


CHAPTER
        1

QUARK--TEMPORARILY BARLESS, unbusy, at loose ends--
walked a frenzied pattern around and around the de-
serted Promenade, trying not to notice the empty kiosks,
locked doors, and dimmed or missing welcome signs. He
felt his face flush; he knew he was a bright, pinkish
orange color that would doubtless elicit a double-sneer
and cutting remark from Liquidator Brunt, if they were
on speaking terms. Never before had the Ferengi bar-
tender debased himself so thoroughly... parading
around the Promenade wearing a sandwich-board adver-
tisement! I might as well be as naked as a female under
here, he thought with some bitterness, though he wore
his best suit in a futile effort to recapture a shred of
dignity. But of course, no one could see it past the
flashing lights and animated holoeharacters cavorting
across his chest and back. No, they were all too busy
drinking up and having a smoking time at the holomated
Quark's Place.




    Grim-faced, the Ferengi quick-walked around and
around, hoping to drum up the merest smidgen of
business. One customer! Is that too much to ask? One,
stupid freighter captain, a passing smuggler, even a hu-
man/He was aware that the cheery image of unclothed,
prancing nymphs and satyrs having a grand old time at
the bacchanalia on his sandwich board contrasted
sharply with the bitter, warning snarl on his face;
Quark's lip curled back from a set of teeth razor-
sharpened that morning in a frenzy of ablution. But he
couldn't stop himself from baring his naked fury. With
the general evacuation, Quark had not had one, single
customer in three days--well, just one: Morn, of course.
    Already hurting more than he would admit from being
cast off the loving accounts of the Ferengi Business
Alliance, now he had to admit that he was failing at the
one piece of identity he had left: Quark was a failure as a
businessman.
    By the Profits/Why not just apprentice myself to Rom
and make the humiliation complete? Or show up on Nog's
doorstep at the hu-man Academy and say "Good morn-
ing, Nephew--I'd like to enlist/"
    Instead Quark walked, not quite staring at the empty
shops, abandoned enterprise zones, lonely benches, and
somnambulant security guards. Constable Odo stood
near one of the benches, a spot from which he could see a
quarter of the Promenade, from Garak's clothier's--not
even Quark had patronized the Cardassian's shop lately;
he had no money even for a new suit!--all the way
around to Quark's Place, at whose flashing lights and
enticing holomation the Ferengi stubbornly refused to
look.
    "Still carrying around that ridiculous, obscene bill-
board?" growled the constable.
    "No, I died about three hours ago, Odo; this is my
ghost you're talking to."
    "I thought Ferengi went to the Divine Treasury when
they died. Weren't you greedy enough?"

    Quark stiflened and stopped, glaring at the tall, aus-
tere, and now thoroughly solid constable--a fancy term
for cop. "Greed is never enough, Odo. A true Ferengi
combines greed with pure corruption and a passion for
staying out of other people's business unless there's a
profit to be made. I'm pleased to note that you fail all
three tests of Ferengi character."
    Odo snorted, his "hnh!" indicating he had been bested
by the Ferengi, as usual. "Take off that ridiculous sign!"
he commanded, to no purpose, as usual.
    "Why should I? Is there a law against advertising a
perfectly legal, perfectly above-the-table business?"
    "You look utterly absurd. Who are you advertising to?
And you're contributing to the net ugliness of this
station--"
    "That's like contributing to the bad temper of a
Klingon. And who is being disturbed?"
    "I'm tired of that thing flashing in my eyes. Take it off!.
Consider that an order."
"You have no authority to give such an order!"
"Then consider it a... a favor." The constable rolled
the word around his mouth as though it had a disagree-
able flavor.
     "A favor?" demanded Quark, incredulous. "You want
the sign gone? Fine. How much is it worth to you?"
  "What?"
    "Everyone has his price... even dear, old Constable
Odo. How much is your sanity worth to you?"
    "I would think you could remove it out of simple
courtesy!"
    "Well, that's not the Ferengi way, is it? How do you
expect me to get to the Divine Treasury if I go around
doing favors for every Tom, Dick, and Odo?"
    "Quark, someday, I hope to see you thrown out an
airlock, drifting away like yesterday's garbage. You'll beg
me to rescue you, and you know what will happen?"
 "The alarm clock will go off, and you'll wake up."
 "Hnh!" Odo stalked away, hands clasped behind his

2                                                                3




back. Quark smiled grimly; he's as bored to death as 1
am./
    Ferengi and constable had a symbiosis that very nearly
allowed each to read the other's mind. Odo fretted,
Quark knew, because the dangers that menaced Deep
Space Nine were wholly beyond the constable's ability to
affect them. Odo understood all manner of internal
disruptions, from simple drunkenness and assault to
full-scale riots, from burglary to sex crimes--some races
that visited the Federation had not even the concept of
self-control--to homicide to religious discrimination;
Odo had gotten much experience dealing with that
particular crime now that Bajor was such a powerful
force on the station. Odo understood financial misman-
agement of all sorts, from thievery to fraud to high-end
smuggling operations, much to Quark's chagrin.
    But the constable knew nothing, absolutely nothing,
about war and invasion. He was as useless in defending
the station against an attack by his own people, the
Founders, as a hu-man would be to judge a Ferengi civil-
court action.
    Now that Odo was gone, Quark peeled the sandwich
board off and threw it to the ground, as he had been
dying to do until Odo started barking orders. Massaging
his aching shoulders, he gave the board a savage kick,
shorting out one quadrant of the holomation: now the
nymphs coupled with satyrs, headed toward Quark's,
and vanished into a mysterious, enticing black square.
That might even have been more effective at drawing a
crowd to Quark's Place... were there any crowd to
draw, that is.
    The billboard had been a last-ditch attempt by the
Ferengi to maintain his sanity. He had let go all his
employees. Why pay Dabo girls to spin the wheel for an
empty bar? Why pay busboys to clean tables that had not
been dirtied for days? Now Quark faced the prospect of
living on his replicatot rations, of all things! Like a hu-
man!

    And all it had taken to empty Deep Space Nine was a
single, nasty encounter with the Jem'Hadar on a planet
altogether too near the wormhole for the comfort of the
cowardly, sheeplike civilians living on the station. One
battle, and it wasn't even conclusive!
    But the mob, the "mobile class," had lived up to its
name by quickly booking passage on any and every ship
leaving the station for points closer to the central maw of
the mass of tentacles that was the Federation... as
though that would save them if the Founders really did
come through the wormhole again.
    "Miserable consumers!" shouted the Ferengi, sitting
on one of the many, many unoccupied benches, though
there was nobody in earshot. "How dare they just leave?
If they have no concern for their own career options,
can't they at least have some consideration for me, their
hardworking, profiteering bartender?" No one an-
swered.
    Quark stared at the flashing sign at his feet, felt the
eerie silence, even the pulse of the station reactors, many
levels down, generally not noticeable above the roar of
the mob. Maybe Rom was right. Maybe, in this misera-
ble, altruistic, hu-man Federation it made sense to have
a trade to fall back on, something other than business.
Quark's own, personal modification of the Sixth Rule of
Acquisition read "Never allow the hatred of family to
stand in the way of opportunity." After all, Quark didn't
live on Ferenginar anymore, did he?
    And never wouM again, echoed an unwanted voice in
his head, the voice of Brunt.
    Quark shook his head. It takes more than a little
adversity to hurl this Ferengi out of orbit. Still, Quark's
brother was pretty busy, even now: Master Chief Miles
Edward O'Brien had Rom hopping all over the station,
repairing every electronic combat device and sharpening
the station's teeth.
 Quark snorted, then jumped as he realized he sounded




just like Odo. Two coins in a purse, he thought bitterly. I
wonder what my brother--

    "... what my brother is doing now?" asked Rom.
Chief O'Brien stared incredulously back at his Ferengi
crewman; the chief was, more than usual, exasperated
and frustrated at the inept, clunky Cardassian circuit
design.
    "I should think you'd have more important things to
do than wonder about your crooked brother," he said.
    "Quark is not crooked! Well, uh, okay, maybe a little,
but his heart's in the right place." Rom couldn't quite
meet O'Brien's eye, the chief noted.
    "Your brother's heart is in his cash register, along
with his conscience and his loyalty. He couldn't care
less what happened to any of us unless it affected his
bottom line!"
    Rom nodded curtly. "Apology accepted," he said.
O'Brien rolled his eyes and returned to the photon
torpedo circuitry, which was failing left and right on
every test run. With war and the rumors of war coming
at Deep Space Nine from all sides, Captain Bejamin
Sisko had ordered a complete overhaul of every combat
system on the station, which meant everything else on
DS9 was going to hell in a handbasket, along with the
special retrofit on the Defiant's cloaking device that
Chief O'Brien had worked out in theory.
    Suddenly, O'Brien's comm badge beeped, echoing like
a screaming baby in the tight confines of the upper firing
chamber of pylon II. The chief jumped and dropped his
plasma infuser, and cursed like an Irish sailor.
    "Chief," said the voice of Major Kira Nerys, depart-
ment head of Weapons and Defenses, "something urgent
has come up. Drop everything andre"
    "I just did drop everything, Major!" barked O'Brien.
"Now I have to pick it up. Can't you wait until I finish
adjusting the--"

      "Now, O'Brien! This is an all-senior-hands briefing by
the captain. I think you'll want to hear this, anyway."
  "Hear what?"
    "This isn't a secured channel, Chief. Come on up to
Ops."
    O'Brien paused. A secured channel? Whatever had
just happened, it was so secret, O'Brien realized, that
Major Kira wouldn't even say it over the comm link for
fear Garak or some other spy might be eavesdropping.
"On my way, Major," he said, softly; he tapped his
comm badge to sever the connection. "Rom, how would
you like to finish realigning the firing chamber wave
guides?"
    "Would I!" breathed the Ferengi, overjoyed at the
prospect.
    "Well, don't have too much fun; this is supposed to be
work, you know." With a last, nervous glance at the
delicate guides, Chief O'Brien began the painful and
delicate operation of extracting himself from the cham-
ber, climbing over the Ferengi--whose small size proba-
bly gave him a job advantage over the bulky chief
anyway--and sliding down the pylon without slipping
and killing himself.
    Twelve minutes later, the turbolift popped up into
Ops, disgorging Chief O'Brien. A teenaged ensign (well,
he looked like a teenager to the chiefl) said, "In the
captain's office, Master Chief," pointing in case O'Brien
forgot the way up the ladderway.
    "Aye, sir," said O'Brien; then he saluted, just in case
the kid didn't catch the sarcasm the first time. The
ensign returned the salute without glancing away from
his scanner panel.
    Hustling up the ladderway, O'Brien entered through
the nasty, dilating, Cardassian security door to find the
entire senior staff, including Odo, staring at him, impa-
tient to start the meeting. "Um, sorry," mumbled
O'Brien, slithering into his seat. "I got--hung up."




    "Now that all of us have arrived," said Captain
Benjamin Sisko, "I will explain what prompted so much
drama." Sisko smiled, his cold, glittery smile that always
made O'Brien swallow. It was the we who are about to die
smile that they doubtless taught at the Academy: use this
expression, cadets, when you tell your troops you're about
to lead them on a suicide mission/
    Captain Sisko stood, his back to the tableful of officers
(and one chief), staring at the main viewer. The Starfleet
planet-logo popped up, followed by a series of security
tags, including Eyes Only. The hairy face of some
admiral O'Brien faintly remembered meeting once su-
perimposed itself over the logo, which faded behind
him.
    "Captain," said the recorded voice, "one of our deep-
cover humints relayed a very disturbing piece of intel to
FleetIntCom."
    "If I may interrupt," said Dr. Julian Bashir smoothly;
the image froze. "What race are the Humints? I've never
heard of them before."
    "Human-intelligence units," said the captain. "It's an
ancient term for actual spies planted inside the enemy
camp. Inside the Dominion, in this case. They probably
aren't actually human, but Admiral Montgommery is of
the old school."
    Chief O'Brien squirmed uncomfortably; a top-secret
message from the vice admiral in charge of Fleet Intelli-
gence about the Dominion could mean only one thing: so
it~ finally happening, thought the chief, wondering
where he could send Keiko and Molly, his wife and
daughter--if they would even agree to leave Bajor!
    Bashir slumped in his chair, probably chagrined at not
knowing an old Earth term for a spy. "Continue play-
back," said Sisko.
    "You have already seen the reports of the minor clash
near Charlie-Lima-202 and Delta-Lima-201, 'Carlos'
and 'Diana,' we're calling them, in the Gamma Quad-
rant. Well, the clash wasn't as minor or as random as we

initially believed. In addition to the two Star fleet ships
destroyed, the Parallax and the Delphine, there were
seven ships that joined the battle in progress...
possibly rebels from the Dominion sphere of influence.
And on at least one other ship, the T'Pau, there was an
infiltration. The Founder was detected when she bolted
before a routine blood-screening; unfortunately, she
escaped on a shuttle before the ships returned through
the wormhole."
    The department heads nodded; evidently, rumors had
already gotten out, though O'Brien hadn't heard them.
He had heard about the battle, of course; everyone had.
It had emptied the station! But O'Brien had not heard
about the infiltration of the Vulcan ship. That was a bad
blow, considering the security measures already in place.
Great, now we'll need to get even tighter/ Lieutenant
Commander Jadzia Dax smiled cheerfully... another
sign of bad things to come.
    The admiral continued: "We now believe, Benjamin,
that the attack was not a random contact between flanks,
but an attempt to keep the fleet away from a particular
sector of the Gamma Quadrant. Captain," Admiral
Mongommery leaned close to the screen, his face look-
ing tired and mechanical, "FleetIntCom is convinced
that a massive assault is imminent and focused in some
fashion on a sector near where the Carlos-Diana battle
occurred. We don't know why that sector is important or
what's going on there. We're worried it might be a new
Founder weapon, or perhaps an alliance or conference to
bring more parties into the war. But all border units are
hereby ordered to full combat alert status... and more
than likely, at some point not far in the future, Fleet
Intelligence is going to draft you and the Defiant as intel
operatives."
    Lieutenant Commander Worf did not react, but
O'Brien knew his friend well: the Klingon was exulting
on the inside with the joy of pending battle, especially a
dangerous mission behind enemy lines as a spy. Dax was




Dax, of course; she would go wherever there was action.
But Major Kira seemed curiously reluctant, less blood-
thirsty than even just a year before. I wonder if impend-
ing motherhood--even impending surrogate mother-
hood-- is permanently changing her personality?
    Julian looked pensive, arms folded across his slender
chest. Odo showed no change in his expression, of
course; it would have required more effort than he cared
to expend on such trivialities.
    The message continued, giving more specifics of other
tiny bits of "intel" Starfleet had managed to pick up,
most of it sounding ambiguous and useless to the chief.
But the admiral seemed convinced, and Captain Sisko
held his own grim, gray grin throughout. The recorded,
scrambled transmission ended with the usual formali-
ties, and the screen went blank.
    "Chief O'Brien," said the captain, "have you finished
modifying the cloaking systems on the Defiant?"
    O'Brien cleared his throat, slightly embarrassed. "No
sir; the system is still based on the Romulan model, and
there's no logic to it. It's a dog's breakfast ofand-or's and
Y-branches; there's no elegance or--" "How long?" snapped Worf.
    "Another week at best," admitted O'Brien. "Assum-
ing something else doesn't blow up in my face. I'd have
been done a week ago if the photons hadn't crashed.
Captain, should I switch back to the ship?"
    Sisko mulled over the question, then answered with
one of his own. "Is Rom up to the job on the photon
torpedoes? I won't leave the station defenseless, no
matter what the orders from FleetlntCom."
    "Well ..." O'Brien looked to Dax for help; she was
training the Ferengi in the scientific and engineering
theory involved. O'Brien had a hard enough time keep-
ing his temper while teaching Rom standard Starfleet
maintenance procedures! The Ferengi had spent too
much time around his brother. He always looked for the

quick and dirty shortcut, not thinking about the prob-
lems it might cause down the road.
    "He can do it, Benjamin," said Commander Dax.
"It'll take longer than if the chief does it, of course. And
there's no way he can do the cloaking retrofit," she
added.
    "Fine, Old Man," said Sisko, "it's against my better
judgment, but I suppose our best allocation of resources
is to move O'Brien back to the Defiant and let Rom
finish the photon-torpedo alignment. Worf..."
 "Aye, sir."
    "Put together a skeleton crew for the Defiant, in the
event we get the mission: volunteers only, with excellent
hand-to-hand, in case we run into Jem'Hadar."
    "Aye, sir!" The Klingon could not keep a snarl of
battlefield pleasure out of his voice.
    "People," concluded the captain, "we've known this
was coming for a long time, ever since we first ran into
the Founders. They will not be satisfied until the entire
Alpha Quadrant is under the control of the Dominion,
and we're all as dependent upon them as are the
Jem'Hadar.
    "I don't know whether we can survive. With the
Klingons and the Cardassians, together, we might have
had an excellent chance, but under the present circum-
stances?" Sisko shook his head, smiling again. I hate that
smile! thought Chief O'Brien.
    Sisko continued. "But this is not what we are going to
tell the troops. For their ears, the war is winnable. We
beat the Klingons; we beat the Borg. We can beat the
Founders. That's what we'll tell them, and that's what
we'll believe. And that is an order!" His smile changed to
one of genuine mirth, and the senior crew chuckled,
even O'Brien.
    "Now unless anyone has anything to add, this briefing
is--"
 Dax's viewer beeped, and she held up her hand; Sisko




paused, waiting to see what was so important that the
duty ensign would interrupt a high-level staff meeting to
signal the science officer.
    "Ship coming through the wormhole, Benjamin," she
said, "and it's broadcasting a Federation priority-one
distress call!" She stared at the screen for a second.
"Captain, there are two ships following the first, firing on
it--and they're Klingon!" She looked up at Sisko. "Ben-
jamin, if we don't get out there in the next five minutes,
they're going to destroy that ship!"
    "Worf, Dax, O'Brien, you're with me on the Defiant;
you too, doctor--we may need to rescue survivors. Kira,
red alert. You have the conn... and remember, phasers
only! We don't want to fry poor Rom."
    Worf slapped his comm badge; "Emergency crew
recall!" he commanded, summoning the Defiant on-duty
team from wherever they were and whatever they were
doing.
    Why would the Klingons try something here? thought
O'Brien. Well, they're in for quite a donnybrook if they
pick a fight in front of this station/

O

CHAPTER
        2

JADZIA DAX WAS momentarily confused with both the
captain of Deep Space Nine and the captain of the
Defiant on the bridge at the same time. Benjamin had
immediately turned over responsibility for the ship's
launch to Worf while he demanded a detailed briefing
from Dax on recent Klingon activity around the worm-
hole. At the same time, Worf was barking orders at her in
her capacity as helmsman and weapons officer!
    Meanwhile, the two Klingon ships fired three more
disruptor blasts. Two deflected off the shields of the
target ship, the last partially penetrated and drew blood
from the starboard engine pod.
    "Aye, Commander--I'm sorry, Captain?--engine
spin-up, seven-six-five-four. Yes, sir, five ships in the last
two weeks; can't say for sure they were Klingon, but they
were cloaked and they were in and out of the wormhole.
Release docking clamps, chief. Aye, Commander, reverse
one quarter...
 Captain Sisko stood and walked away from Dax,




reluctant to interrupt her while she performed the whip-
turn and got the Defiant cruising to attack speed headed
toward the wormhole, where the battle raged. Now one
of the birds-of-prey fired a torpedo of some sort, briefly
illuminating the smaller ship's shield structure to the
naked eye.
    A fourth blip appeared for a moment in the glare, but
Dax quickly classified it as most likely a sensor echo.
Something seemed strange, however. Could it be another
cloaked ship? Well, we'll soon see, she thought; it has to
decloak to shoot anything.
    "On screen," said Worf; he didn't say, but Dax knew
he meant the combat. They watched as two Klingon
birds-of-prey harried a smaller vessel of unknown de-
sign, a ship that scarcely would have attracted the
station's attention except for two points of interest: it
was squawking a Federation distress call, and it was
being cut to ribbons in their own backyard.
    Worf inhaled, but before he could ask, Dax responded,
"Four minutes, Commander." Another disruptor blast
rocked the presumed Federation ship, skewing it from its
path and sending it careening into the teeth of the
second bird-of-prey. "Captain," said Dax, "their shields
are holding remarkably well. We should be there in
plenty of time."
 "Let's hope so, Old Man."
    The lieutenant commander watched her oldest human
friend pace back and forth. His face was impassive, but
the Trill could read it like a tricorder, so long had she
known him. There were rumors of high-level, political
contact between Gowron and the Federation Council,
but nobody had given the word to the high muckety-
mucks of Starfleet, let alone a mere captain commanding
a space station in the quadrant boondocks. The Klingon-
Federation alliance was off; no, it was on again; no,
definitely off---absolutely, definitely, positively--well,
maybe not, but they weren't exactly sure.

    The captain, Dax understood, fretted that yet another
incident between the Defiant and Klingon warships
might have diplomatic repercussions far beyond the
problems of a Federation pleasure yacht or ore-hauler
that had stupidly poked a stick into a Klingon anthill.
But how could Benjamin Sisko possibly stand still for a
Federation ship being mauled within eyeball range of a
heavily armed Federation fortress?
    O'Brien spoke up. "No response to the hail from
the Klingons, Captain. I mean, Commander." Dax
smiled.
"They heard us?" asked Worf, touching all bases.
"Yes, sir. They're just giving us the cold shoulder."
Now Worf rose from his command chair. "Captain,
I insist you either give me full command of this mis-
sion and let me lock phasers or take command your-
self."
    "I'll take the conn, Mr. Worf," said Benjamin deci-
sively. He strode to the command chair as the Klingon
vacated to the XO's position. "Full power to the phaser
array, Old Man. Lock on both targets simultaneously but
don't fire yet. Mr. O'Brien, try one more time... tell
them to stop immediately or we'll blow them out of the
sky."
    "Can I quote you on that, sir?" asked O'Brien, but he
was already sending the message.
    "Two more shots, Benjamin," said Dax. "Their
shields are still at sixty-five percent."
    Sisko stood, staring at the forward viewer. "That
should hold until we can hose them down and separate
them."
    Suddenly, Dax saw an energy surge; her suspicions
were confirmed. "Captain, there's a third Klingon ship!"
The new ship, a small, lightly armed patrol vessel,
decloaked practically at the side of the Federation vessel.
"Their shields are powering up, but they don't have any
disruptors."




    "I've had as much of this as I'm going to take. Fire on
the birds-of-prey. Let's bloody their noses and see if that
catches their attention{"
    Abruptly, Worf leaped from his chair and raced to
Dax's console. "Commander, did you say the small ship
has no disruptors?"
    "Yes, sir. Firing now, Captain." She tapped the touch-
plate, still incongruously called a "trigger" even centur-
ies after the last mechanical lever dropped a hammer on
a firing pin. The twin bolts appeared instantaneously--
actually at just a hair under lightspeed, but close enough
to infinity across such a short distance--cutting through
the weaker side-shielding of both birds, crippling the
disruptor alignment module of one ship and slightly
damaging the aft environmental controls of the other.
Call it one hit and one near miss.
    "Readying photon torpedoes," announced Chief
O'Brien, in case the captain decided to finish them off.
    "Just shields?" demanded the Klingon in Dax's ear,
urgently.
    "Huh? Oh, yes Worf, just shields. Why, is there
something I should--"
    "They're modulating their shields{" shouted Worfi
"Captain, we must reverse course and put as much
distance as possible between us and the Federation
ship!"
    "Why must we do that, Mr. Worf? That ship needs our
help."
 "That ship is already dead, sir{"
    Hesitating only the briefest of moments, Sisko made
an instant decision to listen to his second in command.
"Full stop, reverse full impulse. Get us out of here, Old
Man." His voice seemed a bit sulky to Dax; Benjamin
was not happy about withdrawing when he seemed to
have the upper hand.
    The small, unarmed Klingon ship began to modulate
its shields, extending them. Suddenly, every sensor on

Dax's console shot off the scale, and she actually felt a
hard, electrical shock pass through her body.
    Both ships now drifted naked, the two shield systems
gone. "Hold tight," said Commander Worf.
"Benjamin, the Klingons are beaming something--"
She never finished the sentence. The forward viewer
flared white, giving the Defiant crew an instant of
spectacular rainbows as the viewscreen filters tried to
damp the electromagnetic energy by separating it into
component bandwidths. The computer finally gave it up
as a lost cause, and immediately substituted an instru-
ment readout in place of the visual.
    A moment later, Dax restored visual contact. The
Federation ship was a dark, twisted hulk of metal,
shredded beyond recognition as a starship except for the
telltale warp signature residue and other forms of radia-
tion associated with hyperluminous travel. The smaller
Klingon patrol boat was nowhere to be seen, not even
with a sensor sweep.
    "Faith," whispered O'Brien, eyes as wide as Dax's
must have been.
    "Dax," shouted an unexpected voice from the turbo-
lift, "scan for life signs!"
When did Bashir come up to the bridge? she wondered.
"The two birds-of-prey--where are they?" said Sisko.
The words broke the spell that had held the others
motionless.
    Dax quickly remodulated the scanners, swept the
entire system. She had totally lost track of them when
all the instruments maxed out. "Captain, they're head-
ing back toward the wormhole at full impulse. We
can't catch 'them before they're in the Gamma Quad-
rant."
    Sisko stared, silent a long moment. "Better let them
go, Dax. We have no idea what reception committee
might be waiting for us on the other side, and I think
we'd better discuss this one with the flags before going
anywhere."




    He sat at his command chair, looking heavy and tired.
He hates this part, thought his friend. "Take us to the--
the remains of the ship, Dax. We'd better make an
inspection, file a complete report. Bashir, Dax, pull some
EVA suits and meet me in Transporter One. Doctor,
bring your forensics case. Let's at least try to figure out
who they were."
    Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax laid in the rendez-
vous course and engaged, then she rose from her console
and shuffled toward the turbolift, feeling quite heavy
herself.

    Doctor Julian Bashir sealed up his pressure suit,
feeling the perfect fool, and stepped forward onto the
transporter pad. Listening to his own breath rasping in
and out his helmet stimulated his adrenal gland; his
heart raced, and his breathing grew ragged. By the time
POI Swenson pulled the transporter slides forward,
energizing the away team, Bashir's hands were shaking
and his knees felt weak, as if he couldn't support
himself.
    He didn't need to. There was, of course, no gravity on
the exploded wreck of a hull: no lights, no air, no
gravity--no life that Bashir could see. Materializing, he
could not stop his feet from twitching as his stomach
lurched, and he launched himself gracelessly across the
belly of what once had been the main deck. The others,
even the captain, had similar problems.
    The comm channel squawked loudly in Bashir's ear.
"Good idea to tether us together, Benjamin," said lovely
Jadzia Dax. The doctor quite agreed and said so.
    The away team comprised Captain Sisko, Lieutenant
Commanders Worf and Dax, and Lieutenant Bashir, but
it looked like a single, four-bodied, sixteen-limbed or-
ganism connected by thin, vascular cables. "Everyone
freeze, "ordered Sisko, straining against the pull of three
other bodies with their own momentum, their own
velocity.

    Singly, the captain reeled them in slowly; one tug was
all that was necessary, Bashir noted--he'd "known" it,
of course, but studying zero-G in books at the Academy
was different from actually experiencing it in a ghoulish
hulk of a once-was starshipT Even the two training
exercises he'd received were inadequate.
    As the captain pulled Bashir closer in turn, the doctor
tried to shake off the fantasy that he was a fly in a web
being drawn in by a hungry spider. "Everybody loosen
your tether reel," said Sisko. "Just move slowly and
don't exit the ship without my authorization."
    Suddenly, Bashir blinked. He'd just seen movement,
something about the walls. Staring at a particular bulk-
head, Bashir suddenly realized what he had seen: "Cap-
tain, the hull is contracting!"
    Sisko winced inside his nearly transparent helmet.
"Good eye, doctor. O'Brien, is this ship stable?"
    "Um..." The chief activated his tricorder, which
flashed silently in the vacuum, and he spun slowly in
place. "No sir; it's not stable. It could go at any second.
Maybe we'd better get out of here."
    "Set up a forceshield to reinforce the hull," ordered
the captain."
    "That'll give us a whole half an hour," muttered
O'Brien.
    "Then monitor it carefully, Chief. I don't like sur-
prises."
    While O'Brien set up the minishields, Bashir bounced
gently to the center of the black cavern, trailing his
gossamer tether; looking out--there was no up or
down--he saw stars through gaping holes in the skin of
the ship, holes with jagged edges pushed outward pre-
sumably by a terrible explosion. Ground-zero was not
yet determined; that was Worf's job. Bashir unslung his
medical tricorder, set the scan depth, and kicked the
deckplates to begin a slow pirouette, searching for
lifesigns the ship's scanners might have missed--

/9




though how anyone could still be alive on this frozen,
airless hulk is beyond me, he mentally added. As ex-
pected, the only lifesigns he detected were those of the
away team.
    Bashir began to grow dizzy; he was still breathing too
rapidly, hyperventilating, and the short, shallow breaths
were scrubbing his blood of carbon dioxide. Starting to
panic, he tried to stop his rotation, but he had drifted out
of contact with the deck. He closed his eyes, but that was
worse. Forcing himself to inhale slowly, taking long,
deep breaths and holding them, the doctor finally
calmed himself. His stomach continued to roll and
lurch, however... he really didn't like zero-G!
  "We're alone!" he reported.
    "Ouch! Doctor, there is no reason to shout. I can hear
you perfectly well over the corem link."
    "Sorry, sir," said Bashir, chagrined. "No further life
signs."
    Dax spoke up; Bashir heard tension in her voice, too,
and this made him feel better, though he didn't know
why. "Julian, try scanning for organic molecules."
    "Right, Jadzia." The task required recalibrating the
tricorder to a more sensitive scale, which of course
required closer proximity to what he was scanning.
"Captain," he said, cutting off his words too crisply,
"request permission tomto untether. I cannot conduct a
full DNA scan while tied up like a dog on a leash."
    Sisko was a long moment answering. "If you think it's
necessary, Doctor. I don't like it. Report every few
minutes, so I know you haven't drifted through a hole
and into empty space."
    Julian reached down, hesitating a moment; he gently
rubbed his fingertips together, then quickly discon-
nected before he could change his mind. Holding on to
the base of a chair, bolted to a bulkhead (or had it once
been a deck?), he stared around at a dozen rips and gaps
easily large enough to "fall" through. Even ifI did, the

20

Defiant wouMstill catch me, he told himself; his stomach
and knees refused to believe him.
    The hull lurched again. "Sorry, Captain," grumbled
Chief O'Brien. "This jury-rigged fairy box isn't going to
hold much longer."
    Pushing away the fear with thoughts of duty, Bashir
began a laborious scan across each flat surface for
organic molecules. He struck rich ore right away: nearly
every deck, overhead, and bulkhead was coated with a
fine spray of DNA, the gigantic, easily detected coding
molecule found in varying forms in every species of
animal or plant in the quadrant. "Good Lord," he
whispered, forgetting he was hot-miked. "Find something?" asked Sisko.
    "There was somebodymthere were several some-
bodies here all right, urn, I count six; but they were...
vaporized is the only way I can put it. They were blown
apart by a bomb, I would guess, so powerful that all
organic entities aboard this ship were taken apart, mole-
cule by molecule, and dis--" Bashir swallowed, feeling
nauseated at the thought, "and distributed in a fairly
even coating approximately a hundred and fifty ang-
stroms thick throughout the ship."
    The guttural voice of Commander Worf cut through
the soft conversation like the blare of a trumpet in the
middle of a string quartet. "Captain, I was afraid of this.
The Klingons have perfected a weapon they were only
testing when I was last on the homeworld." "A new weapon, Mr. Worf?."
    "To be more accurate, sir, a new weapon-delivery
system. I do not know how familiar you are with
Klingon battle tactics."
    "I'm reasonably familiar, Worf; I had a good instruc-
tor." Bashir could hear the smile in Sisko's voice; he
recalled that Curzon Dax, Jadzia's former host and a
mentor to the young Benjamin Sisko, had befriended
many old Klingon warriors.




"Then you know about the legendary battle of Fom
Kerdeth."
    "I think I recall," said the captain. "Perhaps you
should enlighten us anyway."
    "At Fom Kerdeth, Bardak Linron the traitor fought
the forces of Kahless to a standstill. Many dead were
recorded during those six days, and many songs have
been sung. But Kahless finally lost the battle when
Bardak sent his best general, Renarg, to negotiate terms
for separating the combatants. Renarg entered the tent
of Kahless's high command with an arrogant list of
demands, but his terms were a ruse, for he had strapped
high explosives all around his body, concealed beneath
his armor and clothing. He detonated the munitions,
sacrificing himself to kill Kahless's entire general staff. It
is only by a miracle that the Emperor himself survived;
he had stepped out to... to relieve himself from the
night's drinking."
    Bashir waited; evidently Worf wanted some prodding,
which Dax supplied. "A charming story. How does it
relate, Worf?"
    "We have long theorized that any ship, of any size, can
be destroyed by transporting a bomb directly to the
engineering deck next to the antimatter containment
field, or to the bridge if you want to preserve the ship as a
trophy. The idea is to detonate a bomb aboard your own
ship, transporting it just as the explosion initiates, so
there is no time for the target to transport it into space or
back aboard your own ship."
    "You can't transport a bomb or anything else through
shields, Worf," said Sisko.
    "That has always been the difficult point," agreed the
Klingon. "The High Council spent years secretly funding
Project Renarg, trying to develop a method for momen-
tarily interrupting a target ship's shield. Two years ago, I
took the initiative to quickly read through a classified
abstract of the current theory: the researchers believe
that if you pilot a ship without a shield up to the target,

22

then activate the shield set to a frequency whose wave
crests and troughs are the exact mirror image of the
target's shield, it will cancel out both shields."
    "Only for a moment!" exclaimed Dax. "Only until the
target realizes what has happened and remodulates its
shields. A second or two, no more."
    "A second or two is all you would need, Commander."
No one spoke for a moment, then Worf continued. "I
have found the center of the explosion, and it is not at a
location where it could have occurred by accident or in
the heat of battle. There is no evidence of concealment;
the explosive device seems to have materialized exactly
where it exploded."
 "Project Renarg," mused Bashit.
    "Yes, doctor. I believe the project has been successful.
The Klingons now have the capacity to destroy any ship
in the Federation fleet."




0

CHAPTER
        3

"CHARMING," SAID DAX. The Old Man doesn't sound
particularly charmed, thought Captain Sisko.
    "Mr. Worf, this raises an interesting question," he
said; "assuming your analysis is correct, why would the
Klingons tip their hand by using their secret weapon
right here, within smelling distance of a Starfleet star-
base?"
    Worf sounded almost apologetic--an odd tone of
voice for a Klingon warrior! "That is the part I cannot
fathom, Captain. I can think of no strategic advantage to
letting us know of their new capacity."
    Sisko smiled, noting the faint emphasis Worf placed
on the words "us" and "their"; making sure I know
which side he~ on, thought the captain. Worf made a
point of doing it every few days, as if concerned that
fellow members of Starfleet might start to grow suspi-
cious of the only Klingon member of the service, given
the circumstances.

      "They would 'let us know' by blowing up a Galaxy-
class starship with a patrol boat," Dax chimed in.
 "Unless..." came a hesitant voice.
 "Yes, doctor?" encouraged Sisko.
    "Unless whatever they had to destroy was more dan-
gerous than allowing knowledge of their success to leak
out."
    Sisko grunted assent. It was the only likely explana-
tion. "So what could have been so valuable aboard this
small, private yacht? What did they want so badly to
destroy? Spread out, everybody. Untether and search
this entire ship--carefully. I want to know what skele-
tons are buried here."
    Heeding his own advice, the captain released the
trigger on his cable reel, and the cable silently rolled tight
through the airless ship onto Dax's reel. Turning, Cap-
tain Sisko played his helmet lamp around the ruined
chamber. There was virtually nothing recognizable left.
"I suggest we move to the farthest ends of the ship, as far
away from ground-zero as we can. We won't find any-
thing intact anywhere else. And people: if O'Brien
shouts, be prepared for an emergency beam-out. As he
said, those forceshields will not last forever."
    Sisko himself moved aft--at least, I think it's aft, he
corrected--until he began to see the skeletons of corri-
dors and shards of doors; then he searched room to
room, looking for clues amid the destruction.
    Movement, flicker; Sisko's heart lurched, and his hand
jumped of its own accord to curl greedily around the
phaser. He froze, drifting slowly in the zero-G corridor,
time frozen. After a moment, he took his hand away
from the weapon, feeling a thin layer of ice crack around
his elbow joints, condensation perhaps from a gruesome
"humidity" of fine blood droplets not yet condensed
against the metal surfaces. He reached to a bulkhead and
tugged himself along the corridor again.
 The movement was his own shadow, thrown into




relief by the floodlights of the Defiant reaching through
the torn skin of the wayfaring corpse. Sisko's shadow
danced on every surface, surprisingly three-dimensional,
as he moved past more holes blown through the hull.
    Whenever the captain came across a shadowy or
buried corner, he pulled away whatever debris concealed
the space, looking and hoping. A thick table or titanium
hatch might have shielded a body or log-clip from the
blast--something to prise the secret from the silent
ship's skeleton! His breathing became more ragged as he
exerted himself, sweating like a horse. More times than
he could count, the captain reached up and tried to wipe
his face, only to bump his hand into the unfamiliar
helmet.
    Farther along the corridor, the force of the internal
explosion (like swallowing a phaser-grenade) had twisted
the ship's orientation; Sisko "swam" through a vaguely
helical corridor, as if he were an RNA messenger mole-
cule surfing the monstrous DNA helix for the protein
code that would whisper what happened.
    At last, nearly as far aft as he could get before the
ribbons of ship became so disjointed he could no longer
unambiguously call it inside or out, Benjamin Sisko
found a cabin space. It was still just barely recognizable
for what it once had been: the infirmary. Here, so far
from the focus, the force of explosion had not obliterated
all traces from the room. Instead, the room was com-
pressed fore to aft, contracted into a space many times
smaller than it once occupied, but still recognizable.
And, amid the rubble, the shatter of glassware, the
ubiquitous spray of bio-residue, to be polite about it,
were the remains of some model of personal log and
recording device.
    The box was nearly crushed beyond recognition by the
compressive force, but still visible was a company logo
glued to the side of the machine: Levanian Biomedical
Survey Pangalactic Consortium, it read in Levanese, as
near as Sisko could tell; he was not an expert in the

Levanian language. But there was one other symbol on
the box that caught Sisko's eye: the stylized red cross that
still, after hundreds of years, signified something medi-
cal on most planets in the Federation.
    Sisko stared for a moment, breathing twice with a
catch in his throat; then he touched the helmet transmit
switch with his chin and spoke into the microphone
inside his light, clear helmet. "Bashir, come aft, home on
my signal. I've found... something."
    "On my way, sir!" The relief in the doctor's voice was
palpable. Julian Bashir was unsettled by a dead ship that
would not yield its dead.
    Within ten minutes, the captain was joined not by
Bashir alone, but the entire away team except for
O'Brien, who still tended the force shield. None had
found anything worthwhile, so they all responded to the
promise of something, anything. "Doctor," asked the
captain, taking Bashir's arm and launching him toward
the find, "what is that piece of equipment?"
    With difficulty, Bashir maneuvered himself upside-
down with respect to the captain's orientation, not that
it made any difference in zero-G. The doctor pulled his
face close to the remains of the electronic device, study-
ing it carefully for several minutes before responding.
"Sir," he said at last, "as near as I can make out, I should
think it's a--it once was a medical log. Of course, I'm
not as familiar with this model as with the modern
Starfleet version."
    Sisko couldn't help licking his lips. "That is what I
thought, Doctor. Julian, if Chief O'Brien can salvage
that medical log, would you be able to deduce where the
ship was and what it was doing to incur such wrath
among the Klingons?"
    Bashir rotated, then seemed disconcerted when he
realized he and Captain Sisko were inverted with respect
to each other. "I... well, that is, I really cannot say,
Captain. The medical officer shouM input the stardate
before every entry, and we should be able to extract the




approximate location. But sir, this isn't a Starfleet ship,
and I cannot guarantee his accuracy or diligence. Or her
diligence, whatever he or she was."
    "Do you generally describe the station's current mis-
sion in your own logs, Doctor?"
    Bashir managed to blush and preen simultaneously;
quite a feat while floating on his head! thought Sisko.
"Well, of course, my own log entries are hardly typical.
I'm a very thorough doctor. I don't know about
these... whatever they are."
    "Levanians," supplied Sisko. "Dax, see if we can
rescue the remains without losing any circuitry or break-
ing it any further than it already is."
    It took the station's science officer more than ten
minutes to gently detach the box from the bulkhead into
which it had been thrown. The rest of the team tethered
around the room in various orientations and fidgeted,
forcibly prevented from "helping" the Trill by stern
command of the commanding officer. Such ham-fisted
help from, say, Worf was more likely to pulverize the
fragile, remaining bits of electronics than actually to
assist Jadzia Dax.
    Worf remained at alert, outside the corpse of the
starship, with the away team inside. Julian Bashir gave
advice to Dax, as if his specialized knowledge of medi-
cine automatically extended to all electronic devices
ever used by doctors. The captain hovered, literally,
nearby, trying to keep the doctor occupied so he
wouldn't bother the Old Man-young woman.
    Finally, Dax loosened the last contact point that had
fused metal-to-metal. She gently teased away the entire
unit with a single, sharp tug, then pulled her hands
away. The data-pack of the medical log "rose" from
the mess of machinery and drifted in zero-G across
the room. It barely rotated on its axis... Jadzia Dax
had quite a delicate touch, far more so than Curzon
had!

    She captured it in a shield-containment module, what
used to be called a magnetic bottle in the more colorful
jargon of bygone centuries, recalled the captain with a
flicker of a smile.
    "Activating a zero-G containment field," Dax said,
touching the appropriate buttons. "This thing is about
ready to fall apart, and the Defiant's gravity field might
just do it."
    At that moment, the urgent voice of the engineering
chief cut through the chatter in Sisko's command comm
circuit. "We're losing it--get us out of here, Captain!"
    Sisko chinned his comm switch: "Away team to Defi-
ant: emergency beam-out! Four to beam back, plus a
memory-pack in a containment field that should be
beamed directly to engineering."
    As he materialized, Captain Sisko saw the hull col-
lapse under the tidal stresses of the distant Bajoran sun
and the ship's own mass. As they materialized on the
transporter pad, O'Brien was looking at his timer:
"thirty-eight minutes, twenty seconds. I'd say we got our
money's worth, Captain."

    Chief Miles O'Brien took custody of the medical log,
but one look persuaded him to leave it alone until he had
it all the way back on the station. As well-equipped as the
Defiant was, the job was too delicate to be conducted
remotely.
    The chief would have preferred to work alone; failing
that, he would have rather worked with anybody than
Doctor Bashir. Although O'Brien had become fairly
chummy with the doctor lately--playing darts,
kayaking--Bashir still tended to ask a fairy-mound of
annoying questions, which O'Brien was obliged to an-
swer politely, since Doctor Julian Bashir was a commis-
sioned Starfleet officer while O'Brien was only an
engineering master chiefi
 Bashir leaned forward, peering over the chief's shoul-




der; O'Brien felt the doctor's breath on his ear and
almost cringed away before catching himselfi "Julian, if
you don't mind?"
    "Eh? Oh, terribly sorry, Chiefi I was just trying to see
what you're doing."
    "What I'm doing is scanning the edge of the spool-
pack to find sections with the property parity; that's the
only spot we're likely to decipher."
 "Ah. Yes. Of course." Bashir nodded vigorously.
 "You don't have a clue what I just said, do you?"
 "Certainly I do. Well, no I don't; not really."
    Gently pushing the doctor back into his chair, O'Brien
explained the engineering theory behind the recording
and how it might have survived the Klingon bomb. The
biggest danger was not the actual force of the explosion,
since the log was shielded by a metal desk. Most of the
damage would have been done by the intense pulse of
electromagnetic energy that would accompany any deto-
nation of that size: it was worse than running through a
data-clip library with a huge electromagnet tucked under
one arm!
    On the first run-through, O'Brien found nothing but
snow on the visual channel and white noise on the audio,
with just a few fluctuations here and there: but those
fluctuations actually contained more information than
the human ear could detect. In the second play-through,
after digital enhancement, O'Brien turned the volume all
the way up. He and the good doctor listened in mounting
nervous fascination to a loud hiss masking the eerie
echoes of a distant warning: the words recorded by the
female doctor of the Levanian Consortium sounded
urgent. The tension in the woman's voice was evident,
even though the words were so far unintelligible.
     A ghost from beyond the grave, thought O'Brien, shiv-
 ering, thinking of the Banshee of the Scots; sheg come to
 warn us, if we can heed her words. But first they had to
 understand her words... and that required more deli-

cate digital construction than the computer could do by
itself. It required the full attention of Miles Edward
O'Brien.
    The chief caught himself working feverishly, as if
everyone's life depended on hearing the Levanian doc-
tor's last warning. Well, maybe it did; until they knew
what the warning was, they had to treat it as extremely
serious, after all, the Klingons had been willing to kill,
even to reveal the existence of their newest weapon, in
order to silence her. It was up to O'Brien to give her a
voice again.
    He clipped individual word fragments, compared
them to intact words elsewhere, and made shrewd
guesses where insufficient information stumped the com-
puter. The trouble with computers was that they were so
literal. It still took a human to make the intellectual
leaps of faith necessary to reconstruct words obliterated
by an electromagnetic pulse, to drag the warning back
from the Other Side.
    Finally, after nearly nine straight hours of "recon-
structive surgery,"--during which Doctor Bashir re-
mained every bit as alert and concentrated as did the
chief, impressing O'Brien more than he would admit--
they were ready for another playback. Gingerly, the chief
said "computer, play tracks four through six." No star-
date was intelligible from the tapes. They were identified
only by the physical track on the bubble-recording
medium.
    There were seven sentence fragments, all that re-
mained of the life and death of the Levanian doctor, all
that remained of her urgent warning. The annoying hiss
remained. O'Brien was reluctant to eliminate it, since it
might contain information that so far had eluded him.
But he had the computer mostly suppress it for the
playback. Each batch of now-intelligible words was sepa-
rated from the others by many minutes of visual snow
and audio steam. Still, O'Brien and Bashir listened
intently, even during the long gaps:

31




SURVEY NEARLY CONCLUDED . . .

APPROACHING GAMMA GAMMA KILO NINER SEVEN FOUR
TO CONDUCT . . .

FOUND THEM~ NEVER KNEW THE ]EM . . .

--DISRUPTED! THE JEM'HADAR HAVE FLANKED...

BESIDE THE KLINGONS; WE DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL
THEY'RE . . .

--WORKING TOGETHER] THIS INTELLIGENCE IS SO CRITI-
CAL, WE MUST BREAK AWAY IMMEDIATELY TO REPORT IT
TO...

--'HADAR TRAINING' WITH THE KLINGONS ON GAMMA!

    O'Brien swallowed hard; he was a man who remem-
bered his history. The Federation had had many con-
flicts with the Klingon Empire, each time Starfleet
barely winning against their more aggressive and vi-
cious opponents for one major reason: the Klingons
were impetuous and tended to attack before they
were fully ready. They didn't wait for a workable
strategy; they never quite had the technology to match
Starfleet.
    But things were different this time, weren't they? In
the past, Starfleet always held the technological and
strategic edge. But the war between the Federation and
the Founderswfought mainly by the latter's slave-
warriors, the Jem'Hadar--was just the reverse: it was
the Jern'Hadar who enjoyed a decisive technological and
strategic advantage, in addition to the Founders' ability
to shapeshift. In fact, the Dominion was so far held in
check only by the Founders' evident reluctance to attack
outside the Gamma Quadrant.
    "All they've ever done is infiltrate, manipulate," said
O'Brien aloud. He didn't need to clarify whom he was
talking about. Dr. Bashir understood.

    "The Gowron incident," said Julian. "They've never
attacked us directly. Maybe their power is stronger
inside the Gamma Quadrant than outside?"
    "Not anymore," said the chief, feeling his stomach
start to hurt. "Not if they've allied with the Klingons.
With Jem'Hadar technology and the Klingon presence
throughout the Alpha Quadrant, the Founders can proj-
ect their force anywhere in the bloody galaxy!"
    Chief O'Brien and Doctor Bashir looked at each other
with the same understanding: the few scraps of data left
in the Levanian medical log indicated the ship had
stumbled onto a secret training base at Gamma GK-974,
an unnamed planetary system deep and cold in the cold
heart of the Gamma Quadrant, a base where Klingons
and Jem'Hadar trained together.
    O'Brien swallowed; a stone weight fell from his throat
into his stomach. "Doctor, are you thinking the same
thing I'm thinking?"
    "I think so," said Bashir, nervously glancing back over
his shoulder to make sure no Klingons or Jem'Hadar
were-sneaking up on them; it was a nervous gesture, and
O'Brien understood it completely. "Can we make it any
clearer, Chief?."
    O'Brien shook his head. "See these batch of electro-
magnetic spikes? This first one is where the pulse itself
washed across the log. These fainter lines in both direc-
tions are the electromagnetic echoes off the metal bulk-
heads and equipment in the infirmary. There's a total of
eleven refraction echos, plus the original: we're damned
lucky to have recovered any of the log at all."
    "Yes, I thought as much," said Bashir, sighing. "I was
just clutching at straws. Do we have enough to take to the
captain?"
    O'Brien turned back to the log, again replaying the
fugitive scraps of intelligence: the Jem'Hadar--beside
the Klingonswworking together. "We have enough that
we don't dare not take it to the captain. There's some-

33




thing else here, something I'm not one hundred percent
sure about: I'd swear that this log was erased before the
Klingons blew up the ship."
  "Before? What are you saying?"
    "I'm saying, Julian, that somebody aboard the Levan-
ian ship deliberately erased the medical log, or tried to;
looks like he ran a powerful electromagnetic field over it,
but he missed a few spots. That's why there's so little left.
Believe it or not, the bomb itself would have left more
fragments, and each fragment would be longer."
    Julian Bashir had nothing to say; it was a puzzling and
sobering development. Twelve minutes later, O'Brien
made his presentation to all assembled: the captain,
Major Kira, Lieutenant Commander Dax--and of
course Worf, the fugitive Klingon, and Constable Odo,
the renegade, now-"solid" Founder. Worf and Odo both
stiflened visibly; they didn't quite move away from each
other, but O'Brien was sure it took inhuman control for
them to stand their ground. Worf flushed darker than his
usual Klingon complexion, and Odo squeezed his fists so
tightly, his knuckles actually cracked--a feat that would
have been impossible back when he was still a shape-
shifter.
    Major Kira was first to speak. The Bajoran ex-
resistance fighter (and very pregnant birth-mother of
O'Brien's second child) sounded an aggressive note to
open the grim meeting. "I'm inclined to believe this log,
Captain," she said, studiously avoiding Worf's frosty
glare. "It definitely smells like a Klingon tactic. Uh, no
offense, Worf."
    "I choose not to take offense," rumbled the Klingon,
in a tone of voice that meant he took very great offense
indeed. Lieutenant Commander Dax shivered when she
heard it. "But I do not believe the report of
Klingon-Jem'Hadar alliance. That would be dishonor-
able," concluded Worfi
    You're dancing on very thin ice, Major, thought
O'Brien. Of course, he didn't say such a thing out loud.

