?" Yilaan asked, taking a scoop of the soup with a piece of bread.
"It's better than outright slavery," Bradley responded matter-of-factly. "The mines are terrible; the workers on the planet below live in dank caves and work twenty hour days. The mortality rate is very high. At least here I have my own room I can go to at night, and my plants. The soldiers only harass me sparingly. I mean work is hell, but...," she finished, looking away somewhat embarrassed at talking so much about herself.
"I'm sorry," Yilaan replied, not knowing what to say to this complete stranger, yet someone who was a part of her other life.
Bradley shook her head and smiled, "Don't worry about it. I don't know why I spouted off like that. You seem familiar to me somehow, maybe that's it." She was interrupted by an angry Andorian soldier shouting from one of her tables for some service. She nodded to Yilaan and went over to deal with yet another unruly customer.
As Yilaan finished her meal, the crowd was picking up in the restaurant. Bradley and the other waitresses busily moved about as the noise level grew. Yilaan turned to watch for awhile, then made her way out. As Yilaan reached the doorway, Bradley tapped her on the shoulder from behind. Exhaustion clear in her face, she asked, "Busy later?" Yilaan shook her head. "Meet me back here at 2300 hours; I'd like to hear about this better place you come from." Yilaan smiled and nodded, and the two women parted ways.
Yilaan spent the remainder of the evening wandering about the station. It was nothing like any base she'd ever been on before, and the layout was a bit confusing at first. The one thing she couldn't help but notice, however, was the abundance of Andorian guards, restricting movement through various places. They all eyed her unendingly; whether they actually suspected her of anything or were merely ogling her she couldn't decide. She figured it was probably a mixture of both.
Not twenty minutes after leaving the restaurant and Bradley's company, she ran into the first of what would be two dozen check points. Yilaan debated turning back, but figured that would look suspicious. The people going through the guard station were a mix of races, but all appeared to be travellers or station residents. Deciding she probably needed no special clearance, she boldly got in line. A few minutes of waiting brought her to the check point proper, and she showed the guards her identification when requested.
"A flower girl, eh? We haven't seen a plant person here in I don't know how long," one of the guards commented. "Not very exciting I'd imagine. Of course if you're interested in a little excitement, I'm sure me and my friends here could help you out." All the guards laughed, while Yilaan gritted her teeth, snatched her identification back and walked quickly away. "Stay out of trouble flower girl!" one guard called after her.
So it went through the other check points; the guards harassed her about her supposed profession and made lewd suggestions. 'At least they're disciplined enough not to make good on their threats,' she thought to herself, though she dreaded their off-duty time. On several occasions, non-Andorians were also harassed at these check points; some were led off to God knows where kicking and screaming, and each time Cecilia Yilaan had to grit her teeth to keep from intervening. Though the guards always told her to stay out of trouble, she was thinking of ways she could make trouble in the event she was unable to find a way back through time to set events straight. Or find people to help her, for that matter.
Q had told her she'd have help; she saw Bradley right away but hadn't noticed anyone else familiar. Yilaan was making the assumption that by help, Q meant people she would recognize people who would be able to aid her; the sense of familiarity between her and Bradley seemed to make this assumption a reasonable one. 'Or perhaps Bradley will lead me to them,' she thought to herself as she made her way about the station.
On her travels, she noticed portals to the ship docking rings and corridors presumably leading to secure places like the station's Operations Center, Engineering, and the like. One of the drawbacks of posting guards is that it draws attention to places. Yilaan smiled to herself as she considered this bit of irony while the time passed and she mentally surveyed her surroundings.
Eventually, after a couple of breaks and much walking, it came time to meet Bradley back at the restaurant. She wandered back, passing through as few check points as possible, and walking quickly. Yilaan met her new friend just as the latter was finishing up. Bradley brought out two cups of coffee and sat down next to Yilaan at a table in the nearly empty restaurant.
