Read Online Diplomatic Implausibility by Keith R. A. DeCandido - Free Book Online

slapped him on the arm. “It has been a long time, my friend. Come, let us drink and remember old times.”
    “Lead on,” Riker said, glad he had had the foresight to take an anti-inebriant before leaving the
Enterprise.
Bloodwine went right to his head.

    * * *

    For the first time in Beverly Crusher’s medical career, she walked into a Klingon medical ward without wincing.
    Well, not wincing
too
much, in any case. . . .
    The pitiful state of Klingon medicine had been a constant source of annoyance to Beverly, especially once she signed onto a ship with a Klingon officer whom she would be responsible for treating. Starfleet’s smallest emergency medikit was better equipped than the best Klingon hospital.
    But the
Gorkon’s
medical ward seemed almost adequate. And Beverly suspected she knew the reason why.
    “Hello, B’Oraq,” she said to the woman presently sitting at a small desk, reading a computer screen.
    The woman—short and compact by Klingon standards, which made her close to the average height for a human woman, and with dark green eyes—looked up, and bared her teeth. She cried,
“ghojmoHwI’,”
the Klingon word for
teacher
or
mentor.
“I had hoped to see you when I learned we were meeting with your ship.”
    And then, in an un-Klingon-like gesture, B’Oraq got up and gave Beverly a hug.
    “It’s good to see you, too, B’Oraq,” Beverly said, returning the hug. “I see you’ve made some progress.”
    “Actually, you can thank the war,” B’Oraq said, pulling on her braid as she spoke, a nervous habit she hadn’t lost in the past decade. Her auburn hair, which had been waist-length ten years earlier, barely reached her neck now. However, she retained the braid that extended down past her right shoulder, secured at the end with a small pin in the shape of the emblem of her House. “Not only was it a glorious victory for the empire—and the rest of the quadrant,” she added quickly, “but it, more thananything, enabled me to finally make some of the advances I had been trying to put forward in Defense Force medicine.”
    Beverly, who had a hard time using the word
glorious
to apply to the drawn-out misery of the Dominion War, frowned and asked, “In what way?”
    “Well, it’s all well and good to insist that you can survive with an injury and that to have it treated is a sign of weakness. But when the Federation and Romulan soldiers fighting alongside you are fully recovered from more devastating injuries in less than a day, you start to learn the value of being able to knit bones in an instant and return whole warriors to the field of battle.”
    Beverly chuckled at that. The Klingon Empire had a lengthy history of warfare, but the Dominion War was the first time they’d fought for such a protracted period alongside such powerful allies.
I suppose it’s bound to
have an effect,
she thought.
    Showing off her medical ward with a gesture, B’Oraq continued: “So they finally allowed me to design a new medical facility. Mind you, what you see here is
not
what I originally designed. For one thing, more or less every cosmetic application was rejected—we are too proud of our scars, it would seem.”
    Smiling, Beverly said, “This
is
an empire with a one-eyed chancellor.”
    B’Oraq laughed. “True, true. However, this is only the beginning. The door is open, but I am determined that by the time I die, Defense Force vessels will have sickbays to match those of Starfleet.”
    “If anyone can do it, you can.”
    Beverly had first met B’Oraq ten years ago, while serving as the head of Starfleet Medical. Sitting in her office,going over starship personnel requisitions, Beverly had been interrupted by an auburn-haired Klingon, demanding to know why she was being discriminated against.
    Knowing that the empire had appallingly bad medical standards, B’Oraq—the daughter of a physician—decided not only to follow in her father’s footsteps, but to bring better medicine to her people.