34

    "If you want my opinion," argued Kira, not backing
down, "attacking Deep Space Nine was pretty dishonor-
able, too."
    Worf had no response, but Dax took up the cause.
"The Klingons I've fought with were all honorable
warriors," she said, folding her arms and crossing her
legs. "Well, at least since the Cult of Kahless arose a few
decades ago. I can't believe that even Gowron would ally
with the Founders. That's too much to swallow, espe-
cially after what they almost did to him!"
    A pensive Captain Sisko frowned. "I don't like the fact
that someone aboard the ship tried to erase the log. Were
they trying to cover up what they saw? Did they hope the
Klingons would allow them to live if they removed all
evidence of the alliance--assuming for the moment that
there really was an alliance?"
    O'Brien shrugged. The other possibility was that one
of the Levanians was a traitor to the Federation, or
perhaps they were carrying a non-Federation passenger?
It was another disturbing aspect of the medical log, but
not their primary problem.
    Odo shook his head sadly. Have we been looking at
him differently since we found the Founders? wondered
the chiefi O'Brien felt his face heat slightly. Even he had
been a little more guarded around Odo since the troubles
started; he'd looked at the constable differently, held
back a little more information than he should have. It
hard, staring at that face, knowing it~ one of their faces.
  "There is only one minor point I should make about
  that tape," said Constable Odo. "Whatever the Klingons
  may think, my people do not even have the concept of
  alliances and treaties: they recognize only masters and
  slaves. If you're not the master, you're the slave." He
  paused, but no one spoke, especially not Worfi "When I
  was briefly in the memory pool on my homeworld,"
  continued Odo, "I received many impressions. One that
  came through very clear was the Founders' fascination
  with the Klingon Empire: they see the Klingons as the




Alpha Quadrant version of the Jem'Hadar, the best
material to be... converted into servants of the Do-
minion. I'm sorry, Commander," he added with unex-
pected tenderness to Worfi
    "You're saying the Founders will betray the Kling-
ons?" asked Major Kira.
    "Let's not be too hasty," said Sisko, relaxing the
tension. "We don't even know there is an alliance yet."
    "I mean, Major, that the Founders see the Klingons
only as the means to an end," continued Odo. "Like
every other race in all four quadrants, to the Founders
the Klingons are tools, used until they're dull, then cast
aside."
    "I still don't buy it," griped Lieutenant Commander
Dax.
    "Commander," said Chief O'Brien, the first words he
had spoken since presenting the medical log data,
"might you be, ah, overly influenced by the memories of
Curzon? It's--it's a different era now. If'those days of
Klingon glory and honor were still here, then Worf
would be honored by his people, not discommodated."
The chief had been trying to cheer up Worf, but it
seemed to have the opposite effect; the Klingon glowered
at the deck, and O'Brien kicked himself for not phrasing
it better.
    Captain Sisko said nothing, but O'Brien saw his jaw
muscles bulge as he clenched his teeth. Maybe he2 still
brooding about the log being erased, the chief thought.
Then Sisko seemed to push his personal misgivings
aside: an immediate decision was required. "Old Man,"
he said at last, "any chance Gamma GK-974 is the base
for the assault that FleetlntCom was looking for?"
    Dax stood and studied the map of the relevant sectors
of the Gamma Quadrant displayed on the viewscreen.
"If it's true--and that's a big ifmthen it would be pretty
well suited for a staging area to order the invasion.
Gamma-Kilo isn't all that close to either Carlos or Diana
sectors, but it's only a couple of days at warp nine. Other

36

than that, it looks..." She trailed off, but everyone
knew what she meant, including O'Brien.
    "It looks pretty deadly," concluded the captain, not
pleased with the confirmation. "Mr. Worf, you haven't
said much. What do you think about the possibility of
alliance between Gowron and the Founders.9"
    IfO'Brien's old Klingon friend had looked stiff before,
he positively fossilized now. "Sir, I cannot imagine that
any honorable Klingon would sign a secret treaty with
the Dominion." Worf paused; no one interrupted the
silence... the Klingon had not finished. "But Gowron
has acted without honor before. He betrayed the Cardas-
sians. And as Major Kira reminds me," now it was
Kira's turn to stare down at her feet, O'Brien noticed,
"he treacherously attacked Deep Space Nine, his Federa-
tion allies, without warning."
    Worf stared at the map, at the transcript of the log,
anywhere but at Captain Sisko. "Sir, I cannot entirely
rule out the possibility," he grudgingly allowed.
    The captain pressed. "So this message could be accu-
rate: there could be an alliance between the Klingons
and the Founders."
 "It could be accurate."
    "And there might actually be a secret base at GK-974
where Klingon warriors are training side by side with
Jem'Hadar shock troops." "It could be so."
    The chief swallowed; he knew what would have to be
done. Silence fell across Ops like a heavy, woolen shroud
over a corpse. Captain Sisko turned to O'Brien: "Prepare
a summary message to Fleet Intelligence, Chief. Worf,
begin working up the Defiant crew for a dangerous run. I
suspect we are about to be drafted."
    "Aye, sir," said the engineer and the security officer
simultaneously.
    "Sir," said Odo swiftly, "I would like to ac-
company-"
 "Of course you will," said Sisko without hesitation.




CHAPTER
       4

LIEUTENANT COMMANDER DAX was unsurprised when the
order came back from Starfleet Intelligence less than
three hours after the chief sent the priority message, even
though it was probably a fleet record for making a
decision of this magnitude. But she was nonplussed
when Benjamin called her into his office and said, "Old
Man, I'm going to have to leave Commander Worf
behind."
 "You're joking."
    "I need an experienced battlefield commander in
charge of the station. There are still Klingons about, and
the Founders might still come through the wormhole."
  "But what about Major--"
    Benjamin leaned close and whispered, as if the major
might hear them even through the Cardassian-steel bulk-
head: "Major Kira, in case you haven't noticed, is nearly
ready to have a baby. I cannot exactly see her squeezing
through the corridors with a phaser in each hand."

38

    "Can you see her manning the phasers on the De-
fiant?"
    "I sincerely hope it will not come to that, Old Man,"
Sisko winked. "This is an intelligence-gathering mission,
not special-ops. We'll stay cloaked, keep our mouths
shut, and our eyes open."
    Dax nodded. "Yes, I can see where that would be hard
enough on Kira."
    "I need Worf here, not because he can fight, but
because if he's here, he probably won't have to fight. Not
many commanders would attack an angry Ktingon with
several thousand photon torpedoes in his pocket, at least
not without a brigade. Worf stays."
    Dax swallowed. Sisko had a point, but Worf wasn't
going to like it. She was just as glad she wouldn't
be present when her old friend issued this particular
order.
    Worffs reaction was more sedate than Jadzia Dax
expected, possibly due to the growing closeness between
them. "No! This is not acceptable!" he growled.
 "Worf, those are the captain's direct orders!"
    "I will not be left behind like a--like a Ferengi! They
are my people, my problem, my mission!" The Klingon
clenched his teeth and began to look around, presum-
ably for something to throw. So much for his taking it
well.
    Dax's first impulse was to bolt, get away from the
raging bull, but she had long since learned that Worfs
Klingon rages burned themselves out quickly... even
when he had as much cause as for this one.
    "Commander Worf, yltamchoH!" The Klingon
blinked in surprise, freezing in mid-rant. "Do you still
have any honor left... or are you a verengan
Ha'DlbaH?"
    Worf said nothing. He stared at Dax. She swallowed,
facing him down. By Klingon law, Jadzia Dax had just
challenged Worf to combat... potentially to the death.




Am I his comrade in arms now? she wondered, or just his
woman? If the latter, she might be dead before his
Starfleet training could reassert itselfi Klingon women
did not lightly insult the honor of their men.
    Worf took a deep breath, then another, and Dax knew
she was safe. "I apologize for my outburst, Jadzia; I have
felt the rage since I first heard about the alliance."
    "Possible alliance," she corrected. "That's what we're
going to find out, Worf." She half closed her eyes, feeling
her own sense of shame at the honor of her old friends
impugned. "My gut still tells me it's not true, but we
have no choice: if the Klingons really are training at a
Jem'Hadar camp, it changes everything. It would
mean--"
    "It would mean having to rewrite the entire order of
battle," said Odo, having joined them so quietly that
Dax jumped at the sound.
    "Worf," she added, "Benjamin needs you here.
Who's going to defend the station if Gowron attacks
again... Kira? Before or after she gives birth? Julian?
Quark?"
    Worf sucked in a third deep breath and let it out in a
snort, curling his lip in disgust. "You are right. It is the
proper course of action for the captain to take. I will
change the voice-codes and command authority at
once." He stomped off toward the turbolift, pylon IV,
the Defiant.
    Constable Odo stared at the wreckage of the bench. "I
suppose the maintenance crew isn't terribly busy these
days anyway," he sighed.
    Not four hours later, Dax expertly tapped the impulse
thrusters to nudge the Defiant away from the pylon,
while her captain brooded over the transcript of the
recovered medical log.
    "Three contacts in this sector," said Kira, staring at
her sensor readout. "Standard lights, no hostile indica-
tors, no fire-control sensors... looks like a Lonatian

freighter and two Federation science surveys where
they're supposed to be, according to SigInt."
    Sisko didn't respond, but he didn't need to; the major
was merely stating for the log that there was no hostile
activity in the vicinity of the wormhole.
    "That freighter is a smuggler who sometimes works
with Quark, our resident one-Ferengi crime wave," mut-
tered Odo, not so much because it was important, Dax
realized, but merely to have something to say. Not even
Odo was immune from nervousness--though Benjamin
still sat silent as a statue.
    The Defiant seemed eerily empty with only the four of
them and two ensigns aboard, Janine Wheeler and
Taryak Amar. Dax missed seeing Chief O'Brien scurry-
ing about, adjusting controls that were already reading
perfectly, and she even missed feeling the longing gaze of
Julian on her neck speckles whenever he thought her
back was turned. Most of all, she missed the comforting
bulk of Commander Worf, his confident snarl, the savage
way he barked orders at the cringing junior ot~cers. But
Worf was needed on the station, and there was no rea-
son to risk the lives of the engineering senior-chief and
the station doctor:. as Benjamin said, this was an
intelligence-gathering mission... four days of tedium
at peak sustainable warp, cloaked; a few days of observa-
tion at Gamma GK-974 to quash the ugly rumor--or
confirm the even more ugly truth--and then another
four-day high-speed run back through the wormhole and
into DS9 again to transmit the intel, for good or ill.
    Well, here goes nothing... I hope! On her own initia-
tive, the Trill turned the ship and headed toward the
electromagnetic and gravitational singularity that was
normally invisible to the naked eye--except when a ship
passed throughrebut was lit up like a supernova in the
high-end of the spectrum from ultraviolet to X-ray.
"Shifting to warp two," she said. "Entering the worm-
hole now."




    The multicolored "tunnel-wall" effect encased the
ship like a cocoon, and Dax clenched her teeth: they were
flying invisible, thus unshielded, into the belly of the
beast... and Jadzia Dax feared what she might find
inside.

    Master Chief Petty Officer Miles Edward O'Brien
prowled around inside his "pit," the engineering well
from which he could, in a pinch, control virtually every
aspect of the station from weapons to environment to
rotation to communications--even, though few were
aware of it, to station movement, as if Deep Space Nine
were a gigantic, albeit slow, starship. Worf eschewed the
captain's office, preferring to command from Kira's
weapon station, for typically Klingon reasons, O'Brien
supposed.
    "Chief O'Brien," snarled Worf, becoming formal in
his agony, "will you please cease whistling? It is bad
enough I was left behind two days ago. I do not wish to
endure audio torture as well."
    The chief stopped, embarrassed; he hadn't realized he
was whistling so loudly. With a guilty start, O'Brien
realized he was actually happy that he wasn't on the
mission--but he was terrified for Kira, and for his and
Keiko's second child, artificially implanted in Major
Kira after Keiko was injured. Happy, frightened, and
guilty, his only outlet had been to sing, and the only song
he could think of would have been more appropriate in
Quark's, or in a Dublin pub, than in Ops.
    Again, O'Brien felt disturbingly as if someone were
staring at the back of his head. He couldn't resist the
temptation to turn around and look behind him; of
course, he saw only the wall of the well, and further back,
the doorless turbolift leading down into the rest of the
station. "Worf, don't you find this rather creepy?" He
gestured around. "This, I mean--the whole station is
empty, and now even Ops is deserted."

    "In fact," rumbled the Klingon, "I find the solitude
refreshing. I just wish the station were also empty of a
certain pair of Ferengi. I am uncomfortable having to
take Odo's place in watching them."
    "Oh, come on, Rom's not bad," said O'Brien, defend-
ing his budding prot~g6.
    "Rom is the brother of his brother! He is still under
the thumb of Quark."
    "He only goes there to eat; I haven't seen him palling
around with Quark since... since I don't know when."
    "I will reserve judgment," conceded Worf. That's
probably the closest he'll ever come to admitting he's
wrong about Rom, mused the chief.
    O'Brien glanced at the readouts on the power grid; he
had noticed some odd fluctuations in the past three days.
Whenever an intense electromagnetic field, such as a
starship, interacted with the EM field of the power
conduits, an interference pattern developed that the
chief could detect on some of his sensors. But there had
been no ship activity around the station since the Defiant
left two days earlier, and the fluctuations and interfer-
ence patterns persisted.
    "Probably one of the grids is flickering," muttered
O'Brien.
"Please say that again. I did not hear you."
"Talking to myself, Worf. That's what happens when
you're the last living being in a dead station." The
Klingon's only response was half grunt, half snarl.
    Spinning on his stool, Miles O'Brien touched three
screens in rapid succession, bumping up the scale of the
displayed interference pattern. He stared, puzzled. No
matter how he sliced the data, more than anything else,
they resembled starship fields interacting with the power
grid. But there was only one problem: there were no
ships. Sensors confirmed the only unnatural objects
nearby were small runabouts and one-man skiffs. Sud-
denly the floor lurched under them.




    "What the hell?" O'Brien exclaimed, gripping his
console as he stared at a sudden, inexplicable surge in
the pattern degradation of the power grids.
    "Chief, I have just lost all communications carrier
waves, and my sensors have darkened."
    "Commander, we were just hit by a huge electromag-
netic pulse!"
    "Is this an attack?" demanded the Klingon, his hands
already flickering across his battle stations; O'Brien's
view in the well was good enough to see Worf power up
all the station's weapons.
    "I don't think so, sir; I don't see..." The scanners
flickered in and out of operation; during the moments
when they worked, the chief scanned all headings, all
bearings, but saw nothing. "I don't see any ships. All I
see is--good God!"
    "What? What do you see? My instruments are blind
here."
     O'Brien stared in disbeliefi A partially functional
 video sensor showed a scene so bizarre, the chief could
 barely believe it was real: the entire subspace emitter
 superstructure had been sheared offJ "It looks like...
 no, can't be."
     "Chief O'Brien! I must have complete information if I
 am to command this station!" Worf seemed more snap-
 pish than normal, certainly more than the situation
 warranted.
     "Sir, it looks like the damage that would be caused by
 a ship colliding with the subspace emitter, but there are
 no ships out there. Wait a moment," O'Brien scanned
 for warp trails. "No sir, there's been no warp activity
 since the Defiant departed two days ago. We must
 have... maybe a meteorite?"
     "Or a cloaked vessel," growled Worf, curling his lip
 and baring his sharp teeth.
     The chief stared at his friend. "Worf, you're saying a
 shipma cloaked ship--sheared a piece of the station

 away?" Again, he stared at his readouts. "I said there's
 no indication of any warp signature since the Defiant
 left; before, even... not for two days!"
     "Then the ship has remained stationary for two days."
 Abruptly, the Klingon stared around Ops, as if looking
 for lurkers in the dark. "There is a spy out there. Has
 anyone beamed onto the station recently?"
    O'Brien checked. "No, not according to the records.
Of course, if someone beamed into, say, the habitat ring
and-- Worf, a ship just decloaked by the sliced emit-
ter!"
    "Shields up!" shouted Worf, but three events occurred
simultaneously: Miles O'Brien positively identified the
ship as a Klingon destroyer. A spherical object materia-
lized in the middle of Ops--the very middle, hovering
three meters above the deck, and a terrific flash bathed
the entire room in a hellish, blue-white light.
    O'Brien never had time to raise the shields. He had
grabbed the lip of the well while he leaned down to the
defensive-systems console. As the invading sphere
flashed, his right hand and arm jerked convulsively. He
grabbed them, and they throbbed angrily, the digits
tingling.
    "Worfl Worf, are you all right?" he cried, but then, the
tingling in his arm expanded until it enveloped his chest
and finally his brain; logy from the disruptor blast,
O'Brien discovered that he could not focus his eyes, and
he felt flushed and nauseated: symptoms of disruptor
stun/his confused mind finally concluded.
    The well had shielded O'Brien from the full force
of the bomb, else he would be down and out for the
count. Worf did not answer, and neither did the only
other person in Ops, a green ensign (literally green; she
was a Lysenian, tinted a charming teal) named...
named...
    The chief could barely remember his own name. He
dimly recollected something about shields, but he




couldn't for the life of him remember what they were or
how one went about activating them. As O'Brien stag-
gered to his feet in the well, he realized he could hear
nothing and could barely see; every eyeblink dragged
back the afterimage of the disruptor bomb that had just
exploded.
    Out--get out.t It was the only thought that screamed
clearly enough to be heard in the tumult of his disor-
dered brain. He tried to grab the lip of the well to vault
out, but his right arm still would not move. He stepped
on a console and managed to slither up the side like a
worm, wallowing onto the deckplates and tearing his
uniform and the skin on his knee.
    "Get... out." The task sounded reasonable enough,
just two words. But he couldn't make his body work!
O'Brien humped along on his belly, elbows digging into
the wire-mesh above the deckplates themselves, crawling
toward the turbolift. They're coming--they're here.t
    He reached the turbolift and rolled into it just as the
first, characteristic vertical patterns of a Klingon trans-
porter appeared in Ops: a dozen Klingons beamed
aboard Deep Space Nine, standing amid the bodies of
Worf and the young ensign.
    One of the Klingons looked vaguely familiar, but
O'Brien had no time to chat him up. They stared around
Ops, pointing disruptors in every direction. Strange,
thought a confused Miles O'Brien, why not bat'telhs?
That was a more usual weapon for a Klingon to carry for
hand-to-hand combat.
     The Klingons spotted the bodies immediately. One
 invader, the obvious leader, crouched low over Worf and
 examined him closely, then he snorted and rose, speak-
 ing rapid-fire orders: "Secure the rest of the station. Use
 the turbolift."
     That's my cue, thought the dazed engineering chief.
 "Computer," he gasped, praying that the disruptor blast
 hadn't burned out voice-recognition circuits, "en-
 gineering--stat!"

     The Klingons turned as a man to stare. "It is talking!"
 shouted the slightly familiar one.
     "No! Really, son of Noggra?" The sarcasm of the
 strike-force commander's response drew a round of
 snickering among the other troopers.
     Just then, the turbolift started to descend, taking
 O'Brien to his command destination. "The prisoner is
 escaping!" shouted the increasingly observant "son of
 Noggra."
    "Shoot the control mechanism!" shouted the leader,
but those were the last words O'Brien heard as he
dropped below the Ops level. All that he heard after that
was the shrill whine ofa Klingon disruptor, and then the
turbolift ground silently to a halt, the safeties tripping
until the computer could diagnose whether the lift was in
danger of fallingmand leaving Chief O'Brien lying half-
stunned on a platform, ten meters above the next deck
down. Level one and a half thought O'Brien bitterly.
    There was only one way down to the Promenade. In a
couple of seconds, he was going to be looking up into a
dozen angry Klingon faces. If he wanted to get down to
the next deck, he was going to have to jump--and pray
for a soft landing.
    Miles O'Brien was not an agile man, but his hands
were quick and his fingers had never failed him, not
while rotating a Bradford spar into place or curling the
most delicate fiberoptic cable into its connection. In the
dim light from Ops, he could see the power conduit just a
meter and a half below the lift platform... close
enough that with luck and a strong grip, he wouldn't
drop down the shaft to his death. But one hand still
tingled madly and barely worked.
    Brilliant, he thought, after twenty years, I've finally
become a maintenance monkey! He lay on his belly and
reached his good arm as far down and forward as he
could. The conduit was still well out of reach. He would
have to drop and make a grab as he fell past.




    "There--stop him!" shouted a voice in Klingon above
him. O'Brien didn't waste time looking up. He knew
who was doing the shouting. He muttered a quick wish
for the dexterity of the wee folk and lowered himself
headfirst over the side of the turbolift.
    Dropping upside-down through the air, it was all he
could do not to close his eyes--it would have been fatal.
He made a wild, one-handed grab at the power conduit
and connected! For a second, he balanced on one arm,
feet still up on the turbolift platform.
    But the chief discovered, too late, that a fine mist of
lubricant from the stone-age Cardassian turbolift tracks
had coated the conduit pipe... his hand slid right off
the side of the cylinder, letting him drop straight down-
ward.
    His shoulder and face thunked into the same conduit
he had just slipped from. This time, he wrapped his good
arm around it in a death grip, then his legs as soon as
they fell onto the steel bar.
    O'Brien swung around until he dangled freely from the
pipe, staring straight up into the nasty end of a Klingon
disruptor seven meters above. The Klingon snarled
something unintelligible that O'Brien assumed was
Klingon for "eat flaming red death!" and thumbed the
contact.
    The chief squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth;
his last thought was of Keiko, his beloved, and of his
darling little girl, Molly.
    O'Brien's next thought was to wonder how the
Klingon could possibly have missed such a thick target
as himself at such close range. Cursing, the attacker fired
again, and this time O'Brien saw the trouble: the electro-
magnetic power grid surrounding the turbolift interacted
with the essentially electrical discharge from the disrup-
tor, and the beam actually bent outward to pour harm-
lessly into the power mesh.
     The chief wasted no time contemplating his brush
 with the final reward. He reached down with one foot

and managed to kick open the maintenance access
ladder for servicing the conduit. Hooking his knees on
the rungs, he swung himself onto the inspection catwalk.
Must remember to thank the gentry, he swore, lest they
take offense and tie Molly~ hair in knots.
    The Klingon commander shouted something, and
O'Brien caught the word for "follow"; the chief grinned.
Let them try! I'd match myself against anyone, even
Rom, for crawling the hidden paths through the station./




0

CHAPTER
        5

WORF, SON OF MOOU, commander in Starfleet and cap-
tain of the Defiant (when Captain Sisko was not taking
the ship out for spy missions), loyal and honorable
subject of the Klingon Empire of a most ancient and
honorable house (a house that was experiencing a few
technical difficulties at the moment), awoke to a throb-
bing pain in his head. He sat up, wincing, trying to
reconstruct what had happened.
    As soon as he realized he was locked into one of
Constable Odo's own cells, and that a Klingon wearing
the uniform of a colonel general was staring at him
through the forceshield, Worf was able to make a shrewd
guess.
    The general's face was shadowed, deliberately, Worf
presumed. The Starfleet commander angrily opened his
mouth; but before he could speak, the captain said "Oh
yes, I will."
    "What?" thundered Worfi The voice... it is so famil-
iar, so--

     "You were about to say, 'You will never get away with
 it!' Were you not?"
  "You cannot succeed."
     "Oh yes, I can." The general grinned; "and you are
 going to help me, Worf, son of Mogh."
    Worf controlled himself outwardly, but his stomach
lurched, not just at the insulting implication of faithless-
ness, but at the increasing sense of familiarity about the
general. He was a Klingon from Worf's past, a face and
name he could not quite pull into the light, but one with
whom his destiny was intertwined, even before the
colonel general captured Deep Space Nine.
    Years earlier, back on the Enterprise, or even a year
ago on Deep Space Nine, Worf would have spit some
angry insult at his captor in response to the prediction
that Worf would sanction the loss of his own command.
But he was older; he felt older. And today, he did not
react as impulsively as the green lieutenant he once had
been. He said nothing, only rose slowly to his feet and
stared at the general from a distance of five meters--by
Klingon custom, far enough not to imply an immediate
challenge, close enough not to appear cowed.
    The general stepped into the light, and Worf sucked in
a breath of sudden recognition.
    "I am Malach of the noble and honorable house of
Razg." Behind Malach was a phalanx of a dozen Klingon
warriors. Something was peculiar about them, but for
the moment, Worf's concentration was fixed upon Colo-
nel General Malach.
    "Did you think I would forget you, Malach?" For a
moment, Worf could think of nothing else to say, though
myriad thoughts exploded through his brain. Malach/
 Malach . . . my blood brother.
    "A house of honor," continued the Starfleet Klingon,
"would not launch a sneak attack without much to gain.
And you have nothing to gain by attacking this station,
Malach, Son of Razg."
 Malach stared Worf full in his eyes, silently demand-




ing Worf remember the oath he had sworn as a boy to the
boy Malach. The general threw his head back and smiled
at the ceiling, eyes closed. "Oh, but we have so much to
lose, son of Mogh. We both have so much to lose." After
a moment, he snapped his head down and stared at
Wore "You know the fear."
    Well, if he is not going to mention it, I will not be the
first. "If the Founders come through the wormhole,"
insisted Worf, "we will stop them here."
    "I am sure you will fight well, son of Mogh, my
brother. And you will earn an honorable peace in Sto-
Vo-Kor," Malach curled his lip, "but that will not help
the Empire much. Or the Federation... I do not know
where your loyalty lies most, my brother; but either way,
if the Founders are not stopped here, they will over-
whelm both Federation and Empire. I launched this--"
"Criminal assault."
    "This military engagement not only for Klingons, but
for humans and their lackeys in the Federation."
    "So it is necessary to kill them in order to save them!
Is this what the honor of my blood-brother has fled in
favor of, a criminal act of cowardice?" It was a calcu-
lated thrust. Worf had not seen Malach for many years,
more than two decades, since they both were young boys
at the military academy in Emperor Kahless Military
City, in the year before the House of Mogh removed to
Khitomer. It was while Worf and Malach were at the
academy that they swore the blood oath. Worf was six
and Malach was eight, but the oath was official and
witnessed.
     Malach did not even blink at the deadly insult, which
 in any other Klingon would have provoked a challenge to
 fight to the death. In fact, he smiled. "You cannot anger
 me, my brother; do not even try. We have killed no one,
 and we will kill no one. I have issued strict orders: for a
 Klingon in my command to kill, or attempt to kill, or
 even to act in wanton disregard for Federation life on

52

this mission, is to earn the dishonorable death of a
traitor."
    Worf stared, astonished at sheer audacity of the gener-
al's lie. "But I felt the blast! I--" He froze as one by one,
the strands of observation pulled together at the center.
    The honor guard behind Malach carried disruptors,
but no bat'telhs. Disruptors could be set to stun. The
bat'telh could not. And in the beserk fury of battle, what
Klingon could resist taking an arm, a leg, or a head, if he
held the bladed crescent in his hands?
    And clearly, the bomb that exploded in Ops had been
set to stun, not kill, or Lieutenant Commander Worf
would not still be sucking air.
    Finally, the astonishing control that Malach exerted
when Worf--his own blood brother!--called him a
coward and impugned his honor, and that of the House
of Razg--not once, but twice!wbegan to percolate
through the commander's skull like the morning's first
raktajino.
    Worf was still at a loss for words; everything he had
seen or heard indicated that Malach was telling the
truth: that this was an invasion without casualties.
Having nothing to say that could advance his causem
and Worf was very clear where his loyalty lay--he stood
mute, waiting for his blood brother and captor to contin-
ue. It was clear Malach thought he could persuade Worf
to cooperate. The burden was on the general to push the
conversation.
    "My brother," said the general, "you must work with
me. I swore to Gowron that you would cooperate."
    "You should not have sworn for another. I will not
help you take control of this station."
    "Worf, I already have control of this station! These
troops," Malach indicated the warriors behind himm
they glared at Worf with nothing but contempt, knowing
who he was and seeing the uniform he wore--"are not as
circumspect as you and I." Malach grinned and




shrugged, acting more like a Cardassian plotter than a
Klingon, Worf thought. "I can give orders, but warriors
can also disobey. Your friends could die if I do not
maintain control, if I must pick another hero to do your
job."
    Worf hesitated, and knew he had nothing to gain by
open defiance--open defiance. Not yet. "What would be
my job?" he asked darkly.
    Again Malach shrugged. "The obvious. Herd the de-
feated into the portable cells, contact Starfleet, demand
ships to transport the hostages back to Federation terri-
tory in exchange for recognition that this station is now
Klingon territory." Malach raised a finger, curling his
lip. "And one more thing, brother: one of the senior
crew, the enlisted man, escaped. He will raise a force
among the remnants of the crew and lead a rebellion,
and people will die on both sides. Worf, your first duty
will be to track down the maintenance chief petty officer
who was on the bridge with you."
    The bridge? It took Worf a moment to realize Malach
meant Ops. "Where is he now?"
    "He has not left the station. Other than that, I know
nothing."
    Feeling a bitter taste in his mouth, Worf nodded. "I
will find O'Brien. You will give me your word as a
Klingon warrior and as my blood brother that no defend-
er will be hurt."
    Malach nodded faintly; it was enough. May the Em-
peror Kahless ensure it is enough, prayed Commander
Worf.
     "He could be anywhere," he growled. "O'Brien knows
 this station better than any person alive, except perhaps
 for Gul Dukat."
     A trace of a smile flickered across Malach's face. "For
 reasons that should be obvious, the gul is not presently
 available for service." Worf glared at the general, never
 having liked his absurdist humor even when they both
 were children.

     Malach nodded to one of his men, and the forceshield
 sealing Worf's cell from the rest of the brig vanished.
 Stepping forward, Worf stood nose to nose with the
 Klingon he once would have defended with his life. "You
 will deafly instruct the Starfleet ships when they capture
 you that I betrayed my oath only to save the hostages."
     "Nobody will capture me, Worf, so the situation will
 not arise."
  "It is inevitable."
    "On the contrary, it is utterly evitable. My men
control Ops, so there will be no communications until I
choose to initiate them through my ship. We destroyed
your subspace emitter, so even if one of your Federation
friends broke free--O'Brien, perhaps--and tried to call
for help, he would not be heard. The station is nearly
deserted, and your captain and his ship are in the
Gamma Quadrant. They will return too late to do
anything but marvel at the glory of the Empire!"
    Worf searched his memory. Was my brother always
such an egomaniac? he asked himselfi Taking a deep
breath, Worf agreed to the terms: "If leading this search
is the only way to protect the lives of my command, then
I will agree to lead the search."
    Malach grinned, in pleasure, not in challenge. "Wel-
come home, son of Mogh," he declared, not noticing that
Worf had, in fact, not exactly sworn to anything; the
statement was conditional.
    So it has come to this, thought the commander; I pass
from warrior to space-lawyer! His cheeks stinging from
the humiliation, Worf pushed roughly past his blood
brother toward the door. But as he passed one of
Malach's honor guard, Worf glanced at the warrior and
froze, staring.
 "You... know this man?" asked Malach curiously.
    "I have seen him before," said Worf in a strangled
voice, struggling to find his center of balance.
 "He is Rodek, son of Noggra. A fine family. He was




wounded in the Cardassian war and has lost the memory
of his former life, but he is a brave and honorable
warrior with an astonishing natural grasp of strategy. I
think he could perhaps command his own ship or cohort
someday." Rodek, son of Noggra, stood tall, his suspi-
cious gaze never wavering from Wolfs face.
    Never wavering, never recognizing. He did not recog-
nize the Klingon who was his brother in another life, his
real brother. Rodek, son of Noggra, was what he called
himself now, not knowing any better.
    But a year earlier, he had been Kurn, son of Mogh; a
year before, Kurn was Worfs brother, a general who
commanded his own fleet. "Perhaps I do not know him
after all," said Worf quietly, suppressing the emotion
that could--at the hands of his blood-brother--threaten
his brother's life.
    A year before, Kurn was unable to live with the shame
of his brother Worf dishonored, their house discommo-
dated. Kurn had demanded to die at his brother's hands
during the rite of Maukto'Vor, but Captain Sisko would
not permit it aboard Deep Space Nine.
    Instead, Kurn's brain had been whitewashed, his en-
tire identity obliterated, and the name Rodek, son of
Noggra, painted across the now-blank canvas. So really,
there is no more Kurn, and I have told no lie.
    Turning his face from Rodek, son of Noggra, Com-
mander Worf pushed through the honor guard and
exited into the outer office of Constable Odo. He
clenched his teeth and forced his hands to his sides, lest
he grab a weapon from the desk--phaser, baton, any-
thing!--and begin killing everyone around him.
    Seeing Kurn--Rodek--shook Worf more than he
allowed himself to admit. It was not just the sight of a
familiar, unfamiliar face; it was the knowledge of what
drove him to the horror of identity obliteration--the
pride of a Klingon, the face that must at any cost be
saved!
  The memory tasted like ashes, and Worf turned away

from Rodek, from the memory, from confronting the
damage wrought by the core of Worfs soul, the core of
any Klingon: honor. If honor led to this, the blank face of
what used to be Kurn, then what was honor but a bitter
joke played upon Worf by the cruel, jesting gods of
Klingon folklore?
    Worf did not look back. He was afraid the punchline
might be gaining on him.

    Jake Sisko, raconteur and troubadour, was engaging in
the time-honored tradition of mopery with intent to
gawk. He was stationed at his normal spot, on the second
level of the Promenade, at the railing high above the
people below, the place where he and his erstwhile
constant companion Nog used to hang to observe the
teeming ants on the Promenade. But with Nog off at
Starfleet Academy--where Jake always presumed he
would be forced to go one day, and which fate he had
escaped only by discovering a talent for writing--and
with the anthill mostly empty with the rumors of war,
Jake was more than usually bored.
    He amused himself by inventing fanciful stories for
each of the few people still puttering around the wide,
circular Promenade: this one was an unlucky gambler
hiding out from his loan sharks; another was a Cardas-
sian spy, surgically altered to look like a chubby mainte-
nance worker; a third was a rich merchant getting ready
to purchase the entire planet of Bajor for her own private
estate.
    Suddenly, a swarm of Klingons burst onto the scene.
For a moment, Jake was surprised at the vividness of his
own imagination; he often visualized invasions or ro-
mantic interludes, but never this distinctly!
    Then he gasped and leaned farther over the rail,
abruptly realizing that this was no dreamy hallucination:
this really was a sudden invasion of Klingon warriors!
    He stared, transfixed, as the tiny figures drew their
disruptors and swept the small, scattered crowd. The




victims collapsed into heaps where they stood, offering
no resistance. They don't even know what ~ happening! he
thought.
    He was about to bolt to the turbolift but stopped
himself, his heart pounding. What the hell was he going
to do, fight the Klingons bare-handed?
    It took only a few seconds for these thoughts to race
through his mind, then he saw a phalanx of Odo's
security force attempt to charge out of the security office,
only to be mowed down mercilessly by the Klingons. The
shrill whine of disruptors and the piercing throb of
phasers drifted up to where he stood, and in half a
minute, Jake began to smell the metallic tang of ozone
produced by the electrical discharges around both
weapons.
    He stood frozen at the handrail, staring down at the
tableau, unsure whether there was simply nothing he
could do and nobody to tell, or whether it was just
another manifestation of his own cowardice. The same
feeling of senseless, unreasoning panic gripped his gut as
he'd felt during the seige on Ajilon Prime, when he'd
deserted Dr. Bashir and fled randomly across the coun-
tryside.
    But even when he forced his panic down and desper-
ately tried to think of something to do, he still found
nothing! The security forces obviously knew as much as
Jake did and couldn't even get out of the squadroom that
had become their trap, and Jake's father, Captain Sisko,
was far, far away, on the other side of the galaxy, as a
matter of fact, in the Gamma Quadrant.
    "Where the hell is everybody?" he demanded of
himself. All right, Odo and Kira were on the mission
with his father, but where was Chief O'Brien? And where
was WorJ? Odo might have had primary responsibility
for crime on Deep Space Nine, but surely defending the
station against an armed Klingon assault was WoWs job!
Unless... Angrily, Jake dismissed the thought. He

 had no doubt about the Klingon's loyalty to the Federa-
 tion, after all, hadn't Jake's father personally picked
 Worf for the station security slot? He can't be involved
 he can't/Dad5 the best judge of character in all Star!leer/
  And then, staring down at the carnage--just begin-
  ning to feel the horrific sense of unreality of a witness to
  massacre--Jake saw him. It was Worf, no question. He
  still wore his red Starfleet command uniform.
     And he was leading the Klingon forces as they circled
 the Promenade, hunting down survivors and shooting
 them.
    "No!" shouted Jake impulsively. He dropped to his
belly, somehow feeling closer to the scene than when he
was standing over it. "No, you dirty... [" For several
minutes, Jake watched Worf clearly lead the Klingon
expeditionary force in a search-and-destroy pattern
around the lower level of the Promenade. Then the
Klingon traitor left a holding force on the bottom level
and led the rest up to the second floor, just below Jake. It
wouldn't be long before they searched the top floor too,
and Jake Sisko would be a cardinal anomaly in a sea of
casualty statistics, dead as a Ferengi's charity.
    For a moment, Jake broke through his own terror and
helpless rage to thank fate and the circumstances of
coincidence that his dad was not on the station. At least
one of us will live to see tomorrow, thought the young
man bitterly.
    At the thought, the rage boiled over into berserk fury.
Jake jumped up, leaned over the railing, and screamed a
stream of obscenities down at the traitor, Worf. What the
hell, I'm going to die anyway! He climbed onto the
railing itself, balancing precariously and hanging on to
the overhead catwalk. For the first time in his life, Jake
felt the fear of death drop away like a torn cloak, and he
felt himself filled with the recklessness of desperation
that produces heroes and martyrs. But in the tumult of
battle, the warrior didn't even hear the poet.


    But other ears did hear. As Jake balanced on the
handrail, one of the Klingons looked up and saw the
young man, the boy, furiously waving his fist. The
Klingon raised his disruptor and fired. The first shot hit
the railing beneath Jake's feet, causing his legs to spasm
with the electrical jolt. He lost his footing, barely grab-
bing the catwalk with his other hand to dangle twenty
meters above the floor that was littered with the bodies
of victims.
    The Klingon raised his sights for the second shot,
striking the catwalk itself. Another jolt of current flashed
through Jake Sisko. It was all he could do to cling grimly
to the bars, his face paling and his stomach convulsing
with the impact. He swallowed bile, knowing the next
shot would either kill him outright, or cause him to lose
his handgrip and plummet to his death below.
    But the most extraordinary thing happened. Staring
down at the man who would kill him, Jake saw another
Klingon, one wearing a much-decorated uniform of high
rank, reach out and grab the assassin's throat in a
headlock. The second Klingon yanked and twisted his
arms savagely, and the sniper fell to the floor, his legs
and arms jerking randomly! Even from Jake's height, he
could see that the Klingon's neck was broken: his own
comrade in arms had killed him.
    But there simply was no time to worry about the
vagaries of Klingon table manners, even without another
helpful blast from a disruptor, Jake was in imminent
danger of losing his grip and his young life.
     Terrifiedmespecially so, now that he thought he had a
 plan for escaping, but still might not make itmhe began
 to swing back and forth, desperately struggling not to
 look down or think about the huge, empty space below
 his feet. With every swing, he got closer to the opposite
 platform, until at last he hooked one bootheel over the
 lip. He shimmied and squirmed until he managed to
 haul himself up and onto the maintenance walk that ran

all the way around the Promenade, close to the ceiling.
He collapsed onto his stomach, utterly spent.
    Shaking, he peeked over the edge. His Klingon guardi-
an angel watched him narrowly, but made no move to
shoot. In fact, as soon as the officer saw that Jake had
made it, he turned back to the invasion, directing troops
to remove the body of the dead Klingon.
    Jake lay on the steel grid, panting and exhausted from
the one pull-up he had done! Absurdly, the thought that
echoed round his skull was of his father urging him to
spend more time on physical training two years before.
His face flushed as he remembered his snotty response:
"How many pull-ups do I have to do to pass the writers'
test, Dad?"
    Jake Sisko staggered to his knees, then his feet, and
jogged lead-looted along the platform, looking for a
maintenance hatch leading up out of the Promenade. If
he could get into the access tunnels and conduits, he had
a chance, assuming he didn't get lost and starve to death!
But beyond the immediate, he had no plan and no
strategy, except one: get as far away from the mob of
bloodthirsty Klingons, led by Worf the Betrayer, as he
possibly could.
    If I can just hoM on. avoid capture until Dad gets back,
he'll know what to do/And if he didn't? Jake refused to
consider the possibility.




CHAPTER
        6

MILES O'BRIEN WATCHED the carnage on the Promenade
from the grating of an air vent high above the main floor,
fuming with frustration--and feeling the most horrific
sense of ddjt~-vu. I've seen this before, he raged, but there
was nothing he could do. The air vent grill was bolted
tight, and even if he could remove it, all he could do was
drop ten meters to the deck, break his ankle, and then be
mowed down by the Klingon invaders.
    But what hurt most, tearing at his innards like a
Klingon bat'telh, was how quickly Worf had reverted to
his own kind. O'Brien ground his teeth as Worf led the
assault, rounding up the Starfleet and Bajoran personnel
who still remained on the station--then watching, doing
nothing, as the forces under his command poured dis-
ruptor fire upon them. The bodies fell to the deck,
twitching for a moment, then lying still. Odo's security
force put up a valiant fight, but without the changeling--
ex-changeling, O'Brien reminded himself---leading the
point-defense, and without benefit of Kira, Sisko, Dax,

 and, of course, the traitor Worf, the good guys were
 overwhelmed by the Klingons.
     The chief couldn't watch anymore; he was sick to his
 stomach. Turning his back on what used to be his
 station--his own friends, allies, comrades--Miles
 O'Brien crawled through the air vent, thanking his lucky
 stars that Keiko and Molly were safe on Bajor, attending
 a conference on ' vertical gardening" and playing among
 the springferns, respectively, and that his nascent son
 was still growing in the womb of Major Kira, the child's
 surrogate mother, where he was reasonably safe in the
 Gamma Quadrant.
    The thought struck O'Brien so hard, his head rang.
Bajor! He had to get a message out to the Bajorans. They
could send warships and contact Starfleet. O'Brien
slapped his comm badge, but all he heard was a persis-
tent, annoying buzz. "So, jamming the signal, are you?"
he muttered. "Well, anything you can fuzz, I can stabi-
lize."
    O'Brien began the long, slow descent to the engineer-
ing levels, where he could control every aspect of station
operations, including the entire communications sys-
tem. Obviously, the Klingons must have left some chan-
nels open, even if encrypted, after all, they had to
communicate with one another. It was just a matter of
finding the open channel and exploiting it.
    But he had one stop to make. He couldn't make the
trip alone, and he would also need an extra pair of hands
when he got there. God, I wish I knew where Rom was, he
thought. Alas, the Ferengi had been off-duty, and could
be anywhere from Quark's Place, just outside the air
vent grill, to his quarters on the habitat ring, to the cargo
hold.
    But there was one obvious second choice, the only
other person aboard that O'Brien could trust. "Next
stop, Saint Julian's Infirmary," he said.




    With no patients to care for and nothing much else to
do, Dr. Bashit was running diagnostics on the medical
equipment in the infirmary, some brand-new Starfleet-
issue, others left over from the Cardassian era. Not that
the station residents were unusually unhealthy of late,
but they were unusually absent... with the threat of
war with the Dominion, recent clashes and dire warn-
ings, it seemed to Julian that the entire station had
abruptly migrated to Bajor or even deeper into the
interior of the Federation.
    At first, he didn't even hear the screams, so deeply was
he concentrating on aligning the cortical stimulators just
so. Then he looked up, his mouth open in astonishment:
through the clear windows of his operating room, over
the desk of the head MedTech, and out the open door of
the infirmary itself, Julian saw people running in abso-
lute panic, closely followed by... "By Klingons?" he
demanded incredulously.
    The doctor bolted toward the open door, getting
halfway across his medical lab before the folly of run-
ning into a panic slammed home. He staggered to a halt,
then spun to take a quick head-count. He slapped his
comm badge and shouted, "Computer, emergency medi-
cal beam-out of four personnel from the infirmary to
the..."
    Julian paused. He slapped his corem badge again. It
did not even make the normal chirping sound, which
meant the computer was either completely offline or else
it couldn't "hear" the high-frequency, subspace throat-
clearing by which a comm badge got the computer's
attention. "Uh-oh," he said.
    "Doctor, what is it?" demanded the senior staffer
present, MedTech-2 Janaholt Jaas, still wearing his
greens from the one operating procedure earlier that day.
Fortunately, the patient had already left to recuperate in
her living space in the habitat ring.
     Julian stared out the door. Now it was mostly Kling-
 OhS running past, firing their disruptors as they ran. It

 was only a matter of seconds before one of them looked
 inside, saw the medical crew and took them out with a
 few, well-placed blasts.
     He looked around the room for a hypo to fill with a
 sleeping aid, a breakfast tray, anything to use as a weapon.
 Alas, Julian's technicians were too well-trained--they put
 everything away when the doctor was finished using it!
    By the time the first Klingon hesitantly poked his
snout into the infirmary, the three MedTechs had al-
ready caught up with Julian in figuring out what was
going on, and how little they could do about it. As the
attacker raised his disruptor and pointed it at the gaggle
of men and women, Julian caught himself thinking, You
know, it never wouM have occurred to me in a million
years to stock the infirmary with phaser rifles.
    The Klingon fired. Julian braced for the impact of
death, the physical blow he expected would end his short
life--worse, his Starfleet career!--in a flash of glory. But
the blow never came.
    Bashir opened his eyes. Evidently, Jaas had panicked
at the last moment in the face of certain death--/can
hardly blame the man.f---and had bolted sideways to
escape the shot, but instead of dodging the disruptor
blast, the poor chap had wandered directly into the
brunt of the blast radius, and in the process, had
completely shielded Dr. Bashir.
    The realization flashed through Julian's mind in a
microsecond, so quickly that the other three were still
just beginning their long, slow fall to the deck. Strange,
thought the doctor in his accelerated mental state, why
didn't they simply phase out of existence?
    But as Jaas was thrown forward by the convulsions of
his own muscles, Julian had a flash of absolute, utter
clarity, as if his spirit had just jumped out of his body,
out of time, and could spend hours or days figuring out
exactly what to do next.
    As the MedTechs fell, mown down by the disruptor
shot, Julian Bashir jerked convulsively in exactly the




same way, falling to the floor almost in unison with his
department petty officer. It was so perfectly executed
that one of the other enlisted technicians, MedTech-4
Yvette Tang, actually fell on top of him!
    This is crazy! This is useless... Surely, as soon as the
Klingons examined the good doctor and discovered he
hadn't attained room temperature, they would simply
slit his throat with a bat'telh or cave in his skull with a
well-aimed bootheel. Bashir stayed very still. His posi-
tion was very awkward, which was good, they were less
likely to examine him closely. But it was also very
uncomfortable, and Julian had to struggle against him-
self not to shift ever so slightly to a different position.
    Two Klingons stomped around the med-lab, nudging
their victims with toes and prodding them with meaty
forefingers. When one of the pair--the foulest smelling
Klingon Bashir had ever run across--leaned close over
the doctor and stared at his face, Julian didn't even
breath for nearly a minute.
    The attackers did not bother feeling for a pulse.
They're so damned cocky, thought Bashir. A bitter rage
tore at his insides as he thought about his dead comrades
lying around and on top of him. Outwardly, he was as
close to a corpse as you can be with a functioning
circulatory system and cerebral cortex. But inside, he
felt such desperate horror at such death and de-
struction... and for what? What did the Klingons hope
to gain from slaughtering the inhabitants of Deep Space
Nine? What the hell did they want with us? he raved, all
without so much as twitching a single muscle in his face
or body. Why, why, why?
    But his friends were unable to respond, and for
obvious reasons, the Klingons chose not to enlighten
him. So still in ignorance, Julian Bashir suffered being
dragged from the scene of the crime, out onto the
Promenade, and deposited among a large heap of bodies
a few meters distant.
  Bashir waited in mounting impatience for the Kling-

66

ons to go away, Instead, another batch came and dragged
all the bodies, the doctor included, to a new spot that
seemed no different or better than the old spot. Then a
Klingon non-com popped round and screamed at the
troops to haul them all back again.
    Lying against the bodies and trying not to move,
breathe, or otherwise reveal his continued presence
among the living, Julian suddenly made the astonishing
discovery that other bodies were also still living. He
didn't dare talk to them or try to find out if they, like he,
were simply faking death, but as soon as he noticed the
incongruity, Bashir began edging his hands out ever so
slightly to gently touch a carotid artery here, a wrist
pulse there. He shifted his eyes and observed long
enough to see that chests were rising and falling all
around him.
    In fact, to Julian BashiPs confusion, he could not find
even one, single dead body! Everyone he was thrown
against, everyone crowded into his particular heap of
bodies, was alive.
    Still, nobody else was raising his head to peek around,
so the doctor had to mimic them and not attract Klingon
attention. Every medical impulse in his brain screamed
that he should jump up and see who needed emergency
help, but if he were killed or incapacitated, that would
leave everyone without medical care now and into the
future.
    At last, his most burning question--did the Klingons
know that their victims were still alive?--was answered
in the affirmative: one of the "bodies" began to groan
audibly, and the sharp-eared Klingon non-com heard
her. He told his subordinates to "take her to the portable
cell right away, the damn disruptor is weariag off."
    The discovery simultaneously relieved and astonished
Bashir: the Klingons were deliberately avoiding killing
their victims! The thought was so boggling that he
almost stood up and demanded to know why.