"Good day?" Yilaan asked purely to start conversation.
Julie Bradley gave her a long flat stare. "Yeah right," she said after a moment's hesitation. She took a long swallow of coffee. "My best days are when I'm not working. So what did you do today?"
"Wandered about the station. I can't believe how many guards there are here."
Bradley looked at her in honest surprise. "Why is that? This is the way it is on all of the Front's space stations which have non-Andorian personnel."
"The 'Front'?" Yilaan inquired.
Bradley's look turned to one more of bafflement. "You honestly don't know what the Front is? You must really be from somewhere better than here if you don't know about the Andorian Defense Front. The 'Defense' part is, of course, pure bullshit. They attack, they conquer. The only defense they do is along their outermost borders, and even those expand all the time."
"Do you know who the Front borders with?" Yilaan asked, leaning forward and lowering her voice somewhat, purely instinctively.
"Sure! A waitress hears all kinds of things; even if the news of victory after victory wasn't blasted over the station's intercom every so often, I'd have a good idea what's going on." Bradley took another sip of coffee while sweeping one hand through her short red hair. "Here's the scoop, so far as I can tell; the border is advancing slowly into the IKRS and Cardassian states. Everything else is under the control of the Front, though there's a new problem."
Yilaan held up a hand. "Two questions; who or what are the IKRS, and what's the new problem?"
"You don't have any idea who the IKRS is? You must be from another universe or something." Yilaan grinned broadly at that comment by Bradley, prompting Bradley to smile also for no particular reason, "Two answers you shall have then. The IKRS stands for the Imperial Klingon and Romulan States; a cooperative forged in the wake of the expansiveness of the Front." Bradley then lowered her voice, "This isn't generally known, but there's a new and powerful threat to the Front. Seems that some race called the Borg has been probing the Front's space of late. A fleet was dispatched to attack one of their battleships; a huge cube-shaped vessel. Anyway, the fleet was successful with minimal losses and the Borg haven't been heard from since. However, intelligence reports indicate the Borg can field dozens, maybe hundreds of those ships of the type that the fleet destroyed, and that has some high ups worried." Bradley leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. "Of course the whole thing suits me just fine."
Yilaan smiled wistfully. "Who led the fleet against the Borg, if I may ask?"
"An Admiral by the name of Jevor," Bradley replied. "Why?"
Startled, Yilaan changed the subject, "No reason. What of some of the other races? What happened to the Vulcans?" Yilaan asked.
"Being a peaceful people, most were exterminated just like the Betazed," Bradley said nonchalantly. A wave of nausea flowed over Yilaan as Bradley continued, "People with some fight in them, live; the Bajorans, the Humans, the Tellarites. People without fight, well most die in the mines and such; the Vulcans, the Betazed, the Caitians. People with fight that aren't willing to be subjugated, die outright; the Tholians, the Gorn." Noticing something was wrong with Yilaan, Bradley's tone changed to one of concern, "Cecilia? What is it?"
"The Betazed," Yilaan said quietly. "Gone?"
Bradley put it together quickly, and gasped. "Are you......you're a......you're a Betazoid? I had no idea! I've never seen one before! Oh, Cecilia I am sorry, but I figured I was stating the obvious." Bradley began to eye Yilaan more suspiciously. "I think it might be time for you to tell me who you are," she said finally. "Who you really are, and what it is that you're doing here, and where it is that you really come from."
Yilaan nodded to her new friend and sighed. "You're right of course; some explanations are in order. Where shall I begin?" Noting that Julie suddenly became distracted, Yilaan glanced over her shoulder towards where she was looking. A large contingent of Andorians had just sauntered in and were beginning to harass the under staffed employees, and at their lead was a familiar face; Admiral Jevor. The same good honorable man that was the Bristol's Chief of Engineering was, in this alternate universe, in command of a weapon of slavery, evil, and mass destruction. Yilaan found the ironies disgusting.
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