    Then his question was answered. Someone who
sounded exactly like Lieutenant Commander Worf
stomped into view, bellowing at the Klingons: "Stop
prodding him with your foot, you miserable worm! I will
tear your cowardly eyes from your head!" The Klingon
grumbled and shuffled off, but Bashir was stunned into
paralysis. Wore My God, Worf was commanding the
attack/
    Unable to resist, Bashir raised his head slightly, peek-
ing over a stunned, barely clothed Dabo girl, he saw Worf
himself. Worf, the Deep Space Nine security officer; the
Klingon who had turned his back on the Empire for the
Federation; the man for whom honor and loyalty defined
his life. The traitor leading the assault upon his friends!
    Suddenly, Worf turned, seeming to feel Bashir's eyes
on the back of his neck. The doctor froze, not wanting
even to lower his head for fear of attracting even more
attention by the sudden movement. Worf scanned the
bodies for the source of the offending feeling, and he saw
Bashir, looked him right in the eyes.
    They stared thus at each other for a beat. Worf's face
was flooded with a sadness and desperation wholly
inappropriate and unexpected in the face of a Klingon.
Then he shook his head, so imperceptibly that Bashir
was hardly certain he had really seen it. Commander
Worf turned away and began barking orders in the
typical Klingon style, accompanied by threats and snarl-
ing denunciations of his troops' honor and courage, and
marched away to see to the comfort of other victims. He
did not look at Bashir again and did nothing to help him,
but neither did he make a move to order him restunned
or shifted to the "portable cell" where they'd taken the
previous, still-conscious prisoner.
    Julian lowered his head excruciatingty slowly. No one
else had noticed him. But he couldn't get past the strange
interlude or decide what it meant. He knew only one
thing for sure: something horrible and strange was

613

happening to the station's resident Klingon, and Worf
felt compelled to cooperate with the unexpected, inexpli-
cable invasion. But whether the compulsion was some-
thing the rest of them would understand, especially
Captain Sisko, Bashir could not possibly guess.
    The Klingons had stacked Dr. Bashir's heap of bodies
in a small room off the Promenade that once was, he
recalled, a bistro serving bad Klingon food. How grue-
somely appropriate, he thought bitterly. The Klingon
cook--whom Worf never patronized, saying he pre-
ferred replicated human food to badly prepared Klingon
food--had left with the first wave of emigrants, proba-
bly because he could only survive as a restauranteur with
a population density high enough that some were forced
to patronize his eatery by necessity. But the place still
smelled like rotting flesh.
    The other victims didn't object, and Bashir con-
cluded, without even examining them, that they must
therefore be stunned into unconsciousness. At the maxi-
mal stun setting, a Klingon disruptor, he remembered,
would put a human or Bajoran out for a least three
hours. So, probably, no one would be back for a long
time--unless they decided to move the bodies again.
    Before he could decide whether to risk standing up
and getting out, Bashir began to hear a strange metal-on-
metal scrape from above. He stayed still, desperately
wishing he could look up and see what was making the
sound.
    A moment later, he heard the wrench of some large
piece of metal, followed an instant later by a hushed
curse, then a loud clatter as an access hatch or panel or
something crashed to the ground a couple of meters
away.
    Julian felt a wild surge of reliefi the curse had carried
the distinct accent of an Irishman and could belong only
to one person. After two minutes of total silence, during
which O'Brien was surely waiting and listening to see if




any Klingons would come running at the noise, Bashir
heard a loud thump, followed by another round of
whispered cursing and moans of pain, and "damn this
ankle! Why don't I just cut the bloody thing off and be
done with it?"
    On impulse, Bashir remained motionless. He wasn't
sure why. "Oh no," said O'Brien aloud. "It really is you.
Julian, why'd you have to be standing in the way when
the bastards started shooting?"
    The shock of the engineering chief was genuine, and
Bashir realized that O'Brien didn't know that the bodies
were still alive! For Julian, it was the first thing he'd
noticed, shoved up against them. Once again, he was
amazed at the quickness with which lay people assumed
a still, unmoving body must be dead.
    He almost rose and reassured O'Brien that he was still
using up the station's oxygen, but a morbid impulse
stopped him, made him lie still and listen to what
O'Brien might say over his "corpse." Probably the closest
I'll ever come to hearing my own eulogy, he rationalized.
    Miles O'Brien was silent a long moment, long enough
that Bashir risked peeking through slitted eyelids. The
chief looked less like a mourner than a student faced
with an unexpected question, trying to drag the right
answer from a dimly remembered study session. His
brow furrowed as he bit his lower lip, staring up at the
ceiling he had dropped from. "I guess you weren't a bad
sort," he said at last. Bashir almost leapt up in outrage at
the faint obitutary. "Though you did get on my nerves
once in a while. Well, quite a few times, actually. To be
fair about it, it was pretty constant; you always... But
enough of that. I really will miss you, Julian. You were a
good friend, and that makes up for a lot.
    "I'm sorry this isn't more flowery, but I was never
good at that sort of thing, you know. Maybe your friend
Garak could've put something together that was a bit
more, well, like you'd probably have done yourself. But
what the hell. It's the thought that counts, isn't it?"

    During the final sentence, a thoroughly offended Jul-
ian Bashir was creeping his unseen hand closer and
closer to O'Brien. With the last question, he grabbed the
chief firmly by the ankle, sat up suddenly with a wild
look, and snarled, "No it bloody well isn't the thought
that counts, you ungrateful rat!"
    Chief O'Brien gasped like a dying man and turned
white as an albino Denebian bloodworm. He stared at
Bashir as if the doctor were a zombie come back from
the dead to vent his wrath upon the living. He skittered
back, face now turning the pinkish-orange color of
Quark, mouth working soundlessly.
    "You... you... you/You son of a--" For the next
several seconds, O'Brien let loose a string of cussing that
would have put a drunken Klingon to shame and make
him take the pledge, resolving to devote the remainder of
his life to good works among the unfortunate. Alas,
Bashir missed the performance by talking over it, a
terrible breach of swearing etiquette.
    "You heartless bolt-tightener! Is that the best you can
do? I wasn't a bad sort? I got on your nerves? And what,
exactly, did you mean by saying my friendship made up
for a lot of things? What things?"
    The two stared at each other for a long minute, while
O'Brien's color and respiration slowly returned to nor-
mal and Bashir's ire subsided into inarticulate grum-
bling. They both looked away, glancing at each other
sidelong.
 "That was a pretty dirty trick," accused the chief.
 "Well that was a pretty pathetic eulogy!"
    Another long, uncomfortable silence. "Friends
again?" offered the doctor at last, feeling more guilty
than he would ever acknowledge about having played
dead and then scared the bejesus out of Chief O'Brien.
    "I guess so," agreed the chief, picking at his boots. "I
guess I could've been a bit more, you know, deep about
it. But I couldn't think what to say. I'm not really a
talker, you know."




    "I know. And I'm sorry, Chief." Bashir shrugged.
"Usually, the person delivering the eulogy has a pre-
pared text, anyway. I'm sure you could have done better
if you'd had some preparation time."
    "Now why didn't I think--I mean, yeah, that's proba-
bly true. Friends again, I guess." He suddenly jabbed a
thick, pink finger at Julian. "But don't you go tellin'
anyone about this, right?"
    Julian half-cringed back, smiling and putting his
hands up. "Oh, I wouldn't breathe a word of it! I
promise." He smiled and winked, and O'Brien scowled.
"And now, the burning question: What in heaven's name
are the Klingons doing here? And why is Worf helping
them?"
    "I think we'd better wait on those burning questions,
if you don't mind, Julian. We've got a more important
problem: How do we transport two wanted escapees off
the Promenade, and where do we find reinforcements?"
    "Ah," said Julian, annoyed that he had missed the
more urgently practical point. "I think I know someone
who might be able to help us."  "Who?"
    "Why, you should know, Chief. You were the one who
suggested him."
    Shaking his head, O'Brien hoisted Julian up until the
doctor could grasp the lip of the air vent. After pulling
himself into the shaft, the doctor returned the favor,
reaching down to haul the chief up beside him. They left
the cover on the floor. The Klingons weren't likely to
notice it, and there was no way to replace it in any event.

CHAPTER
        7

CAPTAIN BENJAMIN SISKO sat cross-legged in his command
chair, tugging absently at his beard, frowning, scowling,
grunting, and, in general, annoying the living daylights
out of Jadzia Dax. "Benjamin," she said sweetly, "will
you please stop fidgeting?"
    "I'm troubled, Old Man. Something just isn't right
here."
 "What?"
 "That's why I'm troubled: I don't know what."
    "Ah, my favorite kind of complaint." Dax pushed a
few buttons uselessly. They were still en-route to Gam-
ma GK-974, a solid day into the four-day journey, and
there was nothing to look at: no anomalous stars, no
peculiar gas clouds, no inexplicable energy sources, no
chronotron particles or emergency beacons or planet-
devouring alien machines. They had crossed paths with
three Dominion ships along the way, but, cloaked, the
Defiant had slipped right past without so much as a
ripple in the ether, not even a warning call via subspace.




    And Jadzia Dax was, quite frankly, bored to tears.
Dax had never been a patient Trill, not in any of his, her,
and its bodies. Jadzia was not as impatient as Curzon,
but in times of tedium, the spirit of Curzon tended to
loom forth and make his complaints very public.
    She swiveled around to observe her oldest non-Trill
friend, now her commanding officer. But Sisko said
nothing more.
    "You know," said Kira to Dax's right, "I'm feeling
something too."
 "Something?"
    Kira made a face, looking down at her bulging abdo-
men. "I think the littlest O'Brien is going to be a
dancer," she added. "But that's not what I meant. I keep
looking over my shoulder, like something's coming up
from behind."
    Dax swiveled back to the sensors, grateful for some-
thing to do at last. "Well, nothing that I can find, Nerys."
    "I know. I already... already..." Then Kira was off
on another sneezing spell, spoiling yet another hand-
kerchief. Take it easy, Dax counseled herself. Bajorans
can't help it.
    Yes she could! rejoined the wicked side of her brain,
the Curzon-devil. She couM have refused to take the
baby. She did it just to annoy us!
    Constable Odo still paced back and forth in the rear of
the bridge, hands clasped behind his back. He was
nervous, Dax could tell; he was not happy. In fact, even
through the plasticity of Odo's face, Dax could tell that
the erstwhile changeling was actually frightened. "I
think we're all just jumpy being out here," he said in his
sexy, gravely voice. "This sector is empty enough that
there's no reason anyone would be looking here. And
nobody knew we were coming... it's not as if there
were any ships around the station when we left."
  "Yes," said Sisko, "I noticed."
  Odo nodded, mistaking the captain's disappointment

for the constable's own relief. "Yes, that's at least one
good thing to come from this war: at last the station's
population is down to a manageable size."
    Sisko glanced at Odo and couldn't help grinning. He
winked at Dax. "So, Constable, how do you suppose
things are getting on back at the station?"
"Oh, I'm sure my deputies have things well in--"
"With an unsupervised Quark on the loose back
there?" added the captain, as if innocently completing
his thought.
    Irritated, Odo opened his mouth to reply before
realizing someone was tugging at his fetlock. He con-
tented himself with a loud "Hnh!" and turned to face the
forward viewscreen, ceasing his pacing at last.
    But Sisko was not clone worrying about his feeling,
Dax noticed. "Benjamin, what's really bothering you the
most?"
 "I just don't like coincidences, Old Man."
 He paused, and she raised her eyebrows.
    "Well, for example, it was quite a coincidence that the
Klingons didn't manage to destroy the ship until after it
passed through the wormhole."
    "True. But the Levanians could have made a monu-
mental effort to break through the wormhole, thinking
the Klingons wouldn't dare follow and kill them right
out in the open."
    "Then there's the matter of the log we found. Think of
the astonishing coincidences connected with that log!
First, the Klingons blow up the entire Levanian ship, just
to stop us from discovering intelligence about this
Klingon-Jem'Hadar training camp, but they don't de-
stroy the very log that will tell us!
    "Third, somebody tries to erase the log with a magnet-
ic sweep. But who? And why? Was there a traitor aboard
the Levanian ship? If so, why destroy the ship and attract
our attention? Or was it the doctor himself, afraid that
someone wouM find the log?"




    "Well, those are good questions, Benjamin." Dax
pursed her lips, trying to visualize a set of circumstances
that would lead the Klingons to pursue and destroy the
ship, but not to destroy the most important piece of
evidence aboard the ship. After blowing it up with
Project Renarg, why not pump a few more torpedoes
into the shredded hulk before the Defiant arrived?
    "And then," continued Sisko, "there's the most curi-
ous coincidence of all: the entire medical log is erased,
hundreds of hours of routine medical reports... except
for just a few words that just happen to be the very clues
we'd most be interested in!"
    Dax exhaled noisily, resting her chin on her hands.
"That is pretty coincidental," she admitted. "You've got
a point there."
    "If you ask me, it is entirely too much coincidence all
around."
    Throughout the exchange, Kira had been turning her
head back and forth like a spectator at a tennis match.
"Oh, come on!" she exclaimed at last, "are you actually
working yourselves into believing this whole thing is an
elaborate conspiracy? But why? If someone wanted to
lure us off to destroy us, why hasn't he struck already,
like right here?" She gestured around them, meaning the
sector they traversed, Dax presumed.
    "You've got a point too," she pronounced. "The
problem here, from a scientific standpoint, is that we're
speculating way, way, way beyond the data. All we know
is that a ship was destroyed, the medical log gave us a
clue to a possible secret Klingon base in the Dominion,
and that Starfleet has directly ordered us to check it
out."
     She looked to Odo for another opinion. The ex-
 changeling shrugged. "In light of the orders, I don't see
 that we have any choice, Captain."
     There was a long pause, during which Benjamin
 continued tweaking his beard and squirming. He's really

bothered by this mission, she realized, and the thought
worried her: almost invariably, Benjamin Sisko's intui-
tion was far smarter than it had any right to be. "For the
moment," he said at last, "Constable Odo has the
winning argument. Until we have a lot more substantial
evidence than my fretting and a few strange coinci-
dences, we must proceed on course to examine this...
Gamma Gamma Kilo niner seven four."
    His face lightened, and Dax knew he had thought of
something for her to do. "In the meantime, Old Man, I
want you to go back and examine the record of the
automatic sensor logs taken while we passed through the
wormhole. If there were a warp-speed chase going on
that ended there, we might have picked up evidence of
the ion trails left behind the ships."
    "I'm on it, Benjamin," she said, already calling up the
raw data.
    The Defiant, like other Starfleet ships, automatically
scanned 360 degrees heading and bearing around itself,
unless the science officer specifically turned off the
autoscan, for "silent running," for example. But Captain
Sisko had thought it more important to have advance
warning of anyone approaching, and Dax had continued
the scans.
    Normally, the autoscan logs were kept only twelve
hours before being erased and recorded over. But Jadzia
Dax had discovered ages ago that sensor logs were
inadvertently shadowed whenever the ship overwrote
them, and the "echo" could still be retrieved as long as
four days later, if one had a well-trained retrieval demon,
which, of course, Dax developed for every new ship or
command she served on, including the Defiant. Thus,
even though the book declared it impossible, she was
able triumphantly to announce her success three min-
utes later, preceded by a computer-generated fanfare
sound.
 "Got it! I have the logs."




 "Miraculous, Old Man."
    "Was there ever any doubt?" Dax reviewed them
carefully for ion trails. The critical period was just before
they entered the wormhole and just after they exited into
the Gamma Quadrant. The sensor autoscan did not
work properly inside the wormhole itself.
    "This is... peculiar, Benjamin," she said after a few
moments.
    "Peculiar?" said Odo, looking as puzzled as one can
look without actually changing expression. "Peculiar in
what way?"
    "Everything on our side of the wormhole looks per-
fectly normal. But on the Gamma Quadrant side, all the
ion trails come from different directions."
    "So?" Odo still didn't understand the significance, but
Dax noticed that Benjamin was starting to smile grimly.
    "Odo," she said, "do you think everyone involved,
Klingons and Levanians, met for the first time right at the
wormhole and started the chase there? What did they
do--flip a coin to see who would be the chaser and the
chasee?"
    Kira leapt in immediately, protecting her friend Odo
from Dax's sarcasm. "Well, maybe somebody else was
chasing the Levanian, and... and the Klingons tried to
head him off at the pass. But he snuck through first."
    "It's a possibility, Kira, but it's starting to smell
suspicious," Dax replied.
    If Odo noticed her sarcasm, he didn't react to it. "Are
you saying that the chase might have been planned? That
they gathered, then created the illusion of a chase to
catch our attention?"
    "That's... a chilling thought, Constable. Is that the
kind of thing criminals might do?" That was, of course,
exactly what Dax already suspected, but now they had
entered Odo's realm: the criminal mind.
    "Commander, criminals can and do contrive anything
they can to hide the truth. It's the sort of thing a Ferengi

 would do by second nature, and I daresay even a Klingon
 could think of it if he turned his mind to being devious.
 Ferengis have no corner on duplicity." Odo folded his
 arms across his chest, pleased to be able to contribute at
 last to the mission. "If my guess is correct, and they did
 stage this so-called chase for our benefit, then that calls
 into question all the evidence about a Klingon-
 Jem'Hadar training facility."
    "And raises a most disturbing question," interjected
Captain Sisko. He sat cross-legged in his command
chair, steepling his fingers and resting his lower lip
against them, deep in thought.
    "You mean why, Benjamin. Why would the Klingons
want us to think they were in league with the enemy?"
    "Well," said Kira, struggling for an explanation, as
they all were, "Cardassians do that sort of thing all the
time: keep everyone guessing whom they're allied with
today and who's about to receive an unexpected visit
from a Cardassian battle fleet."
    "But Klingons aren't Cardassians," griped Dax. Damn
it, can't anyone in the Federation understand the Klingon
concept of honor? It was a neverending source of frustra-
tion for the Trill. In her many lifetimes, she had more
than once fought alongside Klingon blood-brothers and
sisters, developing a tremendous respect for that culture.
Neither she nor any Trill could ever understand the
shortsighted view of the Federation and the Empire
toward each other. When both sides allowed it, they
worked so perfectly together!
    "Tell me about the ship, or what was left of it," said
Odo, who had not, Dax remembered, ever seen it.
    Dax waited, but the captain said nothing. So she began
to talk. "The ship was wonderfully eerie... a dead
hulk, no gravity, no air, and not even a ghost aboard."
    "Doctor Bashir--" Odo said the name as if he sus-
pected the good doctor was not the quadrant's most
reliable witness to anything--"Doctor Basfir reported
finding Levanian remains aboard."




"Well, in a manner of speaking, I suppose," said Dax.
Odo scowled, shifting his hands to the behind-the-
back hold. He had yet to master the lifelike hand
movements of a "solid." "What does that mean, Com-
mander? Either you found Levanian remains, or you
didn't."
    "What she means, Constable, is that we found a fine
mist of vaporized cells that contained Levanian DNA."
    "Exactly," said the constable, who deafly had read the
report closely and was leading them along a train of
criminological deductions. "You found, in fact, no bod-
ies! Despite Doctor Bashir's extravagent claims to the
contrary."
    Kira was staring back at her chum. "What do you
mean? They found what was left of the bodies after the
Klingon bomb."
    "Really?" Odo leaned forward inquisitorally. For a
moment, Dax realized what it must feel like when the
man actually suspected a person of a crime, and she felt
a pang of pity for Quark, which she quickly suppressed.
    Odo asked the next question in his cross-examination.
"Was the bomb blast evenly felt throughout the ship?"
    "No," she answered. "The aft end suffered much less
damage. That's where we found the medical log, still
more or less intact. Apart from the erasing, I mean."
    "And also where you would have expected to find the
bodies of Levanian crew members, also 'more or less
intact.' Wouldn't you?"
    Dax looked at Kira, who stared back, hand on her
belly again, waiting for another kick. "He does have a
point," the Bajoran admitted.
     Lieutenant Commander Dax turned back to Odo.
 "Are you saying there never were any bodies? That the
 Levanian body cells were just... sprayed in before-
 hand?"
     "I'm saying," clarified the constable, "that we don't
 know that there ever were any living Levanians aboard
 that ship, and now we can't even establish that there was

an actual chase before they arrived at the wormhole.
Isn't that interesting?"
    "Old Man," said Sisko, "I am starting to get a very bad
feeling." The captain leaned forward, raising one finger
as if pointing to the overhead. "Let's pretend, just for a
moment, that there never really was any pursuit, no
Levanians, and no Klingon-Jem'Hadar training facility.
We're right back against my original question: Why
should the Klingons want us to think they're allied with
the enemy?"
  "Uh oh," said Kira, staring down at her console.
    "What?" asked Dax, hurriedly scanning for close
encounters of the Dominion kind: nothing.
    "I think I just figured out a reason they might, I say
might, want to trick us."
 "Which is?" asked Benjamin Sisko.
    "Which is--exactly what we're doing. Going out
chasing a green puffin."
 "A green puffin?" demanded Dax.
 "A snipe, a red herring, whatever."
"That," said Sisko, "is exactly what I was afraid off"
"You mean they wanted to lure us out here? Or'just
away from the station?" Dax was already starting to get
angry: she still could not accept the idea that Klingons
would actually ally with the Jem'Hadar, but she could
buy more easily the notion that they could trick Starfleet
into worrying that they were allying with the Jem'Hadar,
enough that they would order the Defiant through the
wormhole to check on the rumor--and away from the
station, leaving it defenseless against... "An attack?" she suggested.
    "That's a terrible thing to say, Old Man, and I'm
afraid you may very well be right."
    "Again?" Dax felt the Curzon memories start to rise in
fury at having been tricked once again by the Klingons.
Maybe, corrected Jadzia Dax to herselfi "On the other
hand, Benjamin, this is all still speculation."
 "Yes," added Kira. "What if the original information




is true after all? If we turn around because we suddenly
get paranoid about the Klingons, we'll be disobeying a
direct order from Starfleet, and we'll never know wheth-
er there really is a joint training camp."
    Odo now turned 180 degrees and began to argue the
other side. Dax was annoyed, but she understood he was
only doing his job: examining every aspect of the evi-
dence, just as he would for a particularly puzzling crime.
"Captain, it's important we never lose sight of the
duplicitousness of my people. They are perfectly capable
of either allying with the Klingons, or else tricking them
into thinking they're allied. Or even of taking the form of
Klingons to trick us into thinking they're allied."
    Sisko turned to look back at Odo. "You sound like
you're saying that no matter what we do, we may be
wrong."
  "I'm afraid so."
  "That there is no right choice."
  "Well, I didn't say that, exactly."
     Sisko rose from his command chair. Everyone else fell
 silent and waited for the captain's decision. "Kira's
 point is welt-taken. We have direct orders from Starfleet
 to proceed to Gamma GK-974 and investigate the
 possibility. But my primary duty is to defend my com-
 mand, which is the station."
     "Captain," interrupted Major Kira softly, "are you
 sure you're not being, um, unduly influenced by the fact
 that Jake is still back there?"
     Benjamin Sisko paused a long moment. "Of course I
 am," he admitted, "and why shouldn't I be? Jake is my
 son, but there are still other civilians aboard, including
 children. Not everyone has left. It is my duty to defend
 them."
     "So you're just going to throw out all the evidence
 aboard the Levanian ship?" Kira seemed amazed that
 the captain would make such a decision. She spent too
 many years in the Bajoran underground, thought Dax,
 saw too many kids die.

    "No, Major. I have weighed that alleged evidence
against the points that Odo brought up, and I find the
thesis lacking credibility." Sisko turned to Dax. "In the
end, Old Man, I trust your judgment about Klingons
more than I trust an unknown medical log on a de-
stroyed ship. Ensign Wheeler, plot a course back to the
wormhole at maximum warp and let me know when it's
ready."
    "It's ready now, sir," said Janine Wheeler, as quiet as
Kira had been. Neither she nor Taryak had participated
in the conversation on the bridge. They had almost
faded into invisibility, trying to stay out of the way of the
senior officers.
    "Engage," said Sisko with finality. Kira shrugged, and
Odo frowned.
    Dax wasn't sure what she felt. she was hardly unaware
of the huge gamble the captain was taking: if it turned
out they were wrong, and there was no attack, the station
was fine, and then the Klingons and Jem'Hadar staged a
joint attack on the Federation... well, everyone aboard
Deep Space Nine might as well bend over and kiss .their
careers goodbye, that is, assuming they and Starfleet
Command managed to survive long enough to come to a
parting of the ways.
    Wheeler turned the ship expertly, of course. She was
only an ensign, but she had spent eleven years in Starfleet
before attending the academy, rising to the rank of
senior chief petty officer. The ensign engaged maximum
warp.
    The ship surged forward, but, almost instantly, it
wrenched back to impulse power and, simultaneously,
every warning horn, tocsin, and klaxon on the bridge
began to shriek: crash warning/
    Dax instantly transferred control to her own console
and veered hard to starboard, praying that whoever or
whatever was heading directly toward them had the
same emergency procedure. When seconds passed and

83




they hadn't turned into a huge fireball of matter-
antimatter reactant, she breathed a sigh of reliefi
  "What the hell was that?" demanded Sisko.
    Dax tapped furiously at her console, backing the
Defiant away carefully. "Urn, Benjamin, you know that
feeling you've been getting about us not being alone out
here? Well, you win the blue ribbon for intuition."

0

CHAPTER
       8

Now THE CAPTAIN was pacing furiously on the bridge, and
Kira was desperately trying to reconfigure her sensors to
target on a cloaked... what? "Captain," she said, "any
idea what kind of ship we're facing? Cardassian, Romu-
lan, Dominion?"
 "Try Klingon?' snapped Sisko.
    "They're not supposed to use cloaking technology,"
said Dax.
    In a pulak's eye! thought the major. "Maybe this one
has a problem with authority figures," she said politely.
The Trill could be so touchy about her Klingons, espe-
cially now that she was romantically involved with one.
"Or maybe he's not even a member of the official
Klingon fleet. Dax, after this long, don't you think
everyone in the galaxy, public and private, has managed
to beg, borrow, or expropriate cloaking technology from
somewhere?"
    Dax said nothing, but she snarled, which Kira took as
grudging agreement.

84                                                         85




    "I don't know that this has ever happened before,"
said the captain, landing at last in his command chair.
"Two cloaked ships, no shields, facing each other blindly
with phasers and torpedoes." He smiled, but without
mirth. In fact, he looked a little like Shakar, leader of
Kira's resistance cell, and now boyfriend, sort of, some-
times. "I can't say I like being the test case," Sisko
added.
    "On the other hand," mused the science officer, "there
was a subspace surge just as we missed that did look a
little like the warp signature of a Klingon bird-of-prey.
Khitomer class, ironically enough."
    Kira stared longingly at the shields console. "Sir,
maybe we should just drop the cloak and raise shields?"
    "Mm-mm," said Dax, emphatically shaking her head,
"can't power up the shields until we complete dropping
the cloak, but the bad guy can fire a torpedo as soon as he
starts powering down his own cloak. And that would give
our friend almost five seconds to torpedo us into constit-
uent atoms."
    "Perhaps if we simply made a speed-run back toward
the wormhole?" Odo suggested.
  "N c'      "
     o nance, said Sisko. "Major Kira, what would the
Klingon do?"
    "He'd follow along behind, guessing where we were
headed or following the ion trail, shooting randomly.
Eventually, one of his torpedoes or disruptor blasts
would slide right up our warp engines, and we'd light up
the sector." At least that~ what I'd do, she added to
herselfi
    "I don't understand how the ship followed us in the
first place," continued the constable. "Isn't the cloak
working?"
    "Evidently," said Kira, "otherwise we'd have been
destroyed by now." She found her hands actually shak-
ing. I'm no coward! Whatg happening to me? Then at
once the explanation sprang into her forebrain: it~ the

86

baby, stupid/ She forced her hands to remain on the
weapons console, though she had a nearly irresistable
impulse to touch her belly, feeling for her baby's kick.
    No/Keiko~ baby, Keiko and O'Brien ~. . . not mine/
Not for the first time, she wondered whether she would
really be able to give the child up, having borne it for so
many months.
    But now was not the time to worry about it; trembling
or not, she had to force her hands to dance across the
console, teasing out whatever slight sensor readings she
could, waiting for a partial lock or even a manual target.
Something to shoot at. Now was the time for Kira the
major, not Kira the mother.
    So began the slow, deadly dance, each ship maneuver-
ing blind and invisible, reaching out with gentle fingers
on the triggers of terrible weapons. First to stumble loses/
thought the young major from Bajor.

    "What?" demanded Miles O'Brien, jerking upward
and banging his head against the ceiling of the ventila-
tion shaft. "You're not planning to invite that doddering,
old fraud, are you?"
 "Old? He's no older than you!" retorted the doctor.
 "Well, he acts like a grandfather."
    "And you know as well as I that you're the fraud. Mr.
Garak is the real article."
    "Oh, and I suppose you're in Garak's league?
Bashir... Julian Bashir. Secret agent!" O'Brien
sounded distinctly nasty. "All right. Then I don't want to
involve us with that middle-aged, competent, but totally
untrustworthy Cardassian spy!"
    "And why not?" responded Dr. Bashir, irritated that
his friend still, after all these years together, didn't seem
to trust the judgment of Bashir, Julian Bashir. There was
something about the hard-headed master chief, some-
thing annoying. "Garak may sometimes look like a
traitor or act like a traitor--"




    "And flap like a duck and quack like a duck. Julian,
he's a duck! He may not be a spy anymore, but head
games are his blood, Julian. We're much better off trying
to get to the subspace emitter and repair it, so we can call
for some help, than wandering around the station look-
ing for the last surviving member of the Obsidian
Order!"
    "Have you got an envirosuit in your pocket? Do you
think the Klingons will leave the airlocks unguarded? I
really hate to do this, Chief O'Brien, but I'm afraid I'm
going to have to make it an order."
    O'Brien stared incredulously. "Julian, you're ordering
me to help you find that Cardassian threadneedle?"
    Bashir took a deep breath. He so rarely pulled rank, it
felt like pulling on an old overcoat that had shrunk over
the years. "I'm afraid so, Chiefi"
    Miles glared at him for a moment. "Aye-aye, sir," he
said tonelessly, and Julian felt the sting. Friendship is
only possible between equals, he remembered. Until the
crisis was settled, Julian and Miles would have to be
Lieutenant Bashir and Chief O'Brien.
    The chief set out along the shaft, scuttling so very like
a spider that Bashir could barely keep up. O'Brien was at
home in the nooks and byways of the station, but the
doctor had never climbed up a turbolift shaft in his life
and had only rarely crawled along a ventilation shaft.
The experience took him back to his carefree days in the
Academy, where only a ventilation shaft connected the
male and female cadet quarters.
    It was hot and very dry work. The air in the shaft was
thoroughly scrubbed of water vapor, to reduce the possi-
bility of molds and airborne bacteria spreading through
the station, and within a few minutes, the skin on
Bashir's face began to crack, and his eyes, leached of
moisture, felt achey and heavy. He tore his uniform at
the elbows and knees, then started working on the skin,
but he had to press on. And of course, Miles--Chief

88

O'Brien, that was--didn't complain, so neither could
the officer.
    So creeping, scuttling like rats, they closed on the
barricaded tailor's shop, desperately hoping the once
and future Cardassian spy had managed to hold off the
Klingon invaders. Bashir knew that O'Brien's heroic
plan to warn Star fleet was something between despera-
tion and despair. If they were to have any hope of
remaining free and retaking the station, they would need
allies, as many as they could get. Bashir was already
thinking ahead, beyond Garak, about whom they could
trust in a pinch.

    Quark was "tending bar" when his brother, the white
sheep of the family, burst in screaming incoherently
about some silly disturbance or other. Quark put the
phrase tending bar in quotation marks in his mind
because the reality of tending bar included, he was pretty
sure, having actual paying customers, which were in such
short supply lately that he was seriously thinking of
packing up and moving to someplace more rollicking,
like Vulcan, perhaps.
    Nevertheless, there were two remaining customers: an
ancient, retired Bajoran judge and, of course, the peren-
nial Morn, forlornly drinking Rigelian bloodwine and
spinning the Dabo wheel, though there were no gorgeous
Dabo girls to take bets. While there was even a single slip
oflatinum in Morn's pocket, it was Quark's Ferengi duty
to relieve him of it.
    Quark was scurrying from behind the bar with a
trayful of drinks, one for Morn and four for the judge,
when Rom charged into the room, grabbed his elder
brother by the elbow, and caused Quark to spill the
entire tray over Morn's table, lap, and head.
    "You blithering idiot!" screamed Quark at his hyperki-
netic sibling. "You... you altruistic nonprofit volun-
teed Look what you've done! Well, that's going to come




out of your--" Quark paused, groping for words, he had
been about to say "wages," but of course, Rom no longer
worked for his brother. Instead, the little Ferengi had
taken the most un-Ferengi-like tack of becoming one of
Chief O'Brien's engineers/ Worse, he had allowed his
own son, Nog, to run away and become a decidedly
unprofitable cadet at Starfleet Academy, an embarass-
ment surely caused by Rom allowing Nog to fraternize
with the hu-man boy Jake Sisko.
    Quark still worked his mouth, though now no words
came out. But Rom didn't even notice. He was still
shouting something about barbarians or invaders or tax
collectors--the Ferengi word he used could have meant
any of the three.
     "We've been invaded by tax collectors?" shouted
Quark, suddenly realizing what his brother was saying.
  "Worse!" responded Rom.
    Quark was puzzled. "What could be worse than tax
collectors?"
"Klingons! We've been invaded by Klingons!"
Quark stared at his obviously demented brother.
"Rom, ring up the sum! Klingons can't collect taxes here,
it's not their financial jurisdiction!"
    Suddenly, Rom seemed to go crazy. He grabbed Quark
by his lapelsw"my best suit!"mand shook him vigor-
ously enough that when he let go, Quark's ears rang and
his sense of balance was halfway back to Ferenginar.
    "Open up your ears, brother!" bellowed Rom, eyes
almost as big as his lobes. "The station has been invaded!
For-real invaded, by Klingons, not tax collectors, and
they're killing people in the Promenade, just outside the
bar!"
    Dizzy, Quark grabbed hold of the nearest stationary
object, Morn's head, to steady himselfi "What are you
babbling about? There are no Klingons!"
    Just then, the loud and unmistakable noise of a
disruptor sounded just outside the open doors of

 Quark's Place, followed by a series of screams and the
 battle-shouts of Klingons in full cry. Quark vaulted over
 a chair and dashed to the door. After a second, he turned
 back. "We've been invaded by Klingons, you idiot!" he
 snapped.
    "That's what I've been trying to tell you! And they've
taken over Ops, and the comm grid is down, and we're
alone and cut off and I want... I want..."
    With two long strides, Quark bellied up to Rom and
shook his fist under the younger Ferengi's nose. "I'll
earbind you if you say one word about wanting your
Moogie!"
    Rom sniffed but didn't say the hated phrase. "I was
fixing a weird comm grid problem that was piping all the
Ops communications down to a public restroom on the
Promenade when I heard Worf say something about
the subspace emitter being sheared off, and then there
was an explosion, and then I heard the voices of Kling-
ons, andre"
    "Rom, will you shut up! I need to think. We have to do
something, but should we bolt with the loot or stay and
defend the place?" Quark heard another volley of dis-
ruptor blasts, followed by a pathetic, few phasers in
return fire. "Well first, we'd better at least shut the door!"
    The two Ferengi ran in opposite directions, Quark to
the door and Rom to the two customers, pushing and
shoving them out the rear exit. Quark poked his head out
for a moment. The battle seemed to have passed right by
Quark's Place. Presumably, the Klingons wanted to
secure the entire Promenade before they started assault-
ing the shops, one by one. But Quark had no illusions
that that wouldn't be the next phase of invasion: plun-
der! Why else would anyone attack anything? he thought.
War is just organized robbery anyway/
    Then he pulled the heavy doors closed and threw the
brand-new deadbolt. The old Starfleet-supplied lock
would probably have lasted about five seconds, he fig-




ured, or just long enough for the first Klingon to set his
disruptor on the highest setting and vaporize the locking
mechanism. The new duridium bolt should be much
better... twenty seconds of disruptor fire, if they were
lucky!
    Then he ran back to Rom, who was already cleaning
out the latinum safe into a tablecloth. "Rom, we're not
leaving! We're going to stand and--hey, how did you get
my safe open, you little sneak-thief?"
    "I pick your lock every couple of days," answered the
young Ferengi without a trace of embarassment, "just in
case of an emergency!"
    "You do?" Quark stared at his brother with new
respect. Maybe there~ hope for him yet, he thought.
"We're not going to be driven away by a pack of wild
Klingons, Rom! This bar is mine, and I'm going to fight
for it!"
  "Good for you, brother!"
    "Help me move the cash register. I've got a little
Klingon surprise hidden under the deckplates!"
    Quark stooped and began tugging at a barely visible
tab that poked from the deckplates no more than two
centimeters--any larger, and he figured that formerly
shapeshifting goon Odo would have found it. But it was
devilishly hard to get a grip on such a small bit of metal!
Sudden shouts, followed by the pounding of a steel-shod
bootheel against the door lent urgency to his tuggings.
    At last, the trap flew open with a groan, just as one of
the Klingons outside shouted to use a disruptor, as
Quark had predicted. "Hah!" snarled Quark, poking an
arm into the black dark hole and retrieving first one,
then another, phaser rifle. The heavy shoulder-weapons
were a little too big for Ferengi hands, but Quark
supposed they would manage.
     "Where did you get those, brother?" asked Rom,
 staring incredulously.
  Quark looked up, annoyed at the query when he

should have heard congratulations at his cleverness.
"From Mrs. O'Brien's magnificent phaser collection in
the schoolroom!"
    "Uh, that doesn't look like something Mrs. O'Brien
wouldw"
    "Oh for acquisition's sake, Rom! What difference does
it make where I stole--I mean bought--I mean found
them. Take one and shoot anything big and warlike
coming through that door!"
    "Yes, brother!" Rom fumbled the rifle when Quark
tossed it to him. As it twisted and spun, finally falling to
the deck, Quark squawked and dove for the ground,
cringing; the gun didn't fire, fortunately.
    "Rom, you idiot! It's not enough you ruin the family's
reputation by becoming a hu-man engineer... now you
want to fly me?"
    "Uh, I'm sorry, brother." Sheepishly, Rom picked up
the rifle and hefted it. "Does this feel a little light to you,
Quark?"
    "Light? Light?" Quark bared his sharp, crooked teeth
at his brother. "Well, why don't you just hang the first
Klingon corpse from the barrel to make it heavier?"
    "Oh, here's why it's so light." Rom stared into a slot
he had just opened. "Uh-oh."
    A slow, red, creepy feeling spread through Quark's
innards. "Uh-oh? What do you mean, uh-oh?" Gingerly,
he turned his own rifle upside-down and popped the
hatch.
    It used to hold a battery, the battery that supplied
the phase-energy that supplied the phaser shots. "It's
empty," announced Rom, master of the blindingly
obvious.
    Quark suddenly felt nauseated. He quietly buried his
face in his hands as Rom ticked off a list of possible
suspects.
    "... and he could have traded the batteries for a can
of Hyperian beetle snuff," the engineer finished trium-
phantly.




    A defeated Quark shook his head. "It doesn't matter
who took it, you imbecile. The point is, my entire family
is now as good as dead."
    "Don't be silly, brother--the whole family isn't going
to die!"
    "Oh! Really? How is that possible?" the bartender
drawled skeptically.
 "Well... Moogie isn't even here."
    Quark stared at his brother for a second. "Rom, get
your lobes into the bolthole!"

0

CHAPTER
       9

THE KLINGONS WERE still pounding on the doorlock,
which was a brand new, duridium deadbolt Quark had
just bought from a Lonatian trader. He hated bargaining
with them so much--they spoke only in rhyme, and one
had to conduct negotiations in iambic hexameter to get
anywheremthat he had allowed the trader to get the
better of him.
    Well, at least we'll get to see whether he actually
cheated me or merely overcharged. Quark dashed for the
Ferengi bolt-hole on the heels of Rom, who was still
Ferengi enough to grab the bag of latinurn en passant, the
pitiful fruits of all the years of Quark's labor in the bar.
The Ferengi were practical businessmen, and they always
believed that no matter how good things were going, at
any moment, the marks might figure out the actual rules
of the game, at which point, they would storm the
Ferengi shops with torches and pitchforks.
 Thus, it was standard Ferengi business practice,




though never formalized into a Rule of Acquisition,
always to build a last-ditch escape tunnel, or bolt-
hole, into every Ferengi establishment. In fact, "block
his bolt-hole" was a common Ferengi expression mean-
ing "don't give him any options or room to nego-
tiate."
    Rom dove over the bar and hit the deck rolling, just as
a final kick from the lead Klingon snapped the duridium
dead-bolt like a wooden spoon. Hah, you lantern-headed
Faav lizard! thought Quark, already imagining what he
would do to the Lonatian if he ever caught up with him
again; he's not a trader... he's a traitor/
    Rom grappled with the ventilation grating in the
bulkhead; Quark elbowed him aside and grabbed for it
himself. They wasted precious moments in a wrestling
match for who would get to open the bolt-hole and
escape first, but a blast from a Klingon disruptor that
split the difference between the two Ferengi settled the
matter: Rom had his hands on the grill for the moment,
and Quark leapt back screaming threats and impreca-
tions at the attackers, allowing his brother to wrench free
the metal grating.
    The Ferengi bolted into the hole in reverse chronologi-
cal order, the younger brother going first. Just as Rom
cleared the lip, the first enraged Klingon leaned over the
bar, saw the escaping proprietor, and bellowed an order
to halt immediately. "Yes sir, right away sir!" screamed
Quark to confuse the behemoth. While the Klingon
vaulted the countertop, Quark dove through the hole
after his brother.
    The Klingon made a blinding lunge and barely man-
aged to catch one of the Ferengi's boots, but Quark had
just had one of the Dabo girls, Deppi An, polish the
footwear before she emigrated--and the Klingon's grip
slid right offi
    Quark scuttled backward like a spidercrab. The Kling-
on's shoulders were much too broad to fit into the bolt-

 hole, but, of course, he could stick his gun-hand inside.
 And he did.
    But a Ferengi bolt-hole would be suicide without a
back door to slam in the face of the pursuing enemy! As
the Klingon shoved his arm and one shoulder into the
hole, bending to bring one angry eyeball into view and
his disruptor to bear, Quark lashed out with his foot and
kicked the "panic panel."
    With a bang like a huge, Cardassian firecracker,
explosive bolts blew three rods made of DS9 hull
material across the tunnel, blocking the entrance,
and incidentally impaling the Klingon's arm in the
process. He screamed in agony as one of the rods passed
right through his forearm. Then his Klingon machis-
mo took control, and he clenched his razor-sharp
teeth and fought back another scream. But for all
intents and purposes, the bolt-hole was permanently
blockaded.
    "Let that be a lesson to you, Rom," said Quark,
gingerly retrieving the pinioned Klingon's disruptor,
which had fallen inside the tunnel; "always trust tradi-
tional Ferengi values, like the bolt-hole, ahead of new-
fangled, duridium technology."
    They scurried through the "tunnel"--actually the
gap between the shops of the Promenade and the
station core, too small even for Ferengi to crawl through
comfortably--as it made several right-angle turns.
They dropped through a hole in the floor, then wriggled
up a ladderway. When Quark and Rom stopped at last
to catch their breath, there was no line of sight between
them and the Klingons, not even a good three-cushion
shot for a projectile weapon. "Ah, I have a question,
brother," said Rom. Quark said nothing, he was too
busy staring back the way they had come and thinking
about the wreckage of his business, his standing in the
Ferengi community, and his life. "Where are we
going?"




    "Straight to the Land of Perpetual Poverty," muttered
Quark, "not the Divine Treasury, not the Lake of Lat-
inum."
"Actually, I meant where are we going right now?"
Quark shrugged. What was the difference? With the
bar gone, occupied, in enemy hands, one hiding place
was as dead and worthless as another.
    "Well, if you don't have anywhere in mind," said
Rom, "I suggest we find Chief O'Brien. He probably
wants us to, uh, defend the station or something."
    "Perfect! Why not?" Quark turned to glare at his
brother. "It's not as if I had anything to live for anymore!
Might as well go out in a blaze of bankruptcy."
    Rom still sat in the tunnel unmoving. "Well?" de-
manded Quark, "take me to your boss."
 "I don't know where he is!" wailed Rom.
    Any minute now, he's going to start blubbering for
Moogie, predicted Quark. "Look, Rom, there's nothing
more to do here. We're going to have to abandon the bar
and the station and get help from somewhere. We'll head
for the cargo bays and try to steal a runabout. Then,
when the hu-mans and the Klingons finish fighting it out,
we'll return in triumphant glory to reopen the bar."
Suddenly, he saw a faint metaphoric glimmer at the end
of the proverbial bolt-hole. "Say... maybe the Federa-
tion will pay us a reward!"
    "We can't abandon the station, brother. The chief
would never forgive me!"
    Quark rolled his eyes. "Well, aren't we just as likely to
find O'Brien in one of the cargo bays as well? Getting off
the station and getting help is probably the top priority
on his mind, too." Quark didn't mention his own idea
what was the most probable "top priority" thought in
O'Brien's mind at that moment: justifying himself be-
fore the Divine Treasury, or wherever it was hu-mans
went when they were fried into a cloud of submicronic
dust by a disruptor blast.

 "Well, you may be right," conceded Rom.
    "Am I ever wrong?" added Quark, his bad mood
returning as the Federation reward receded farther and
farther in his mind, hidden behind a mountain of dirty,
dangerous work.
    Rom looked dubious, but he seemed to have no better
plan. The two Ferengi set out through the bolt-hole,
trying to find the main ventilation shaft that they would
take toward the cargo bays.

    Chief O'Brien kept a pretty face, but inside he was
groaning and complaining like a bent, old woman strug-
gling up Tara hill. The extended crawl through the shafts
and vents was killing him. He didn't want to admit he
was getting to be an old man, and he surely wouldn't let
Bashir see him crippled and limpingrathe kid was
thinner than O'Brien had ever been, and wiry enough to
slither like a snake through the narrow holes of the
ventilation system, and Miles O'Brien would be damned
before he'd let on how much he was hurting!
    It would be different if he were alone, better, but with
another person bumping up against his feet every few
seconds, the chief's chest tightened and he felt more than
a dollop of frustration, exacerbated by Bashir's incessant
chattering.
    "How far do you think we've crawled, Chief?. I'll bet
it's at least a couple of kilometers. I never realized how
extensive was the ventilation system in this station! I
guess that makes sense, though... I mean, it has to
supply air to thousands of people and filter the atmos-
phere of every room on Deep Space Nine. Have you ever
thought of installing lights along here, Chief?. No, I
suppose there's no need... I wish you'd let us use hand-
torches, instead of these glowtubes, but I agree there's
too much danger of the Klingons tracking the electro-
magnetic fields produced by the current-flow in flash-
lights."




    O'Brien stopped so suddenly, Bashit ran right into
him, yelping in surprise. The chief turned his head; his
body was too tightly wedged to move. When he spoke,
his voice was more than subtly tinged with irritation:
"Will you please kindly shut the hell up? Sir?"
    A few moments before, he wouldn't have thought it
possible, but O'Brien found the ensuing silence even
more troubling. He felt guilty. Bashir wasn't a bad sort,
really, just a bit of a blatherer.
    "Garak's shop is just ahead, Julian, if you're still
interested in that wash-up," O'Brien continued in a
gentler tone. "I think he sleeps there too."
    "Oh, he won't be there," predicted the doctor. "Kling-
ons and Cardassians mix like acid and base."
    O'Brien stopped again, but this time Bashir was
farther back and avoided bruising his cheek against the
chief's boot again. "If you'll pardon my asking, then why
the hell did we just crawl all the way around the damned
Promenade?"
    "I expect him to have left, but I hope he left behind a
clue to his whereabouts." Bashir's voice floated from the
darkness beyond the red light of the glowtube. It was
strange to talk to a person whose face was shadowed.
O'Brien never realized how much of communication
depended on visual cueing; he felt he was talking to
Bashir over a comm link.
 "Why would he leave a clue?"
 "So I would know where to find him, of course."
    O'Brien rolled his eyes, but Bashir probably couldn't
see it in the dark. "He left it for you to follow?"
    "Of course; he knows I would try to find him, were I
able to do so. Who else could serve as the nucleus of the
resistance force against the Klingon occupation?"
    "But he wouldn't know the station was being invaded
until the Klingons burst into his shop. There'd be no
time for a note to you! And the Klingons would find it
and use it to hunt him down anyway."

     "I'm sure he had advance warning, Chief. He probably
 heard you and Worf talking about it up in Ops."
    O'Brien began crawling again; the annoyance pro-
voked by the conversation was getting him agitated
again. "Julian, you think the station tailor has planted a
bug in Ops?"
      "Why not? He's also the only resident member of the
Obsidian Order."  "Ex-member."
    "Chief, there is no such thing as an ex-member of the
Obsidian Order of Cardassia. No matter what Garak
may say. 'Death will not release you,' as they say."
    O'Brien merely grunted in response. He was too busy
trying to fit through a particularly close section of the
tube.
    If the shaft narrowed any further, though, O'Brien
would stick; he was already cursing himself for not
following Keiko's advice and losing a couple of inches
around the waist. I'm sure that skinny bastard Bashir is
having a grand, old time. But he crept forward.
    They came to a sharp bend that intersected the main
shaft. The course they followed was a long, circular
route--"a commodius vicus of recirculation," thought
the chief--circumnavigating the Promenade, and the
right-hand bend led inward, toward the core, right about
the point that Garak's shop should be. "I think we're
here, Julian. I think this turning is the air-supply to
Garak's place."
    "What turning? I can't see a thing over your
enormous--ah, boots."
    "It's up here. You'd better go first, sir; if it's a wrong
turning, I might not be able to back out again."
    O'Brien crawled forward past the T-intersection, al-
lowing Bashir to squirm into the very narrow gap and
hump forward on elbows and belly.
    The chief's glowtube was fading. Time to crack the last
one, he thought. But before he did, he poked his head


into the black-dark and thought he saw a faint glow of
light in the distance, diffuse, as if it were reflected off a
dull material with a low albedo.
    After a couple of minutes, Bashir's voice came from
far down the darkness. "I see light, Chiefl I can see into a
room, and it's definitely Garak's shop... I think."
  "Wait, you think it's definite?"
  "Nearly so, I'm pretty sure."
  "You can't tell?"
     "I mean," said the doctor, "that I think it used to be
Garak's shop, but it's been turned." "Searched?"
 "By somebody with a wrecking crew, it looks like."
    "Can you break open the grill and make your way out?
Julian? Julian?" Now where had he gone?
    O'Brien turned and crawled along the inward shaft as
fast as he could. As the glow of light became strong
enough not to deny anymore, he found another baffle, an
S-turn; negotiating that took time and ingenuity--he
imagined Bashir had just bent around it casually without
giving a second thought to his thicker partner.
    Around the baffle, O~Brien saw what Bashir had seen,
and the stylus-thin doctor was right: it had been Garak's
shop! The grill was missing. Since the chief hadn't heard
it wrench out, he presumed the Klingons had already
pulled it off when they searched the room, but the baffle
was clearly too narrow for any Cardassian (especially
Garak) to squirm around, or a Klingon, for that matter,
preventing a search of the shafts by the invaders.
    Chief O'Brien crawled to the lip of the shaft and
lunged out, head-first; there was no way to turn around
in any event. He fell onto his hands, and his right wrist
spasmed in pain, provoking a yelp from the chief, hastily
cut off in case they were not alone.
    The doctor came running. "Chiefl Good heavens, I
entirely forgot to tell you it was all right! Please forgive
me." Bashir instantly noticed the way O'Brien was

flexing his hand and wincing. "Let me fix that for you,"
said the doctor, fishing out the medical kit he could now
reach.
    Bashit played the cylinder, whatever it was, up and
down O'Brien's wrist, and the pain ebbed quickly. The
chief took the opportunity to look around the tailor's
shop, trying to make sense of the chaos the Klingons left.
Racks were broken apart and the pieces flung into
corners, walls were torn out, the desk was smashed, and
Garak's computer screen was kicked in. And everywhere
were clothes, or their remains: shreds of teal and emer-
ald, happy pink and crimson, somber mauve, brooding
cobalt, maroon, and midnight, epic argent and auric for
trim... what once was the wardrobe for every nefarious
character who slunk the Promenade or stalked the
corridors of Deep Space Nine, from Klingon to Ferengi
to Bajoran to Starfleet captain.
    Now, the ruler of Garak's shop would be nothing but a
king of shreds and patches; he could adorn himself as the
world's most colorful beggar, or be misapprehended as a
wandering Ferengi rag merchant.
    Bashir began to tour the shop, muttering inanities to
himself "All right, my clever, Cardassian friend, what
devilishly brilliant hiding hole could you have--" But
O'Brien rushed first to the door to check whether they
were likely to be dodging Klingon disruptor blasts in the
next few minutes. He listened carefully. Hearing noth-
ing, the chief crept close enough to the door to activate
the auto-open.
    The door remained shut, and O'Brien bumped his
nose against the door hard enough to break the probos-
cis. "Damn it!" he yelped, pulling away a hand dripping
blood. Then the nose began to throb, then itch, and he
felt a terrible need to sneeze, which would have been
terribly painful, he knew.
    Gritting his teeth, he stomped back to the doctor.
"Loog, Duliab," he said, wincing from the pain, "I




habboo bobber ooh, bu' cabboo... ?" He pointed at his
nose, as if Bashir wouldn't notice without a visual aid.
    "Chief, Chief, how do you get into so much trouble in
such a little bit of time?" Shaking his head, the doctor
once again broke out his medical tricorder and repaired
the damage.
    O'Brien sniffed a couple of times, satisfying himself
that the nose really was straight once more. "Thanks, I
particularly appreciate the bedside manner." He turned
his back and returned to the curiously inactive door.
"They must've cut power to the automatic servos," he
announced, "probably to deactivate any automatic secu-
rity systems. The Cardassians left a few surprises on the
station, if you remember."
    "Oh, how could I forget? Just the picture in my mind
of the entire Ops crew crouching behind control panels
while Gul Dukat's alarm system fired..."
    The chief tuned Bashir out, concentrating on forcing
open the doors despite the inactive servos and the high-
friction sliding tracks. When they were wide enough
for O'Brien to exit, he poked his head onto the Prome-
nade.
 "My God," he breathed; "it's completely deserted!"
    "No bodies?" asked Bashir, his head appearing di-
rectly below O'Brien's, giving the chief a start.
    "Looks like your hypothesis was correct, Julian. I
don't think they're killing anyone. There's no blood,
either. So where would they take everyone?"
    "They talked about a portable cell, whatever that
is. Probably some sort of forcefield gadget they've
rigged."
    "Clever," said O'Brien. "It means they don't have to
waste manpower actually guarding the prisoners." He
stepped back into Garak's tailor shop. "So what do we
do now? You took charge, remember?"
    Bashir shrugged. "The only thing we can do, we find
whatever message Garak left us."
 "And if he didn't leave a message?"

    "Or we can't find it? Then... then I guess we crawl
back into the ventilation system and try to find some-
body else. Or we find suits and try to make it to the
subspace emitter. Don't ask mereI'm a doctor, not an
insurgent!" With the final admonition, Bashir resumed
his hunt for a mythical message from an Obsidian tailor.




CHAPTER
      lO

THE SEARCH WAS ON, and O'Brien found himself drawn,
unwillingly, into his friend's fantasy. So maybe Garak
left a message... so what! You can't trust him farther
than a pregnant Irish bull!
    But Bashir was obsessed, and Chief O'Brien really had
no better plan. So they searched every corner of the
shop, looking for an invisible message.
    And they found it. Actually, horrifically enough, it was
O'Brien who spotted the ink scrawl on the wall, near the
smashed remains of computer, below the trim, above the
deck-mounted mike pickup for the main ship's comput-
er, ahead of the holo-projected fitting dummy (now MIA
with the death of the servos), and behind the intact
latinum safe. "What the hell is that?" demanded
O'Brien, squatting to stare at the strange symbols.
"Looks like chemistry," he said. It was his least favorite
subject at school.
    "That's exactly what it is," said Bashir excitedly,
on his hands and knees to stare at the scrawl. "It's

Cardassian biochemistry, actually... a Cardassian
amino acid, you might say. It's part of their DNA; it
can substitute for cytosine when a human mates with
a Cardassian. Urn... corrigor? Corregidor? No--
corigan something." He leaned close, counting some-
thing.
    "What is that supposed to mean? A Cardassian amino
acid--is he hiding somewhere where there's a lot of
acid?"
    "Corigan Nine-Five, a rare, amino-acid disorder of
Cardassian children that causes them to be born with no
cerebral cortex, kind of like anencephaly in a human."
    "Well, that certainly fits," said O'Brien, but again, the
sarcasm was lost on Julian, who seemed never to notice
it.
    Bashit struck a pose, resting his chin upon his palm,
the elbow resting upon his other arm, which folded
across his pencil-thin chest. "But what could Garak
possibly mean by drawing a picture of Corigan 9-5?"
 "That he felt his brain leaking out his ears?"
     "If you wanted to conceal information from a
Klingon, what would you do?"
 "Tie it to a carrier-tribble?"
 "I'm serious, Chiefl"
    "All right, I'm sorry, Julian." O'Brien paced; his brain
seemed to work better on the go. He kept his eyes on the
deck, so as not to stumble across the strewn debris and
detritus. Something tugged at the tip of his forebrain, a
thought--where could a Klingon never look? What
would they never think of?. What does Worf lack, for
example? he asked himself.
    Suddenly the chief snapped his fingers. "Julian, I've
got it! What does every Cardassian have, but few Kling-
ons possess7"
 "I shudder to ask," quipped the doctor.
    "That's it exactly! A sense of humor. Cardassians love
to pull intricate, complex gags on their friends and




enemies. They mock, they gloat, they laugh at everyone
else. They pull pranks, like that alarm set-up you men-
tioned: Gul Dukat wasn't content to set it and leave; he
wanted to watch us sweat, so he could laugh at us."
    "You're saying if a Cardassian wanted to conceal
information where a Klingon would never find it, he
would--"
    "He'd hide it in a joke, Julian. A play on words, a
pun."
 "Corigan. Corridor?"
    "Too obvious. Besides, the corridors were crawling
with Klingons just a bit ago."
    Now the doctor paced as well. They nearly bumped
into each other, and O'Brien altered his flight plan so
they could orbit without intersecting.
 Bashir suddenly stopped. "Word play, you said?"
 "Would a Klingon ever notice it?"
 "How about an anagram?"
    "An anagram? You mean rearranging letters of one
word to form another?"
    Bashir smiled. "Corigan can be anagrammed into the
phrase 'in cargo.'"
    O'Brien froze as well. They stared at each other.
"That's perfect!" said the chief. "There are a lot of cargo
bays on this station, and each has hundreds of individual
cargo pods) And all the private cargo is shielded against
sensors unless you get right up on top of it, so a
Cardassian stowaway could escape detection for a long,
long time." O'Brien paused, pensive. He called up the
mental image of the cargo holds on the station... it was
a very big picture. "The only trouble is--which one?"
He looked at Julian, who was staring upward so intently,
O'Brien's own gaze was drawn to the ceiling.
    But Bashir was just thinking hard. Abruptly he re-
laxed, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. "Of course,
what an idiot! It's staring us in the face. That wasn't just
the amino acid Corigan he drew; it was a specific

damaged version, with a unique name: Corigan Nine-
Five."
 "Yeah, so?"
 "Nine dash five? How about nine minus five?"
 "Corigan four... 'in cargo' bay four/"
"That has to be it, Chief. How fast can we be there?"
O'Brien looked back at the ventilation shaft they had
tumbled out of, and he shuddered. "Faster than a
speeding snail, Julian."

    Captain Benjamin Sisko strained forward in his com-
mand chair, staring at the viewscreen, as if that would
enable him to see his invisible enemy better. This is bad
morale, he lectured himself. I cannot allow the crew to see
me so agitated/
    The Defiant was edging sideways, so gently--impulse
engines at 0.001 percent--that he hoped the Klingon
would miss the faint radiation surge against the cosmic
background radiation of three Kelvins.
    "Benjamin, surge at forty-three mark minus nine-
teen!"
    "All stop," commanded Sisko. Ensign Amar reacted
instantly, killing the impulse engines quickly; Wheeler
sat back, her hands in the air to signal that she was not
touching a thing on the Nay console. "Old Man, are we
flanking them?"
    Though the engines were silent, the Defiant would
continue to drift in space relative to her previous posi-
tion, of course. Two centuries of subspace science had
not managed to overrule Newtonian physics when it
came to macroscopic objects traveling at nonrelativistic
speeds: objects in motion remained in straight-line mo-
tion unless acted upon by an outside force, such as an
impulse engine.
    If they were lucky, if the Defiant were moving relative
to the Klingon ship (assuming it was a Ktingon ship),
then after a few minutes, they should clear the obstacle.
And then what? he asked himself, again. So what if




they managed to clear the Klingon ship? They couldn't
jump to warp speed; the ion flux and warp signature
would give them away, even if the Klingons couldn't see
them because of the cloak. They sure as hell wouM know
where we were headed/All they would have to do is fire a
few torpedo volleys in the direction of the wormhole. If
the Defiant was unlucky enough to catch one up her
exhaust vent, that would end the story: they could not
raise shields while maintaining their cloak. It was one or
the other.
    But suppose we didn't follow a direct line to the
wormhole? Suppose we tacked back and forth? That
would minimize the chance of a torpedo strike, but...
    Sisko sat back in his chair, making an elaborate
pretense of cool serenity, probably the hardest but most
important job of a senior officer. No, that wouldn't work.
The Klingons wouM figure out that that was our likliest
evasive pattern; they wouM follow their own torpedoes at
maximum warp straight to the wormhole--and arrive
first, because we'd be monkeying around. The thought of
a blind fight at the mouth of the wormhole did not
appeal to the captain.
    "Benjamin," said Dax quietly, "the energy pickup
over the passive radioastronomy antennas isn't dimin-
ishing." She looked up at him and explained before he
could ask what that meant. "I can't pinpoint them
because of their cloak, but I can tell when they're close.
And they haven't gotten any farther in the last four
minutes since our burn."
    Sisko frowned, rubbing the close-trimmed beard he
had adopted for greater military bearing. "They must
have detected the increased radiation to one side and
correctly deduced what we were doing."
    "They matched us, Benjamin, speed for speed.
They're still too close to risk heading toward the
wormhole... even if we could figure a way around the
torpedo question."
  It was unusual to have Odo aboard, and the captain

 decided to take advantage of the occasion by picking the
 constable's brains. "Odo, you understand the situation
 we're in?"
     The constable stood with his hands crossed rigidly
 behind his back, staring at the viewscreen. "It's rather
 like a security officer and a Ferengi loose in an enormous,
 pitch-black cargo bay. Neither can see the other, but they
 can hear each other breathing, so they know they're
 close. They each have a hand-torch, but whoever turns
 on his torch first signals his whereabouts to the other,
 and he'll be incapacitated before he can swing the beam
 around and find his foe."
     Sisko nodded, impressed. "You have it exactly, Con-
 stable. It is essentially a game of cops and robbers...
 now how do we find the bad guy before he finds us?"
    Odo turned up the corners of his mouth in an expres-
sion that almost looked like a smile. He had been
practicing it ever since he became a solid. "I suppose it's
out of the question to shapeshift into a creature that sees
in the dark?"
  "Perhaps the next model of the Defiant."
    "Then I would program my torch to light automati-
cally in ten seconds, put it down, and walk away from
it."
    Sisko pondered a long time. There was something
there, something he could use; he was sure of it. But he
couldn't quite pull it out. "Dax... what do you think of
Odo's idea?"
    Actually, the logical person to ask would have been
Kira. There were several alliances and cliques develop-
ing on Deep Space Nine, which didn't bother Captain
Sisko a bit; they made for competing theories, which
usually arrived at a workable answer faster than a single,
top-down heirarchy: Dax and Worf were now an "item,"
which was hardly unusual, given Curzon Dax's friend-
ship with Klingons over the decades coupled with Jadzia
Dax's fascination with the physical side of things; this
gave her great insight into the Klingon mind.




    Kira and Odo had been friends for several years,
originally owing to the fact that both were egregiously
maltreated by the Cardassians: Kira tended to back Odo
and vice versa, sometimes without really thinking it
through.
    Then there was the puzzling and absurd coalition
between Dr. Bashir and Garak, former member of the
Cardassian Obsidian Order. Alas, both were back at the
station, where Sisko hoped they were enjoying a lunch,
during which Garak would hint at the various intrigues
of espionage he was engaged in, while the young doctor
tried desperately to sort fact from fancy.
    "I don't see how that helps us," groused Dax, respond-
ing to Odo's suggestion. "There's nothing we can set and
walk away without it instantly becoming visible to the
Klingon." Odo was a technical nail'compared to Dax,
and she was impatient at a suggestion that sounded
nonsensical.
    "Wait a minute, Jadzia," objected Kira, as the captain
had known she would. "Don't just dismiss it out of
hand! This is a police situation." Now that the Bajoran
major had opened her mouth, she had to struggle not to
put her foot in it. She would think through Odo's
suggestion more furiously, Sisko predicted, than if he
had simply asked her directly in the first place, then she
would have said "yeah, sounds great," which wouldn't
bring them any closer to a plan than before.
    "The walking away wouldn't matter if... if it were a
light point-source, rather than a beam. The whole room
would get bright, and you'd see him the same time he
saw you," Kira said.
    "So we'd each shoot each other! Benjamin, what's Odo
getting at?" Dax asked.
    Sisko hadn't a clue, so he merely sat silently in his
command chair with a faint smile, as if he were the
Sphynx demanding an answer to his riddle. But he knew,
he just knew they were on the verge of something.

    "No," said Kira, "you don't get it! Sure, he'd see us
the same time we saw him... but we'd be expecting it/
He wouldn't--I figure I can get one clean shot while the
Klingons are saying 'What the hell was that!'"
    And suddenly, no one was talking about cops and
robbers. Now it was a concrete plan for the Defiant
against the presumed Klingon bird-of-prey that stalked
them invisibly.
    Now Dax was getting excited, seeing the possibility for
some flashy pyrotechnics. "Benjamin, if we could create
some sort of bright pulse, something heavy, but with a
wavelength less than four or five times the length of his
hull, we might be able to see it bend around his ship like
ripples around a leaf floating in a pond."
    Benjamin Sisko raised his hand in benediction. "So
mote it be," he intoned.
 "Kira, what about a hyperphasic pulse?"
    "Yes!" shouted the former terrorist. "The soliton
pulse through subspace would have to deflect slightly
around the cloaking field itself. It's kind of like how we
used to detect Cardassian transports coming in to land."
    What an amusing irony, thought Sisko, to detect a ship
because of its cloak. It would only work because of the
incredible proximity: if the ships were more than five
hundred or so kilometers apart, the effect would be too
minuscule to detect.
    The women dove for the warp drive circuits~ ripping
away the cover panel without getting into each other's
way, astonishingly enough. Sisko turned to his constable.
"A brilliant idea, Odo."
 Odo nodded gracefully. "Thank you, sir."
 "I think you may have solved our problem."
 "Perhaps. It's a good start, at least."
    Captain Sisko turned to watch his science and weap-
ons officers attacking the ship's controls. Quietly, he
added, "You haven't a clue what Dax and Kira are doing,
do you?"




 "Not the vaguest idea, sir."
 Sisko smiled broadly.
    "Ensign Wheeler," he said, loud enough to attract her
attention, "at random intervals every few seconds, fire
up the impulse engines to point zero zero one, random
heading. Just to keep them on their toes."
    Fifteen minutes passed, during which the captain
strained his eyes so hard, staring at the starscape through
the forward viewer, that his vision went out of focus and
he had to blink for half a minute to restore it. Dax called
out, "Got it, Benjamin! We're set up for the hyperphasic
pulse whenever you pull the lanyard."
    Eyes closed, Sisko asked, "Can we raise shields while
we pulse?"
    There was a pause. In between blinks, he saw Dax and
Kira looking at each other and communicating silently
via nods and shrugs, as two conspirators often did.
"Sorry, sir," said Major Kira. "It's too much drain on
the ship's systems. In fact, we won't be able to do
anything that requires a power-drain for almost ten
seconds after the pulse."
 "Can you lock on phasers and torpedoes?"
    "Sure, but we can't fire until the storage cells
recharge... nine point nine seconds."
    "That will be fine. If we're lucky, the Klingons will still
be blinking from the flash."
    "Captain," said Odo, "perhaps I'm not following the
technical side of this conversation, but wouldn't it take
even more power to raise shields than it will tO fire the
phasers?"
    Kira agreed. "Can't even start for nine point nine
seconds; then it'll take three and a half seconds for
forward shields, if that's where they are."
    "But what if the Klingons don't happen to be directly
forward?"
    The major shrugged. "Well, after we identify their
bearing, it's nine point nine seconds to full power, then

three point seven seconds to start raising the appropriate
shields, and a final four seconds before full shields can be
raised. Almost eighteen seconds for full shields, assum-
ing nobody trips over their own fingers."
    "So what you're saying," Odo persisted, "is that if we
don't destroy the ship or at least disable their weapons
systems, then after we get one free shot, they'll get one
free shot. And neither of us will be shielded."
    "That," said the captain, "is the chance we will have
to take." He stood, folding his arms across his chest.
"Secure all emergency hatches, all hands to crash posi-
tions. Dax, activate the pulse on my command: four,
three, two, one, now."
    At the final word, Sisko sat quickly and thumbed the
crash-restraints on his command chair. Dax touched her
console.
    The hyperphasic pulse was so powerful, the captain
actually felt it himself, right through his body: it was like
a sudden glass of particularly rough, moonshine whis-
key, the kind he used to drink with his father in the
bayous of Louisiana when he was Jake's age, but instead
of starting in the throat and spreading down to the
stomach, thence to the rest of his body, the hyperphasic
pulse erupted from his brain and spinal column and
spread along his nervous system to the extremities,
hands and feet, fingers and toes.
    Sisko jerked and grunted, blacking out for a microsec-
ond. He shook himself and pulled his shaky hands over
his own command console, ready to take control from
Kira if she were still unconscious from the pulse. She was
awake, but the ship's systems were dead!
    Just as the fact registered in Sisko's mind, along with
the mild regret one feels when "the best laid plans of
mice and men aft gang agley," the bioelectronics burped
and abruptly came online again.
    "Searching," shouted Kira, unnecessarily, since no-
body's hearing was affected by the pulse. "Where are
you? Where the hell are you?"




    "Yes!" shouted Jadzia Dax, touching a single button
that shot the coordinates directly to Kira's console.
    "Got it," said the major. "Thanks... come on, little
ones; come back to me--come on back to me!" Evi-
dently, the phaser cells had ears; they responded almost
instantly to Kira's summons. She did not wait for orders.
She fired a full spread of phasers and photon torpedoes.
"Blessed be the Prophets," she mumbled, almost as an
afterthought.
    "Incoming!" shouted Dax. Before she could finish the
word, the entire ship shuddered, as if it had been
smashed by a giant sledge hammer. With a second blow,
the starfield began to race past the viewer. It took Sisko
almost a second to realize the ship was spinning rapidly
from the force of a blow.
 "Inertial dampers?" he inquired.
    "Normal parameters, Captain," said Ensign Amar. he
looked a little green nonetheless.
    "Correcting for the drift and spin," said Wheeler, her
hands jerking across her navigation controls.
    "Unfortunately," said Dax, "the Prophets giveth and
they taketh away. The Klingons got their shields up
before the torpedoes arrived, but we did wing 'em with
the phasers."
"How bad is our damage from the return shot?"
Dax held her hands up, staring at her diagnostic
screen. "Looks good, Benjamin! We got the jump, and
our shields came up just before their disruptor blast.
That was the first jolt. It was their torpedoes that started
us spinning, but there's no serious damage. The shields
were nearly full-power." "And the Klingon?"
    "One of Kira's phaser shots popped him right in the
weapons pod. He won't be shooting again for a couple of
days, I think. Got a partial on the warp engines. Benja-
min, I can't tell for sure with his shields up, but I think
he's crippled!"

    "That was an extra-base hit, Major," grinned Sisko.
"Now set a course back to the wormhole, maximum
sustainable, Ensign Wheeler, and get us the hell away
from here."
    "He'll follow," said Kira, as the ensign lay in the
course and engaged the warp drive.
    "But he has a weak arm," said the captain, still in a
mood for baseball metaphors. "And I'll bet the Defiant
can beat the throw to the plate anyday."




0

CHAPTER
      11

MAJOR KmA 'rOOK control of the Defiant away from the
irritated Ensign Wheeler, who rose from the nav-chair
when requested and fairly stomped to the "woodshed,"
the fold-down jump seat used for visitors on the bridge,
where supernumeraries and cadets sat to observe the
bridge. Janine Wheeler had done nothing wrong, but it
was only her third navigation-propulsion watch on the
Defiant, and the captain wanted a more senior hand at
the helm.
    Kira verified the course every half hour; "landmarks"
were distant enough in the Gamma Quadrant, which was
so sparsely scattered with stars, that there was insuffi-
cient parallax for the computer to reliably navigate: the
stars were so far away that they didn't change much as
position changed, and it was easy to drift from the
course. But on many long trips in the quadrant since the
discovery of the wormhole, Major Kira had developed
various seat-of-the-pants navigation techniques, such as
a "sideways glance" at a particular planetary system they

 skimmed, judging by the relative position of the well-
 mapped planets whether they were on course, or how
 much of a correction was needed.
     "Wheeler, stop pouting and watch what I'm doing,"
 snapped the major. "I know what they taught you in
 .your Academy, but that's theory. The reality is that there
 ~s no such thing as 'coordinates' in real space."
"I don't understand," said the ensign, still fuming.
"Coordinates are measurements from a zero-
point .... Earth, in the case of Federation coordinates.
But Earth doesn't sit still; it revolves around its sun, Sol;
and Sol revolves around the center of the galaxy and is
tugged by other star systems."  "We account for all that!"
    "But you can't account for the fact that the relative
length of whatever unit you use for measurement
changes, depending on what direction you're approach-
ing the coordinates from, and how fast you're moving
relative to Earth when you drop out of warp into sublight
velocity."
    "Huh?" The ensign looked blank, and Kira silently
cursed the allegedly "practical" approach to astronaviga-
tion that taught Starfleet officers only what they needed to
know about special relativity and quantum mechanics.
    "I mean," explained the Bajoran, with rather more
patience than she actually felt, "a ship approaching the
so-called coordinates from one star system going ninety-
nine percent lightspeed actually measures a different-
sized meter or kilometer than a ship coming from
somewhere else going ninety-nine point ninety-nine per-
cent lightspeed."
    "Wait," said Wheeler "you're saying they two ships
might come to two different spots, and each one would
think it was at the right coordinates?" "Exactly!"
 "But, which is right?"
    Kira couldn't help groaning aloud. "Janine, neither is
right. Or they both are, however you want to look at it.




There is no exact correlation between coordinates and
some fixed position in space. All you can do is note
landmarks and correct when you get there." Kira read
the numbers the computer just finished crunching from
the sighting she just made. "That's what I'm doing here,
see? I know certain landmarks--every pilot has her own
set--and I take a peek, calculate the deviance, and
correct."
    Wheeler stared for a long time, trying to absorb the
lesson. When she spoke, her voice was softer, meeker
than when she was banished. "It sounds like you're
saying the whole science of navigation is... fuzzy."
    "It's not a science, it's an art. It's like..." Kira
groped for an analogy, looking back at Captain Sisko.
    The captain had been following the conversation more
closely than even Kira realized. "It's like throwing a ball
to a friend," he explained. "There's no precise answer to
when to let go of the ball, because you never swing your
arm exactly the same way twice."
    "Only in this case," Kira added, "you're on one
runabout, and your friend's on another going a different
direction."
    Dax chimed in. "Actually, our friend is going the same
direction... and he just increased his speed. He's gain-
ing on us, Kira!"
    The ensign instantly forgotten, Kira stared at the rear-
mounted sensors on her threat board. Indeed, the image
of the Klingon in the sensor array was "blueshifting," the
term used by analogy with light, indicating he was
moving closer to them. The Klingon was catching up.
"How the hell is he doing that?" demanded Kira, almost
rhetorically.
    Dax took it as a real question. "He's overcranking his
engines, Nerys. Got hot spots all over the pods. It's a
miracle that thing hasn't blown a gasket by now."
    "Blood of the Prophets," swore Kira. "I don't believe
it."

      "Believe what?" asked Captain Sisko. "Major, if you
know something we don't, please tell us."
 "He has no weapons," she said.
 "Yes, I told you that!" griped Dax.
    "And his engines are damaged. He might not be able
to make it all the way back to the wormhole... it's two
days travel." Kira Nerys paused, but nobody spoke. The
silence was eerie, and she quickly filled it. "So that leaves
only one choice for our Klingon friend: he has to close
the gap and ram us."
    Sisko pursed his lips and touched his beard. He looked
pensive. "I cannot think of an alternative," he said at
last. "Circumstances dictate tactics." He paused for a
moment, then turned to Dax. "Old Man, we have to
match velocities. We can't let him catch up. Can you
modify the engines to get higher than maximal warp out
of them?"
    "Benjamin," she said cautiously, "we could burn out
our engines. And if we did, then we'd be stuck here, a
sitting duck, long enough for the Klingons to finish
repairing their weaponry. I can pretty much guarantee
we wouldn't make it back in time to stop--"
    "Stop whatever surprise party the Klingons planned
for Mr. Worf and Chief O'Brien," finished Sisko.
"Nevertheless, we have little choice either, just like the
Klingons: their tactics dictate ours. We must go faster.
But Dax--"
  Yes.
    "Don't overrev it all the way to maximum, and don't
burn out the warp drive; that's just what the Klingons
want. As long as they're gaining more slowly than they
are now, we should be all right." "Aye-aye, Cap'n."
    Dax dove into the wiring again, obviously unhappy.
But looking down at her screen, Kira saw that the bird-
of-prey had closed the gap by 8 percent of the separation
in only a few minutes. At this rate, she calculated, they'll
be close enough to smell the raktigino in ninety minutes/




    "Hm, one question, Benjamin," mused Dax from un-
der the propulsion console, her voice muted by the mass
of fiberoptic bioelectrical wiring, "the only two places I
can divert power from for extra speed are the shields or
the phaser banks. Which would you rather lose?"
  "Kira?" asked the captain.
    The major opened her mouth to choose the former,
then closed it to think a second time. "If we drain the
shields, and it turns out the Klingons fix their disrup-
tors faster than we expected, we're dead meat. I can
live without the phasers. We still have plenty of torpe-
does."
    "Phaser array it is," muttered the barely audible Dax.
Kira sat back and stared as the Klingons crept closer and
closer; she had to force herself to divert some attention
to course corrections, so concerned was she about the
pursuing ship.
    A few minutes later, Dax managed to goose the warp
drives, and the Defiant began to shudder. Kira gripped
the edge of her console and tried to read the blue-
shifting, difficult with the buffet from engines opera-
ting at 105 percent or 110 percent normal capacity.
"He's... not gaining quite so fast," she announced.
The good news sounded tepid. She should have hol-
lered "he's falling back!" but the sensors showed
otherwise.
    Sometime in between glances, while Kira was poking
at the nay stream, nudging the ship on a better course for
the wormhole, the blueshift changed to redshift. "Oh!"
she declared, and almost forgot what she had been dying
to say. "He's not--the Klingons are--Captain, I think
the bird-of-prey slowed down. We're pulling away from
him, now."
    "Excellent!" declared Sisko. But the triumph was
short-lived, within two hours, the color had changed
once again, and the Klingons were once again trying to
overtake the Defiant.

    For more than eight hours, the tug-of-war continued:
both ships nursed their engines, prayed hard, and goosed
the nacelles just a little faster, then backed off the heavy-
warp when warning lights exploded like a string of
supernovas across the engineering consoles. Sometimes
the Defiant gained; more often, the game went to the
Klingons. By the time another bridge-watch had passed,
and Ensign Janinc Wheeler had been replaced in the
woodshed by Ensign Tarvak Amar, Kira, who still sat in
the driver's seat, felt a terrible, shooting pain in her eyes.
She couldn't keep them moist enough, and she had to
take a thirty-second break every bell to drip saline onto
her corneas.
    The Klingon bird-of-prey had closed the gap to just
one quarter of where it had started out, after the Defiant
got the first, big jump at the very beginning. Their lead
had eroded to virtually nothing, and still the Klingons
came!
    "This is ridiculous!" complained Dax. "Their engines
are hotter than a stellar core--and I mean that
literally--their ship is shaking apart, the dorsal and
ventral stabilizers are stuck open, so the damned thing is
rocking like an elephant in full gallup. Why hasn't their
ship exploded or shot off in a random direction by
now?"
    "Jadzia," said Kira, "we're not much better off. Ex-
cept for not taking a hit to the warp pods--and it doesn't
seem to have affected them much--we're in as bad a
shape as they are."
    "Speaking of which--damn it, not again!" Dax swore
fluently under her breath. Once again, she killed the
extra-power feed from the phaser array into the engines
that had been salting the matter-antimatter reaction for
just a jot more power.
    "Kira," said Sisko, "are they in torpedo range?" She
jumped. It was the first question he had asked in hours.
"No, sir. Can't lock onto the target from here."




    "Major Kira," he continued smoothly, "have you ever
heard of a mine field?"
    Of course she had. The Cardassians had regularly
buried the deadly, indiscriminate explosive devices along
routes followed by Resistance columns, either troops or
supply trains--or civilian traffic, as the routes were
generally public. "You mean--just drop photon torpe-
does behind us and hope the Klingons run into one?"
    "Do you have a better idea?" asked the captain. Since
the answer was no, of course, Kira began the process of
"mining" the path behind them. Every five minutes, she
allowed two or three torpedoes just to "roll" out of their
magazines, set to proximity fusing. The first time caught
the Klingons by surprise, and they drove directly into a
torpedo. The blast diminished their shields by 11 per-
cent, but front then on, the Klingons were watching for
Kira's little surprise packages and were able to dodge
them. Still, the evasive maneuvers slowed the pursuers
down and prevented them from applying full warp
power toward catching up.
    With every mine Kira dropped--she preferred to
think of them as depth charges; she had seen the results
of Cardassian mines on Bajoran children--the Klingons
fell back to drive around it, then overcranked their warp
nacelles to play catch-up.
    "Kira, what are you doing?" asked Dax. "Their en-
gines look like they're ready to burst?
    "It's not the torpedoes, it's the speeding up and
slowing down," said the major, not taking her eyes off
her threat-board. Again she dropped a depth charge,
then again, then once more. "Um, Dax, how close do
you think they are? We're starting to run low here. If we
run out, we're defenseless: no phasers, no photons."
    The Trill hummed skeptically. "How many do we have
left?"
  "Four. That leaves us bone dry."
  "Well, four more spurts of power ought to blow their

engines, but I've been thinking they're going to blow for
some time now, and--"
    "And they're still turning over," Kira completed.
Damn! What are they running on?
    The captain spoke from behind Kira. "It's your call,
Kira."
    Kira discovered herself silently praying to the
Prophets... something she had been doing more and
more recently, since getting pregnant with another cou-
ple's baby. She rested her hand on her swollen belly,
something else she had started doing all the time.
Ordinarily, Kira would suggest standing and fighting,
but not every person aboard the Defiant had chosen the
danger: there was one aboard who had never chosen
anything, not yet.
    Why did I go on this mission? she berated herself, but
it was too late now for recriminations. The mission was
supposed to be a routine trek through the Gamma Quad-
rant: get close to the planet, do a passive scan for Klingon
and Jem'Hadar lifesigns, get out quickly before anyone
even knows we're there. Instead, they were racing across
the galaxy with a bird-of-prey literally in hot pursuit,
desperately trying to make it back to the wormhole--
and having no idea what they would find on the other
side. If the station fell under attack, are the O'Briens still
alive?
    Kira remembered that Keiko was down on Bajor, and
she breathed a sigh of reliefi at least one O'Brien was all
right, no matter what may have happened to the station
when the Klingons drew the Defiant away on a wild
Jem'Hadar chase. But of course, that also meant at least
one O'Brien stood to suffer the most horrible blow a
parent can suffer: the death of a child, should Kira make
the wrong choice now. Worse, Kira couldn't remember
whether Molly was aboard with Miles or on Bajor with
Keiko!
 "Dax," she asked, her throat was too dry to speak, and




she had to clear it. "Dax, what's the pattern on their
warp-engine overload?"
    "You mean each time? Urn, it rises steadily as they
accelerate to about twelve percent past redline, then they
scale back."
    "Which do they use as the mark: the speed, or the
engine temperature?"
    "Oh! I hadn't thought of that." Dax typed at her
console, then reported back. "You're right, Kira--
they're cutting off their engines when they reach closing
speed, regardless of the engine temperature!"
    Got 'era! "All right, people, here we go: let's see how
slow they have to go for four depth charges."
    With a final amen, Kira dropped the last four torpe-
does out the aft end of the Defiant. hoping the ship's
name would live up to expectations. She watched help-
lessly; with no more ammunition, there was nothing
Kira could do. Dax could reroute power back to the
phaser array, slowing the ship, but the bird-of-prey
would run right up the Defiant's aft end, possibly de-
stroying both ships in the ensuing collision. The final
depth charges had to work! The alternative was not to be
considered.
    Because they were just dropping the torpedoes out the
back of the ship, not firing them, it was impossible to
predict the pattern they would take. Kira held her
breath, praying they wouldn't all line up on one side.
    They didn't. In fact, the torpedoes spread nicely,
forming an impassable "picket fence" directly in front of
the Klingon ship. The pursuers did the only thing they
could: they slowed dramatically and altered course to
avoid the explosive barrier.
    But when ships are moving at what Bajoran scientists
called hyperluminous velocity--that is, faster than
lightspeed--slowing "dramatically," even by a few
tenths of a warp number, meant that, all of a sudden, the
Defiant was way ahead of the Klingon ship: in the ten or

so seconds during which the Klingons had to drop from
warp 9.72 to warp 9.20, the Starfleet ship pulled ahead
by some three and a half million kilometers... that was
more than eleven light-seconds.
    The determined Ktingons commenced their overheated
burn to catch up to the Defiant, and Kira gritted her teeth:
here was the last chance they had to shake the pursuit!
The Klingons had not been this far behind since they
began to overbum their engines, and they threw caution
to the solar winds, revving their warp engines up to 110
percent rated capacity. Within seconds, inside the nacelle
containment field, the matter-antimatter reaction super-
heated to the core temperature of a mid-sized nova.
Closer and hotter, the measurements stood in indirect
proportion to one another. By the time the Klingons had
almost caught up, the subspace tachyon and chronotron
output from their blighted ship was probably lighting up
sensor arrays across the entire sector, as dozens of space-
faring races were staring at their own threat boards and
saying "What the hell is that?"
    A Klingon bird-of-prey is a sturdy ship with plenty of
built-in safety margins. But no safety margin ever made
could contain a point-source as hot as those engines.
There was a flash that burned out several of the De-
fiantg sensor contacts and probably fried all the un-
shielded electronics throughout the ship. Kira's screen
went dead for several seconds, during which she
sweated and cursed silently. Then the array flickered
back into existence, the computer having switched to
backups.
    She searched behind them for two solid minutes, but
all she found was microscopic debris that might have
been the remains of the bird-of-prey, but they would
never know for sure. The ship did, however, vanish from
the sensors: whether it had blown up or burned out and
put up its cloak, she couldn't tell.
    "That did it, Captain," she said, licking her lips like a
Prophet-Bobber lizard. "I don't know where they are,




but I know where they aren't. We're clear from here to
the wormhole... unless he had a friend who's still
running silent."
    "That is a chance we shall have to take," said Sisko.
He tried to appear calm, but Kira saw his pale knuckles
and the imprint his gripping fingers made on the uphol-
stery of his command chair, and she was not fooled, not
for a minute.

0

CHAPTER
      12

JAKE SlSKO WAS surprised to find himself less terrified
than he had been earlier, much less than he had been
under the bombardment on Ajilon Prime. It wasn't just
the fear of death, he realized, it was the helplessness/
Struck by his revelation, he crept along the corridor,
back against the bulkhead, trying to look forward
with one eye and back with the other... an unten-
able position. But he hadn't seen a Klingon in several
hours.
    For the first four hours after fleeing the Promenade,
Jake "ran into" the invaders left and right. The enemy
were making no attempt to be silent--hardly unusual
for Klingons--and fleet-footed Jake, silent as a ghost,
was always able to evade the troops. He knew the sta-
tion well enough to avoid dead ends, and he was lithe and
wiry enough to duck into the most astonishingly narrow
spaces, where wide-bodied Klingons wouldn't even think
to look.




    But there were some hairy near-misses, such as the
time he hung by hands and feet from a fire-suppression
sprinkler pipe not three meters above the heads of a
Klingon patrol, who had previously spotted him and
were looking. They looked everywhere but up.
    Now Jake stalked empty halls and silent passageways,
and he wasn't afraid--not that afraid--but he wan-
dered aimlessly, from nothing to nowhere. Until he
found himself turning a corner, shading into a shadow
when a pack of braying Klingons scuffled past, looking
for stragglers. Jake had seen none for more than an
hour, the station was secure. But when the Klingons
passed, and Jake continued on his ostensibly aimless
route, he found himself standing at the entrance to
Cargo Bay 4, and at once the plan that had eluded his
stunned brain became clear: if he could steal a runabout
and escape the station to Bajor, he could warn his father
and Starfleet!
    Jake stared at the locked door, his palms itching and
sweat beading on his forehead. A moment before, he was
calm, accepting the situation as immutable. But now
that he abruptly had something to do, all his old fears
and insecurities flooded back. He was grateful for the
fear; it meant he was still alive. For many leaden minutes
at the beginning of the crisis, Jake Sisko had wondered
whether he, too, had been gunned down, and his con-
sciousness was nothing but a ghost walking the site of his
physical death.
    At first, his brain froze; then he remembered the
standard access code for station personnel, which he
wasn't technically allowed to know, but his father was
captain and had given him access. Sofile a complaint, he
once told Odo when the constable raised the issue, back
in the days when Jake and Nog made mischief and
menaced quietude on the station. Jake typed the
code... and nothing happened.
  Of course, the Klingons encrypted all the access pass-

words. Well, what did he expect, incompetence? From a
Klingon operation?
    Jake smiled. The Nog era was about to pay off yet
again. To prove he would never be bested by a mere hu-
man, Nog had demonstrated his own methods of break-
ing into allegedly secured facilities and quarters, meth-
ods that didn't require a father who ran the station to
give his little precious a security-access code. Jake,
roundly impressed, had learned the techniques, the easy
ones at least.
    He scavenged the deck until he came to a cooling duct,
as usual wrapped with tight coils of insulating material.
When uncoiled, the material was stiff but bendable, and
could be flattened into a shiny strip a meter and a half
long and four centimeters wide.
    Stretching as high as he could--Nog always needed a
leg-up--Jake flattened his thumb against the insulation
at the top of the jamb. Pressing up hard, he created a gap
just thick enough to slide through the strip of unrolled
insulator. He inserted it as far as he could, retaining just
two fist-widths, then he bent the stiff material downward
and inserted it a little farther, until the bend was right at
the top of the door.
    Jake gently pumped the insulator up and down, and
the shiny, reflective surface caught the motion-sensors
on the other side of the door. With a faint hiss, the door
slid open, the door-eye thinking someone approached
from the inside to exit. Exiting was allowed from the
cargo bay by default, unless the function was specifically
turned off, and disabling the mechanism had simply not
occurred to the Klingons. Besides, presumably they were
moving in and out themselves, and it was convenient not
to have to type an encrypted access code with an armful
of weapons.
    Jake slid into the darkness of the bay, crouching low to
make a small silhouette against the bright corridor. He
froze, his pulse pounding in his ears. His chest ached,




and he realized he was so tense, he probably wouldn't be
able to move even if a raging Klingon burst through the
boxes directly ahead of him, sweeping his bat'telh like a
scythe.
    Jake forced himself to relax, slowing his aching heart,
taking long breaths silently through his mouth. As his
pulse quieted, he could hear the noises of the cargo bay,
normal noises, but faintly behind them the insistent
buzz of low, guttural conversation.
    Creeping closer, shackled by a strange chill, the young
Master Sisko caught a word here and there, deep and
harsh, an ugly sound to the speech. But somehow, it
didn't sound quite Klingon enough. He mentally cursed
his universal translator: he knew what Klingon speech
sounded like, if only the damned technology would get
out of his way and stop translating everything into his
own tongue! What finally tipped him that he was not
dealing with a Klingon enemy was the height of the
noise, which he finally localized by twisting his head
every direction until he pulled a muscle. Unless the
Klingon were squatting on the ground or were a dwarf, it
was doubtless a Ferengi--a pair of Ferengi, now that he
listened closer. One pair of Ferengi: hardly enough even
to open the bidding!
    Jake closed the distance, treading quietly enough to
avoid alarming the two little men, but not so quietly as
to sneak up on them. His efforts were for naught.
    Rom was so startled he could barely open and close his
mouth, but Quark let out a satisfying yelp. Then the
Ferengi bartender grabbed his brother and shoved him
forward. "It was Rom! It was all Rom's idea--take him,
not me!"
    Brother Rom found his voice. "This is Quark, the
infamous smuggler! I'll be happy to inform on him ...
I've often heard him talk about how dishonorable and
cowardly the Klingons are!"
  Jake stepped out quickly, before the Ferengi caused

 irreparable damage to their sibling relationship. Quark
 and Rom stared, mouths open. The elder Ferengi was
 furious, which didn't bother Jake in the slightest, but he
 did feel a twinge of conscience at Rom's reproachful
 look. "Um... sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."
    Quark straightened his coat of many colors. His ears
had turned pink, almost glowing in the darkness of the
cargo bay. Starlight from the open bay door, covered
only by a forcefield, illuminated Quark's lobes from
behind and picked out the blood vessels.
    "We've been running from the Klingons for hours,"
Rom said almost apologetically.
    "Well me too!" said Jake defensively. Then his shoul-
ders slumped. "Oh, never mind. Guys, what are we going
to do? Is there a runabout here?"
    Quark snorted, sounding remarkably like Constable
Odo. "If there were, do you think we'd still be here?"
    'T uh, think the Ktingons took them," Rom said. "All.
Some time ago. This is the third cargo-launch bay we've,
ah, investigated."
    Great. Another brilliant Jake-Sisko idea shot to hell/He
sat on a box, tucking his long, thin legs beneath him and
resting his chin on his knees.
    Suddenly, Quark jumped to his feet. In the dim light
of distant suns, Jake saw the Ferengi's eyes go wide,
staring over Jake's shoulder, as if he was looking at a
ghost.
A Klingon ghost? "Oh, cut it out, Quark!" said Jake.
A monstrous paw suddenly grabbed Jake's shoulder.
The boy blanched, his breath stopping in his throat, as
the insistent power of the huge, bearlike hand gripping
his flesh rotated him all the way about to stare at a
lightless figure that loomed between Jake and his escape.
 "It was all RotnS' idea--"
 'Tll be happy to inform--"
    Jake didn't waste his breath shouting. He lashed out
with all the pent-up fury produced by hours of terror,




helplessness, and the destruction of everything he had
called home since he was a young boy. His fist struck the
assailant full in the face, numbing Jake's arm and nearly
splitting his knuckles wide open.
    The figure stepped back, blinking, otherwise unaf-
fected. "What a peculiar greeting you humans have for
fellow freedom-fighters," said Garak, contemplatively.
  "You're not a Klingon," announced Jake.
    "I would have expected a bit of leaping about, clap-
ping on the back, cheers and such. Or perhaps a re-
served, Cardassian smile and bow."
Jake squirmed. "Garak, could you let me go, please?"
"Ah, 1 might have known the Ferengi would manage to
evade capture. They've always been so... practical."
Garak let go of Jake's shoulder, allowing the boy to
slump backward and almost stumble over a launching
stanchion. The Cardassian was dressed in a thoroughly
practical Cardassian military jumpsuit, but ~ithout the
battle armor that, for example, Gul Dukat would wear
over it. Garak smiled, and Jake immediately felt an urge
to step back uneasily; he suppressed it.
    "Garak, I'm really, really glad you're here," gushed
Jake hesitantly. He thought for a moment and added
what the Cardassian probably wanted to hear, "Good
thing we have someone experienced in, ah, resistance
fighting now."
    Quark was in a sneery mood. "Oh yes, we're just
brimming with military effectiveness now... a poet, a
tailor, an innkeeper, and a nitwit! We'll send those
Klingons packing in two hours."
    They sat in the dark talking in hushed tones, while
Jake stared out the bay door at the stars slowly rotating
past his view. He said little, grunting agreement now and
then or adding an observation, while Quark, Rom, and
Garak filled in what had happened so far in the invasion.
They diagrammed Deep Space Nine on the floor using
the tailor's chalk Garak carried, and Rom and the

Cardassian sketched where the forces had moved: the
Klingons were following a quick but pedestrian invasion
route, starting at the hub, the Promenade and Ops, and
working outward and down toward the habitat ring at
one extreme and the lower engineering levels down to
the reactor room at the other.
    Jake said nothing about his most important and
controversial observation, but he knew he would have to
spill it eventually. Still, he cringed like a Ferengi when
Rom raised the very point that Jake was hoping to avoid:
"Uh, I know Odo's off the station--"
      "Everyone knows Odo is off the station," interrupted
Quark, rolling his eyes. "But..."
 "But what, Brother?"
    "But where's, you know, Commander Worf. I mean, if
Klingons are invading the station, shouldn't Worf be
fighting?"
 Jake winced. "Well, he is fighting, sort of."
 "Where is he fighting? I haven't seen him."
    Garak smiled mysteriously. "Would you like to tell
them, Jake, or shall I? Nothing to say? Well, Rom, Worf
is fighting--at the head of the Klingon invasion!" Six
eyes snapped to the Cardassian.
     Quark broke the tension. "Worf is fighting with the
Klingons?" "He is."
    Rom sought clarification. "You mean he's fighting, uh,
leading the Klingons? Against the station?"
    "I know this is an unpleasant fact, gentlemen, but we
must face unpleasant facts. They don't go away by
ignoring them. Isn't that right, Jake?"
 The young man jumped. "Oh. Yeah."
    Garak of the cursedly sharp eye continued, "But you
don't seem very surprised, Master Sisko. In fact, if I
weren't sure you would never hold back such a vital piece
of information, I would almost say you already knew




that Worf was leading the Klingons before I mentioned
it."
    The Ferengi brothers turned accusing eyes toward
Jake, who pressed his lips together and exercised his
right to remain silent. As was usual, exercising the right
appeared to implicate him more thoroughly than a
denial would have--rightly so. "All right!" he confessed.
"I saw Worf on the Promenade, and it looked, I mean
sort of looked, like he was leading the troops."
    "I never did trust that blasted Klingon!" shouted
Quark, turning to kick a huge box labeled "Spare Repli-
cators." It was a mistake for which he paid, dancing and
swearing for several seconds.
    "Fortunately," announced Garak, "we have our own
weapon to use against them." He reached into his coat
pocket and extracted what looked to Jake like a small
comm badge, or comm earpiece, actually, connected to a
phaser-sized piece of electronics. "I managed to liberate
this from one of our friends out there on the Prome-
nade."
    "What is it?" demanded a peevish Quark, who had
removed his boot to massage his injured toes.
    "Uh, looks like a communications device," said Rom.
"Does it work?"
    "Well, in a sense." The Cardassian pressed a button,
and a pair of lights began blinking. All Jake could hear
was faint static, though he thought he picked up a
pattern within the static.
    "Encrypted," muttered Rom. He reached for the com-
municator, and after a short but gingerly struggle, got it
from Garak. "I, uh, think it's supposed to be run
through, ah, through a passkey system the Klingons wear
in their battle helmets. I think we're picking up the
transmissions but--"
    "What you're saying, brother, is that Garak's piece of
junk is totally useless."
    "Well, unless we can decrypt it somehow, yeah. Can't
use it."

    Garak was frowning. "After all the trouble I went
through to win it! Such gratitude."
    "Oh, you probably picked it up off the floor," accused
Jake, still smarting from having been exposed by Garak.
    "Off the floor!" The Cardassian drew himself back,
pressing his hand against his exquisitely tailored coat
and raising his eyebrows at Jake's effrontery. "Let me
tell you what I had to go through, the pain, the suf-
fering-"
 "The bolts of fabric," sneered Quark.
    "Please don't, Garak," said Jake, but it was no use.
The Cardassian tailor, whom Dr. Bashir always insisted
was a former member of the infamous Obsidian Order,
had already begun his epic narrative.

The Tailor's Tale

    For some time, I have been receiving commu-
nications from sources of mine that the Kling-
ons were preparing for an assault upon the
station. I know that Dr. Bashir believes I was
once a member of the patriotic, visionary order
you've all heard about, but I assure you that
even the lowliest tailor has access to more
intelligence information than you might imag-
ine. After all, people buying suits tend to talk;
you know how it is, Quark, in your position as
bartender! You hear things, and you cannot
always decide just how much credibility to
assign to the drunken ramblings of Morn, or the
tall tales of a merchant-fleet captain you've
never seen before in your life.
    But when you hear the same stories over and
over, after a while, you begin to lend them some
credence in your head. So it was that my sources
informed me for several days now that this




attack was imminent, and I was prepared, of
course, with several contingency plans: just as
would any good... tailor.
    When the attack itself came, I must confess to
being in a rather awkward, that is not to say
undignified situation, however; as one of your
human books says, no man shall know the hour
or the day, and there are certain duties to which
we each must attend once or twice a day, if you
know what I mean. Yes, Rom, I am aware that
you were attempting to fix the problem. It must
be embarrassing for Ops communications to
accidentally be rerouted to a public wash-
roombhowever did you manage that? As I said,
I was in a rather awkward position when I
realized the invasion had begun, but I extracted
myself as quickly as I could and rushed back to
my shop, where I had prepared my plans for
response to the impending assault.
    Well, as your human poet Burns wrote, the
best-laid plans of mice and men oft go awry. I
hadn't quite made it back when... Oh, all
right, Jake, gang agley, whatever that means.
No, I'm sure your father has the quotation
correct. I had not quite made it back to my shop
when the first wave of Klingons materialized on
the Promenade and began to lay down cover
fire.
    I saw right away they were not aiming, merely
shooting to force everyone down to the deck,
helpless, where the Klingons could dispose of
them at their leisure. Taking advantage of their
own tactic, I kept my feet and charged across the
deck directly at one of the attackers!
    Oh, it was a glorious fight, reminiscent of the
grand days of the Empire. In fact, I daresay I felt
a small surge of the patriotism that members
of--of that order must feel as they ferreted out

disloyalty, corruption, and treason among the
more libertine civilians of our populace, or that
a soldier in the front lines must have felt when
confronting the barbarians ship to ship, Cardas-
sian wits against Klingon bat'telhs! The Klingon
saw me coming, but too late! He raised his
disruptor and fired, just as I dove through the
air and rolled across the deck. I felt a tingling in
my back as his bolt o'ershot me.
    Coming out of my roll, I rose before him and,
remembering my training, I struck with--I
mean, my training in school, of course, Jake; I
know what Dr. Bashir thinks, but he is rather a
romantic soul--I was too close for fists or feet,
but remembering my schoolboy training in the
manly arts, I struck at the Klingon warrior with
my elbows and knees, knocking the wind out of
him right through his battle armor. And let me
tell you, were I some fragile species like human
or Ferengi, instead of a proud Cardassian, I'm
certain I would have done myself an injury!
    As it happened, though, I dropped him to the
deck and snatched up what I thought was his
disruptor. At that moment, the other Klingons
belatedly realized their danger, and they con-
centrated their fire upon me.
    Dodging disruptor blasts is quite an invigor-
ating exercise. I highly recommend it for, ahem,
sedentary bartenders, Mr. Quark. But I realized
that I was somewhat outnumbered--though
they were only Klingons, hence a little, shall we
say, thick--and decided discretion was the bet-
ter part of valor, an expression we civilized
Cardassians try to live by. I exited and circled
the Promenade to my little tailor shop. It was
only then that I realized that my talented fin-
gers, quite on their own initiative, had liberated
this particular piece of technology from my




assailant as I pulled him to the deck. Quite an
accomplishment! I only wish the good doctor
had been there to witness it. It amuses me to
feed his charming fantasy about the Obsidian
Order.
    I left a short hint to the doctor that I was
headed here. Now don't fret, Jake. I assure you,
the Klingons will never understand the message,
if they even find it. It will just be so much
gibberish to them. I only hope Doctor Bashir is
as subtle as he wishes and more subtle than he
appears!
    And that is my tale. And if Quark does not
immediately cease rolling his eyes so rudely, I
shall surely do him an injury!

CHAPTER
      13

EN ROUTE TO Cargo Bay 4, Miles O'Brien hesitated before
entering the long, dark crossover bridge connecting the
hub of Deep Space Nine with the habitat ring. "I don't
like the look of this," he said. "Why are the lights out?"
 "Maybe the Klingons like the dark?"
    "Very funny, Julian. It looks like the perfect place for
an ambush." Glaring at the doctor, who retained his
semipermanent smirk, O'Brien led the way into the tube,
walking along the catwalk that fronted the turbolift
shaft. The chief tried to watch ahead and behind simul-
taneously, which resulted in a headache. Human eyes
couldn't point like that.
 "Urn, chief?."
 "Yes, Julian?"
    "What happens if a turbolift uses this particular tube
while we're in it?"
    O'Brien hesitated a long moment. He had hoped the
doctor wouldn't think of that particular eventuality.




"You'd better hold on really tight, sir. At that range, the
damned turbos will probably shake your eye-teeth loose."
    Bashir stared at the chief. O'Brien could barely see the
discomfort in the doctor's face in the waning light from
the tunnel mouth. "Oh don't worry, Julian. What are the
odds that it'll happen in the exact half hour or so we'll be
in there?"
    Truer words were spoken every day and twice on
Federation holidays. No sooner did the reassurance leave
O'Brien's lips than he knew he had just sealed their fate:
what god of mischance would pass up such an opportun-
ity as the chief had just handed him?
    By an incredible stroke of inevitability, they were a
third of the way along the shaft when Chief O'Brien
began to feel a rumble in his feet. He crouched, putting
his hand against the Cardassian steel-mesh to feel the
vibration. "Wonderful," he announced, "absolutely per-
fect timing!"
    Bashir stared wildly around. "Chief, there's no place
to hide! There's nothing to hold onto!"
    "Damn, there's a spar a hundred meters up, but we'll
never make it."
 "They'll see us!" shouted the doctor.
    O'Brien blinked in the darkness--that was a side-
effect he had not even considered. If the Klingons saw
them in the shaft, they could stop the lift using the
emergency socket-kill, assuming they could figure out
how to use the Cardassian circuits, then step out and
blast doctor and maintenance chief into oblivion.
    "Quick, lie flat, Julian. Unless they're sharper than
they have any right to be, they won't even notice."
    Bashir and O'Brien threw themselves down to the
mesh and tried to flatten against it, the vibration became
unbearable, then finally turned into sound, a low-
frequency roar that reminded O'Brien of the fusion
reactors in the bottom level of the station.
    Momentarily, a bright halogen beam cut the black-
ness, seeking them out in their hide-in-plain-view posi-

tion. The single, unwinking eye of the turbolift washed
the walls of the crossover bridge white, so bright it
painted over the colors that lesser illumination picked
out: the beam was bright enough to reflect off every
water droplet, every smooth segment of wall, dazzling
the chief.
    He averted his eyes from the direct glare. The reflection
fi'om below the catwalk silhouetted him like a scarecrow
against the rising sun, and he lay perfectly still, hoping
Bashir didn't succumb to the temptation to raise his head
and stare: the Klingons would see, and the doctor
wouldn't... not for hours while his eyes recovered!
    Then the vibration turned to a shake, and O'Brien
gripped the railing to hold himself from being shaken off
the walkway. The turbolift galloped past, a herd of a
thousand horses with bright flame snorting from nostrils
and lightning flashing in their hooves. He gritted his
teeth to hold back the scream as the lift, which ordinarily
would be rerouted if a crewman were known to be doing
maintenance in the crossover bridge, scraped past not a
meter distant at a horrific velocity.
    At that speed, it was past them in a fraction of a
second, and O'Brien cautiously raised his head. He
froze: the instant he moved, he realized it was a stupid
reaction of premature relief--the blood-red tail lamp of
the turbolift caught him in perfect relief, and Miles
O'Brien stared into the startled eyes of the tail-gunner
Klingon looking aft through the cracked doors of the
Promenade-to-habitat express.
    The Klingon recovered quickly, raising his disruptor
for a shot at the chief. He missed, of course. It would
have been the bull's-eye of bull's-eyes if he had hit them
on the draw from the rocketing platform. But it made
little difference. Klingons would be in the habitat ring in
seconds, and they would call in reinforcement and sweep
the crossover bridge on foot. "They can't miss us,"
O'Brien bitterly concluded after explaining the situation
to Doctor Bashir.




    For a long moment, the pair stared at the receding dot
until it stopped. They could not see Klingons getting off,
but they knew they were. They couldn't hear them call
for backup, but it was moments away. Think, think,
think! thought O'Brien, but the only plan that suggested
itself was a pell-mell dash back the way they had
come... and surely the Klingons would swarm the
crossover bridge from both ends, anticipating just such a
retreat. "Damn it, there's got to be somewhere to go!" he
said, half aloud.
    Bashir had a peculiar, faraway look on his face.
"What?" demanded the chief, grabbing the doctor's arm
to bring him back to the here-and-now.
    "Chief, how tight is the forceshield around this sta-
tion?"
    "What?" O'Brien scowled. "Julian, what are you on
about now?"
    "Does... does the forceshield that surrounds Deep
Space Nine fit exactly against the outer hull? Or is there a
gap?"
    Chief O'Brien's frown deepened. How did Bashir
always manage to find a safe spot? "Normally there
wouldn't be any gaps, but this station is a crazy-quilt of
Cardassian technology with--"
 "So there are gaps," Bashir interrupted.
    O'Brien's eyes narrowed, then suddenly widened.
"Oh, you're not thinking about... You're crazy!"
    Bashit raised both eyebrows. "Wouldn't it work?
Couldn't it?"
    O'Brien ran through the technical specs in his head.
There were a few places where he'd been keeping the
fields extended. Bloody hull always needed some repair
or other. The chief understood what Bashir was suggest-
ing. It was just crazy, though!
    Yeah, crazy like a fox. "Come on, Julian, we don't have
all day!"
 Miles O'Brien led the doctor along the tube toward the

habitat ring. Spaced evenly along its length were various
access ports for maintenance, and the nearest was twenty
meters outward. O'Brien took the top and Bashir the
bottom as they untogged the pins, then the chief rotated
the wheellock at the center of the hatch. He rolled the
door back toward them, then pulled it open.
    They stared out at the stars whirling past as Deep
Space Nine rotated majestically on its axis. "Uh, after
you, sir."
 "WcI1, it's your station, Chief."
    "Excuse me, but it's your idea, Julian." O'Brien insis-
tently gestured with his hand. The doctor gritted his
teeth, grimacing, and edged through the hatch to the
outside of the station.
    Chief O'Brien followed. As soon as he cleared the
hatch, he was jerked around and found himself hanging
from the lip of the access port, for "down" was now
directly outward toward the habitat ring. They were
outside the jurisdiction of the artificial gravity genera-
tors, propelled now by the momentum of the station's
rotation.
    The chief stared outward at the spinning stars, down
at his feet and the habitat ring, up toward the core of
Deep Space Nine. A terrible, reasonless panic gripped
him: Outside without your pressure suit, bucko! It was
every spacer's worst nightmare. But there was a thin
envelope of air surrounding the skin of the station,
trapped by the forceshield and simply part of the station
enwronment, as far as the environmental controls were
concerned. But the thin hull that separated O'Brien and
Bashir from the crossover tube may as well have been an
iron curtain between living and dying in the chiel"s
bruised psyche.
    Cautiously, holding tight with both hands and wedg-
ing one foot in a handrung, O'Brien extended his left
foot in front of him, like a Ferengi Lobette. When he saw
the shimmering ripples surround his foot, he yanked his
leg back. They had about half a meter, no more, between




the hull and a messy death: blood boiling, lung alveoli
bursting, skin and eyeballs freezing solid.
    His boot wasn't cold--it had only been in the vacuum
of space for a second and hadn't had time to lose heat.
Paradoxically, the sweat on his trousers had boiled away:
in vacuum, any temperature above freezing is automati-
cally boiling, because there's no air pressure pushing
down on the water to keep it liquid. "Freeze-dried
laundry," he mumbled. Bashir didn't answer.
    Doctor Bashir clung to the handholds, looking fright-
ened and more than a little sorry he had ever thought of
the idea. Straining himself, O'Brien did a pull-up,
reached in, and pulled the hatch door to. Just in time.
Looking through the tiny, pillprick porthole, the chief
saw a light bounce past, swing high to illuminate what
once was the ceiling, then sweep side to side: Klingons,
bearing flashlights.
    "All right, here they come," said the chief. His voice
sounded a little distant, as the air pressure was lower in
the "bubble" than inside the station, but it was perfectly
discernible.
    "Can--can they see us?" stammered the doctor; he
looked pale. I probably look even paler, thought O'Brien.
     "I don't know, Julian. It's kind of bright out here,
what with the floods and all." "Can we kill the lights?"
"Oh, that wouldn't attract any attention, no sir!"
The doctor remained silent. O'Brien kept his own
mouth shut, grateful for the chance to worry uninter-
rupted. He stared through the porthole as the Klingon
search party got closer, their dozen torches casting bright
beams in every direction, swirling spotlights looking for
the little men who were not there.

I saw a man upon the stair,'
A little man who was not there;
He wash 't there again today;
Gee, I wish he'd go away/

     Then he heard the faint tramp of boots, ironshod
 boots of warriors unafraid to be seen and heard. The
 sounds were faint through hull and in the thin air of the
 pocket, but they approached, and O'Brien ducked his
 head until just one eye cleared the porthole. A mob of
 Klingon warriors rolled past, looking in every direction,
 including under the catwalk and "overhead," which was
 actually sideways from O'Brien's viewpoint.
    Then the chief saw a sight that caught his breath: in the
midst of the enemy invaders was one very familiar
Klingon face. Lieutenant Commander Worffs grim vis-
age appeared among the mob, floating "above" the
others (Worf was the second tallest Klingon O'Brien had
ever personally seen). Worse, it was evident from the
body language, though there was such a confused babble
of sound that the chief couldn't distinguish words, that
Worf was leading the assault on Deep Space Nine.
    Worfa traitor? O'Brien forgot himself and his predica-
ment and actually rose to stare full-faced through the
porthole, fury overwhelming good sense. You bastard!
You treasonous snake/"So it's war you want, is it, lad?"
he said aloud, "have the decency, at least, to take off
your Starfleet uniform before you dishonor it!" But it
was absurd, and O'Brien abruptly felt the uneasy inde-
cency. Worf could never betray them. Somethingm
something--must have happened to the Klingon...
something horrible.
    Worf looked up toward the porthole. For an instant, it
almost seemed as if their eyes met. In Worf's face, O'Brien
saw only a cold, emotionless determination, an inhuman
but thoroughly Klingon savagery that spoke of imperial
fantasies and glorious dreams--Worf the Magnificent!
Worfthe Terrible/Worf the traitor was making his name in
the Empire by sacking his own former post! The pain
struck O'Brien like the sharp point of a bat'telh beneath
his ribs, and he realized he was clenching his teeth so hard
his jaw throbbed. No, it's stupid. Worf couldn't be a
traitor--it's not possible for his Klingon brain.




    But Worfgave no sign of recognition. He did not smile
and wink, or call the troopers' attention and bang
outside to fire on the two men. Instead, his eyes passed
along without a moment's pause, without even a flicker
of surprise... either Worf had never seen O'Brien, or
else he had a promising career as an actor.

    Lieutenant Commander, now Brevet Colonel, Worf
scanned the crossover corridor, hoping not to find who he
was looking for. From the description given by the corporal
of the guard, there was no question the corridor had
moments before contained Miles O'Brien and some other
person, probably a female, judging from the physique.
    O'Brien.t Worf silently cursed his luck that he, Worf,
wasn't safely aboard the Defiant when the attack had
come. It wasn't cowardice or lack of confidence that he
would somehow be able to thwart the invasion, it was
the certainty of what his "treason" was doing to his
honor. Comrades in arms at each other~ throat, he
thought bitterly, with my blood-brother pulling the
strings. I shouM enjoy it... it is a Klingon opera/
    As the soldiers made happy, grunting noises rooting
around for the Federation escapees, Worf tracked his
eyes up and down the corridor, wondering where they
had managed to hide. Perhaps he could contrive to miss
the spot in his search? Then he turned to glance at the
porthole, and the sight he saw nearly stopped his heart:
O'Brien was outside looking in--without a pressure suit!
    It was absolute, utter madness. I have gone insane, and
now I see ghosts and hallucinations/It took every erg of
willpower the Klingon possessed not to make a sign,
gesture, or even just stare. He managed, barely, not to
give any outward indication of what he had seen.
    "There is nothing here," snarled Worf, shoving the
nearest man into a group of soldiers bending over. Two
of them toppled, but they forbore to challenge his
authority. "Go away! Kleeg and Drach saw shadows of
their own bloodlust--there are no Starfleets here!"

    After conferring, Worf moved the soldiers further
down the corridor, leaving Bashir and O'Brien hanging
tight. "They're gone," said the chief, trying to force his
shoulders to untense. It was impossible, and they began
to spasm.
    "Now what?" asked Bashir. He seemed in better
spirits now that the Klingons had passed and the pair
were still free and alive.
    O'Brien took a deep breath, feeling explosive pressure
behind his eyeballs. It wasn't decompression. The force
came from his sinuses, and behind them, his brain, what
he had just seen. Reluctantly, he told Bashir what he had
seen: Worf, leading the expedition! Worf, hunting for
them at the head of a pack of Klingons! "That's ridiculous!"
 "You think I'm lying, Julian?"
 "Of course not!"
 "But I saw him--Worf is leading the invasion."
     "Of course not! Chief, there has to be another explana-
tion. Did he have a disruptor to his back?" "No."
 "A frightened expression on his face?"
 "Not in the least!"
 "Well, how about a dour and angry expression?"
 "Of course; he always has that."
    "Well, there's your answer! They threatened him with
something."
     "Julian, he looked... determined. I saw him when he
looked right at me: he wasn't scared; he was efficient."
 "He looked right at you?"
    "Through the porthole. I guess he couldn't see me
through the glass. But I'll never forget that expression; he
was absolutely grim and determined--Julian, he really
is behind this whole thing!" The chief pressed his head
back against the outer skin of the station. He can't be. He
can't be. Maybe Julian can think of an explanation.t
    "You're bounding from one ice-floe of conclusion to
another," grumbled the doctor. "But what next?"




 "I already told you, Julian. This is war. Worf's asked
for it, he deserves it." You don't truly believe that, Miles!
  "My God, Chief. You've known him since your Enter-
  prise days. What are you saying? You think he has
  anything to do with this? You know he's no traitor!"
    O'Brien looked down at the thin, wiry doctor, once
again feeling the pang of jealousy at everything Bashit
had that the chief didn't: good looks, thin waist, a license
to cut and paste, women dripping off of him. But he
doesn't have Keiko, thought O'Brien, or Molly either.
And they're worth fighting for. "Comrade once, maybe,
but he showed his true colors pretty damned quick!
There are some things, Julian, you simply don't forgive."
The chief shook his head. "I don't know... maybe he's
been drugged or hypnotized. It seems pretty damned
incredible, if you ask me." O'Brien shook his head.
"What next indeed? If Worfcan be seduced by his dark
side, any one of us could be next."
    Bashit rolled his eyes. "I meant, Chief, what do we do
next right now? Worf has no dark side. Put aside your
emotions and think more logically. He must be--I don't
know, setting a trap for the Klingons? Maybe?"
    O'Brien shook his head. "God, I hope you're right. I
just can't picture Worf as a traitor to Starfleet, but if he
is, we're in a quadrant of hurt. Come, we'd better rush,
pop back in behind them, and make a run for the habitat
ring. You really think anyone's going to be waiting for us
in Cargo Bay Four?"
    "You can rely on it," said Bashit, sounding an awful
lot more certain of himself than he looked.
    O'Brien gently opened the door, careful not to slip and
"fall outward"; that would get him to the habitat ring an
awful lot faster than he wanted, and it would be a chilly
cold trip. He struggled himself up to a half-pull-up.
"This used to be so much easier a few years ago!"
    "You mean a few kilograms ago," retorted Bashir. The
chief pretended he hadn't heard.
Struggling into the crossover corridor on his belly, he

turned to help the doctor, but Bashir whipped himself up
and vaulted inside, landing on his feet. O'Brien glared,
but said nothing. He led the way along the catwalk,
sneaking as much as possible with hard-soled boots on a
metal grill.
    "Well, maybe that explains one thing," said Chief
O'Brien, as they peeked cautiously around the lip of the
turbolift shaft, looking for patrols. "What explains what?"
    "Why the Klingons haven't been killing us, Julian. It's
Wore Even if he's playing the traitor to fool the invaders,
he wouldn't actually murder his crewmates."
    Bashir raised his eyebrows. "That makes sense. Surely
something is staying their hand. I've never seen a kinder,
gentler Klingon assault."
    "Well, here's at least where we get to even the odds a
bit." He sidled to a weapons-storage locker, leaned close,
and whispered "Emergency lock-override, O'Brien ro-
delta-omega." Silence; the locker did not respond.
"Pickup must be off," he muttered, tapping at the circuit
with his finger.
    "All right," said Dr. Bashir, "any more brilliant
ideas?"
    O'Brien stared, then pounded the locker with his fist.
"They must've scrambled the damned codes! What
vicious bastard thought of that7"
    "Oh come on, Chief, it's not hard! If you're invading a
station, you don't want the inhabitants shooting at your
back."
    "Of course. That makes perfect sense." The chief
paused for a beat, then lunged at the door, yanking on it
and hissing obscenities that made the gentlemanly
Bashir blanch and put his fingers in his ears. It was, of
course, a weapons locker: built to take a knocking and
keep on locking.
    "Perfect!" snarled O'Brien, punching it one last time.
"What else is going to go wrong?"
 The locker between chief and doctor abruptly lit up


like a Yule tree, and sparks showered off the shell into
O'Brien's face. He whirled to face the Klingon, twenty
meters distant along the habitat ring main corridor and
sighting his second shot.
    Instinctively, O'Brien threw up his hands to cover his
face, and the disruptor struck his right palm. He yelped
once, then clenched his teeth--his hand was on fire! In
fact, his hand itself was numbed and the nerve endings
spasming in agony, it was his sleeve that was actually
aflame. He smothered it against his stomach as Bashir
shoved him away from the Klingon, who, having failed
with aimed shots, was now attempting spray-fire.
    Fortunately, he was no better at that mode--an unco-
ordinated Klingon! what're the odds?--and neither esca-
pee was struck. They quickly lost the soldier in the maze
of twisting hallways and corridors, led by O'Brien,
surelooted even while gasping in agony. Cargo Bay Four
was another hundred degrees along the circle of the
habitat ring, only a few minutes away--unless the next
Klingon sharpshooter they ran into had actually passed
the marksmanship test.

0

CHAPTER
      14

JA}~E TOOK ms turn at guarding the cargo bay from a
position some distance from the bickering Ferengi. He
didn't want to hear them, and he felt like a voyeur at a
family spat.
    Quark and Rom never seemed to tire of sniping at
each other and each had his own technique. Quark
would overtly insult his brother: "You're such a profit-
able ambassador for the Ferengi, Rom; you go to work
for a hu-man, your son joins Starfleet, you join a strike in
my bar, and you get our entire family declared outlaws!
What's next? Will you visit Ferenginar and make the sun
go nova?"
    Rom, in response, would play the "dumb Ferengi"
while more-or-less subtlely hinting that Quark was a
half-witted failure, all accomplished while cringing in
the proper Ferengi style of junior to senior brother: "Uh,
sorry, brother. I don't mean to be such a disappointment
to you. I shouldn't have kept you here, where it's so hard




to make a profit. Uh, is the bar doing any better, now
that you don't have to pay me?"
    Jake rolled his eyes. He was so distracted by the
bickering that he almost missed the faint creak of metal
on metal. He leapt up from his seat, a box labeled
"Danger! Highly Explosive? and fumbled with the huge
phase-wrench he had rustled up. It was as close to a
weapon as he could find.
    Turning wildly in every direction and hissing for
silence, Jake finally located the noise. It came from a
vent high over his head, at least four meters off the deck.
The vent bent outward, then, with a loud click, it
detached from its mounts and dropped noisily to the
metal floor, followed by the soft cursing of Chief
O'Brien.
    The chief dropped reasonably lightly into the room,
but one arm dangled limply. He was followed immedi-
ately by Dr. Bashir.
    Garak stepped from the shadows in which he had
secreted himselfi "Welcome, Doctor! I see you got my
message."
    O'Brien stared at Garak, then Bashir, then back at the
Cardassian. "You're not serious, are you? That really
was a message from you?"
    Garak bowed stiffly at the waist. "It brought you here,
didn't it?"
    Jake stepped forward. "We haven't seen any other
survivors. I think--I think they're all..." He couldn't
say it, the lump in his throat prevented further speech.
    "No, they're not," said Bashir, smiling and putting his
hand on Jake's shoulder. "The Klingons have been quite
assiduous about not killing any of the residents of the
station, so far as I can tell. At least, they threw me into a
pile of stunned bodies--stunned, not dead--and when a
Klingon patrol shot at us, they were using their disrup-
tors on the lowest setting. Otherwise, the chief would be
looking at limb-regen now."

    The youngest Sisko stared at Bashir. His heart felt
as if it froze in his chest then began to pound at twice
the normal rate. Alive.t "They're--all alive? All of
them?" He suddenly remembered to breathe and
gasped for air.
    "I think so," confirmed O'Brien. "We haven't found
any corpses. I think they put everybody in porta-cells
inside the Promenade shops."
    Jake bit his lip, wondering if he should say something
about Worf, but Bashir and O'Brien had a right to
know--and in any event, neither Quark nor Garak had
any love for the Klingon security officer. "Chief," he
began, but O'Brien was engaged in a cheery reunion with
Rom and wasn't paying attention. "Dr. Bashir? I have
some bad... I mean, I saw something that I think you
should know. It's about a certain Klingon we all
know--"
    "The one leading the assault? Yes, we saw Commander
Worf somewhat earlier."
    After a moment, Jake remembered to shut his mouth.
"Well, what are we going to do about it?"
Bashir looked confused. "Why are you asking me?"
Garak smirked. "Because, my dear Julian, you are the
highest ranking officer--in fact, the only commissioned
officer--in our little resistance group."
    "But... but you, Garak! You're in the--I mean, you
were in the Obsidian Order! They practically invented
covert warfare. Can't you--?"
    "Doctor, I am but a humble tailor! You are the man
with pips on your collar."
    Dr. Bashir hesitated only a moment. "Well, I suppose
I am. All right, let's gather our resources together and see
what we have. Does anybody have a weapon? Quark?"
     The Ferengi scowled and kicked another explosives
box. "I had a weapon, a phaser rifle." "Excellent!"
    "Except that somebody seems to have drained it
completely and left a nasty note in the battery receiver."




 Bashir's mouth pursed, and he grunted in annoyance.
 Jake held up his wrench. "I have a club."
     "Club!" exploded the chief. "That's a fine, precision
 piece of equipment, Jake!"
     "Well," said the doctor, "unless we find a bit of wiring
 that needs to be adjusted, it's a club."
    Hesitantly, Rom stepped forward, showing O'Brien
the encrypted Klingon handset he had unsuccessfully
tried to rewire. "Uh, Chief, can you decrypt this comm
link? I think that static is, um, the Klingons talking to
each other. Maybe we can get a fix and avoid them."
    "Or track 'em down and shoot 'em," muttered
O'Brien, taking the handset from Rom with his good
hand. "Oh. Yeah, I can pick this thing with Julian's
tricorder. Or rather, I could, if I hadn't been shot. Rom,
you're going to have to be my hands."
    The chief turned to Jake, who was trying to follow that
conversation and the one between Bashir and Garak
about resistance strategy simultaneously. "Jake, I have a
bit of wiring that needs adjusting, and I think I'll be
needing that phase-wrench now. That is, if you don't
need it to hammer nails or crack walnuts for the next few
minutes."
    Wordlessly, Sisko the Younger handed it to the chief
and pointedly went to sit next to Quark; the Ferengi
appeared not to appreciate the company. Jake allowed
his mind to wander, and he found himself back on Earth,
in his grandfather's restaurant. He sat in a booth at the
back eating jambalaya and writing about his adventure
on a deep-space station under attack by Klingons. It
always seems so much more survivable in novels and
holo-plays.
    No, not Klingons. Klingons were so... outre. Or is
that passe? Always get those two mixed up. Nobody's
going to believe Klingons, not in this day and age. Jake
squirmed deeper into his fantasy, relieved at not having
to be scared, for just a few moments, at least. Aliens,

unknown, faceless aliens. Power suits. Oh, wait a
minute--this is good! They use some really horrible
weapon, not a nice, clean death ray like a disruptor. but
a--He grinned. No, it was too perfect. The aliens would
use some super form of firearm! An actual gunpowder
weapon that fired bullet after bullet, tearing up the
station: faceless monsters in power suits with--what was
the word?--with machine guns. "It could work," he
mumbled aloud. Except that in real life, of course,
everyone would have to die. In fiction, the author could
brazenly bring them all back to life again. Ah, that~ why
I don't write science fiction, he sighed.
    He was jolted from his reverie by O'Brien's trium-
phant crow of "That's it, you've gotten it, Rom. Here,
gather around. Let's listen in on the Klingons."
    Dr. Bashit took back his tricorder and leaned over the
handset. The Kiingon messages were as far from fasci-
nating as they could be. The officers spoke tersely,
moving squads and four-man teams around the station
to hunt those few defenders remaining free. "Maybe if
we listen long enough," said Jake, "we can start mapping
where they are?"
    "Excellent idea, Jake," said Lieutenant Bashit.
"You're in charge of tracking the Kiingon troop-
movements."
    Jake almost objected, but he caught himself. He'd
opened up his big mouth and "volunteered" himself for
the duty. Besides, it was certainly more interesting than
standing between Quark and Rom during one of their
familial spats. Jake Sisko fished in his sealed pocket [or
his KlipRite and stylus and activated the station route-
mapper. Every few minutes, whenever a Klingon officer
sent some warriors on a mission, Jake would attempt to
figure out where they were going: the invaders didn't use
the standard, Starfleet designation for the rooms and
areas of the station, of course. He marked the troop
concentrations on the map as best he could.




    It was difficult writing or even viewing the screen in
the gloom of Cargo Bay 4. It was especially tough to
continuously strain his ears to listen to the chatter on the
Klingon comm link, rather than listen to the boistrous
discussion that had sprung up between Garak and Chief
O'Brien. "Damn his Klingon hide)" snapped the chief.
"What the hell is he up to? Why doesn't he tell us what
he's doing?"
    "That is simply the way they are," said Garak, shaking
his head.
    "They? Which they do you mean?" O'Brien's voice
held an undercurrent of irritation.
    "Klingons, of course," said Garak, failing to notice the
looming shift in Chief O'Brien's body position. Jake
smiled to himself; despite his smug certainties, Garak
really knew very little about humans. When a man calls
his comrade a bastard, the worst thing you can do is agree
with him/
    Having stepped into the quicksand, the tailor contin-
ued to stand pat, oblivious to the fact that he was sinking
fast. "Well, I'm sure we've all learned a lesson about the
so-called honor of Klingons. Perhaps in the future, you
will listen to this older, wiser head when he tells you that
the two things you can rely upon in this quadrant are
that quality will rise to the top and that Klingons will
betray you the first chance they get."
    Jake tried to return to the map. The Klingons were
following a strange, almost random search pattern.
Something seemed out of kilter about it, but Jake wasn't
sure exactly what was wrong.
    He was just about to ask the chief what he thought
when O'Brien turned on the Cardassian in sudden
vehemence, slipping in an instant into the role of court-
appointed counsel for the defendant. "And just what is
that supposed to mean? Let me tell you something, Mr.
Obsidian Order. I would trust Worf with my life--with
my family's lives! And I wouldn't trust you as far as !
could kick you!"

    "Well, that is certainly the attitude I would expect
from a Federation subject." Garak folded his arms and
chuckled. "You have eyes, but you do not see. Chief,
Worf is leading the invasion. You saw him yourself in the
crossover tunnel. When will the Federation grow up and
accept reality for what it is? It's a Cardassian trait you
would do well to emulate."
    Now O'Brien began to get angry. He stepped well
inside Garak's "zone" and confronted the Cardassian.
"Well how do you know what hold this Klingon general,
whatever his name is, has over Worf? Did you ever think
that maybe he's holding Alexander hostage, or he's
threatening to blow up the station if Worf doesn't
cooperate?"
    "That may explain, but it doesn't excuse," lectured
Garak.
    "And how do you know Worf isn't really on our side,
going along with the invasion until he's in a position to
do something about it?"
    Garak snorted, shaking his head. "The human capaci-
ty for wishful thinking never ceases to amaze. I certainly
know enough about betrayal by friends to--" "Oh, I'm sure you do!"
    Frustrated, Garak was just about to respond when
Jake thought he heard something important over the
handset. "Quiet)" he shouted. "Dr. Bashir, can you
make everyone shut up for a moment?" Jake listened in
silence, hoping that some Klingon on the other end
would request clarification or repeat of the orders.
    At last, the disembodied voice over the handset con-
tinued to detail the patrols: "Search the cargo bays on
the outer ring," she said, "starting with the one opposite
the prison cells."
    Desperately, Jake scrolled the map up and down,
trying to find Odo's office and the attached brig. At last,
he located it and tacked directly outward to the corre-
sponding spot on the habitat ring: the Klingons were
searching Cargo Bay 3, and depending on whether they




decided to go clockwise or not, their own hiding place
might be the very next one searched.

    Julian Bashir began issuing orders in a crisp command
tone, hoping he sounded an awful lot more confident and
full of "military bearing" than he felt. "Chief, find us a
way out of here other than the main doors. Everybody
else, pick up any evidence of our presence here and hold
it or stow it on your person. We can't let them know how
few we are, or even that we were hiding here!"
    O'Brien ran first to one side of the bay, then the other,
hunting for an access vent low enough that they could
reach. The one he had Bashir entered by was obviously
far out of reach. At last, he whirled in frustration.
"Julian, the only thing we can climb up into without an
antigrav unit is a dead-end storage locker."
  "It's better than here, Chief."
  "But if they have a tricorder--"
    "I can hear them right outside the door!" stage-
whispered Jake, who had stationed himself near the
entrance.
    "No choice, Chief," Bashit ordered. He had a sinking
feeling that his command was to be short-lived. O'Brien
was right: all the Klingons would need to do was sweep
the room with a tricorder, and they would find the
escapees in a moment.
    The chief made a step with his hands, hoisting the
Ferengi up first because they were the lightest, then Jake.
Then O'Brien and the Cardassian began doing the "after
you, no after you" routine. After two rounds of this, an
exasperated Garak picked up the chief bodily and
hoisted him into the hole, leaping up to scramble inside
himself. Ah, the advantages of Cardassian musculature,
sighed Bashir to himself. He barely made it up after his
troops, pulled by Garak and O'Brien together, when the
doors slid open and a platoon of efficient-looking
Klingon warriors entered the room.
 They fell into a defensive phalanx, searching the room

visually before moving from their spot near the open
doors, ready for a quick retreat if there had happened to
be an army of occupation-resisters lurking inside. Bashir
stayed in the shadows, watching them. Not even Klingon
eyes were able to see in total darkness, he knew, but then
the non-corn in charge snarled, "Tricorder, scan the
room."
    Bashir snorted. He had a fleeting impulse to leap from
his hiding place and charge across the room, hoping to
draw the platoon's attention. But he knew it wouldn't
work. Klingons didn't fall for the old misdirection trick.
One or two of them would cut him down, and the rest
would search the hole he had just left.
    "We're dead meat," muttered O'Brien, who had also
heard the order, evidently.
 "Not if I can help it," said Garak mysteriously.
    A warrior stepped from behind the other six and
unlimbered a clumsy, wicked-looking Klingon toy. He
started at one comer and began a slow, careful scan,
arcing counterclockwise. Bashir gritted his teeth and
tried to smile reassuringly, not that anyone could see
him.
    There was a movement behind the doctor. He heard a
faint whirring noise begin. Dimly, from the corner of his
eye, Bashir thought he saw a flicker of amber before the
light was quickly hidden by a hand. The noise was very
high frequency and quite faint, but it seemed to pulse.
    When the Klingon's tricorder was pointed directly at
them, the faint whirring behind the doctor rose in pitch
and intensity markedly, and the Klingon continued right
past! The warrior saw absolutely nothing on his tri-
corder, despite it being pointed directly at three humans,
two Ferengi, and a Cardassian tailor holding a hissing
light soume cupped in his leathery hands.
    The Klingon finished his sweep. "No humanoid life-
forms except for ourselves," he reported in the guttural
language of the invaders, instantly decoded by the
universal-translator implant in Bashir's ear.




    The troops milled about a little, turning over a few
boxes and shining hand torches on the ground to look for
telltales of recent habitation. Evidently finding nothing
to interest them, they moseyed off, disruptors held at
port arms as they marched. The door shut, and silence
reigned once more in Cargo Bay 4.
    Bashir stared after them for a moment, then back to
Garak. The Cardassian crouched directly behind the
doctor, watching with wide-eyed intensity; he held noth-
ing in his hands. "Garak, what was that thing you used?"
    "Thing? Dr. Bashir, could you perhaps be a bit more
specific?"
    Bashir grew annoyed. "That device you just used to
nullify the tricorder field! I've never even heard of such a
thing. Where did you get it?"
    "Doctor, I really have no idea what you're talking
about. I'm a simple tailor. I have no access to super-
secret tricorder suppressors. I'm not an intergalactic
spy!" He leaned close, whispering conspiratorially in
Bashir's ear, "or am I?"
    "Garak, I don't know whether anybody else saw you,
but I saw, and I know what you just did."
    "When a man has kicked around as long as I have, he
picks up certain, shall we say, toys, tricks of tradecraft,
so to speak. Is that entirely unreasonable?"
    "So you admit you're a member of the Obsidian
Order. You still even have spy paraphernaila--a tri-
corder field-suppressor, for goodness's sake!"
    The Cardassian winked. "Well, let's just keep it our
little secret, shall we?"
    "Keep what a secret?" asked Jake, crawling from the
back of the L-shaped storage locker.
    "Never mind," said O'Brien. "Sir, hadn't we better get
out of here, before that patrol comes back?" Bashir
didn't quite like the way O'Brien had been saying "sir"
since the doctor took charge, but he let it slide.
 "On the contrary," said Bashir, "this is probably the

safest place on the whole station right now. Why search a
space that you've just cleared?"
    Quark, who seemed already to have grown tired of the
novelty of creeping around the station like a cat burglar
interrupted. "So we're staying here for a while? Does
anybody have anything to eat? I guess we can't use the
replicatots." Rom opened his mouth, but Quark glared
his brother into silence.
    "We're staying put for now," agreed Bashir. "But it's
time we stopped running and started coming up with a
plan to beat that--that traitor Worf." There, I said it.
Bashir waited for a retort from O'Brien, but the chief
just stared downward, sullenly fascinated by the deck-
plate design. O'Brien couldn't deny his own eyes.
    "Chief, you know Deep Space Nine better than any
man here," continued the doctor. "Where can we go to
override the forceshield that's stopping communica-
tions, so we can somehow send a message to Bajor?"
    "Well, ultimately we might have to don pressure suits
and go outside. The whole subspace emitter superstruc-
ture is obliterated. The Klingons drove their bird-of-prey
right through it."
 "So how can we send a message?"
    "We can't. Not without the subspace emitter. It's the
only structure large enough to stick outside the field.
That's why they sheared it off, I suppose." "Then what's your idea?"
    The chief hesitated. "Well, maybe if we could get some
transmitter outside the range of the communications
shield, something that could broadcast automati-
cally-"
    "You mean like a probe?" asked Bashir, seeing some
solid hope.
    "Exactly. Except a probe wouldn't work. The electron-
ics would light up all the sensors on the bird-of-prey like
Bajoran festival bushes."
 "So," summarized Garak, "the Klingons would detect




it and blow it to constitutent atoms before it even cleared
the blanking field. Nor, of course, have we any access to
such a probe. And the Klingons control all the launch
facilities anyway. A brilliant plan, Chief O'Brien!"
    "Well, I admit it has a few rough spots," mumbled the
chief.
    "Please, gentlemen, we're still in the brainstorming
phase," said Bashir, trying to take charge of the situa-
tion, as the manual instructed. What a truly awful
feeling... being in command when there~ nothing one
can do! "First, let's see if we can't figure out the pattern
of the Klingon searches, so we know where they're going
to be looking."
    "But that's just it," said Jake. "I was tracking them
before, on my padd, and I noticed that the search parties
keep crossing and recrossing the same areas, and missing
other areas completely. It's really a stupid, mixed-up
search pattern. I can't figure it out."
    O'Brien suddenly grinned so wide, the corners of his
mouth nearly met behind his head. "I was right. I was
right!"
  "Right about what, Chief?." asked the doctor.
    "It's Worfl He hasn't betrayed us... he~ leading
them in circles!"
    At once, reality began to fall in place. Julian Bashir
hadn't realized just how painful was the feeling of
betrayal until it began to dissipate. He had never quite
accepted the image of Worf as traitor, despite his words
(and despite what the conflicted Chief O'Brien had
seen). Now, Bashir clutched at the offered straw, praying
he wasn't simply yielding to sentiment. We've got a man
inside! For the first time, he had a realistic hope that
resistance might not be so futile after all.

0

CHAPTER
      15

J^KE SISKO LOOKED at Dr. Bashir. The doctor's eyes were
unfocused, as if he were staring at a point several
kilometers away from the station. Jake turned to Chief
O'Brien, who bored a hole in the deckplates with his
scowl, a study in red intensity and gray strategy. Garak
stroked his angular chin, shifting his eyes left and right.
The Ferengi looked at each other, puzzled--Rom
scratched his lobes absently, while Quark fingered the
buttons on his glittery teal jacket.
    There was no longer any question of Worf's loyalties.
The question was, what should they do about it? What
would Dad do? that was how Jake phrased it to himself.
    "We've got to send him a message," said Jake, looking
down at the beckoning handset. Yeah, that~ what Dad
would do/
    "Saying what?" asked Garak in more or less of a sneer.
"Good luck betraying your Klingon pals."
Jake's face grew hot, and he closed his mouth firmly,




not wanting to say the first thing that popped into his
mind. Besides, the Cardassian's point stung, since Jake
had no more idea than Garak of what they could say to
Worf.
    Rom was not quite so tongue-tied. "Uh, maybe we can
tell him to shut down the environmental controls," the
Ferengi gingerly suggested. "That ought to slow down
the Klingons."
    "Oh, brilliant idea!" retorted Quark. "Then we can all
suffocate and float around the cargo bay like balloons!
But we'll have the satisfaction of knowing the Klingons
are just as dead as we."
 "It was just a thought, brother."
    "And so typical of your real-world understanding,
Rom!"
 "We could get into pressure-suits."
    "Rom, shut-up. Let the rest of us common-sense
adults work on it. You go sit with Jake."
    Jake bristled, almost jumping up to confront the
Ferengi barkeep, but then Rom, too, looked toward Jake
with irritation, as if the son of the captain were still the
thirteen-year-old chum of his own son, Nog. Angry but
helpless, Jake settled down to listen with an ill humor.
    "The handset idea is good," said the doctor, breaking
silence at last. "But what in heaven can we say that will
help him in any way?"
    O'Brien shrugged. "Another of your secret messages, I
suppose."
    "Oh, there~ a good suggestion!" It was Garak again,
and Jake smiled in spite of himself.
    The chief got a little heated. "Oh come on! Let's not
shoot the messenger before the message is even deliv-
ered. How about a code of some sort--tell him we're
here and where we can rendezvous."
    Bashir snorted. "Not a Klingon military cipher, I
hope! He's surrounded by Klingon military personnel,
for heaven's sake."

    "And," added the Cardassian, "no Federation code is
safe either. I'm certain the Klingons have long since
cracked them all."
    "And what makes you say that?" O'Brien still hadn't
forgotten Garak's last comment, Jake surmised.
    But the chief walked right into Garak's verbal snare.
"Because we did, Chief O'Brien. And the Klingons may
be a bit slower than the Obsidian Order, but they do
eventually get where they're going."
    Quark spoke up, surprising everyone--especially
Jake--with a suggestion that actually made some sense.
"How about a pun?"
    "Another one?" muttered O'Brien. Jake puzzled over
the chief's remark but couldn't make sense of it.
    Doctor Bashit smiled. "Yes... I like that. That will
work, Quark--good suggestion!"
    "Julian, Klingons don't have a sense of humor," said
the chief.
    "But Worf has been living among humans and Ba-
jorans and Trills, and all the rest of us, for years now!
Ever since the Khitomer destruction. He's Klingon, and
he tries to act like a typical Klingon, but for heaven's
sake, he must have more of a sense of humor than the
rest of them."
 "All right, all right! I give up."
    Jake tired of sitting silently in the spectator's gallery.
"You've got the form," he said, "but where's the con-
tent?"
 "I beg pardon?" asked Doctor Bashir.
     "We're going to send the message as a pun, but we still
have to figure out what message to send." "Oh. Yes, of course."
    Everyone fell to musing. But Jake already had the
answer, and a chance to pay Rom back for the little
betrayal earlier, when he had looked at Jake as if Quark
were banishing Rom to sit at the little kids' table at a
party. "I know what message we can send," said Jake.




    Dead silence. All eyes turned to the young man, who
reveled in his moment, drawing it out to the breaking
point.
    "Well?" demanded Garak, impatient despite his years
as a Cardassian spy, "are you going to tell us telepathi-
cally? Or perhaps spit out a word or two, to help us
simple souls along?"
    "We should tell him to turn off the environmental
controls. That ought to slow down the Klingons."
    Bashir and O'Brien looked at each other, nodding
appreciatively, and Jake felt a sudden pinprick of guilt.
Rom said nothing. His idea had been expropriated, but
somehow, Jake realized, no one had taken it seriously
when the far more qualified Ferengi had made it. Jake
caught Rom's eye and tried to apologize with a look, but
it only made things worse.
  "I like it, Julian. I like it a lot!"
  "This could be the key we're looking for."
    "But I don't think Worf would have any opportunity
to shut down the controls. They must know he's the
weakest link in their chain, even if they haven't figured
out he's actively fighting against them. This General
Malach won't let Worf get anywhere near the environ-
mental controls."
    Garak spoke up. "Ah, but we have a certain freedom
of movement, assuming we don't get caught."
    Bashir nodded appreciatively. "Garak knows what
he's talking about. This is right up his alley. We'll shut
off the artificial gravity ourselves." Then Bashir smiled
and got cryptic again. "Aren't you glad now, Falcon, that
we spent so much time training for this mission?"
    O'Brien rolled his eyes, evidently understanding the
message that eluded Jake. "All right, then we'll shut
down the gravity and evacuate the station. But we have
to warn Worf to--"
    "Whoa, hold that thought, Chiefl Evacuate the sta-
tion? You mean, dump the air into deep space?" Bashir

sounded taken aback, which made sense: Jake was
horrified.
    "Julian, if we just cut off the station gravity, what good
will that do? I'm sure the Klingons train as much in zero-
G, or more, maybe, as we do."
    Quark was glaring daggers at his brother. At least one
person remembers whose suggestion this was originally,
thought Jake with another slice of guilt. "If I may
interject," said the Ferengi, "I repeat my question: if you
cut off the gravity and pump out all the air, won't that
leave us just as dead as the Klingons? Not to mention the
Federation prisoners."
    "Chief, that's just my point," exclaimed the doctor.
"What about the prisoners? We must think of the
prisoners! Even if we get into pressure-suits, what about
them?"
    O'Brien looked stumped. "Well, if we warned him
what we were going to do, wouldn't he get them into
some kind of protection?"
    "Don't you think it would be a tad suspicious," said
Garak, "if Worf were to issue pressure-suits to all the
prisoners, but not to his own troops?"
    "I didn't mean suits! I meant a forceshield of some
sort... level four, it would have to be, to protect them
against vacuum."
    "But why would they use level four, Julian? If they're
just keeping prisoners from escaping, they would set up a
level two or maybe three, wouldn't they?" Again, the
chief was stymied.
    Jake cleared his throat. "May I make a suggestion?"
He waited until he had everyone's attention. "Why don't
we send the message. We still have time to decide
whether we'll dump the air or not, right Chief?."
    O'Brien shrugged. "I guess so. Don't have to decide
until we're down in the environmental-control level.
    "Then, why don't we work on the message? Doctor
Bashir?"




    Bashir looked at O'Brien, who looked at Rom, and the
glances went all the way around until they came back to
Jake. The doctor nodded. "All right, then. Let's work on
that message."
    You know, Jake realized to his surprise, I'm suddenly
the most qualified man here/Words were Jake's business,
not anyone else's. Environment, he thought to himselfi
Gravity... a grave situation--the gravity of the situa-
tion. Yeah, that's it, something about the gravity of the
situation/ "Doctor, I think I've got it! Or almost,
anyway."

    Lieutenant Commander, now Colonel, Worf called yet
another arbitrary twist in the search pattern, sending the
entire platoon of thirty-two Klingon warriors back into
the very same rooms they just searched. When Gunnery
Sergeant Komanek and Lieutenant "Rodek," Worf's
erstwhile (brainwiped) brother Kurn, protested that they
were searching very inefficiently, Worf roared and bel-
lowed, "Are you challenging my authority?" He accom-
panied the threat with a vicious blow that sent Gunnery
Sergeant Komanek reeling backward and caused him to
twist his ankle. Worf couldn't bring himself to strike
Kurn--Rodek. Fortunately, the warrior backed down.
    The rest of the platoon wisely kept their mouths shut,
while Komanek hopped away to beam back to the bird-
of-prey for medical care. As Worf led the search team
over what he already knew was old, empty territory, his
comm link buzzed in his ear.
    It was General Malach, Worf's blood-brother and the
leader of the assault on Deep Space Nine. He spoke over
the universal comm link to every Klingon on the station.
"Heroes, I have just discovered that one of our guards
was incapacitated and his handset was taken from him.
He has been appropriately punished and shall remain
forever nameless now."
    "There is no compromise in our plans. The handset
was properly encrypted, and there is no way that the

rebellious subjects can listen in on our transmissions or
confuse us with their own propaganda and disinforma-
tion. All the same, I am ordering my heroes to stay off the
corem link unless it is a matter of victory or defeat. That
is all."
    A bright flame of hope glimmered in Worfs brain.
O'Brien... it had to be O'Brien! Who else would have
thought of that? More to the point, if it were someone
else, then Malach was right: it would do the defenders no
good at all.
    But Malach did not know Miles Edward O'Brien the
way Worf did. The Klingon knew with utter certainty, as
only a Klingon can know, that if O'Brien indeed had
gotten hold of the handset, he could decrypt it and
probably already had. Worf decided he must operate
under the premise that Chief O'Brien had done so. It was
the only hope "Colonel" Worf had to repel the invasion
before Gowron decided Malach was victorious and
deserved reinforcements.
    Almost immediately, a voice spoke over the forbidden
comm link. Worf did not recognize the voice, though it
spoke in Klingonese. "General Malach, I do not under-
stand the gravity of the situation regarding this handset."
The speaker clearly overemphasized the word "gravity,"
raising Worf's suspicions.
    For several hours, Worf had contemplated the best way
for the remaining Federation defenders to turn the tables
on the Klingons, at least long enough to broadcast an
emergency message to the Bajorans, but he had arrived
at no satisfactory battle plan. Now, something about the
message tickled the back of Worf's brain.
    "Who said that?" demanded Malach angrily over the
same comm link. "You buffoon, switch off your guard
frequency if you want to communicate with me or any
other officer--that goes for all of you! Switch off the
guard channel immediately/"
    Worf smiled: the guard frequency was a separate
channel used only for emergency broadcasts. It was




always monitored, but no one would broadcast on it
unless he were extraordinarily stupid and incom-
petent-or he did it intentionally. If the broadcast were
intentional, Worf had a very good idea who must have
been behind it.
    And that meant there was a hidden message behind
the words, and it was meant for Worfs ears alone.
    Another message sputtered in Worf's ears. "My apolo-
gies, General. In this harsh environment, I neglected to
check my handset frequencies... a grave error, sir."
    This time, there was dead silence. It seemed Malach,
too, was mulling over the possibilities of who sent the
message. Worf continued sending his men searching in a
ludicrous and inefficient pattern while his brain churned.
If the message was meant only for Worf--it was not
O'Brien's voice, but surely the chief was behind it
somehow--then it must have been said in a way that no
other Klingon would understand. This thought led im-
mediately to the realization that they had gone to some
pains to find someone who could speak unaccented
Klingon--obviously to disguise the origin, but also,
perhaps, to direct Worf's attention to the language of the
message?
    Worf, of course, after so many long years among
humans, spoke the standard language of the Federation
as well as he spoke his native tongue. He tried translating
the message into the language of his adopted parents,
and, abruptly, much fell into place. In that language, the
word for seriousness, "gravity," was also the word for
the accelerative force created by matter and artificially
generated by the station. It was what the humans called a
"play on words"--the charms of which had always
eluded Worf, but he had, at least, studied such subjects
while living in the Federation if for no other reason, then
for self-protection against secret ridicule at school.
    Gravity... the station ~ gravity? Worf quickly remem-
bered his own painful, nauseating experiences with zero-
G training at the Academy--and he remembered that

such instruction was not taught in any Klingon military
academy he had researched. Worf could barely keep a
grin of triumph off his face as the full meaning of the
message popped into his head entire: the defenders were
going to kill the station's gravity generators!
    Perhaps not the full meaning, he amended. There was
still that equally mysterious broadcast about a "harsh
environment." The speaker had seemed as anxious to
broadcast that clue as the other.
    But now, the painful part: Worf would have to inform
O'Brien, or whoever had the stolen handset, that the
message was received and understood, and that meant
he would incur the wrath of Malach, and perhaps even
reveal his own intransigence.
    Switching his own command-set to include the guard
channel, Worf broadcast his own supposedly "private"
message to the general. "Perhaps it was simply an
untimely levity on someone's part," he said.
    "Worf, you idiot.t" snarled Malach on the private
command-circuit. "You are broadcasting to the entire
station! You, too, are echoing on guard frequency!"
    "My deepest apologies," rumbled Worf, cutting off the
guard echo. Once more would push credulity to the
breaking point.
    The Klingon strike force had quickly rounded up a
small number of Federation prisoners of war--and some
merchants unlucky enough to have been caught
napping--and placed them, at Worfs suggestion, in a
makeshift brig made from forcefields in shops along the
outer ring of the Promenade, where they would be out of
harm's way. By sheer good fortune, not because Worf
had anticipated the Federation plan, the brevet colonel
had gone beyond the call, demanding not just that the
warriors of the Empire place a forcefield across a corner,
trapping the prisoners against the walls of the stores, as
they normally would have. Instead, Worf had insisted
that gas-tight forcefield walls be placed around each
entire room, all six sides (four walls, floor, and ceiling).




"To prevent any harm coming to them in the event of a
counterstrike by the Federation," Worf had growled in
response to Malach's raised eyebrow, and in that he had
told the direct, honest truth: whatever Starfleet chose to
do, Worf hoped to safeguard the hostages as well as he
could.
    It turned out to be the most fortunate serendipity that
the forcefields would also prevent the prisoners from
suffocating if something catastrophic were to happen to
the environmental controls, for Worf began to speculate
that that might be the second half of the Federation
message--presumably from O'Brien, regardless of who
spoke. Alas, the hint was too vague: "harsh environ-
ment," indeed! It could mean anything.
    Worf listened through a long silence following his own
broadcast over the guard channel. Even as a young boy
of eight, Malach was mentally quicker than virtually
anyone else, adults included, in Emperor Kahless Mili-
tary City. "Worf, Worf, my little brother," he said at last.
"So there is still a little bit of rebellion left in you!
    "I do not know what secret code you are trying to
convey--I will have the computers aboard the Hiding
Fish work on your message--but it is of no consequence.
The few remaining defenders are scattered and helpless
before my heroes. You may as well stay off the guard
channel and not make an even bigger fool of yourself."
Worf did as instructed. He could not possibly get away
with another message.
    He said nothing more; there was nothing more to say.
Either O'Brien knew that Worf understood, or else, by
the time Starfleet found out about the loss of Deep Space
Nine, it would already have been reinforced by Gowron
himself'. for the raid was a test. At that point, Starfleet
Command, faced with the prospect of a major assault on
their own station (with its own contingent of a thousand
photon torpedoes), would probably back down and
negotiate for some face-saving exchange. Gowron and
Malach would have won.

    The resulting animosity between the Federation and
the Empire might well be enough to allow the Dominion
to play one side against the other, despite Malach's best
intentions for a strong defense. For all of our sakes,
thought Worf, I hope the chief is at least half as smart as
he thinks he is.t
    Worf gathered his bored, straggling platoon. They had
figured out that the new colonel had made a stupid
mistake, but were reluctant to offer the improving criti-
cism for fear of joining the gunny back on the bird-of-
prey's infirmary. "It is time to search in a brand, new
location," commanded Colonel Worf. "First stance.t
Right turn! Forward, step.t" Worf started the platoon
marching toward the exact, opposite side of the habitat
ring. I have a feeling, he thought, it is going to be a good,
long, slow march.
    Worf smiled. It was now time to eliminate one thom in
his side, and at the same time send one more assurance
to Chief O'Brien. Colonel Worf summoned Major Kru-
gus, the eyes and mouth of Malach, and pulled him back
from the rest. "Do you see that turbolift, Major?" As if
to emphasize the point, "Colonel" Worf harshly grabbed
the back of Krugus's head and wrenched it around to
look in the correct direction.
    "Yes, I do have eyes, Colonel!" The warrior was the
eleventh child of an old and honorable house. He was a
fearsome warrior, and were it not for the accident of
birth order, Rimakag Aganandaf would surely have been
elevated to general officer by now. But in Gowron's rigid
caste system, an eleventh child struck his glass ceiling at
major.
    Annoyed as Krugus was at Worffs assumption of
superiority, he did not even notice that the hand lingered
just a bit too long on Krugus's battle-helmet. "I want you
to find General Malach and repeat the following message
word for word, exactly as I give it to you."
 "I will obey, O grotesquely mighty one."
 Worf snarled and clenched his teeth at the back-




handed slur, but he held his temper. The man was a
master at saying just enough without saying too much, at
baiting young superior officers into striking him--
which, under Klingon law, was the only action that ever
allowed a major to strike back at a colonel.
    "This is the message: The weight of our assault should
focus on the habitat ring, where we have left too much of
a force vacuum."
    The major nodded curtly and left. Worf returned to his
platoon and led them in another clumsy, ill-thought,
meandering search of the decks for escapees, who surely
would have heard the newly minted colonel barking
orders loudly enough to be heard in the next quadrant.
    Some minutes later, Worf was gratified to hear his
comm link sputter to life. The major loudly repeated the
confusing message Worf had given him, because he was
speaking, he never noticed that every word was being
broadcast over the same guard frequency that Worf and
the first, unknown, voice had accidentally used... the
same frequency he had accidentally activated on Kru-
gus's helmet comm link while "accidentally" switching
the broadcast mode to "hot mike," which broadcast
everything spoken to the entire station.
    A moment later, Worfs personal headset whispered in
his ear, a sibilant hiss that he knew was not being echoed
anywhere. "So, what treasonous ice are you skating
across, my brother? Can this be some prearranged sig-
nal?" Malach paused for a moment, thinking deeply.
"No. I cannot imagine you would have guessed such a
plan as mine was possible. But you are conveying our
every move to that Starfleet pig who stole the
handset... a swine I am now convinced you somehow
gave the decryption code. I have, of course, taken care of
your treasonous ally, Major Krugus, though how you
turned him, I confess I cannot imagine."
    "Are you calling me a traitor?" Worf demanded of
Malach in an outraged tone of voice. He broadcast only
along the command circuit.

    "But it makes no difference. It does not matter. Hear
this, my brother!" Worf heard a click, then a slight buzz.
He realized that Malach had just widened the broadcast
to include every Klingon on Deep Space Nine. "Atten-
tion, heroes of the Empire! Our comm link has been
compromised. Upon pain of immediate discommoda-
tion, there will be no more broadcasts. All further
communication will be conducted by hand-signals and
runners. Any voice you hear besides mine will be an
enemy attempting to befuddle. That is all."
    The buzz stopped, and Malach returned to the private
command channel. "As a boy, you were no match for my
intellect, Worf. And even as a man, you fall short. I have
given you a chance at redemption from your own people,
do not cast it away to honor those who are without
honor!"
    "I will not tolerate being called dishonorable!" bel-
lowed Worf.
    Malach did not rise to the bait. "You are a noble hero
of a noble house. Come back to us; come back to your
people. Gowron is like an angry father who must disci-
pline his son but still loves his son." "I am not a child!"
    "He opens his arms to you, Worf!. The Empire wel-
comes you back. Do not push us away. Do not push away
the plate of honor untasted."
    But despite his defiant words, Worf felt himself weak-
en, perhaps he was wrong after all. Maybe his duty to the
Empire was greater than his duty to the oath he swore as
a Starfleet officer. After all, it was not like the bad old
days of expansionism, when the Klingon Empire wanted
nothing less than despotic rule over the entire Alpha
Quadrant.
    What was Malach asking, was it really too much? He
wanted--Gowron wanted--a strong defense against the
most dangerous enemies they had ever met, Federation
and Empire alike. The Founders were shapeshifters, and
without a rigid screening process that would make a




mockery of the Federation's soft-hearted (soft-headed,
Worf corrected) ideas about "freedom" and "individual
rights," the Founders would gradually replace more and
more of the Federation's leaders, until one black day, the
entire Alpha Quadrant woke up to realize it had "softly
and suddenly vanished away," to be replaced by a new
province of the Dominion.
    Worf had already seen what decades, centuries of
peace and indolence had done to--what was the phrase
he had read in the letter?--to the grasping tentacles of
the Federation, stretched infinitely far, infinitesmally
thin. Today, the same people who had many times
beaten back the massed warships of the Empire could no
longer handle even a few raindrops on their precious
pleasure-planet!
    Take away their phasers and replicatom and holo-
suites, their transporters and medical miracles, and
deposit them naked on the surface of a world no more
dangerous than their own had been a few centuries ago,
and how many of the highest-ranking officers in Starfleet
would even survive, let alone be able to rebuild a
civilization? Try as he might, Worf could not imagine
anyone referring to the "heroes of the United Federation
of Planets," unless in cold sarcasm.
    So was Malach, his blood-brother, really so wrong
after all?
    Worf shook his head and ordered his platoon to
double back upon itself to search the other end of the
habitat ring. The resulting traffic jam among the ranks
and file occupied his men for several minutes. The
problem with an Empire of heroes and warriors, he
realized, is that none of us wants to be servants or
soldiers. Right or wrong, Worf could never imagine
himself living his life to bring glory to another...
Malach or Gowron. And that, after all was said, was
what heroing was all about: who eats and who is eaten.
The ultimate futility of that philosophy, more than his

oath, was what had made Worf a Starfleet lieutenant-
commander rather than a Klingon hero.
    And that was why Malach was truly wrong after all.
After two centuries, the Empire had become the antithe-
sis to the Federation's thesis, with the Alpha Quadrant as
the synthesis of the two--if the Federation became the
Empire to save the quadrant, or if Empire turned into
Federation, it would destroy the synthesis, and neither
confederation of worlds could stand.
    Sighing, Worf overtook his platoon and led them from
the front, as befitted a hero of the Empire. He begall a
slow circuit of the habitat ring, desperately hoping that
Chief O'Brien would turn out to have somewhat more of
a sense of humor than he ever had demonstrated in the
past.




0

CHAPTER
      16

GARAK MADE ^ sour face. He hates speaking in Kling-
onese, realized Jake, more even than the rest of us. The
Cardassians had had their own troubles with the
Klingon Empire, long before the Cardassians ever met
the Federation.
    "Well," said Chief O'Brien, his brogue thicker than
usual. "Well, that's two responses, as I make it. One from
Worf himself, one from someone saying he was speaking
for Worf. Is that good enough for you, Julian?"
    The doctor shook his head. He was still reticent about
evacuating the station, and Jake couldn't blame him. If
Worf had somehow missed that part of the message, and
if the prisoners were in unprotected, low-force pens, they
would all die! It was a terrible gamble, but Jake Sisko was
convinced where Dr. Bashir was not yet.
    "I said you could say we were going to pump out all
the air, Chief. I haven't yet decided whether we really
can do it."
 Quark had looked more and more incredulous as the

discussion continued. "Surely you're not--not serious!"
he sputtered at last. "Even in pressure-suits, what are we
going to do? We'll be balloons, I tell you... air-filled
balloons bouncing helplessly around the station!"
    Rom said nothing, and his back was turned to his
brother, but that gave Jake a perfect view of a huge,
wicked grin of sharpened snaggle-teeth. Rom was enjoy-
ing his brother's discomfiture!
    O'Brien tried one more argument. "Julian, it's the
only thing we can do... and if we don't do something,
we're going to lose this station and probably everybody
on board anyway."
    The doctor shook his head, eyes closed. "We don't
know that, Chief. But, we have sat here long enough
contemplating our navels. I suggest we..." Bashir
shrugged and gestured toward the door.
    Jake moved toward the front of the column without
thinking, but Bashir gently pulled him back behind
Chief O'Brien, who was a few centimeters shorter, but
made a wider target than the younger man. O'Brien
approached the door, which snapped open without a
care in the world. 'Twas Cardassian, then Federation,
and now Klingon, and had been slave to thousands. The
tiny brigade filed out. O'Brien looked carefully both
directions, and Jake couldn't resist a quick left-right
himself.
    Jake still held on to the now-useless handset. He
looked at his school padd, unfocusing his eyes to men-
tally superimpose the station diagram on their present
position. "Sir," he said to Dr. Bashir, "last word we got,
there was a heavy Klingon troop concentration two
levels below us, working up. They could be here by
now."
    Garak looked at the padd as Jake held it up. "Chief, is
there any way we can get down to the level of the
crossover tunnel without crossing any major ladderwells
or turbolift shafts? We really don't want to run into




Worf's patrol. He might not be able to stop them from
stunning us."
    O'Brien looked pensive. "Well, ordinarily I would say
sure, if it were just me and Rom. My arm has finally
stopped tingling, no thanks to our good witch-doctor."
Bashir snorted, sounding almost as officious as Odo; the
chief took no notice. "But I'm not so sure the rest of you
can climb an unprotected ladder down four levels."
  "Unprotected?"
    "I mean no fall-guards, like staggered platforms. Our
Cardassian friends didn't see much need for safety
features."
    "That is because we Cardassians assume our crewmen
and servants to be competent and free from disabling
phobias," sniffed Garak. "I would have no trouble
climbing the antenna-well ladder, if that is what you
mean; I've climbed it several times before."
    "You have?" asked the doctor. "Now why would a
Cardassian tailor find occasion to use the antenna well to
sneak through a Cardassian station without detection by
Gul Dukat?"
    Jake smiled. The chief always enjoyed baiting Garak.
By now, he thought, everyone on DS9 must know Garak
was a Cardassian spy.
    Garak smiled lazily, evidently enjoying the game as
well. "Private fitting," he said. "And who said it was
during the Cardassian tenure of Terek Nor?"
    "Yeah," said O'Brien. "I mean the antenna well. You
think you're all up to it? Jake, Quark?"
    The elder Ferengi rolled his eyes. "If my brother can
climb the ladder, then certainly I can! Rom isn't exactly
Mr. Dexterity."
    Jake just nodded. In fact, he did not at all savor the
thought of climbing four levels--Cardassian-sized levels
at that--down a naked ladder spaced for Cardassian
limbs. But his only options were to stay behind alone or
compromise the entire team's effectiveness, and these
were no choices at all.

    The mob headed for the door, trotting as quietly as
they could, even Quark ceased grumbling and walked in
subdued silence as they entered the dead, silent corri-
dors of Deep Space Nine. After a few moments, Jake
heard the sounds of guttural speech, the words indistin-
guishable but the tone of voice unmistakable. He pushed
the mental picture of a mob of angry Klingons from his
mind and followed behind the doctor, the tailor, the
maintenance chief.
    Down the black-dark corridor and through an unob-
trusive doorway, hopping over a series of holes in the
deckplates (where Rom had been working a day earlier),
squeezing between a bank of cyan-glowing tubes that lit
the company with an eerie phosphorescence, O'Brien led
the sapper squad to a scaffold that only Jake and Garak
could reach unaided. The pair clambored up and pulled
the rest after. It took the two of them, plus Bashir on the
bottom, to pull up the chief. Jake began to sweat. The air
vents this deep in the bowels of Deep Space Nine never
did work well--they were Federation add-ons--and
there was no workable way to drain off the excess heat
generated by humanoid bodies and radiate it to space, as
there was in the rest of the station. But Jake was also
shaking, and he had to force his teeth together to prevent
them from chattering, and neither of those latter two
reactions could be explained by too much heat, he noted
wryly to himself.
    But at last, a gasping O'Brien dragged his forearm
across his dripping hair, plastering it back against his
head, and pointed wordlessly to a black shaft, black as
pitch, empty as the space between galaxies. Jake swal-
lowed; moving closer, he saw a narrow ladder, the rungs
spaced too far apart, leading into Stygia, or perhaps
Tartarus.
    Garak smiled grimly. "I see that the Federation does
not believe in performing maintenance on the lighting
systems," he gloated. "I would have thought better of
you."




"It's hardly a high priority to light a ladderway that
nobody uses!" objected the chiefi
    "Besides," added O'Brien's assistant engineer, Rom,
"we haven't had time to do any maintenance, and, uh, it
was next on my list after I corrected a slight problem
with the comm system. I can show you the work orders if
you don't--"
    "Don't show this tailor our work schedules, Rom! It's
no business of the Obsidian Order how we maintain this
military outpost."
    "Oh. Right. Sorry, Chiefi" Rom cringed politely, but
O'Brien ignored the Ferengi ritual. Quark reached across
and pinched Rom's right lobe hard enough to elicit a
yelp, and the assistant engineer looked grateful. Evi-
dently, that was the Ferengi response he sought. Garak
rolled his eyes, looking very Odo-like, and then he
snorted. The constable is contagious! concluded Jake.
    The young man edged to the shaft and peered down-
ward. "Careful," cautioned Bashir.
    Straddling the dangerous pit, Jake fumbled in the back
of his padd and extracted the emergency hand-torch. He
shone it down the shaft, but the illumination petered out
long before lighting the bottom. "Jeez, that's a long way
down."
    "Four decks," said O'Brien from right behind Jake,
"and not just short decks. I mean it goes from the top of
the habitat ring to the bottom--forty-two meters--and
halfway in between is the deck that connects to the
crossover tunnels."
    Only forty meters? thought the younger Sisko. It looks
deeper, but that~ probably the darkness. He smiled; it
was plenty deep enough to smash him into a pile of
pumpkin remains at the bottom of a hole.
    No, it's not just the fear of falling. There~ something
else, something I don't want to think about. Try as he
might, Jake was unable to dredge up his real fear, but he
knew it had something to do with his shameful behavior
on Ajilon Prime. Something was pinching his cowardice

nerve. There was something he was afraid of, but he
couldn't put it into words yet.
    "I'll take point," said O'Brien, and he plunged into the
darkness without hesitation. Jake was impressed with
the chief's aplomb. Rom affixed a lamp from a nearby
storage locker to his waist and went next. The Ferengi
was short enough that he practically had to hop from
rung to rung, dangling at the end of his hands and
stretching to touch one toe to the next rung down. Jake
was amazed he could reach it at all.
    Dr. Bashir gently pushed Jake forward, and he took
the third position behind Rom after tucking his padd on
his belt. For a brief moment, he felt the familiar weight
of honest acrophobia; at least this fear he could under-
stand! But there still was something else behind the
simple adrenaline surge of being in a very high place
with nothing to stop him from slipping and falling to his
messy death: there was still a fear of not doing something
he should be able to do. But what?
    Garak, Quark, and finally the doctor fell in behind
Jake, and the entire procession proceeded very slowly
hand-over-hand down the ladder. Even moving cau-
tiously, O'Brien quickly got his bulky body ahead of
everyone else. His lamp shrank to a brilliant star, then a
pinprick, while his figure faded altogether into the black-
ness. Jake kept his eyes riveted on Rom, keeping pace
with the surprisingly wiry Ferengi. Young Sisko didn't
look up, so he had no idea how the company above his
head was doing.
    At last, after an eternity, during which Jake's arms
began to ache until he was honestly frightened that
fatigue alone would throw him off the ladder, he noticed
that the O'Brien star was moving inexorably closer: the
chief must have stopped at the hatch through which they
would exit the ladderway. At once, Jake felt his stomach
tighten with a sickening fear--and finally, he under-
stood what it was he was so afraid of.' it wasn't dying, it
was failing. Jake was afraid that once O'Brien and Rom




killed the station gravity, he would panic in zero-G and
humiliate himselfl
    He had never felt it in his life, and he knew from his
father's stories that many people, upon their first expo-
sure, became disoriented, nauseated, and completely
unable to function. Jake Sisko was terrified that he would
turn out to be one of those people who experience a full-
blown panic attack, that he would disgrace the Sisko
name.
    The fear of panic itself almost made him lose control.
He wrapped both arms around the ladder, hugging the
metal and swearing softly, every obscene word that
Captain Sisko never would allow him to utter.
    Naturally, Bashir, directly above him, made things
worse by completely misinterpreting the problem. "Jake,
there's no need to be frightened. You're almost there.
You're not going to lose your footing now."
    Jake said nothing, not trusting his voice not to quiver.
Garak tried again. "Do you want me to climb down and
help you?"
    "No," croaked the youth. It was all he could manage.
Garak hesitated, presumably wondering whether to ig-
nore the answer and climb down anyway. But Jake,
desperate to avoid letting anyone get too close to him at
that moment, forced himself to continue. He pressed his
lips tight together and envied the Starfleet training that
supposedly made the officers fearless. What I wouldn't
give for that/Anything but my writing talent, that's what I
would give. Nobody made him an offer, unfortunately.
    He made himself look down. O'Brien had already
gotten the hatch open and disappeared inside. Rom's
torso was already within and, as Jake watched, the
Ferengi's legs slithered through the hatch.
    Then Jake got close enough to see the hole in the wall
they vanished through: again for no reason, mindless
terror threatened to rise and engulf him. Jake was not
afraid that the zero-G would hurt him; he was afraid that

it would make him lose control and panic, forcing his
squadmates to waste precious time and energy quieting
him... maybe even causing them all to get caught by
the Klingons!
    He waited a few moments for the overwhelming
performance anxiety to subside, then, taking advantage
of the brief lull, Jake practically slid the last few meters
and slithered around to the inside of the ladder. He bent
forward into the opening in the side of the shaft. For a
brief moment he dangled, perfectly balanced between
the access hatch and a fall to his death. Then he
squirmed forward a fraction, and the balance shifted
decisively toward the hatch. Within ten seconds, he was
inside, rising shakily to his hands and feet in the narrow
hatchway.
    With the immediate danger past, Jake started to calm
down somewhat, but his apprehension at how he would
react to zero-G and being trapped in a spacesuit grew
with every stoop-shouldered step forward, slouching
toward the crossover tunnel, the engineering levels, and
ultimately the environmental controls.
    They came at last to a grating that effectively screened
them from passersby in a busy corridor. The pedestrians
were all Klingons, of course, and Jake quickly realized
that it was Worf's lost patrol, trooping up and down the
same corridor, by sheerest accident, that Bashir and his
roughnecks had to cross! It was a rotten example of
rotten luck, and Jake decided he never would have put it
into a novel: too stupid for words, he raged, to come all
this way, climb down that damned ladder, and get acci-
dentally boxed-in by our own secret ally/
    Meanwhile, O'Brien worked steadily and silently on
the mag-clamps holding the grating against the power-
coupling tube they crouched inside. He depolarized each
magnet in turn with a slim tool extracted from the
emergency kit Rom carried, and soon the grill was held
against the lip of the tunnel by nothing more than the




chief's knee-pressure. O'Brien gestured at the grating
and raised his eyebrows in the doctor's direction, as if to
ask, Now what?
    Bashir gestured to Rom and Quark, then pointed at
his own ears. The order was clear enough to Jake: the
doctor was telling the Ferengi, with their notoriously
sensitive hearing and monstrous earlobes, to listen for
footsteps or other signs of approaching guards.
    Quark pursed his lips and scrunched smaller than his
already diminutive frame, then he closed his eyes and
slowly swung his massive head back and forth like a
deep-penetration sensor array. He held up his hand,
gesturing for the crew to stay where it was. Rom,
meanwhile, simply scowled, making himself look less
intelligent than Jake knew him to be, and appeared to be
listening intently to something he almost heard.
    "Nothing, and... nothing," said Quark. "I think it's
safe."
    Garak chuckled from behind Jake, as if he knew
something no one else knew. Sisko ills attributed it to
typical Cardassian smugness.
    Bashir smacked O'Brien on the shoulder, and the chief
extracted the grill without making too much noise. He
unfolded himself and staggered into the corridor, hop-
ping and shaking his leg in sudden pain. "Damn thing's
fallen asleep!" he whispered, as Jake and then the
Ferengi hopped down beside him. O'Brien's arm still
wasn't up to full range of motion, notwithstanding his
earlier claim. The lingering effects of the Klingon disrup-
tor seemed to still plague him.
    Disaster struck just as Bashir was unlimbering himself
from the shaft. A door slid open with a hiss, and four
Klingon warriors stomped out, looking cross--even for
Klingons. They halted and stared at the three humans,
two Ferengi, and one Cardassian. For a second, they
merely blinked, nonplussed. Then they reacted, grabbing
for their weapons.
 Garak reacted quicker than a pan of hot grease could

spit. He lunged toward the Klingons and shoved the first
one backward hard with a well-aimed, open-handed hit
to his center of gravity. The Klingon stumbed back into
his comrade, who fell back onto the third. The fourth
Klingon decided to charge at the same moment, and he
tripped over the other three, sprawling across them.
    But Garak was already pounding down the corridor in
the opposite direction before the first hit the ground. By
the time the Klingons untangled and leaped to their feet,
Bashir's mob had already put fifteen meters between
them and the Klingons, Garak leading the rout.
    When the action started, Jake had stood, frozen,
watching everything as if it were a holoplay staged for his
amusement. The result was that he found himself tail-
end of the snake as it slithered down the corridor. When
the Klingons opened fire with their disruptors, Jake
ducked involuntarily, feeling an itch in the middle of his
back where he expected to feel a disruptor beam any
moment.
    He saw the crossover tunnel ahead--O'Brien was
angling toward it! They might just make it... except for
the disruptors. The Klingons were finally getting smart.
Rather than try to aim each shot, they thought of
holding down the fire-button and sweeping the beam
across the floor, where it couldn't help but brush across
them.
    Then they heard a very familiar voice booming behind
them: "All warriors, "bellowed Worf, "draw and fire upon
the escapees/"
    For a moment, all Jake could think was, Betrayed/
Then he spared a glance back and realized the genius of
WorFs order: the Klingons now filled the corridor several
ranks deep! As expected, when the rear echelon opened
fire, the front echelon, including Worf himself, instantly
became irrelevant to the fight.
    "You shot the colonel, traitorous dog. t" shouted an
angry voice from up front. In the ensuing donnybrook,
the Federation "escapees" made it to the crossover




tunnel and dove inside, and Jake never did get to see the
outcome of the friendly fire fiasco. O'Brien said some-
thing about "missing the train this time," but Jake again
couldn't make heads or tails out of it.
    The core of Deep Space Nine loomed a few dozen
meters ahead. Within a few minutes, they would kill the
station gravity and environmental control. Jake was
about to find out whether or not he was truly worthy of
the family name.

O

CHAPTER
      17

CHIEF MILES O'BRIEN slipped down the last, slanty Jef-
fries tube, skinnying into the bottom well of the engi-
neering level--below the level, actually, in the area
beneath the metal-catwalk flooring that few persons
apart from the engineering crew of the station even knew
existed. He looked up and saw the steel-shod boots of a
dozen Klingon warriors directly overhead, in the "low-
est" official level of engineering above the reactors, and
felt a terrible temptation to cringe back against the wall
out of sight. But he knew well that the level above was
much better lit, and from up there, the environmental-
controls well looked like a Stygian cave.
    Dr. Bashir leaned close to the chief and whispered
something in his ear. "What?" bellowed O'Brien, enjoy-
ing the shocked look on the doctor's face. Bashir made
an urgent shushing noise, which was lost in the rumbling
cacophony of the atmospheric pumps and recirculators
and gravitic generator itself--a low throbbing that




sucked sound from the air as easily as the tide sucked
away the wash from the waves. O'Brien shouted directly
into the doctor's ear: "They can't hear us down here!
They can barely hear themselves talk/Trust met"
  "What~ the plan?!"
    "There g the master control/The banks of blue buttons
control the station gravity! There ~ a failsafe! You have to
push this bank and that bank simultaneously!"
  "What?!"
    O'Brien cleared his throat, then repeated the instruc-
tions at top volume. He glanced up involuntarily, but the
Klingons were not looking down at them, just shouting
at each other, even their heroic howls drowned out by
the machinery.
  "We need another pair of hands!"
    It turned out they needed two other pairs. O'Brien
grabbed Rom and pulled him close, pointing wordlessly
at the banks of turquoise-lit lamps labeled "Gravitic
Generator Circuit"; the chief held up his hand showing
three fingers, then two, then one in rapid succession.
Rom squinted a moment, then nodded happily.
    Looking over the rest of the mob, choosing between
Garak, Jake, and Quark, O'Brien reluctantly gestured to
the boy to come close. '?'m going to give a visual
countdown/" yelled the chief. "At zero, touch the bottom
of all six of these slidebarsl All at the same time/Got it?f"
    Jake stared at the board full of buttons and slidebars,
shaking his head slowly from side to side. Feeling an
increasing unease, O'Brien elbowed his way next to the
lad, grabbed Jake's hands, and physically dragged them
right above the proper slidebars. Jake was trembling. He
kept licking his lips and dry-swallowing. Please don't
bollox it up, lad! thought O'Brien to himself.
    "Everybody else!" screamed the chief, 'yind something
solid to hang on/ Here we go!" He wasn't sure they
understood his warning; neither Quark nor Garak acted
as if they even heard him. On the other hand, O'Brien
didn't particularly care whether they went for a sail or

not... in fact, with those two, it might be quite the
bonny sight.
    O'Brien opened a console and typed for a long inter-
val, giving coded responses to a series of security queries.
He had to type, since not even the computer could pick
out his words in the din, even if it hadn't been compro-
mised. At last, he successfully circumvented the
maintenance-security subroutines and was ready to in-
troduce a note of levity to Deep Space Nine.
    Chief O'Brien held up his hand and waved it to grab
the attention of his surrogate fingers. Three! He held it a
long moment, making eye contact so he could assure
himself that each person was watching.
 Three!
 Two!
 One!
    Where zero should have been, O'Brien brought seven
well-spaced fingers down sharply on the bottom of the
slidebars. Evidently, the others did their jobs as well, for
he began to feel light-headed immediately.
    It was a horrible feeling, as if he were falling, falling!
O'Brien flashed back to the eerie, shattered hulk that had
started the horrible adventure, the hollowed-out shell
collapsing in on itself. His own pulse skyrocketed, and a
burst of adrenaline pushed through his circulatory sys-
tem. Panic! It was purely physical, the body screaming
out in fear that it was falling. But even knowing it was
just the transition to zero-G, Miles O'Brien could not
calm himself down. The unreasoning fear welled up and
seized hold, and he almost let go the slidebars, which
would have been a disaster: without constant pressure,
the safeties would kick in automatically, restoring full
gravity.
    His entire body began to lift against the slight pressure
of his feet against the deck, his hands against the
controls. Just at the point where he could no longer hold
his fingers down without simply pushing himself away,
the gravitic generator control passed the "point of no




return," whence it would continue by itself down to
zero-G.
    It was a horrible sensation, worsemfar worse!--than
floating in the derelect ship, for this was his home, his
own. This world was never supposed to be so torn apart.
Topsy-turvy, topsy-turvy... the inadequate words ran
through O'Brien's head like the tolling of some great bell
signaling disaster, the Dire Tocsin of the Irish village,
crying fire, flood, a terrible squall off the coast among the
fishers/
    Then the nausea crawled "down" his throat--no "up"
or "down" left--into his stomach. He tasted the bile
first, felt it ooze along his esophagus to slowly over-
whelm his guts. A raging, terrible sickness far worse than
he had felt in the dead hulk, because this was Deep Space
Nine, and it was never meant to be this way.
    Chief O'Brien's ears burned, and he knew if he could
see them, they would first be pink as boiled corned beef,
then red as a bowl of strawberries. He felt a terrific
itching in his throat and ears, and dizziness shook him
like a fever-chill. He noticed he was floating "upside-
down" with respect to the console he had just been
pressing, and he flapped his arms, trying to right himselfi
He had been so intent upon killing the gravitic generator
that he had forgotten to secure himself to something
solid.
    Garak grimly clutched a chair hooked into a track,
and, curiously enough, Jake Sisko had wrapped his
gangly legs around the railing surrounding the wellm
true son of a captain that he was. Bashir was as loose as
O'Brien, but the young know-it-all seemed as unper-
turbed by the turn of events as he had been earlier in the
ship.
    Thank God at least Quark looks as sick as me, and
Rom too, thought the chief in unbecoming bitterness
that startled even himself. It's the spacer's revenge, he
told himselfi It's making my head funny.
 The doctor was talking, but O'Brien needed every bit

of attention to keep from dry-heaving uncontrollably
and truly disgracing himself. His skin felt clammy, and
he knew his flesh was as gray as the fat-scum floating in
the boiling water atop the corned beef... soon to be
white as the cream poured over the strawberries.
    Suck it up, he commanded himself, and stop thinking
about food/He forced himself to pay attention to the
young pup with the pips on his collar. "Listening to me? Chief2."
    "I'm--sorry, Julian. I was--thinking." O'Brien swal-
lowed several times. He suddenly realized that he could
hear Bashir; most of the engine noise had stopped,
leaving only the whine of the air pumps. All it wouM take
is one, little twist of the pressure-regulator...
    "Glad to see you're still among the living. I said,"
repeated Bashir, "what are you going to do next?"
    "What we... already... decided. Vacuum... envi-
ronmental controls."
     "I was afraid as much," said the doctor, wincing at the
thought. "I'm afraid I cannot allow you to do that."
 "But why--"
    "Chief, think of the prisoners! What if Worf didn't
figure it out? What are they supposed to do then, suck
vacuum?"
    Chief O'Brien rolled his eyes, a signal of disgust that
cost him dearly in the fragile sense of balance he had
constructed from visual input alone. "Julian, Worf
said... force vacuum. Must're figured it out... must
be safe."
    "Safe how? Did the Klingons issue them all pressure-
suits, just in case some damn fool discharged the atmos-
phere out a porthole?" Bashit had drifted close enough
to a railing to grab hold, where he fluttered gracefully, a
flag on a blustery day. O'Brien found the movement
disturbing enough that he began to hyperventilate. He
stared away, focusing on the Ferengi. They were still
bouncing slowly around the room like slow-motion
balloons, waving their arms and legs and bleating.




    "I don't know!" shouted the chief, too late remember-
ing that the Klingons probably could hear him now that
the generator was offiine. "On the Klingon ship or
forceshields--something! Worf wouldn't have said vacu-
um part if they would die."
  "Maybe he didn't think of it!"
    Chief O'Brien remembered in time not to roll his eyes
again. "Known him longer than known you... sir. Not
make... mistake like that!"
    At last, by sheerest mischance, O'Brien drifted face-
first into Bashir's boots. He grabbed hold with both
hands, climbing along the lieutenant in a successful, if
disturbingly familiar, drive for the railing. He latched
onto the bar in a death-grip and faced the doctor from
half a meter away.
    This close, O'Brien saw that Bashir's own skin had
grown pale. He realized that the doctor was anguishing,
trying to decide whether to flush the atmosphere and risk
killing every man, woman, and child held hostage
aboard the station, which would be the result if Worf had
somehow missed that part of the message after all, or
else do nothing and, in essence, surrender the station to
the Klingons. The zero-G was a nuisance, but not
disruptive enough by itself to prevent them from holding
their conquest until reinforcements arrived from the
Empire. Without the evacuation of the station atmos-
phere, the six of them could not hope to overwhelm the
Klingons.
    Bashir hesitated on the precipice of decision, too
perfectly balanced to go either way. But the chief knew
what to do, perhaps because, of all things in the world,
he trusted Worf not to be as thick-skulled and humorless
as his Klingon brethren. The problem was, how to
persuade the doctor? For obvious reasons, the potential
death of the prisoners was far more real to Julian Bashir
than was the joke-getting ability of a Klingon he had met
for the first time just a couple of years earlier.
 For a moment, O'Brien was at a loss, then abruptly,

the words jumped into his mouth almost before they
appeared clearly in his brain. "Julian, you said it your-
selfl"
    "Said what? What?" shouted the doctor, staring back
and forth between the chief and the environmental
control panel.
     "You said yourself that the Klingons were moving
heaven and earth not to kill anyone... you said it!"
 "So-o-o?"
    "So they know there's going to be a counterattack by
the Federation. There has to be! And the only place the
prisoners would possibly be safe on a station under
bombardment is behind a level-four forcefield!" When
he finished the thought, the chief noted with surprise
that his nausea was almost entirely gone, even though he
was still dizzy and disoriented; the pressure of logical
thought calmed him down.
"Maybe they just plan to release them when--"
"No, I mean that's what Worf must're argued with
them, that's how he got them to store the prisoners
behind the forcefields, even before we broadcast the
warning. That's why he told us so quickly to go ahead
and do it!"
    It wasn't much. There were logical arguments that
might be advanced against the point, if Bashir were
looking for them. But it was just enough to tip the
balance in the doctor's mind, the one, final stick that
broke the logjam. "Yes," said Dr. Bashir quietly.
 "Julian?"
    "Yes, Chief, I believe we can. Chief O'Brien, get
everyone in pressure suits. What Worf said about the
station atmosphere... make it so."
    "Aye, sir!" Now that he wasn't thinking so hard about
the lack of gravity, his Starfleet training reasserted itself.
He spun around, using his hand on the railing as a pivot
point, and kicked across the room toward the bank of
storage lockers. One contained ESO pressure suits for
Extra-Station Operations in the unlikely event that such




a thing was required; it hadn't been in all the years
O'Brien had been aboard Deep Space Nine.
    Fortunately, the lockers were too old to have been
connected into the station computers, therefore, the
combinations were not scrambled as were the rest of the
locks. O'Brien punched his own code, and the locker
snicked open with the cold efficiency of Cardassian
machinery.
    Garak materialized by O'Brien's side. "Do I take it we
are about to embark upon an invigorating swim to
Bajor?" he smirked.
    "Take it any way you want. Just stay out of my way."
In the closet were eight Starfleet pressure suits and,
miraculously enough, two Cardassian suits left over
from the old days. "Here," mumbled the chief, extract-
ing one of the latter and launching it toward Garak. "I
wouldn't want you to be underdressed."
    "It would spoil my image," agreed Garak, efficiently
shedding shoes and outer garments to slither into the
suit.
    O'Brien turned around and gave one suit a gentle push
in Bashir's direction. If he can kick my butt at darts, he
can bloody well catch this damned thing. t Then he slipped
into a suit himself.
    "Chiefl" hissed Jake Sisko from a few meters away.
The lad dangled at an impossible angle from the cage
separating their deck from the one that used to be
"above," a concept now meaningless. "Chief, what are
we supposed to do with those?"
    "Watch!" commanded O'Brien. He kicked off his
boots--they were included in the suit, of course--and
gently pulled apart the front seam of the suit. Maneuver-
mg it so that the chest opening just touched his feet,
O'Brien slithered his way into the tight-fitting,
accordion-jointed, head-to-toe jumper. Pulling his arms
inside and ducking his head into the helmet, O'Brien
pressed the chest seam together again and dialed the
mode-select to seal. He heard the soft thunk as the suit

pressurized itself to three-quarters station normal, and
his ear cracked at the sudden change.
    Holding three suits, he reset his feet and launched
toward the Ferengis, who were still bumping around in
the corner. He stretched and handed-off one ESO to Jake
en passant. When O'Brien reached Quark and Rom, the
bartender turned reluctant revolutionary was already
eyeing the suits with horror. "Chief O'Brien, you had
better not be telling me that/have to wear one of those!"
    "Here you go, Rom. No, Quark, I wouldn't be telling
you anything. Leave it off if you think it might clash with
your teal jacket, I don't care."
    "Oh, right," sneered Quark. "So I can die and allow
Rom to take over my bar? Not for a Ferengi's grace
period!" Quark snatched the remaining suit, which was
marked for a supervisor. "But don't you imagine for one
microsecond that I'm going to forget about this cross-
species humiliation!"
    Humiliation? What the hell is he on about? Then the
chief saw Rom squirming into his own suit, and he
understood immediately. When the young Ferengi fi-
nally managed to get himself inside and work the air
seal, it was all O'Brien could do to avoid actually
laughing out loud at the absurd picture of a tiny Ferengi
inside an ESO built to accommodate a burly human: the
arms and legs flopped uselessly, and Rom could barely
see over the lip of the helmet. The assistant engineer
looked like an egg stuffed into a sock.
    Quark, when he struggled into his suit (with help from
Rom), looked even more ridiculous. Unlike his brother,
Quark tried to look dapper and dignified and succeeded
only in making himself look like Molly playing dress-up
in Keiko's clothes.
    But it was good enough; everyone was secured inside
the pressure-suits. The moment of truth had arrived.
    O'Brien kicked gently back toward the environmental-
control panel. He plucked a delicate probe from his
pocket and carefully bypassed the final security subsys-




tems, literally rewiring the environmental interface to
delete the interminable requests for passwords and
superuser status. The environmental-control password
system had been designed by the Cardassians to prevent
some idiot from accidentally purging all air from the
stationmor a Bajoran terrorist from doing it on
purpose--but they had no time for it now!
    But now it was O'Brien who hesitated, nervously
stopping his hand just a centimeter away from the purge.
Do I really have the guts? Was I right about WorJ? Was
Worf right about the Klingons not wanting to hurt the
prisoners or use them as human shields?
    He hesitated for three seconds, then looked up to see
Bashir staring at him with such intensity, O'Brien jerked
backward, almost pushing himself away from the con-
sole. "Have to move," he muttered to himself, too
quietly to be overheard through the helmet. "Some-
body's got to make the decision, and that somebody's
me."
    He sighed a long, resigned breath, then flexed his digits
the final two centimeters and poked the "Emergency
purge" touchplate. At first, O'Brien heard nothing inside
his suit except for his own breathing, loud in his ears,
then he started to hear the roar of escaping gas as the
mighty circulation system began the eight-minute proc-
ess of evacuating all the air from the station in an
emergency, crash-priority purge. Accompanying this was
the red-alert warning shriek and an insistent voice
warning of imminent doom from hard vacuum. O'Brien
quickly reached into the open control panel and slew the
sound effects. When the wind-roar reached its peak, the
chief had to grip the console tightly to avoid being
sucked toward the nearest air vent.
    Gradually, the external sounds became faint and tin-
ny. He heard horrified shouts from the level "above."
Glancing up, he saw four Klingons caroming off the
walls of the engineering level in panic, searching for
pressure suits, oxygen masks, something to save them-

selves! They finally located a locker and blasted it open
with disruptors, but it was too late for all but one
Klingon, who flung himself into a suit in a desperate
frenzy.
    He made it... barely. But his comrades were dead,
by the most horrible means O'Brien could imagine: slow
suffocation as the atmospheric pressure plummeted.
    The remaining Klingon was alive, but incapacitated by
the trauma to his lungs and tissues. The Federation
counteroffensive had finally begun.


CHAPTER
      18

JULIAN BASmR BEGAN to get cold feet as the air pumped
from the rest of the station. The dimly remembered
manual insisted they had another ten minutes before the
larger spaces in Deep Space Nine were evacuated, and he
determined to make use of those precious moments.
"Jake, give me the handset," he said. The boy looked
blank until Bashir remembered to say "Open comm link
to, ah, pressure suit 224A, codename Jake Sisko." He
repeated his request for the handset, and Jake fumbled
the recovered Cardassian communicator to the doctor.
    Licking his lips, Bashir activated the device. "Open
comm link to handset. Scan for frequency squawk, link
to broadcast." The commands were unfamiliar, but
then, he had never tried to link from a pressure-suit to a
Klingon communicator before. After a moment, he
heard a fast click-click in his ears that he presumed was
maintenance shorthand for "link established," and he
breathed a sigh of relief.
 "Attention General Malach. This is Lieutenant Julian

Bashir, commanding officer of the Deep Space Nine
defense forces." Bashir paused. He had deliberately not
mentioned that he was a doctor--let him sweat at the
thought that we're trained counterterrorists! "We are
evacuating all air from this facility. The process cannot
now be reversed. You must immediately move all Fede-
ration prisoners to airtight confinement or they will die,
and Starfleet will hold you personally, and the entire
Klingon Empire, responsible for the deaths of all men,
women, and children under your control!"
    Nothing but static. Bashir waited thirty seconds and
was just about the try again when the voice he recog-
nized as "Malach" came over his suit comm link. The
general sounded as though he were whispering directly
into Bashir's ears. "If you value the lives of your fellow
Federations, you will instantly restore the atmosphere of
this station!"
    "Negative, the process cannot be reversed. It is beyond
our control now. Only you can save their lives... and I
demand that you do so or suffer the wrath of the
Federation for all time to come--against you and your
house for all eternity!"
    The ruse having failed, Malach responded immedi-
ately this time. "The prisoners are safe. We wish to
discuss terms of your surrender. You will not be
harmed."
    "Oh, we have no intention of surrendering, Malach."
Bashir deliberately did not use the term 'general.' "We
shall fight to the last man. I suggest you pray that your
Klingon warriors have trained as assiduously in zero-G
vacuum warfare as we have. We are coming for you,
Malach. Today will be a good day to die... for you." He
thumbed off the handset broadcast switch and listened,
but Malach did not respond.
    Bashir looked up to find the entire company staring at
him, each from his own peculiar attitude in the weight-
less environment. "Maintain open comm link with pres-
sure suits 224A, 228A, 172A, 173A, and 175A."




Click-click. "Men, I have just informed Malach that we
are evacuating the station, and ordered him to get the
Federation prisoners to airtight spaces."
    "Yeah?" demanded Quark aggressively, "and what
about the non-Federation prisoners, like Morn and Cap-
tain Kobei?"
    "Malach has no reason to suddenly start killing them
now, Quark. But we need a plan of action--he knows
we're coming for him, but he has no idea how many we
are or how heavily armed. He only knows we're here and
we can monitor their communications."
    "And he knows that Worf is on our side," added
O'Brien, who floated directly "above" Bashit and
upside-down from the doctor's point of view. "I hope to
hell Worf knows the game is up!"
    Bashir said nothing. His own breath was loud in his
ears. Quark and Rom were still flailing, and Rom's
helmeted head struck a bulkhead. Bashir jerked when he
heard the thump loud and clear over the comm link.
    Malach's voice returned in the doctor's ears...
everyone's ears, presumably, with the open circuit: "We
had no choice. The Federation does not understand that
this is the greatest crisis ever to face the Empire--the
entire Alpha Quadrant. More even than the Borg! Some-
body had to act."
    "We have the advantage," Bashir nearly shouted,
ignoring the Klingon. "Let us strike quickly, while
they're still getting their sea-legs, so to speak. We must
retake Ops and get a message through to Bajor!" The
handset did not broadcast, so Malach heard only silence
in response to his evident urge to rationalize. Good, let
him sweat for a change.
    "We want no war with the Federation. We are not
asserting control over your territory, do you not under-
stand? We saw a leak, and we moved to plug it. You
would have done the same, if you would have allowed
your warriors to act. Lieutenant Bashit, listen to me. We

are not your enemies. Our mutual enemy lies beyond
this gateway in the Gamma Quadrant. Listen to me.t"
    Bashir found a solid railing with his feet. Grace under
any condition, including zero-G, came easily to the
doctor; always had. He launched himself toward the
hatch that mediated between the "upper" and "lower"
levels of the engineering department, though the terms
were meaningless now. Garak followed close at his heels,
and Jake and the chief took a moment to retrieve the
squawking, flapping Ferengi and tow them along behind.
    Arriving at the hatch, Bashit gripped the ladder with
his legs while he worked the manual override--not an
easy task in zero-G, since it had never occurred to the
Cardassians who built the station that anyone would try
such a damn-fool stunt. But by bracing himself and
applying dynamic tension in opposite directions simul-
taneously, he managed to twist the screw and dial back
the bolts. The door opened, and Bashit wriggled
through.
    He spared barely a glance at the four }Clingon soldiers
who had guarded engineering: three clearly were dead,
but he couldn't tell about the fourth. You're a doctor,
damn it, insisted one part of his brain, but another part
screamed, No time, no time! Feeling a wave of guilt, he
bypassed the possible patient and pushed toward the
next level up.
    "Lieutenant Bashit, I do not want to fight you. Join
me--join us in glorious defense of the Alpha Quadrant
against these invaders from the Dominion. Join the
Empire, and arm-in-arm, we shall repell the Founders
and secure our borders. Lieutenant, answer me! You
dishonor me by this stony silence. I require an answer. I
demand an answer.t"

    Major Kira Nerys tensed when Dax said it, tensed
though she was expecting it, ready for it: "Wormhole
ahead," said Dax, dry-mouthed enough to have to clear




her throat. The normally irrepressible Trill seemed to be
entering in the general spirit of doom and anxiety that
gripped the rest of the bridge crew of the Defiant.
    Kira tensed and licked her own lips. Her fingers sought
out the torpedo controls, and though they trembled with
anticipation, she knew, if the order came, she could fire
cleanly and without hesitation. Passing through the
wormhole, she scanned constantly for a hidden invader.
The realm of the Prophets seemed an especially blasphe-
mous place to plant an ambush, hence quite attractive to
a would-be Klingon enemy. But nothing happened in the
wormhole itself.
    As usual, she felt a twist wrench her guts outward, like
tidal forces, as they passed through. The wormhole was
neither here nor precisely there, nowhere in particular, in
fact. It was everywhere along its route at once, and
nowhere with any great specificity. In fact, she felt no
passage of time, per se, just the vague, disquieting sense
of being where she came from and where she was going
all at the same, drawn-out instant. She felt foreboding,
too, and that emotion at least was new for her.
    "Exiting the wormhole, Benjamin," announced Dax,
as though she were saying Leaping out of the J?ying pan,
Captain.
    Kira held her breath. This is it, she thought; if there
were to be an ambush, this was where it would have to
be, so close to home. But no ball of energy met them, no
cascade of disruptor blasts to pulverize the cloaked but
unshielded skin of the ship. There were no torpedoes,
disruptors, large rocks, or buckets of sand flung into
their path.
    Butrebut we're not alone, she realized. She felt the
squeezing fist in her belly that always told her whenever
there were a Cardassian patrol lurking nearby, back in
the bad old days. The fist clenched tighter as the Defiant
exited the wormhole, accompanied by the usual, spectac-
ular starburst pattern that she had seen so many times

from aboard the station. "Great," she muttered, "may as
well fire off a flare gun to announce our arrival."
    "I am sorry, Major," said Captain Sisko, "but I didn't
quite catch that."
    "I mean, sir, that it's frustrating to be running silent in
a cloak and pass through the wormhole with an an-
nouncement loud enough to be seen three sectors away!"
Suddenly, something didn't look quite right. "Stand by,
Captain. Dax! Check for... check for warp signatures.
There was nothing recent when we left, remember?"
    "Checking. Uh-oh... Kira, there has been somebody
here, snooping around."
    And there definitely was something different about
Deep Space Nine. "Hail them, sir?"
    "Negative," said Sisko immediately. "Did you notice
the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime, Major
Kira?"
 "Huh? What dog?"
    "The dog did nothing in the nighttime, Benjamin,"
said Dax with a mysterious sing-song quality, as if
quoting.
    "That was the curious incident," remarked Benjamin
Sisko.
    Riddles, always riddles with those two/"Oh, I get it: we
just came through the wormhole. Why didn't they hail
US?"
    "Exactly, Kira. Let's poke around here for a while
until we understand what's going on."
    Kira brought the station up on the viewer and began
systematically examining the image from top-left to
bottom-right. Definitely, something was wrong. Now she
had to find it.
    A presence loomed over Kira's shoulder. "Now this is
funny," said Constable Odo, her closest friend among
all the inhabitants of Deep Space Nine, "there's no
chatter."
 "No what?" she asked.




    "Humans--and Bajorans--are the noisiest mob of
people I have ever encountered, Major. It's a constant
source of irritation to me, having to filter out the
incessant chattering you people do all the time: Bajor to
the station, the station to Starfleet, the station to ships in
the area, wanted smugglers to Quark and vice versa."
  "All right, so we talk a lot. We like to keep in touch!"
  "But Kira, there is no chatter."
"No chatter? You mean, no communications? At all?"
"Ordinarily, at any one moment, there are three
comm links between the station and Bajor. Even re-
cently, with the station blessedly quiet and even Quark
starved for want of criminal enterprise, we should have
seen some idle chatting in the ten minutes since we
entered the station's space. But there hasn't been a word,
not a single communication from the station. The Ba-
joran high council just sent a new batch of wanted holos,
and nobody in my office even acknowledged receipt!"
    "Captain!" cried Kira, "I've got it! Look at the main
emitter... there's just a great big hole where the anten-
na used to sit." She tapped rapidly at her keyboard
console. On the main viewer at the front of the Defiant, a
red circle appeared circling the jagged scar where the
emitter array used to squat.
 "Can we beam onto the station, Old Man?"
"No chance, Benjamin. The station shields are up."
"I do not like the looks of this at all," said Sisko
quietly. Abruptly, he sat bolt upright in his command
chair and said, "Dax, take us around the station, but
keep the impulse engines below a quarter." The captain
rose, absently stroking his beard as he stared at the
forward viewer. "We're not alone," he said at last.
    The words sent a shiver through Major Kira, and she
almost began sneezing again, though it was months
beyond when the pregnancy should have stopped caus-
ing that reaction. "A cloaked ship," she said, not particu-
larly surprised. "Klingon?"
 "Who else?" asked the constable, who had not moved

from his spot behind Sisko's chair. "The station is
compromised," added Odo. "The Klingons have cap-
tured it in our absence and thrown a communications
shield around it so the survivors cannot call for help."
    "That does seem the most logical solution," said the
captain.
    Kira felt her stomach clench even tighter into a ball at
the icy, emotionless tone of the statement. Jake's on
board! she thought. She did not dare say the words aloud.
"Do they know we're here? Oh. Stupid question."
    Dax snorted. "Even if they weren't looking for a warp
signature, they sure couldn't miss our spectacular floral
arrangement a few minutes ago." She was referring to
the opening of the wormhole, which Dax claimed resem-
bled the flowering of some monstrous, cosmic tulip bulb.
    "Should we send a message to Bajor?" Kira's hands
hovered over the console.
 "No!" said Sisko sharply.
    The major jumped. "Why not? We need reinforce-
ments to--"
    "Because opening a channel is like clicking on a hand-
torch in a dark room. They'll decloak and fry us before
we get two syllables out."
    "How about making a speed-run toward Bajor?" sug-
gested Constable Odo. "Once inside Bajoran space,
surely the Klingons wouldn't shoot."
    "They're cloaked, Odo," reminded Dax, a mere sec-
ond before Kira would have.
    "They can burn us and cruise quietly away," added the
major from Bajor, "with no one the wiser. We're like two
black cats," she continued, "maneuvering around a
pitch-black room, stalking each other. Playing cat-and-
cat."
 "Play ball," muttered Sisko.
    Kira wasted no time staring out the viewer as they
rounded the station, hunting for the Klingons. The ship
was cloaked, as were they, and would be invisible to the
naked eye. Instead, she watched for the tiniest fluctua-




tions of energy readings on her threat-board: faint
changes in temperature, a flicker of the cosmic back-
ground radiation as the enemy ship passed between
them and the rest of the universe. A star that suddenly
moved the slightest amount, detectable only by astro-
gational instruments, would indicate a slight refocusing
of the image of the star due to the fact that the cloaking
shield was not equally thick all along its length--the
effect was like holding an ancient contact lens at arm's
length and finding it by the visual distortions it caused.
Any of these would give the Defiant a bearing but no
range on the Klingon ship--or ships!
    "Run us closer," said Sisko, sounding and looking
completely calm, but Kira had enough experience with
professional killers during the Occupation to recognize
the mark of the beast beneath his skin and behind the
corneas of his eyes. "Run us right in and among the
pylons, Old Man. Let's see how badly that...
gentleman wants to play hide-and-seek."
    "Heat surge bearing one seven zero mark plus fifteen!"
called out Major Kira, almost before she realized herself
what she had just seen.
    "Come about, all engines stop!" snapped Sisko. The
viewer spun sharply as Dax turned the Defiant 170
degrees, so that she pointed directly at the heat source
Kira had spotted. The major performed an extremely
sensitive, passive scan of the immediate area, but she
found nothing. The surge was gone.
    "They must're banked their own engines," she mut-
tered. "If they tamped them down to a quarter
impulse--well, make that a fifth impulse, with that noisy
Klingon ship--they'd be a silent as we are."
    "They spotted us the same time you spotted them,"
said Odo. The captain grunted in disappointed agree-
ment.
    "All right, keep moving, Old Man; in and around the
pylons. Perhaps we'll get lucky again. Major Kira, con-
sider this a wartime situation. Don't try to hail them,

don't give them a chance to surrender. We've been fired
upon already, and we're within our rights to blow them
out of the sky without warning." "Yes sir," she grinned.
    Kira forced her eyes off the viewer, enticing though it
was to watch Dax's skill as she threaded the needles of
Deep Space Nine. The major stared intently at her
targeting computers, her fingers hovering lightly over the
fire key... though that was quite an arm-stretch, con-
sidering how far the baby-on-board made her sit from
the console. But she couldn't help catching the looming
obstacles in her peripheral vision, just enough to gasp
every now and then as the captain's "old man" cut a turn
a little too close.
    "Heat flume!" called out Kira. "Wait, neg that. "It's
from the station." A moment later, she added, "For
Prophet's sake, there goes another. They're getting pretty
careless with the outgasing back there."
    With the sixth venting, she began to get suspicious.
"Hands of the Prophets," she whispered. "Captain, the
whole station is lit up like a Bajoran festival bush in the
infrared... they're leaking atmosphere from every joint
and seam!"
    "Leaking atmosphere?" said Sisko, sounding, if any-
thing, even colder and more controlled. He's living
through hell right now, she realized; even she couldn't
help but picture the slowly suffocating residents, drop-
ping to the ground and grabbing their ears as the
atmospheric pressure plummeted. "Dax, where's it com-
ing from?"
    The Trill shook her head. "From everywhere, Benja-
min! It's--they're purging the entire atmosphere! Benja-
min, this is crazy... it's going to take them hours to be
able to restore it again, and there're not enough pressure
suits for even a third of the station population, even
considering how few people are left?
For the first time on the mission, Captain Sisko almost
lost control. He jumped to his feet and shouted, "Son of




am" He swallowed the rest of the statement, choking on
a long string of ear-burning obscenities that Major Kira
dutifully supplied in her own mind. The captain
clenched his hands so tightly, she could hear the knuck-
les crack from where she sat. After a moment, he sat
again with exaggerated calm, false control. "The situa-
tion has become urgent, Kira," he said, not even bother-
ing with the formalities of rank. "Secure the station.
NOW."
    She could not stop her eyes from staring up at the
viewer, despite the fact that her sensors were far more
sensitive. Her gaze bored into the screen as if to rip right
through it and penetrate the Klingon ship by force of
will. As though some force held her vision and wouldn't
let her look away, she stared, unblinking, riveted, and she
saw the ship. She sucked in a breath. The Prophets had
answered her prayer, for the Klingon ship had become
visible! Then it flickered from view again, and Kira's
brain finally caught up with her eyes: she knew what she
had seen.
    "Captain! It's the air--the steam--I mean, frozen
water droplets in the venting atmosphere, and they look
like steam, like fog, and the damned Klingon ship is
swirling through the fog! I can see it! I can target it!"
    Lieutenant Commander Dax's cold voice suddenly cut
through Kira's mounting excitement. "Computer, over-
lay forward viewer with thermal imaging." The viewer
color-palate suddenly shifted to shades of red from the
ruddy black of cosmic background temperature of three
Kelvin to the pinpoint white of the station nuclear
reactors; the visible-light outline of the station, still
visible behind the thermal image, showed as a stark,
metallic base surrounded by a deep amber, almost burnt
umber, that represented the normal heat-radiation of the
station skin.
    But dancing all along that skin at regular intervals
were fountains of prismatic beauty, rare rubies spouting
plumes of fiery spirals, like fire-flowers or the swirl of a

dancing Firebird's tail. The hot atmosphere escaping
from a dozen joints and nozzles turned the entirety of
Deep Space Nine into a miniature galaxy in yellowing
red: the streams began in electric yellow at their core,
where they sprouted from the station arteries; they
spiraled around the rotating station, darkening through
orange, umber, and finally turning the color of bright,
oxygenated blood as the venting atmospheric gases
cooled, darkening along tile yellow-red color axis on the
viewer.
    There were several breaks and eddys in the scintillant
image, too many! Kira almost fired a torpedo at the
station's own ventral sensor array before she realized
what was causing that particular disturbance in the
pattern. She looked from ripple to cut, identifying each
one as a normal piece of the station disrupting the fluid
flow, like rocks forming cascades in a rushing river. She
was looking for the singular, inexplicable splash that
would signify the presence, not of just another rock, but
of a hidden fish lurking beneath the surface.




0

CHAPTER
      19

MAJOR K~ NERYS stared at the slowly rotating swirls,
thinking of the sunberry ices they sold on the streets
back home. They're here, they're here somewhere, the
bastards, can't sit still forever, have to move sometime.
Come on you cowards move somewhere! Don't be fright-
ened of the gases that are going to kill you in the end. Just
cut through them, just get up and move from one side to
the other and I've--
    Except, for all her staring, it was Constable Odo who
spotted the moving disturbance with the telltale bow
wake. "There!" he shouted, running forward to the
viewer to point directly at the track. For a moment, he
seemed to forget himself, and he kept stretching his arm
as if still a changeling, able to turn the limb into a
telescoping pointer.
    "I see it!" snapped Kira, desperately bringing her fire-
control sensors to bear on her best guess, based on
Klingon bird-of-prey profiles, of where the bridge
would be. But--no, that's impossible/Don't do that/

"It's moving behind a pylon! Our own pylon is in the
way!"
    "Fire, Major," said Sisko calmly, having regained his
sense of self.
 "But we'll shoot--"
"To hell with the pylon--take the shot, soldier!"
Kira obeyed without another moment's hesitation, but
she shifted to phasers, since a photon torpedo would
merely hit the pylon and stop. The phaser struck the
metal protuberance six meters from its end. After a
moment, the heavy blast sheared through the pylon and
continued to the next target in its line of sight.
    For an instant, the thermal image on the viewer
burned as white as the snows on Mount Turyeil Bajori.
Then the filters adjusted, shifting the color-palette to-
ward a lower frequency, and Kira could see the ghostly
image of a burning hole, streaming hot gas and black
specks that must be metal debris. The Klingon ship was
silhouetted black against the eye-straining yellow-white
of hellish heat. The bird-of-prey's power plant had
ruptured, spraying a stream of antimatter into the swirl-
ing oxygen and nitrogen, where it reacted, producing
enough heat to swamp the infrared sensors.
    "Computer," said Captain Sisko, his command-tone
cutting through the ice of fascinated reverie that gripped
the bridge crew, "remove thermal imaging, restore for-
ward viewer to normal visual light reception."
    At once, the viewer went nearly black, so quickly that
Kira still saw the afterimage of the burning hole in the
antimatter-containment shell. Yet the hole was still
visible, the antimatter stream still reacting brightly
enough to produce a monstrous arrow pointing directly
at the bird-of-prey. The Defiant began to roll and vibrate
as it was buffeted by the shock waves from the initial
explosion and the subsequent matter-antimatter reac-
tions. The inertial dampers mostly compensated, but the
ship still pitched and yawed like an old-fashioned sailing
vessel of centuries past.




    Kira grabbed her console and held tight. Dax and
Sisko likewise rode it out, and Odo reacted more quickly
than a human would have and braced himselfi But the
two ensigns were neither so quick-thinking nor so lucky.
Taryak Amar was thrown out of his chair by the first jolt.
When he struggled up against the shaking a minute later,
Kira noticed he was cradling his left arm, which did not
move, and his face was bone white. Ensign Janine
Wheeler had been standing at her post near the astroga-
tion console, but now she lay on her side, unmoving, her
head against the bare-metal railing separating the upper
from the lower bridge.
    Kira tapped her comm badge. "Medical emergency on
the bridge, send a head-trauma team, blue alert."
    If the captain noticed the casualties, he didn't have
time to fret about them; he was still in the middle of a
battle. "Drop cloak and raise shields, Old Man. Keep the
pylon between us. Is he shooting or running?"
    "Both," answered Dax. A pair of photon torpedoes
launched directly at the Defiant, followed by a narrow-
beam disruptor blast. It was a standard Klingon tactical
trick: fire the torpedoes, then shoot the shields to punch
a hole for them to push through. It never worked
perfectly--but then, it didn't need to. The disruptor
burned a hole partway through the shields, and before
they could compensate, the photon torpedoes over-
loaded the system and crippled the ship.
    Kira ducked involuntarily as the disruptor beam
washed across the forward sensor array, then she re-
turned fire with an identical spread of two torpedoes and
a phaser blast to light their way. "Damn," she muttered,
"they got their shields up."
 "But they're badly hurt!" shouted Dax.
    "So are we! Shields damaged, I mean, not the ship, not
yet --"
    "Containment breach on the bird-of-prey has turned
into a hull breach, and they're turning tail."
 "They're shooting as they go," added Kira, "and our

forward shields are still trying to recover. Captain,
they'd better not shoot us or we could be cooked
rajelah. "
    Demanding control from herself, she maintained an
even strain by meditating upon the Fifth Fire-Verse of
the Prophets:

The gentle breeze dies,
But the gale builds in passionate intensity;
The fire is ever in the breaching,
Not the building.

    "Never mind, Benjamin," said Dax. "They're not
even targeting, just popping shots over their shoulder.
Hundred to one against them hitting--"
    Kira continued to monitor her sensors. "Incoming/"
she shouted, before even realizing what she saw: torpedo,
constant bearing, decreasing distance... it was coming
right down their throats!
    "Shields!" barked Captain Sisko, but Kira could only
look back at him and sadly shake her head. "Brace for
impact," said the captain. "Lie down if you're
standing."
    Dax evaded, but the Klingon torpedo tracked. If the
initial shot hadn't been so perfect, so lucky, the tor-
pedo's eye could not have found the Defiant in time.
Unfortunately for the Starfleet crew, the Klingons had
thrown the dice and rolled a double. Dax swerved and
bucked, but the torpedo exploded three thousand meters
off their port bow, where the shields were still weak from
the two-pronged assault of a few seconds earlier.
    The Defiant shuddered with the initial shock. The
white whale breached by a harpoon, thought Kira, who
was working her way through the great human literature
of centuries past. The ship took the blow badly, bucking
and yawing so that it was all the major could do to wrap
her arms around the mast and not be cast into the sea
with Ahab. The jerky visuals were making her sick, so




she shut her eyes, unable to block the inner vision of
another ship, the Pequod, tossed in the water by a living
leviathan, rather than the shock waves from matter and
antimatter crashing together in the froth of energy that
drove Kira's own vessel.
    Sisko stood, glaring at Dax. "Good call on the odds of
a hit, Old Man."
  "Oh come on, Benjamin! That's not fair."
  "How fast?"
    "The leak? Oh, we're not going to be sucking vacuum
in the next hour. But we're not going anywhere, either.
We could wait and hope we drift out of the communica-
tions containment shield, then call Bajor for help."
    "No time, we have more important fish to fry," said
the captain. "Prepare to beam the entire crew aboard
Deep Space Nine."
    "Benjamin, the shields are up, we can't transport. And
the station is in hard vacuum and zero-G," said the
science officer, staring at her sensors. "And there are
forty-three live Klingons aboard!"
    Sisko thought for a long moment, eyes closed. "There
is one place on the station you can beam to," he said, lips
curling into a marrow~freezing smile. "Target the pylon
that Major Kira so kindly tore up with her phasers. I'll
bet good latinum the pylon shield is compromised."
    "Oh! Um, yeah. I suppose it is. What do you know?"
Dax's face turned a pinkish shade, and Kira couldn't
stop a quick smile.
    "Kira," barked Captain Sisko, "break out pressure
suits and issue phaser-rifles. We're going in. Instruct the
ship to break outside the corem-blanking field and send
a priority-one distress call to Bajor after we--"
  "Can't," said Dax unhappily.
    "Are you saying, Old Man, that you can't program the
Defiant to leave the station and send a subspace mes-
sage?"
 Dax sat heavily. "Yes, sir."

    "Aye, Captain," said Kira, finally able to respond to
the order for suits and phaser-rifles. She rose and began
cranking open emergency lockers.
    Sisko seemed to notice the fallen ensign for the first
time. The medical team had arrived up the turbolift, and
the ship's medic crouched over Janine Wheeler, doing
something to her skull. "Senior Chief," said Captain
Sisko, his voice softening now that the crisis had passed,
"is she going to be all right?"
    The MedTech looked up blankly, unsure who had
spoken. "That depends," she said, "can we get the ensign
to the station infirmary?"
    "This is not possible to determine just yet," said the
captain, elaborately casual, but again, Kira could tell
that inside, Sisko was ready to explode.
    "Then I can't say whether she'll be all right, because
that's what she needs, sir. I can't do anything else. I
immobilized her head, but there's brain trauma from the
cranial impact: pupils not equally reactive, with the left
barely responding at all; no coring response, no response
to verbal stimuli."
    The other MedTech, a petty officer second class,
indicated Ensign Amar, who had taken the captain's
advice to hit the ground before the torpedo impact.
"This one has a busted wing, but that's it."
    "Suits and phaser-rifles, Captain," said Kira, laying
them across the railing. She stared at the suit, then felt
her bulging abdomen, wondering whether she would fit
into it.
    Sisko grunted and nodded, evidently not trusting
himself to speak. "All right, everybody except the medi-
cal personnel and the injured--oh, and except for you,
Major; sorry about that--suit up and grab a rifle. You've
all been drafted onto the away team." Kira started to
protest, then realized that Miles O'Brien might very
possibly be dead, and if that were so, what Kira carried
would be all that Keiko had left of her husband.




    The away team--Sisko, Dax, Odo, and nine other
crew members--slid into their ziplock suits and headed
down for the transporter room.

    At first, Worf thought his weight-loss was only his
imagination. He had desperately been hoping that
O'Brien would catch the rather broad hints the Klingon
had thrown out, at great danger to himselfi For a few
moments, Worf was certain it was merely wishful
thinking.
    He was double-timing his squadron around the perim-
eter of the habitat ring, dragging them behind in an ever-
more raggedy formation as they struggled to keep up,
when he realized that every long stride in his march-step
was bouncing him higher into the air than the last. The
sign was unmistakable--the sometimes stubbornly
thick-headed chief had finally gotten it! And if O'Brien
had figured out the rest of the message, then Worf had
better start looking for an emergency pressure-suit lock-
er immediately.
    Without saying a word to his alleged command, Worf
shifted his gaze left and right as he walked. There were
not that many lockers, it had never occurred either to the
Cardassian construction crew or the new Federation
landlords that depressurization was a likely emergency.
Not surprising, since that particular emergency had
never happened in thirty years, except as a result of ship-
to-ship or ship-to-station combat.
    Within a few more strides, Worf was feeling decidedly
light-headed, but he wasn't sure whether that was be-
cause of the low-gravity or a drop in the atmosphere.
Then he began to pant from the faint exertion of fast
walking, and all doubt disappeared. "We are under
attack/" he bellowed, paying for his air expenditure with
a dizzy spell that almost dumped him onto the deck.
"The enemy is on the other side... break ranks and
charge/"

    Worf himself led the charge, pounding along the
corridor, bounding higher and higher until his head
began to graze the overhead with every leap. He gasped
for air, seeing sparkles before his eyes. Colonel Worf--
No, Lieutenant Commander/--began to laugh at the
absurdity of everything. He slipped and fell, sliding
across the deckplates like an ancient Farak disk across
the ice, with gravity a tiny fraction of normal, friction
was proportionally diminished.
    Worf laughed until the tears rolled, then he felt a wave
of unreasoning terror, and finally, the rational thought
rolled lazily into his brain that he was experiencing the
narcotic effects of oxygen-deprivation: his brain simply
wasn't getting enough oxygen because of the plummeting
atmospheric pressure, and the rational faculties were
shutting down.
    The terror transformed suddenly to rage and hatred,
emotions never too far from the surface anyway in a
good Klingon warrior. He spun as quickly as he could in
the low-G, ready to confront the devil-Klingons behind
him with bloody-minded ferocity.
    But the troops, his erstwhile command, had their own
problems: they were tearing into each other like a pack of
starving gravka beasts. Some had drawn their short-
bladed d'k tahg knives, but others were using hands and
feet. Their flesh varied in color from ashen gray to white
with blue highlights around the lips. Several had col-
lapsed and lay still. Worf had run them into uncon-
sciousness, perhaps death.
    Worf turned away, another thought drifting into his
feeble excuse for a cerebral cortex: I must find a pressure~
suit or I shall die. The thought aroused no particular
emotion, neither fear nor glory in a heroic death--and
that lack of emotion frightened him a little, galvanizing
the Klingon to action.
    He pushed himself to his feet and staggered onward,
struggling against unconsciousness, which lapped at his




mind--waves along the seashore, gently tugging him
toward the vast deep. Ahead, he spied the symbol he had
been looking for: the stylized pointy cylinder with a hose
snaking from the top and around the body, which meant
"pressure-suits inside"--something the other Klingons
would probably never figure out until it was too late.
Humans, who dominated the Federation, prided them-
selves on their "universal" emergency symbols, which of
course no one but a human could decipher.
    Worf tried to leap the remaining distance, but he fell
over instead and bounced face-first into the bulkhead.
His head jerked, as ifa giant held it in cupped hands and
yanked to the right and up, over and over. Nausea
overwhelmed the warrior, and, for a moment, he was so
sick and dizzy, he forgot that he was also quickly
suffocating to death.
    Time... I have time.t I have five minutes before
permanent brain damage. The words echoed inside
Worf's skull. He squirmed along the ground, a sick and
dying rodent headed for the comfort of a hole in which
to die.
    For a moment, blackness claimed him. The room
spun, but Worf no longer cared. It was over. Death
wasn't so bad after all. Sto-vo-kor. More words, but this
time from another time, another voice: But that will not
help the Empire much. Or the Federation.
    Who said that? He could not remember, but it had
something to do with a war, or a raid, and blood entered
into the transaction, as it always did. What happened to
the lights? Oh. Eyes closed. Open them.
    Still not much, but it was enough to see by. Worf saw a
pointy cylinder with what looked like a rope coming out
of one end. It was painted onto a door his hand was
almost touching.
    With effort bordering on that of the heroes of old,
Worf struggled back to a shadow of consciousness and
was rewarded by another wave of nausea. He was float-
ing now, all the station gravity gone: he was held against

the locker door only by the station's spin, which im-
parted a slight acceleration outward--one thirtieth of a
G on the habitat ring. Less than fifty Newtons held him
against the pressure-suit locker; he could push himself
away by flexing his hand.
    Problem: the doorplate required far more than fifty
Newtons pressure to open the door. Worf stretched his
feet back as far as they would go, and his groping toe
faintly brushed the opposite bulkhead. A smaller man
would never have been able to reach. He shifted his
fingers, centering them on the touchplate, and pressed
outward simultaneously with fingers and toes.
    The plate depressed silently, and the door slowly
rolled back, its grating noise lost in the filmy wisps of
atmosphere. When it was halfway open, Worf pulled his
hand back and pushed once again, hard, with his foot.
He drifted into the opening, shoulders barely clearing
the doorframe.
    He wasted no time on a full pressure-suit. He had one
overriding, desperate need. He grabbed the back of a
helmet and twisted the air-flow valve full forward, then
he opened the helmet and stuck his face into the
neckhole. His lungs were heaving, gasping at the noth-
ingness that surrounded him. He felt himself blacking
out again, and this time, there was no stopping the
sensation.

    He blinked, wondering where he was, what he was
supposed to be doing. Who he was. In panic, he realized
he did not even know his name.
    He blinked. Any minute now, I will remember who I
am. He heard a rushing in his ears that meant... that
meant something. Any minute, I will remember my
name. I know this--I shouM know what this is/
    Wo-ooo-ooooooo-orfl The name whooshed back on
the North Wind, but a second later, it was followed by
the most violent headache ever to batter his skull--a




bat'telh caving into his cranium from behind wouldn't
have brought so much agony! Worf gritted his teeth,
refusing to scream and disgrace himself, a Klingon
warrior.
    Klingon... warrior. He shook his head--big mis-
take. A wave of nausea hit him full force, as all his
memories rushed back at hurricane force. Lieutenant
Commander Worf was floating in the pressure-suit
locker, his arms wrapped in a death-grip around a
helmet, his face pushed against the neckhole, whence he
sucked the life-giving oxygen into his lungs, clearing his
head.
    Dressing in a pressure suit in zero-G was hard enough
without also having to stop every few seconds to suck
another lungful of air from a detached helmet. His
head still pounded from the oxygen-pummeling his
brain had received, but at least the nausea retreated
under the onslaught of urgent action. It took the Kling-
on a full fifteen minutes to struggle his way into the suit,
but when he did, he was fully in command of himself
again.
    Malach was screaming in Worfs ears, the voice com-
ing over the command headset: "... the prisoners be-
hind force shields, now, you lazy--!" The rest of
Malach's order could be represented in Worf's mind only
by a long string of vile dashes, language appropriate to a
gunnery sergeant, perhaps, but not a commissioned
officer from a fine, old house. In the flush of the crisis,
Malach's lack of true breeding was leaking through,
confirming what Worf had always dimly suspected about
the "noble" lineage of the house of Razg.
    Worf did not know exactly where Malaeh was. The
"general" could be anywhere. Worf smiled, but I know
where you are, O'Brien my comrade. The environmental
controls could only have been monkey-wrenched from
one of two places, and there was no way that the chief
could have fought his way through to Ops. Therefore, he

was in the lowest level of all, the bottom of the engineer-
ing section--or had been, at least.
    Worf grabbed a phaser rifle from the "upper" section
of the pressure-suit locker and set out for the nearest
crossover tunnel. It was time for hammer to meet
anvil--with several dozen Klingon warriors in between.




0

CHAPTER
      2O

LIEUTEt~ANT COMMANDER WORF, shucking off the ersatz
rank of colonel, bounded clumsily through the crossover
tunnel, cursing himself for not taking extra time practic-
ing zero-G combat in the holodeck on the Enterprise, or
even in Quark's holosuites on the station! I shall rectify
that immediately, should we retake the station, he told
himself. Thinking, forming words and sentences, helped
stave off the persistent effects that zero-G had on his
middle-ear: vertigo, dizziness, nausea, and a pervasive
and clearly clinical sense of impending doom.
    His only consolation was that everyone else must be
feeling the same set of symptoms, and Worf at least had
recent experience with it in the derelict hulk. Except the
doctor, he corrected darkly. Dr. Bashir never seemed
bothered by anything.
    At first, the Klingon warrior struck his helmet with
virtually every "step," until he forced himself to stop
jumping up and instead to point himself the way he
wanted to go and jump straight. By the time he figured

out the technique for double-timing in the weightless
station, Worf had managed to give himself a concussion
right through his helmet, or at least a headache angry
enough to fell anyone but a Klingon.
    Worf saw the airlock at the inner end of the tunnel
looming. He flapped his arms and legs and slammed into
the titanium door with a loud clank, head-first. Fortu-
nately for the mighty warrior, the pressure-suit helmet
was built to withstand asteroid-mining accidents and
cargo-bay misadventures. Seeing stars, Worf braced his
legs and twisted the manual release on the airlock door,
which had sealed automatically when it detected depres-
surization.
    The door retracted; it was silly, actually, there was as
much hard vacuum on the inside as the outside, so what
good was an airtight seal? But Cardassians were known
for following rules and maintaining good discipline, not
for subtle logic. Worf dialed the door until it was open
enough to admit his bulky frame, made even bulkier by
the pressure suit. Then, dragging his phaser-rifle behind
him, he twisted his body into line with the door's
"pupil" and propelled himself into the Promenade level.
    A spate of pressure-suited Klingon warriors, none
lower in rank than staff sergeant, waited to greet him.
They had set their ambuscade halfway between cross-
over tunnels two and three, since there was no way of
knowing which he would take. But there was no question
they were floating in ambush for Worf, because they
opened fire on him as soon as he shot into the Prome-
nade.
    But these Klingons were not as well trained as most in
the art of zero-G combat, and they didn't expect Worf to
rocket into the huge cylinder and continue all the way to
the inner bulkhead. Their disruptor shots passed the
pressure-suited projectile.
    "Fools," muttered Worf, before realizing his mike was
probably hot. It was clear what had happened: Malach
had figured out that Worf really was a traitor, and he had




 cut Worfs headset out of the communications loop.
 Thus, Worf had never heard the orders sending a hit-
 squad to the Promenade to intercept him.
    He struck the inner bulkhead, ironically crashing into
the door to Constable Odo's office. The squad was
already coming after him, clumsy in their movements.
At first, he thought it was because they were trying to
move and fight in unfamiliar, Federation pressure-suits
they had managed to don, but then he realized there was
an even more ridiculous explanation.
    Are they trying to walk? he wondered in amazement.
Indeed, the battle-hardened warriors were trying to keep
their feet in contact with the deck! They windmilled
their arms (against what?), trying to find a balance that
of course no longer existed. Their middle ears screamed,
Falling/Falling/And they desperately needed an "up"
and a "down" to avoid the terrible feeling of vertigo that
still lurked at the back of Worf's brain, as well.
    But the lieutenant commander had a huge advantage:
he had already had a dry run in zero-G ops just four days
earlier. And Worf remembered his lesson well.
    While the hit-squad advanced slowly, struggling to
maintain familiar contact with the deck, Worf took the
opposite tack: he aimed himself at what would have been
the ceiling of the Promenade, nearly ten meters "over-
head," and pushed off with his friction boots against the
constable's door. He soared in the airless, weightless
environment angling slightly toward the crew. He calcu-
lated well, ending up directly "above" the squad. Only a
few of the warriors had even seen where he went. The
rest stared and pointed, presumably shouting that Worf
was over there or hiding behind that kiosk.
    As Worf headed toward the overhead, he fumbled at
his phaser-rifle. His normally nimble fingers were ham-
pered by the thick, insulated gloves. Even so, he man-
aged to click the phaser beam-dispersal to the widest
pattern, the power setting to the highest level.
 He twisted his body and opened fire on his erstwhile

comrades even before he struck the ceiling. The combi-
nation of high power and wide beam dispersal created a
cone of stun-force phaser shot. The Klingons felt like
pu'tahk lizards on too hot a rock. Nine jerked and
spasmed, sending themselves careening through the
Promenade on random courses, unconscious and likely
to stay that way for several minutes. Only three reacted
quickly enough to grab hold of a bench and slide
themselves under it for cover.
    The Klingon shooters returned fire with their disrup-
tors. Just then, Worfpassed the upper-level catwalks, the
same perch from which Jake Sisko and his Ferengi
cohort, Nog, used to spy on the people below. Worf
made a grab and managed to hook one hand on the
railing, yanking himself to a halt. He rotated through
270 degrees around the railing, striking the catwalk on
the opposite side from the Klingons, far "below." The
metal mesh of the walk partially shielded him from the
disruptor blasts, and what little destructive energy got
through dissipated around his pressure-suit, which was
shielded against cosmic particles and gamma radiation.
    Alas, the same could be said of the three warriors still
left unstunned below. Abovemwhere Worf hung on to
the top of the catwalk to avoid drifting away with the
slight movements of respiration and twitching--the
weapons officer fumed at his lack of weapons. His
opponents were behind a wall too thick for his depleted
phaser to cut through. What I really need, he grumbled
to himself, is a photon torpedo instead of a phaser
running low on power.
    He stared at the station core in frustration. He had to
link up with O'Brien and whichever station personnel
the chief had managed to rescue. But if he made a dash
for the inner bulkhead of the Promenade, he wouldn't
get even halfway before the massed disruptor fire of the
Klingons tore him to shreds--or stunned him into
submission, if Malach's no-killing order still stood.
  He stared through the grillwork, knowing that his




counterparts were staring up at him. Their eyes might
even be meeting, though none of the parties could
possibly tell. And a thought occurred: what he really
needed was a photon torpedo, and what was he holding
in his hands but a potential bomb? Like any other
phaser, with a little electronic surgery, the rifle could be
cross-wired and made to overload and explode.
    There was one small drawback, of course: it was a one-
shot weapon, after which Worf would be disarmed, save
for his d'k tahg knife, which of course, was inside his
suit! On the other hand, if he didn't take the chance, he
could stay on the catwalk all day and all night, or until
enough reinforcements arrived to take him out by a
swarm attack.
    Worf was a Klingon warrior, and that meant that a
decision was quick in coming and was always followed
immediately by action. He turned the rifle over, popped
the case, and pried open the power-pack. He held on to
the catwalk with his feet, hoping they were too small a
target for the sharpshooters to notice.
    "Worf, Worf," sounded a mellifluous voice over his
headset. He jumped, startled by the unexpected resump-
tion of communications from his blood-brother. "I
know you believe your treachery is irretrievable, and
perhaps you believe it is now an affair of honor. But it is
not too late. You can still come back to me, back to your
people."
    Worf sighed. "You are not my people... my
brother."
    "The final triumph of the Empire is inevitable, Worf.
Do not find yourself on the losing side of an impossible
war."
    For a moment, Worf said nothing. He struggled to
remember his engineering year back at the Starfleet
Academy, where a classmate had showed him one night
how to overload a phaser. Needless to say, it was not a
skill taught officially in the curriculum, nor could it be
found in the standard Federation engineering manuals

on the weapons. If the chief were here, he could not help
thinking, he wouM have finished this task in thirty
seconds.
    He realized he was sweating and biting his lip, not an
auspicious reaction for a mighty warrior of the mighty
Empire. "I cannot predict about the war, but you are not
going to win this battle, Malach. You must withdraw
with what honor and dignity you can. Starfleet must
have already sent a ship to discover why the station
stopped communicating."
    "They will wait, Worf. They have already been in-
formed about the communications failure and in-
structed that all is well. When the Starfleet ship finally
arrives, it will find a surprise. Worf, once we have the
station and can decrypt the weapons-lock, we can use the
station defenses themselves to defend our station from
Starfleet. Starfleet will relent and negotiate, as they
always do."
    "Your plan is flawed and will never work. The captain
will return and will not negotiate with terrorists and
madmen."
    "Mad? You call me mad?The general who pulls off the
greatest feat in recent military history must surely be the
sanest man in the Empire!" Malach's voice rose to a
crescendo, and Worf paused in his labors. I struck a
nerve, he realized with a chill. Malach is terrified that he
is losing his mind! That, Worf realized, might have been
a major motivation for the stunning attack on Deep
Space Nine.
    "They all said you were mad, did they not, my
brother? You told them your plan, and they laughed at
you, told you it was insane. But you showed them, blood-
brother. You showed them all."
    "You see how alike we are?" whispered Malach in
Worf's ear, a disturbing intimacy that angered the lieu-
tenant commander. "You are the only one who ever
understood me. They thought I was mad even when we
were children--Commandant Gacht'g told me so him-




self, right to my face! Where was honor then, eh Worf?.
You have been my rock, my support all these years that I
had to hide myself in simple service to the Empire as a
mere major. The one friend I could depend upon. Now, I
am the general, and I shall remember your support.
Come back to me!"
    Worf frowned. He found the wires he thought he
wanted, but hesitated before crossing them: if he had
guessed wrong, rather than overload for eight seconds
then blow, the phaser would melt in Worf's hand,
probably taking half his arm with it. So either way, I
shall be disarmed, he thought grimly.
    Malach's delusional state was more advanced than
Worf ever imagined. He had had no contact whatsoever
with his "blood-brother" since they both left Emperor
Kahless Military City. Yet, evidently, Malach had fanta-
sized a whole relationship that never existed, visualizing
his boyhood friend into his adult ally. Then another
thought struck Worfi as a mere major? Like Major
Krugus?
    "I am sorry to disappoint you," said Worf, then
realized with a start that it was quite true. "I am no
man's rock. I walk my own path, and that path does not
include your... invasion of this station." At the last
moment, Worf changed his mind; he had been about to
say ')~our mad scheme."
    Taking a deep breath, Worfcrossed the wires. The rifle
did not melt. Instead, it began to emit a high-pitched
noise over the corem link; its frequency at the extreme
edge of Worf's auditory range. He was committed. The
wires, once crossed, could not be uncrossed. As he
leaned over and gently pushed the phaser rifle toward the
floor of the Promenade, he thought about blood-
brotherhood, wondering whether it, too could never be
uncrossed.
    Abruptly, another revelation crossed Worf's mind, this
one purely tactical: it was clear from his conversation
with Malach that WoWs own comm link had not been

disabled. He was still able to hear and broadcast. He had
been cut out of the communications loop between
Malach and the other Klingon warriors, and probably
they could not hear him, having been instructed to
accept only communications preceded by a digital code.
    But the handset that O'Brien had--was proven to
have by his response to Worf's hints--had no such filter.
The chief can still hear me, Worf realized, and filed away
the datum for an unexpected tactical advantage...
later.
    The rifle drifted lazily "downward," tumbling end-
over-end, but neither gaining nor losing velocity. He had
not timed the push perfectly; the phaser exploded before
it struck the ground. But it turned out to be close
enough. Two Klingons were flung to the sides by the
force of the explosion. They jerked in agony at their
violent injuries, then they began convulsing in earnest,
clawing at their Federation helmets, as if tugging them
off their heads would allow them to breathe the vacuum
more easily. The suits had been breached.
    Worf waited until they stopped moving. Odd, he
thought, I thought there was a third... But no one else
reacted to the blast. Tentatively at first, Worf pulled
himself over the catwalk rail and pushed off toward the
floor. No one moved to impede him, either by disruptor
fire or by grappling with him as he bounced past. Worf
decided to enter the core through the doctor's office, so
he headed in that direction as quickly as he could in the
zero-G. Malach evidently had nothing more to say--for
the moment.

    Once again, Miles Edward O'Brien, in a long life of
such violent encounters, found himself fighting Klingons
hand-to-hand, a torn iron stanchion against a bat'telh--
they weren't supposed to use them.t screamed his brain--
kicking stomachs and trying to tear holes in Federation
pressure-suits that now protected the enemies of the
Federation. My God, doesn't it ever end? They fought in




zero-G, worse yet! And with every blow, the Klingon foe
would shoot one direction while O'Brien tumbled the
other in a perfect demonstration of Sir Isaac Bloody
Newton's Second Law of Mechanical Physics.
    Garak seemed to be swarmed, the brave little tailor.
He ought to be able to kill seven at one blow, thought the
chief, his mind wandering at the hopelessness of their
plight. There were too damned many Klingons! They
were everywhere! They came out of the woodwork,
though admittedly, the Resistance (as O'Brien termed
the six of them) encountered more dead Klingons than
live, pressure-suited warriors.
    The Resistance had barely made it up three levels--
though "up" was a relative term--and were still mired
in the higher levels of engineering. Whatever monkey
business General Malach had worked on the computers
still eluded the chief's ability to undo, so there was no
multilevel communication except through the handset,
which had ceased receiving useful information. Malach
himself had gotten online more than once, however, and
patiently explained to the "rebels" why they couldn't
possibly win. So the device still worked, it was simply
locked out of the comm loop. The suit communicators
worked, so long as everyone was in one room together. If
there was no line-of-sight, the Klingon jammers pre-
vented a relay.
    "Chie0." bellowed Bashir, making O'Brien wince. The
doctor couldn't get it through his head that when speak-
mg over a comm link, even inside a pressure-suit, a
whisper was as good as a shout, and it didn't matter how
far apart they were, so long as Bashir was in direct line-
of~sight with the chief.
 "I'm here, for God's sake, Julian! Stop screaming."
    "Chief, I'm trapped! They're pressing me back
through the number two access port!"
    The Resistance had been driven sideways, into the
outer edge of the large engineering deck, in a section
connected to the main engineering deck by only two

doors and whose outer skin was the outer hull of the
station itself. O'Brien and Garak perched at one door,
beating back the Klingons whenever they tried to force
their way inside. Bashir and the Ferengi were at the other
door, with Jake Sisko shuttling between the two camps as
the "reserves," lending what assistance he could to
whoever was being driven back most quickly.
    This is futile/Another never-ending war, another...
O'Brien blinked. The germ of an idea sprouted in his
backbrain. Across the room, Jake Sisko plowed into the
marauding Klingons with a torpedolike swoop. Directly
in front of Chief O'Brien, the Klingon with the bat'telh
abruptly stiflened, then drifted slowly to the side--
stunned by his own non-corn, who still remembered the
"no kill" order of General Malach.
    O'Brien barely slammed the door in time to avoid the
sergeant's second shot, which would have stunned him.
The chief's thought grew, and in a moment, he had the
answer... "The Resistance can win!" he muttered.
    "What'swwhat's that?" gasped the doctor, leaning
against the door. The Klingons on his side had with-
drawn to regroup, as they had on O'Brien's. Garak
grasped the remaining piece of stanchion from which the
chief had torn his weapon. The Cardassian gasped huge
lungfuls of air and looked distinctly blue.
 "Julian, I've got it!"
 "Got what? A plan?"
 "Yes, we just keep fighting!"
 "Oh. Well, that's simply wizard, Chief."
    An angry Quark piped up from the comer into which
he had drifted. "Oh thank you, Chief, for that insightful
analysis!" Because of the size of their suits, the Ferengi
could control either hands or feet, but not both at once.
Quark had a mini-phaser found in a locker, while the
more technically sophisticated Rom was using a disrup-
tor taken from the body of an atmospherically chal-
lenged Klingon warrior. But neither Ferengi could
control where he drifted or which way he pointed, not




while operating a weapon. So they ended up spinning
lazily, taking pot shots whenever they happened to rotate
to a good field of view.
    "No, you don't understand, either of you. We just keep
fighting, keep them fighting every minuterowe should
open these doors and start shooting."
    Jake gasped in understanding. "Chief, I get it! You're
thinking about the oxygen, aren't you?"
    O'Brien grinned. It was good that at least one other
person had seen it before he explained; it was a good test
of the idea. "The kid's got it right, fellas. We keep the
Klingons moving, keep them active and fighting. Julian,
you should know this. They've got a larger lung capacity,
right?"
"Yes..." admitted the doctor, evidently still puzzled.
"So if we keep their lungs pumping, shouldn't they run
through their air tanks much faster than we will?"
    Silence. Then after a long several seconds, Bashir's
voice over the comm link. "Good Lord, Miles--that's
brilliant!"
    "Well, Quark? Does this plan meet with your appro-
val?" O'Brien threw every gram of sarcasm into the
question he could muster. Of course, the Ferengi took it
seriously, instead.
    "Yes, Chief, that's inspired! It's almost... Ferengi.
Have you been reading the Rules of Acquisition re-
cently?"
    "No, Quark, and I wouldn't touch 'em with a three-
meter positronic discharge tube. Now let's open the door
and not give them time to rest or, God forbid, change air
tanks!"

CHAPTER
      21

TuE moHv WAS furious, but didn't last long. Quark was
torn by his natural tendency to stay out of barroom
brawls, a technique mastered after years of running a
haven for the scum of the quadrant, and a very un-
Ferengi-like urge to leap to the defense of his comrades
in the Resistance. Weighing against the latter option was
the fact that his hands and feet, even at maximum
stretch, came far short of the gloves and booties of the
gargantuan suit into which Quark had crammed himself
in panic as the air vanished: at first, he literally could do
nothing but flap his arms and legs and squawk in
humiliated rage over the comm link. His only consola-
tion was that Rom was in the same boat. Then, he had
figured out (though Rom tried to grab credit) that he
could clumsily operate a phaser two-handed with his
hands at the elbow joints of the pressure-suit, but it was
undignified and not terribly useful.
    The Klingons swarmed all over Bashir, O'Brien, and
the Cardassian tailor. Even the boy was swinging a steel




pipe, despite his earlier peculiar insistance to Nog (who
told Rom, who told his brother) that he was a total
coward. Why not phasers? wondered Quark, then real-
ized that the suits were probably tough enough to deflect
the low-powered hand phasers and hand disruptors,
which were all either party had. Nobody had rifles.
    There were four Klingons to four Resistance fighters,
but because of O'Brien's tactic of using the hu-man boy
as reserves, shuttling back and forth between Garak and
the O'BriemBashir tag team, the Klingons ended up
being outnumbered in both fights.
    The invaders fought lustily and recklessly, however,
and might still have won, had the chiefs plan not finally
worked. Even from his upside-down vantage point, as he
fired the occasional, relatively useless phaser shot, Quark
was able to see Klingon heads gulping for air and turning
a bluish-purple as they found themselves inhaling noth-
ing but their own exhalation. O'Brien was right: Kling-
OhS, with their bigger, more powerful lungs, used much
more oxygen than did their hu-man (and Cardassian)
counterparts. The warriors had sucked their tanks dry
when Quark's pressure-gauge showed a full hour and
thirty-four minutes of air left!
    And then the battle was over before Quark could work
up a sufficiently greedy argument to compel him to find a
wall and launch into the thick of the fray, to strike at
least one blow for his economic right to cheat customers
in hi6 own bar, his own way. The Klingons went down
fighting, every one. They died rather than surrender. The
only injury was to O'Brien, who got his arm wrenched
and the sleeve of his suit torn. The last was by far the
more serious "injury," and everything stopped while
Bashir frantically tore open every drawer and locker in
the engineering deck before finally finding a pressure-
patch, a thick piece of plastieized cloth with very sticky
glue on one side, to seal up the chiefs torn sleeve.
    While patching the chief, Bashir conducted a hurried
conference, with O'Brien, the hu-man boy, and the

VENGEANCE

Cardassian (each at his own angle, which made Quark's
head spin more even than the zero-G). Nobody thought
to fetch the Ferengi and include them, though of course
Quark could hear and participate via the radio. It was
disconcerting to collude while rotating slowly on his
axis, however.
    "This isn't going to do it," said O'Brien. "We can't go
from deck to deck, fighting Klingons with no plan. It
stands to reason we'll be clipped, taken out finally, and
Malach will win after all."
    "You're so cheery," griped the doctor, his pride
wounded at O'Brien's grim assessment. "Isn't it a bit
early for a dirge7"
    "Julian, it's a mathematical certainty that long before
we overcome them, we'll be captured--or killed, even
accidentally. There might be as many as forty Klingons
still left aboard!"
    "I'm afraid I must agree with our esteemed chief,"
chimed in Garak. "I'm not averse to risking death or
imprisonment in order to defend the station, but isn't it
a terrible waste of spirit and manpower?"
    "Thanks, Garak, for that vote of confidence in my
leadership."
    "I have nothing but the greatest respect for your
leadership, Dr. Bashir! I'm simply pointing out a few
realities, unpleasant though they may be: we're not
getting anywhere, to put it bluntly. What's our purpose7"
    "Jake," asked Bashir, "what's your take? You're as
much a part of this as the rest of us."
    "Hey, remember me?" demanded Quark, at that mo-
ment facing directly away from the huddle in the center
of the room. "Isn't anyone interested in my take on
strategy?"
    "Quark, I'm terribly sorry... you don't feel left out,
do you?"
    "No, Doctor, I'm simply filled with gratitude when we
move from room to room, and Chief O'Brien says 'don't
forget to bring the beachballs!' How come everyone but




 us gets to hatch plans? Ferengi are very good at schem-
 ing, you know! It's one of our best traits. Isn't that right,
 brother?"
    "Uh, yeah. Quark's right. We really are good at it,"
confirmed Rom. He didn't sound particularly convinc-
ing, though, not even to Quark's lobes.
    "All right, Quark," said the chief. "Do you want to
scheme? Fine, then come up with something, some plan.
Oh, and I'm sorry about the beachball crack, but you
really do look funny, you know."
    "Well it so happens," said Quark, with all the frozen
dignity he could muster, "that I have thought of a plan.
Actually, you said it yourself a day or so ago, but I think
you thought you were joking."
    "If you would care to enlighten us," purred the
Cardassian tailor, "I'm certain we would all be eternally
grateful."
    "It's very simple. Obviously, the Federation has no
idea what's happened to the station, right? They must
have bought Malach's crude lie about the comm grid
being offiine for repairs."
    "Unfortunately," said Bashir, sounding petulant,
"Starfleet appears to be so uninterested that they haven't
even bothered to come over and scan us."
    "And if Malach can secure this station and send for
reinforcements from the Klingon Empire--Gowron, is
it?--then by the time the Federation gets off its butt and
comes out here, they'll have to fight a Klingon fleet and
their own station. Am I right?"
    "That's Malach's theory. It appears to be logical...
again, unfortunately."
    "So our best chance of stopping him is to get a
message to the Federation, or to Bajor."
    "But we can't," explained O'Brien with ill-disguised
impatience. "We can't get a message through the comm
shield the Klingons put around us. We could have used
the subspace emitter, since it sticks out quite a ways

~ LN~LANI..L

from the station, but that was the first thing the bastards
took out. I think they sheared it off with their ship."
    "But chief," asked Quark, "why does the emitter need
to be attached to the station?"
    "Don't be an ass, Quark! How's it going to broadcast if
it's not--"
    "Chief, what if the transmitter were intelligent enough
to broadcast all on its own? And suppose you could get it
far enough away from the station that it was outside the
communications damping field. Wouldn't that work?"
    Quark had finally rotated around on his axis to look at
the assembled "Resistance." It was a scuffy-looking
bunch, even by hu-man standards. O'Brien was staring
at him. Even though the helmet faceplate, Quark could
see the chiefs typical look of annoyed puzzlement. "I
don't have the resources to build an intelligent transmit-
ter, Quark. And the Klingons would detect the electron-
ics and blow it apart. We've been through all that!"
"You idiot, I'm talking about launching one of us!"
Dead silence. For a moment, Quark became terrified
that his comm link had suddenly died. Then Bashir
spoke. "One of us? One of us here?"
    "Of course! What else? You don't need a computer,
Chief--you just need to open an airlock and throw one
of us, probably Jake Sisko, in the general direction of
Bajor. As soon as he clears the damping field, he starts
transmitting. Chief, can you boost the gain on these
cheap, little comm sets in the suits?"
    "Quark!" exclaimed Garak. "That's... that's bril-
liant! I never knew a Ferengi had such potential." Quark
was losing sight of the conference out his peripheral
vision as he continued to rotate. He harbored a desper-
ate hope that he would drift close enough to a wall that
he could grab it and stop his slow spin.
    "Oh, my brother is too smart for the Ferengi Alli-
ance," bragged Quark's brother. "That's, uh, why they
wouldn't let him back on Ferenginar."




 "Shut-up, Rom?
    "Quark," said Bashir patiently, "I cannot allow one of
my--"
    "No, Julian, it's a great idea! You wanted a plan? Well,
here's one dropped right in your lap. We get to the
Promenade, where the emergency airlocks are; I short-
circuit the computer locks; we stick Quark inside, and
when the doors open, he kicks out away from the
station!"
 "Perfection itself," said the Ferengi.
 "But, how long can he survive just in his suit?"
    "A Ferengi?" asked the chief. "Oh, six hours, easily, if
he takes it slow and doesn't make any unnecessary
movements. The suit has a transponder. The Bajorans or
a Starfleet vessel can pick Quark up anytime after the
Klingons have been subdued."
    Something odd had happened. Quark couldn't quite
put his finger on it, but the hu-mans had gotten some
aspect of his plan terribly wrong. He scowled, replaying
the conversation in his lobes, listening for the mixup.
    "Wouldn't the Klingons just shoot him before he
broadcasts?" asked the good doctor, fretting about the
humanity of it all.
    "How would they even know to look for him? They've
got all the runabouts, they've got the bird-of-prey. They
know we don't have a subspace emitter antenna because
they sliced it off; they know we can't even communicate
with each other out of line-of-sight, because of the
damping field. And we can't use the station comm links
or computers even if we got to them, because it would
take a couple of days to break the encryption scheme...
without access to a starship computer, I mean.
    "Julian, they think they've already won! There's noth-
ing we can do anyway. How vigilant do you think they'll
really be? Are they likely to spot one tiny Ferengi in a
spacesuit, zooming through space under a communica-
tions blackout? It's not like he has enough electrical
activity to ring alarm bells on their sensor arrays!"

    Like a puzzle, the fine strands came together in the
center of Quark's mind. Abruptly, he realized the terri-
ble flaw in the implementation of his plan. "A tiny
Ferengi?Wait! Wait! How did/get to be the one who--"
    Jake Sisko chimed in. "Quark has a point, sir. Maybe I
should be the one to--"
    "Oh Jake, really! Do you think your father would
allow me to keep my head, let alone my collar-pips, if I
allowed you to take such a terrible risk with your life?"
    "Such a terrible risk?" screamed the impressed volun-
teer. "Let the boy do it! He's much more the heroic
type... I'm an idea man, a thinker, not a doer!" Quark
struggled wildly, flailing his arms and legs like an agi-
tated rodent. He twisted and tried to swim in the air, but
he couldn't manage to give himself any faster of a spin or
turn himself around. Something to do with conservation
of angular momentum, he glumly decided.
    While three hu-mans and a Cardassian tailor, all quite
unsympathetic to Ferengi in general, debated the life and
all-too-likely death of Quark, the subject of their discus-
sion could only stare helplessly at a very uninteresting
bulkhead, his back to the roundtable. Beads of perspira-
tion popped out on his face, where they stuck. In zero-G,
there was no "down" for them to run. It was the most
uncomfortable feeling in the world, piled on top of the
general zero-G-induced sickness: warm, salty drops of
sweat glued to his flesh. He couldn't wipe them away
because he couldn't get at them! The helmet shielded
Quark's face from all possible relief.
    Not that Quark's discomfort mattered to anyone, oh
no. Though he often thought himself the only sane
person left on the station, since the departure of the
Cardassians--who were admittedly cruel and cold-
hearted, but so what? was that a crime?--he was gener-
ally treated worse by the inmates than the Cardassians
used to treat Bajorans. Harassed at every step by Consta-
ble Odo, prevented from making a decent living, not
allowed a moment's respite, subject to being hauled into




Odo's security office at any moment when the call went
out to "round up the usual suspects."
    Quark sighed, but no one caught the subtle hint. By
the time he rotated around to face the mob again, they
had reached a consensus. Whether by voting or by
Bashir's exercising dictatorial fiat, Quark couldn't care
less. The unchangeable upshot was that they would
happily accept Quark's idea, but Quark would be the
expendable one!
    "Do your worst," he snarled, and they did. For the
next hour, the self-styled Resistance battled its way up,
so to speak, level after level, until they were only two
down from the Promenade. The Promenade was the
nearest level that had an airlock. Not that an airlock was
strictly necessary. With the station in vacuum, Quark
was grateful they didn't simply break a window and
defenestrate him.
    But there, two levels below the Promenade, they stuck
fast: they ran into a pocket of resistance that quite
outnumbered them, twelve Klingons to their four (plus
two involuntary noncombatants), and they had to re-
treat behind a door the opening circuitry of which Chief
O'Brien shot out with a phaser blast, jamming it.
    "For God's sake, Chiefl" shouted the doctor, straining
to hold the door shut by bracing his feet against one side
of the jamb and pulling back on the door's emergency
manual bolt. "Isn't there any other way up to the
Promenade.'?"
    O'Brien was exhausted. He drifted loose, gasping for
each breath, probably grateful for the zero-G. Unlike
Quark, who still cursed the stupid chief for his brilliant
idea. Garak looked grim and alert, but the Ferengi's
years tending bar made him extraordinarily sensitive to
falsity, and the Cardassian tailor's heart pounded so
hard that Quark's sensitive lobes could actually pick it
up through the line-of-sight comm link.
 Jake Sisko made no pretense of spirit. He had pulled

himself into a upside-down fetal position and held the
top of the same manual bolt that Bashir braced without
trying to help the doctor. The boy was exhausted. Great,
another useless appendage better left behind, groused the
Ferengi, floating helplessly--as usual.
    For half an hour, they had done nothing more than
parry the Klingons' attempts to force the door, the only
door, thank the Divine Auditor. But all the while, the
sibilant voice of the Klingon commander whispered to
them through the captured handset. The voice was soft
in Quark's lobes through the jury-rigged relay O'Brien
had set up between handset and the suit corn-links.
    "You cannot win; the game is over. You have already
lost. Now is the time to surrender yourselves. You will be
spared, I give you my word of honor as Malach of House
Razg! Federation, there simply is no further escape. You
can go no farther, though the distance you have covered
and the warriors you have slain attest to your remarkable
courage and warrior spirit. But every battle must end,
and I have maneuvered sufficient force to prevent your
further advance. Surrender now, and I personally guar-
antee not only your own lives, but the lives and fleedom
of all the prisoners I hold!
    "The prisoners are safe. They are within forceshields.
Not one Federation or luckless neutral has been harmed,
I swear it! But you must surrender now, or I simply will
not be able to restrain my troops any longer."
    "Maybe he's right," conceded Chief O'Brien, finally
being sensible, though his voice sounded beaten and
discouraged rather than calculating. "He's not killed
anyone yet, at least not that I've seen. And he did shoot
one of his own men when the man almost knocked Jake
off the railing."
    "It's what we would do, surrender, I mean," said Rom,
surprising Quark with such a proper Ferengi attitude.
"Rule of Acquisition number--"
 "Oh, shut-up, Rom!" snapped Bashir, proving himself




as cranky as the rest of them. "Look, I will not surrender
my command, just because a bunch of punk Klingons
gain a little, temporary advantage over--"
    "Julian, face the facts! He's got twelve out there
already, he says there are more on the way, and I'm
inclined to believe him! We're only four--"  "Six!"
    "Four who can fight, Julian, and one of us is a teenaged
boy! What more can you expect us to do?"
    "Much as I loathe admitting it," said Garak, keeping
his voice remarkably steady, "the chief is being quite
practical. Now, had Malach been fighting the Cardassian
station of Terek Nor, instead of the Federation Deep
Space Nine, it might have been a different story."
    "Oh, yes," sneered the chief, "the Cardassians gave
them real hell when they overran your entire so-called
empire in a few hours!"
    But Garak's inevitable retort was cut short by another
crackle from the handset. When the voice sounded,
Quark was startled first to realize that it was not the
voice of General Malach, the only Klingon voice they
had heard since the Klingons realized they could be
heard. But the Ferengi bartender was utterly nonplussed
when he realized whose voice it was. It was the prune
juice, extra large!
    "You must do as General Malach suggests," said Worf,
his voice fizzing and popping like the hu-man drink
called root beer. "You cannot win this battle, and no one
will come to your aid if you burst through those doors.
This is not like Captain Sisko~ famous victory on the
glorious Kobyashi-Maru campaign. Surrender immedi-
ately, and do not even think about further resistance."
The coin flips once again, thought Quark in surprise.
Three voices spoke simultaneously, the first in tri-
umph, the latter two in complete baffiement: "You see?"
crowed the general who had masterminded the strike
against the station, "even your own spy and saboteur

agrees that you have no choice but to surrender this
station and accept my generous offer!"
    "Glorious victory?" exclaimed Doctor Bashir, "glo-
rious-victory?"
    And Chief O'Brien had his own contribution: "Ko-
byashi? Who the hell is Captain Kobyashi?"




0

CHAPTER
      22

DR. JULIAN BASHIR looked from one blank face to anoth-
er. Only Jake looked pensive, the others clearly had no
clue to the significance of what Worf had just said. No
clue? Bashir stared at O'Brien. "Chief, the glorious
victory of the Kobyashi-Maru! Don't you get it?"
    "Get what? Julian, it's just more gibberish. What the
hell is Worf on about? What's this Kobyashi Maroon
thing?"
    "The Kobyashi-Maru! Chief, the Koby--" Bashir
froze in mid-shout, feeling his face turn hot. Master
Chief Petty Officer Miles Edward O'Brien was so
damned useful around the station, included in so many
high-level meetings, treated like any other department
head, that sometimes, that nearly always, Bashir forgot
that O'Brien wasn't a commissioned officer. The chief
had never been to Starfleet Academy in his entire life!
    Of course he had no idea about the Kobyashi-Maru,
the secret exercise given to all cadets not once but many
times. The exercise that could not be won... that was

designed for failure. The purpose was so simple, it took
most Academy cadets their entire school career to figure
it out. Starfleet wanted to see how they reacted to failure.
What would the cadet and future officer do when every-
thing he tried, no matter how brilliant or unexpected,
still led to his ship exploding in a fiery death, taking the
cadet and all the crew with it?
    Glorious victory? The Kobyashi-Maru was so much
the opposite that there was no way Worf could be
mistaken or misremembering. It was a code, a deliberate
message.
    Unexpectedly, the boy spoke up from his disconcert-
ing vantage point at the other end of the tog-wheel that
Bashir was wedging shut, upside-down with respect to
the other three combatants. "Chief, the Kobyashi-Maru
is... well, let's just say it was an important battle, and
the Federation lost. Big time."
    "I never heard of it," retorted the chief. "I've studied
every military engagement listed in every casebook, and
I never--"
    "It's something they only study at the Academy. It's
not in the books. The--Starfleet is sort of embarrassed,
they don't want to let anybody know about it."
    "Which raises the rather interesting question," said
the doctor quietly. "Of how you, Jake, seem to have
found out."
 "Oh. Uh, I was... told."
 "By your friend Nog, I take it."
    "No! Urn, no. Nog wouldn't do that, not while he's
still at... I mean, my source was kind of higher rank
than Nog. A Starfleet officer."
    Bashir smiled sardonically. "Wouldn't happen to hold
the rank of captain, would he?"
    "Anything's possible," said Jake noncommitally.
"Anyway, my source waited until it was certain that I
would never attend Starfleet Academy. He wouldn't have
wanted to, ah, ruin the effect, if you know what I mean."
 "This is all charming," interrupted O'Brien. "But




what's the point? So Worfthinks a defeat is a victory. It's
probably one of those Klingon honor things. Big deal!"
    "No, Chief. It's decidedly more than that. It's a clue,
maybe the last clue he can give us--he called the
engagement a glorious victory, but it was a terrible
defeat. What does that mean?"
    Long, pregnant silence, during which Bashir strained
every neural fiber in his head to concoct increasingly
complex meanings for the bizarre faux-pas. The silence
was broken at last by the small, tentative voice of
Quark's brother Rom. Probably the most common-
sensical voice among u& Bashir told himself. "Uh, that
he means the exact opposite of whatever he says?"
    Thud. The Latinum dropped. Of course, when all else
fails, try the most obvious answer!
    "So, what else did he say? Anybody remember?
O'Brien, Rom, Jake?"
    "I notice you chose not to ask me," muttered Garak,
perhaps forgetting that they were all "hot-miked," and
everyone could hear every smallest utterance.
    "I can remember exactly," said Rom. "A Ferengi
businessman is expected to memorize his business ac-
counts going back five years--"
    "Yes, yes," said Bashir hastily. "We've been through
all that! What exactly did Worf say, besides the bit about
the... the famous battle?"
    "He said, 'You must do as General Malach suggests.
You cannot win this battle, and no one will come to your
aid if you burst through those doors. This is not like
Captain Sisko's famous victory on the glorious
Kobyashi-Maru campaign. Surrender immediately, and
do not even think about further resistance.'"
    "But that's it!" shouted O'Brien. "He said no one
would come to our aid if we crashed through the door--
he's saying he will come to our aid!"
    "'You can't win the battle,'" quoted Jake; "Worf's
saying we can win the battle if we make an all-out attack
right now, coming through the doors, and he'll join us,

and--and maybe Malach doesn't have the manpower to
reinforce those guards out there."
    Sensitive to the Cardassian's previous remark, Bashir
rotated to face him. "Garak? I know you have a lot more
experience in these matters than you like to let on. Any
thoughts?"
    "My only thought, my friend, is that we are doing
precious little good cowering here wishing everything
would get all better. At this point, I'm quite ready to die
of sheer boredom. Death by disruptor fire would be a
welcome relief?' Garak smiled, barely visible through
the faceplate of his pressure-suit, which was styled to
look much more imperial than the Federation suits, but
which was otherwise reasonably well-tailored. "Thank
you for asking, Dr. Bashir."
    Encouraged by the unanimity, Bashir twisted until he
located the two Ferengi, clutching an odd-looking wall
that he realized, on second glance, was a catwalk when
the station was under gravity. "Quark, Rom? Do we have
a consensus?"
    "Oh, you're bothering to ask the torpedo's opinion?"
sneered the former. "How civilized of you, Doctor.
Better watch yourself; you might start to recognize that I
have certain rights that are being--"
    "We think the plan is fine," said Rom, cutting off his
bitterly cynical brother.
    "Then," said Bashir, "on the count of three, here we
go. It's Armageddon time, troops."
    The sudden opening of the door caught the Klingons
flat-footed, or perhaps "randomly floating" was a better
term: they were huddled in a conference of their own,
helmets pressed together to speak too quietly for Malach
to hear on his channel. Presumably, they were discussing
their inability to break through the defenses of the
Resistance and deciding what they were going to tell the
general. One by one, they stared in surprise as the door
rolled quickly open (with both Bashir and Jake spinning
the tog, their feet braced as best they could manage). One


Klingon pointed and shouted something, then the
mighty Klingon warriors fumbled for their disruptors.
    Simultaneously with that motion, a red disruptor
beam lanced from a dark, shadow-painted tube--one of
the auxiliary power-conduits, Bashir reckoned. Two
Klingon invaders were tagged from behind before the
rest even knew they were fighting on more than one
front.
    Cleverly, the entire platoon of Klingons tried to rotate
to deal with the new threat--not an easy task in zero-G!
They grabbed each other, of course, and Conservation of
Angular Momentum insured that for every Klingon who
rotated to face Worf, the one he grabbed was spun in the
opposite direction!
    Bashir kicked away from the door and into the room,
taking hip-shots with his own phaser as he drifted. He
careened off one bulkhead, kicking again to make up for
the momentum absorbed by his body. Another shot, and
another, and finally a hit! Three of twelve Klingons
down, and so far, no casualties for the Resistance.
    It became instantly obvious that these warriors were
not as experienced as he in zero-G combat--and Julian
Bashir regretted every second he had spent badmouthing
Captain Sisko for requiring extra training! Klingon war-
riors used their comrades as launching platforms, kick-
ing off from one another, sending the launching pad
tumbling off in the opposite direction.
    Worse still: as they kicked off their compadres, the
launchees tried simultaneously to spin around to return
fire. But of course, they didn't stop spinning just because
they were pointing, for a moment, in the right direction!
Like any other object in a zero-G vacuum, once they
started rotating, they continued rotating, spinning like
gyroscopes and firing desperate salvos during the brief
intervals they could see their targets.
    Worf--it must be Worfl--crouched absolutely. still in
a dark comer, and he had the eye of a demon: every shot
was unerring. Of course, against enemies as disoriented

as these, even Julian Bashir could play Wyatt Earp,
picking off the Klingons as if shooting desperadoes in a
Wild West holonovel. Even so, even with O'Brien, and
with Garak--who, unsurprisingly, was quite a good
shot--and Jake, who couldn't hit the port bulkhead with
the starboard bulkhead, even so, without Worf, the tide
of battle would eventually have turned against them.
Worf alone accounted for half the casualties among the
Klingons. Caught in the crossfire, gyrating uncontrolla-
bly, and rebounding from walls and pieces of equipment
in unexpected directions, the Klingons had no chance at
all.
    The war was over virtually before it began. Twelve
Klingons floated about the cabin in various states of
incapacitation--sadly, up to and including death, sever-
al by suffocation when their suits were ripped open by
sharp projections they ran into. For a terrible moment,
Bashir was driven by his Hippocratic oath to want to try
to save those who were still alive, but dying. It tore his
guts out to float motionless, hand gripping a seat-back,
doing nothing--withholding medical care!Mwhile men
died around him, even Klingon warriors.
    But there were many others still on the station, prison-
ers folded into forceshields somewhere, whose air might
be running out, or who might be at risk of being
slaughtered if the Klingons became desperate enough to
forget their orders. Doctor Bashir had to make way for
Lieutenant Bashir, who had an entire station to tend.
    Or did he? Worf kicked from the opposite wall, aiming
at the tangle of seats and railings that decorated one wall.
Must be the floor when the gravity~ on, thought Bashir
lamely. The Starfleet Klingon rotated to crash into a
chair shoulder first, bringing himself to a halt. "Is there
any senior officer in your group, Doctor Bashir?"
 "No, Worf. I'm in charge."
    "You are in charge no longer, Doctor. I will take
command."
 "I beg your pardon, Worfl"




    "I am assuming command, lieutenant. We have no
time for this sparring! We must find a way to alert
Starfleet to the danger."
    "Well, begging the lieutant-commander's pardon,"
said O'Brien, with a decidedly sneering air, which he
relished good-humoredly, "but if he'll stop taking com-
mand for a couple of seconds and listen, we've got the
plan all worked out."
    Worf's face through his faceplate contorted in a brief
flicker of fury. I wonder whether the chief realizes how on-
the-edge his oMfriend is? Bashir thought of stories he had
read about people who had tried to domesticate wild
animals, only to be torn limb from limb when the beast
reverted, even for a moment, to its natural state. Then
the doctor flushed hotly, realizing how xenophobic such
an analogy would sound! But I didn't mean it that way/
    Worf was not an animal, and within a second, his fury
turned to mild annoyance. "Please tell me what your
plan is--Julian."
    Speaking in turns, Bashir and O'Brien explained
Quark's plan, careful to give credit, though Worf looked
incredulous at the thought of the Ferengi coming up with
something useful. O'Brien, meanwhile, was modifying
Quark's comm link, presumably boosting the broadcast
power.
    Feeling a terrible sense of urgency, Dr. Bashir urged
Worf to let him stay behind to offer medical care, but the
Klingon refused to waste time on the defeated enemy
and led them quickly "upward," toward the Promenade.
Under the circumstances, Bashir didn't push the point.
    "Malach still has quite a few soldiers roaming about,
at least twenty," Worf warned. "Keep your phasers out
and get ready for an excellent firefight, with plenty of
glory for us all. Today may turn out to be a good day to
die." Worf smiled like the hero of a Klingon opera in the
final act, before the entire stage was washed with the red
kazl syrup they traditionally used for blood.
  "God, I hate it when he talks like that," muttered

V I' NL~ t'Al~l~t'

O'Brien. Bashir didn't answer. He was too busy not
looking at the bodies of the patients he would not treat.

    Against all his expectations and every Ferengi rule of
survival, Quark discovered to his horror that he actually
liked being in the thick of things, even if his own military
contribution was minimal. He couldn't shoot well be-
cause his hands, when he stretched, reached only to the
wrists of the suit, which was too bulky to bunch up
further. He could grip a phaser halfheartedly by clamping
it between his flippers, but he couldn't aim well enough
to guarantee not frying his own comrades. At least Rom
is in the same stupid fix. he thought uncharitably, pleased
to feel a bit more Ferengi-like. It was intolerable on those
few occasions when, due to sheer, dumb luck, his little
brother ended up saving the day, while QuarKuselessly
flapped his arms like a bankrupt madman.
    They were still two levels away from the Promenade
airlock and had to fight their way through Klingon
forces. But soon, the battles blended into one another;
they were all so much alike. The so-called Resistance
would stumble across a lone Klingon, or maybe three,
and there would be a brief exchange of phasers and
disruptors, because the Resistance nearly always took
the Klingons by surprise, and had the advantage of cover
and concealment (tactics that were distinctly Ferengi,
not at all like the "scream and leap" tactics Quark
usually associated with hu-mans), they won with no
casualties each time. They walked through six invaders
that way, and only one time was there any real excite-
ment for the pair of Ferengi.
    They surprised a pair of invaders. One performed the
normal, expected, Klingon course of action when am-
bushed by a numerically superior band of enemy sol-
diers: he spun, grabbed some feeble cover, and began
spraying disruptor blasts as if he were at the Final Audit.
Worf and O'Brien took care of him quickly.
 But the other, a dangerously clever chap, did the




utterly unexpected: he got his feet behind him and
launched himself directly at the party. The shots from his
partner drew the fire of everybody else, and amazingly,
they didn't even see the Klingon swoop past their heads,
close enough to reach out and touch them.
    He made no contact with Bashir, O'Brien, Worf, Jake,
or Garak, but his trajectory put him on a direct collision
course with Quark and Rom! The Klingon fired a shot.
But he was agitated and tumbling slightly, and his shot
split the pair of Ferengi. Before he could fire another, he
collided first with Quark, then, on the rebound, with
Rom.
    Quark was terrified, but he never had the chance to
freeze. He reacted as his savage, precapitalist ancestors
must have: he wrapped his arms and legs around his
attacker, managing to catch the Klingon's throat in the
crook of one arm, and squeezed and jerked for all he was
worth in bars of latinum. Rom grappled the Klingon's
feet, taking a couple of brutal kicks to the chest. If there
were atmosphere, reflected Quark dully, he probably
would have heard the crack as one or more of his
brother's ribs broke.
    Then Quark's groping hand found the emergency-
release on the neck valve of the Federation pressure-suit
the Klingon wore. He tore it open and snapped the lever,
detaching the helmet, and that spelled the end of Mr.
Clever. It was Quark's only kill... and he had to split it
with his idiot brother!
    Two decks later, with Quark and Rom being towed
behind the rest like balloons behind a thoughtless child,
they finally reached their goal, the Promenade, and there
they found their reward: the main body of Malach's
remaining army, sixteen warriors, and the general him-
selfi Evidently, one or more of the ambushed Klingon
lookouts had managed a comm link call to Malach, and
the general knew just where they were coming. He had
set up an ambush, but then he allowed them to enter the

VENGEANCE

Promenade unmolested! Quark shook his head in
amazement--the arrogance of the Klingons!
    The bedraggled members of the rag-tag Resistance
fluttered like flags, rippling with every slight movement
of their anchor hands. Quark and Rom gripped an
ornate sign with both arms... ironically, the sign for
Quark's Place. If only this were one of those hu-man
holonovels! lamented the Ferengi, but Quark knew that
no cavalry would come to the rescue, and there was no
way out of the trap: Malach had them where he wanted
them.
    "You have done astonishingly well to get to this
point," allowed Malach, speaking through his own
comm link. His words were received by the handset,
forwarded to the receivers on each helmet. Quark
cringed at the cold cruelty behind the compliment.
Malach thought he had been made a fool of, and that was
not a healthy way to start a relationship with a Klingon.
    "But the game is played out, and, in the end, you see, I
wear the Empire crown." The general touched his hel-
meted head. Quark had the vague idea that Malach was
making a reference to some impossibly bloody Klingon
opera. General Malach, bulky even for a Klingon, nearly
as big as the frightening Worf, was stuffed tight in the
Federation suit he had "liberated."
    "We won't surrender," said O'Brien, who had patched
his own suit's transmitter into the handset as well.
"You're going to have to take us by force, and we'll die,
and you'll have a full-blown war with the Federation. Is
that what you want?"
    "No," admitted Malach. "I want only the station." He
smiled, visible through his faceplate, as his troops scat-
tered to all directions, as if by prearranged signal. "But I
will take what I can get and hold it against the enemies of
the Empire."
 "You said we weren't enemies!"
 Malach's face contorted in anger. "All who oppose the




right of self-defense for the Empire are enemies of the
Empire/" He seemed to catch himself, turning left and
right off his pivot-point. His right hand gripped the
sculpture near the turbolift and the aifiock... the air-
lock, whispered a very un-Ferengi-like voice in Quark's
inner lobe. "Surrender, and we shall be enemies no
more," continued the Klingon general. "Restore air and
gravity to this station. When we have sent you under
truce-flag to your Federation, along with the other invol-
untary guests, they shall not want war between us."
  "Stuff it up your... Jeffries tube."
    Quark cringed, waiting for the explosion; it never
came. Malach merely smiled again, unperturbed by the
rude suggestion. He raised his hand to give the order to
attack.
    Worf beat him to it. The lieutenant commander fired a
full-power phaser shot directly at Malach, but bad luck
dogged the Resistance still. By raising his hand, the
general had twisted his body inadvertently, and the
beam barely brushed his side. The pressure suit deflected
what little wash it took (at a bad angle), and Malach was
unhurt.
    The Klingons returned fire, of course, and the battle
raged. There was so much debris, so many metal bits and
protruding spars, that everyone had cover. The fight was
a standoff, beams lancing back and forth in eerie silence
in the vacuum, nobody hitting anyone. But Malach
dispatched five of his warriors to circle the Promenade
and flank the Resistance from behind. When that hap-
pened, there would be nowhere to hide--the Resistance
would fall!
    Minutes passed, and everyone stopped the useless
shooting. Garak and Bashir turned to face back the other
way, leaving Worf, Jake, and O'Brien to hold the main
force of Klingons tight behind their cover. But it was a
losing game of Moogie's Auction, where the asking price
started high and worked slowly downward until the first
person accepted the bid from the seller. You waited and

waited, and some altruistic clod always got the first bid
in before you could! Everyone was just waiting for the
flanking team to show up and catch the Resistance in a
crossfire. The game would be lost at that moment.
    Quark had just resigned himself to possible death and
was rehearsing his final tally for the Divine Treasury
when he saw the most amazing thing he had ever seen in
his life: the turbolift doors abruptly slid open, and half a
dozen beams of phaser fire flickered toward the Klingons
from behind--it was Malach caught in the same
hammer-and-anvil attack he had set up for the Resist-
ance!
    Quark stared wildly at the suited figures bursting from
the now-empty turbolift shaft. One looked familiar. The
figure twisted in mid-trajectory, shooting in every direc-
tion at once. Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax
grinned with a bit of battlelust as she decimated the last
remnants of Malach's victorious invasion force.
    Quark made a mental note to stock up on old hu-man
holoprograms... the cavalry to the rescue!




CHAPTER
      23

FUR AND PHASERS continued to fly in the airless, weight-
less, curiously peaceful war zone: without the noises
usually associated with battle--the shriek of phasers, the
snarl of disruptors, the screams of victims, the screech of
torn metal, the hiss of escaping air from ruptured hulls,
the bellow of ~'~rnmands, the the froth of curses, threats,
imprecations;-and insults, the ululation of a Klingon
battle cry, even the hysterical sobbing of terrified by-
standers. War just wasn't the same. Quark shook his
head, sighing to himselfi The party was over. Sisko was
back with Odo (of course) in tow.
    Ordinarily, the Ferengi would have cringed and cow-
ered in classic Ferengi fashion behind something thick,
solid, and opaque, but he simply had seen too much in
the past few days. The old fear-glands were bled dry. The
Ferengi adrenalyte had flowed so freely, it no longer
affected Quark's physiology. It was like the ancient
Ferengi story of the boy who cried "Audit!" once too
often, and nobody came when a real auditor showed up.

    He yawned inside his helmet, watching the battle rage
silently around him, above and below, left and right, all
directions being arbitrary, of course. The pincer maneu-
ver drove Malach and his warriors back about thirty
degrees around the Promenade concourse, but Quark
was too filled with ennui to follow.
    Abruptly, he was shaken from his reverie by a rude
hand grabbing him by the shoulder of his suit. "--Wake
up/" blistered Chief O'Brien, who evidently had been
calling him for some time. Quark continued to tumble in
the direction he had been jerked, spinning majestically
end around end toward the open turbolift doors. "God
Almighty, Quark, get your head out of the stars! How
much pull have you got on the tanks?"
    Disoriented by the spin, Quark didn't understand the
question at first. He crashed into the bulkhead next to
the doors and clutched a mapboard, stopping his tumble.
"Wh-what?"
    "Your air tanks! Your air tanks, you giant earlobe! You
just donned new tanks. How much air have they got left
m there?"
 "Uh--oh! Uh, it says seventeen point three."
 "Hm... that's enough for--"
 "Seventeen point three what?"
    "For about five hours, if you don't kick around much
out there. Yeah, that's plenty. All right, ,~,;ark, into the
lock!"
    "The lock? The lock! Chief, surely you weren't serious
about that idea! I mean, I could never--I would panic,
I'm sure--/can't hurl myself into empty space/"
    "I figured that," said O'Brien, nodding inside his own
suit. He had kicked across to join the Ferengi. "So I'll do
the hurling."  "You/"
    "Sure, it'll be just like throwing darts. Except with a
big, clumsy, pointless missile." O'Brien grabbed Quark's
loose suit and kicked, launching the two of them across
the Promenade toward the outer wall, directly opposite




the turbolift. They gently bumped into a small, innocu-
ous, recessed door labeled "Emergency Exit Airlock" in
Cardassian. Quark had never noticed it before, but then,
why would he have? He had never before contemplated
leaping into the endless void riding only a spacesuit!
  "You can't do this! I have rights!"
    Silently, O'Brien began to untog the door, one bolt
after another. After the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth
bolt, Quark felt a sudden chill of terror thrill through his
body and up his spine, driving away any lingering apathy
he felt.
    "Ha! ha! ha! He! he! A very good joke indeed. We'll
have a good laugh about it at the barmhe! he! he!mover
our synthalethe! he! he!" Quark was aware he was
losing it.
 "The synthale," said the chief.
    "He! he! he! He! he! he! Yes, the synthale. But isn't it
getting late? Won't they be waiting for us at Quark's
Place, Jadzia Dax and the rest? Let us be gone."
  "Yes," said O'Brien, "let us be gone."
  "For the love of latinum, Miles O'Brien/"
  "Yes," he said, "for the love of latinurn."
    Quark stammered wordlessly in reply, staring at the
door. Eleven togs; twelve; thirteen togs, and the door
rotated slowly to the side, rolling like the docking
airlocks in the station arms. After a few moments,
O'Brien looked impatient. "Quark!" he barked.
    No answer. He shouted again: "Quark!" No answer
still.
    Chief O'Brien shoved Quark inside the Cardassian
tomb and began to crank. Slowly, the door rolled back
into place, the airlock darkening to black, as there was no
working illumination. When only a crack remained, and
Quark stared at the world he had known for ten years or
more, probably his last glimpse of the station, O'Brien
spoke a final time. once the door was shut, there could be
no further communication. "You know what to do?
Don't waste your breath until you've got a good way

away from the station. Then start broadcasting. I've set
you to full gain on your comm link. And don't panic!
You've got five hours of oxygen if you don't panic ...
maybe two and a half if you waste it screaming or
thrashing about. Got it?"
    Quark stared dumbly, then, against his will, he found
himself nodding slowly. Chief O'Brien grinned a sadis-
tic, little smile (in Quark's opinion), and ground the door
the rest of the way shut.
    Don't panic/ That was a laugh. The Ferengi could
already feel his heart pounding so hard that his chest
already ached. The adrenalyte he thought was drained
rushed back like the returning tide, and his entire body
shook like a misaligned impulse engine. His extremities
were cold, heading quickly toward numb, and he was
dimly aware, in some corner of his mind, that he was
probably going into shock.
    He wasn't going to make it. You're going to die out
there, whispered a matter-of-fact voice in his inner lobe.
In the coldest, loneliest place in all of Deep Space Nine:
the great outdoors/He began to hear a hiss. O'Brien was
flooding the airlock with air... Quark was to be fired
from the chamber like a dart from a blowgun!
    Quark reached back to touch the bulkhead behind
him, the last, seemingly flimsy barrier remaining be-
tween himself and the starry abyss of emptiness. Defying
O'Brien's last orders, Quark made quite a production
out of wasting precious oxygen by screwing his eyes shut
and screaming for all his lungs were worth.
    When he finished, he opened his eyes. He was still in
the airlock, of course. Numbly, he grabbed hold of the
handle above his head, rotated his body until his feet
were planted against the place where O'Brien had walled
him intout. With no more warning, the outer door
exploded away from Quark with a loud bang. After
hours of silence in the vacuum of Deep Space Nine, the
noise of the explosive bolts made his whole body con-
vulse. Then he was pushed from the lock by one, single




atmosphere of force that felt like a thousand, enough
anyway to hurl him outward, spinning slowly on two
axes.
    After the brief surge of acceleration from the mini-
hurricane, Quark was surprised to discover that there
was not the slightest sensation of moving. Rather, it
looked like the station was receding from him, growing
more distant every time his spin brought it back into
view. It pulled away slowly, majestically: the stately core
fell away from his feet. After many minutes, the mon-
strous habitat ring passed before his face--it took a
hundred heartbeats to pass. Pressing far away were the
twin "coat hooks" of the pylons, sticking out either
direction from the ring. Another fifty meters to the right,
and he would have collided with the "lower" pylon (the
other looked severely damaged, as if someone or some-
thing had used it for target practice).
    Dimly, Quark tried to remember why he was where he
was, why he had been cast out to die among the stars and
the interstellar dust clouds. Something came back, a dim
memory hiding behind the evil, malicious grin of
O'Brien the Executioner. Something about a comm link.
    "Awk!" he said. "Ack--back--gack!" No, that wasn't
quite it... Quark snapped from his state of shock,
staring wildly around the inside of his helmet as if he had
never seen it before. It didn't look like the Divine
Treasury... could he have gone--to the other place?
    Wait, wait, there~ something I must--I'm supposed to
do...Quark convulsed. All the memory flooded back at
once, and he remembered who he was and why he was
drifting among the stars. The comm link! Sweat beaded
on Quark's forehead, turning icy in the recirculated air
of his pressure-suit. He felt a distinct nausea that he
thought he had banished hours before: the stars spinning
past his visor raised again the old specter of space
sickness. Quark closed his eyes for a moment, but it only
helped a little.

    A small fact had just occurred to him: if he couldn't
raise anyone on the comm link, then he would, without
fail, die the loneliest and coldest death in the universe: to
freeze or suffocate or die of fear a hundred kilometers
from the nearest air, light, and life.
    He tried to talk, to shout over the open comm link, but
his throat was frozen shut! He couldn't utter a sound...
he couldn't even breathe. Panic gripped him like a living
thing. He opened his eyes wide and thrashed and
bucked, trying to throw it off. His vision dimmed; the
bright pinpoint jewels surrounding him flickered and
began to fade. I'm dying ofhypoxia! he raged to himself.
    Then the scream he had been suppressing since kick-
ing off from the station finally forced its way up his
throat, breaking the data-jam. "Help met Help me, for
the love of latinurn! Please, somebody--Bajor, Starfleet,
anybody!"
    No answer. Quark breathed deeply, then his heart
almost stopped when he caught sight of his air gauge: 8.8/
He had already burned up half his oxygen, and he had
only been cruising for a few minutes, a couple of
seconds, a--he stared at the chronometer reading inside
the helmet--for two hours?
    Stunned, Quark watched the chronometer and contin-
ued to broadcast his distress call every ten minutes. In
between broadcasts, he tried to calm himself, breathing
slowly, shallowly, husbanding his air supply. He lowered
his air intake so dramatically--meditating upon an
enormous room, a whole station full of bars and strips
and shavings of latinum--that he actually began to see
stars and sparkles at the edge of his vision. His color
perception grayed-out, and it was difficult to see the
numbers on his chronometer. His mind wandered
through a fanciful corridor in the Divine Treasury, a
long, curving hallway that looped back into itself (swap-
ping inside and outside, like what the hu-mans called a
Klein bottle). Something tickled his lobes. He ignored it,




mechanically repeating his distress call over and over,
mumbling like an employee. The tickling grew louder,
more insistent.
    Words... a voice, a shape of sound. His lobes burned
cold, but they could hear perfectly well.
    He heard a sound, a voice, a response. "This is
Commander Tureilav of Bajor Naval Rescue. Vessel
calling distress signal, please identify/We cannot locate
you on our sensors."
    Quark blinked in surprise. Stunned, he realized his
mind was a total blank. For the first time in his long,
painful, profitless life, Quark had absolutely nothing to
say.
    Then he shook all over, as if he had just been granted
stock options in the Grand Nagus's personal corpora-
tion. Words popped into his head: "Quark! I'm Quark!
I'm Quark!"
    "Tureilav to Quark, what is the nature of your emer-
gency? We are en route from Bajor. What are your
coordinates?"
    "Commander Tur--Tureilav," said Quark with a sigh,
"you are not going to believe what I'm about to tell you!"
As the stupid clich6 left his lips, Quark had the terrible
premonition that it might turn out to be prophetic--
what if the Bajorans didn't believe him?
    But they simply had to believe... The most idiotic
altruist in the quadrant wouMn't make up a story this
crazy/

    "What have you done? Colonel Worf, what have you
done?" Malach screamed through his comm link, bring-
ing a grim smile to "Colonel" Worf's lips.
    "I cannot say for certain what Mr. O'Brien has done,"
answered the lieutenant commander, "but I can guess."
In fact, Worf did not have to guess; the stroke was
obvious (and brilliant) the moment Quark dove into the
airlock: Quark the ballistic hero/thought Worf, unusually
poetic for a tactical officer, but the grand scheme re-

VLNGLAN~L

minded Worf of one of his favorite Ktingon operas, and
the poetry came naturally to his brain.
    O'Brien, his back still to the hidden airlock that even
Worf had never noticed before, broke into the conversa-
tion through his own link in the Klingon communica-
tions chain. "I'11 tell you what I've done, Malach,
whoever the hell you are. I've put a stop to your daf'
scheme!"
    Malach ignored the chief and spoke directly to Worf.
"And what, exactly, have you had your man do to 'put a
stop' to my strike?" He smiled, exposing his teeth in a
gesture more fierce than friendly.
    "Worf had nothing to do with it, you--dishonorable
pig! I just sent out my own comm link, and by now,
there's nothing you or anyone else can do!"
    The general seemed to notice O'Brien for the first
time, holding the lip of the door to Quark's Place and
rotating to face the chiefi "You! You are a rankless man.
Who granted you this authority?" "Admiral Benevidez."
    Worf scowled, staring back at O'Brien. Has the combat
driven him mad? he wondered.
    Malach stared too, his eyes widening just for amo~
ment. "He is the senior admiral of Starfleet, is he not?"
    "Yeah, he's a good friend," explained O'Brien. "In
fact, he's been hiding in my closet ever since the attack
began. We keep in contact by subspace carrier pigeons."
    Worf, in a long and infamous career in and out of the
Klingon Empire, through more adventures than he could
count on fingers and toes, had seen more than his share
of angry, irritated, and downright furious Klingon faces.
General Malach's, however, was one of the angriest Worf
had ever seen. Malach's flesh turned white as the
pressure-suit he was wearing, and his eyes widened into
twin reflector dishes.
    Worf had seen Malach lose his composure now and
again during the long campaign, but it was nothing
compared to this time as Malach finally realized that a




L)AFYDD AB MUGH

tiny handful of Federation defenders had finally broken
the final campaign of "General" Malach, and almost
assured discommodation of whatever shreds remained
of the "noble" House of Razg. Malach screamed a long
string of threats and obscenities. However, the specifics
were left to Wort"s imagination, for Malach wisely sev-
ered his comm link before cutting loose.
    "Malach!" shouted Worfi When the general--Wori"s
blood-brother--failed to respond, Worf kicked the gain
to maximum and shouted again.
    Instead of answering, however, Malach abruptly
pulled his feet to rest against the doorframe of the bar
and kicked off, away from Worf and O'Brien. The
maneuver caught Worfby surprise. He is abandoning his
men! realized Worf, shocked. He never thought his
blood-brother could do such an un-Klingon-like thing. It
is only in the final extremity that honor and dishonor
show themselves unmasked, remembered Worf, quoting
an old children's proverb he had learned... at the
academy at Emperor Kahless Military City.
    But as Malach faded from sight, his voice came clear
and peremptory over the scrambled comm link: "The
fight was glorious, my brothers. The gods have turned the
dice, and the the victory goes to the enemy. But you
fought well and bravely, and with honor.
    "Those of you who joined my cause because your
houses were discommodated, you have the word of
Gowron that they are restored. Those who joined for the
sheer Klingon joy of battle are satisfied.
    "Honor is satisfied! There is no need for the rest of you
to commit Mauk toWor. Lay down your weapons, you
who are left alive. Yield as men do when they know the
fight is lost. We gambled; we lost. But we have shown
these spineless worms what it is to be Klingons! We have
shown them what face they must keep if they are to serve
effectively as the front line against the Dominion...
and that means we won, in the long view: we have helped
the cause of Empire, of Gowron, of Kahless.

    "To honor! To Empire! Stand tall until we meet again
in Sto-vo-kor. Farewell, of all my military commands,
this last was my greatest." Then Malach fell silent.
    Inside his helmet, rapidly running out of air, Worf's
mind worked furiously: following Malach would be
nearly impossible--one warrior with a disruptor could
certainly seal off tunnels behind him! No, not to
follow... Worf would have to reason where Malach was
headed.
He has gone to die, Worf knew, but where? How?
The lieutenant commander, in desperation, turned to
his closest friend on Deep Space Nine. Covering the
distance between himself and Miles O'Brien with a
blurry leap, impacting with a bone-jarring crunch, Worf
quickly killed the comm link--he couldn't have the
other Klingons overhear him--and instead pressed his
helmet directly against the chiefs. "He has gone to kill
himself," he explained tersely to O'Brien. "We must
deduce where!"
    "Worf, he just saw Quark go through the airlock. It's
got to be heavy on his brain! He'll throw himself out an
airlock, and we'd have the devil of a time finding him,
especially with so much of the station damaged, and not
knowing exactly where to look."
    Worf closed his eyes, putting himself into the heart
and spirit of his blood-brother. Yes... yes/That wouM
be his path. "But where, Chief?. Where will he do it? Is
there another secret airlock?"
    "Well if there were, how the hell would Malach know
about it?"
    Worf and O'Brien looked at each other and said the
obvious at the same moment--"The cargo bays." Of
course! With the station forceshields down and all the air
evacuated, Malach could crank open the main door of
any one of the cargo bays with his hands, and there
would be nothing stopping him from pushing off into
bright space beyond those doors. It involved time and
work, but Malach had no other appointments to keep.




L)AI~YLID All nu~PI

    "There are many cargo bays," said Worf. "I may find
Malach before he can get the door open, but this duty is
mine alone. You cannot say to my blood-brother what
must be said. Find the prisoners and make sure they have
air/That is my last order before turning command over
to Captain Sisko."
    Malach, when last seen, had been heading vaguely
toward Cargo Bay 2. Worf shot for the turbolift shaft to
intercept.

0

CHAPTER
      24

M^LaC, wAS NOT in Cargo Bay 2, not in Cargo Bay 3. One
advantage of zero-G was the speed with which Worf
could bounce, literally, from point to point around the
Habitat Ring. Worf continued on his trek, and in Cargo
Bay 4, he found Malach. The general had already opened
the cargo-bay doors, but he was waiting for Worf.
    "I see your deductive skills have not diminished with
age," said Malach. At the academy in Emperor Kahless
Military City, Worf had taken top honors in Logic and
Opera Appreciation; Malach had beaten him in Mathe-
matics, Military History, Military Bearing.
 "You knew I would come," said Worfi
 And Individual Psychology.
    Malach smiled behind the crystaline faceplate. "I have
six minutes of air left," he noted, glancing at the gauge at
chin-level inside the helmet.
 "There is plenty of spare air."
    "We have five minutes, Worf. I require one minute to
see the universe before I die." General Malach let go of




DAFYDD AB HUGH

the pile of lock-stacked cargo he was gripping--dolimite
for some colony in the Gamma Quadrant--and stared
hard into Worffs face. The general smiled. Contemptu-
ous, thought Worf, almost a sneer. Worf fought down the
instant Klingon-rage at the implied dishonor in the
look... this was, after everything, his brother--blood-
brother. "So this is what a traitor looks like," said
Malach.
    "I am not a traitor," answered the security officer of
Deep Space Nine. "I have a duty to Starfleet!"
    "Does it supersede your duty to your own people? To
the Empire?" Malach shook his head. He really wasn't
interested in the answer, Worf knew. He probably will
not believe me anyway.
    But Worf had to try. For the sake of what they both
had learned at Emperor Kahless Military City, where
Worfs father had sent the boy when he began to have
disciplinary problems at age five, Worf was desperate to
explain the "betrayal" to his blood-brother. "My father
died in the attack on Khitomer," Worfbegan. "It was the
year after he placed me in the academy. We had just
moved to Khitomer, and I resented being taken from the
academy after such a short time, when I had just found
my feet. I was still a problem--you remember how I was
when we first met--but I had learned much. For the first
time, brother, my father spoke to me with respect! You
do not know what that is like, since you never knew your
father."
     Malach merely smiled wistfully. He looked over his
 shoulder out the open door at the beckoning stars. "And
 the Romulan attack left no time for the happy reconcilia-
 tion, father and son. How mawkish, Worf. You have
 changed, and grown stupid, if you think that will make a
 difference to me. The pleading of traitors does not
 interest me."
     "Silence, Defeated One/" thundered Worf over the
 special command comm link. That did it, he thought,

VENGEANCE

that snapped his eyes back. Worf curled his lip. Worf had
invoked the sacred Klingon relationship of victor to
vanquished, and Malach was now honor-bound to treat
Worf with respect. "You owe me these minutes by our
witnessed blood oath, but if I cannot compel you to obey
a debt of memory, you will at least pay me the courtesy
of recognizing my victory!"
    Malach bowed, as much as one could in zero-G. He
inclined his head slightly, but still smiled with bitterness
and ill-humor. "Speak, now that you have recognized me
as your enemy, you cannot deny me a death with honor,
not by our past or your recent service. You have invoked
the Speech of Victory. You cannot retract it."
    "Underneath this uniformawell, the uniform I usu-
ally wear--I am still a Klingon! I obey the old ways. And
the core duty of old was the Sword Oath, is it not so?"
    Malach said nothing, nor did he acknowledge the
question. He was skating on brittle ice.
    "Do you not understand, Malach? I did not desert the
Empirethe Empire deserted met I had sworn an oath, a
Sword Oath, to Starfleet and to Captain Sisko, and
Gowron knew that! He could have given me dispensa-
tion under the Code of Houses--he did not have to
discommodate my House!" Worf realized he was shout-
ing with anger. Years of pent-up frustration and fury
spilled out of his heart into the cargo bay, globules of
cruel, cold disillusionment that floated, spinning, toward
his blood-brother. "Can you not see yet? I swore to
Captain Sisko as if he were my father.t"
    Worf fell to silence, shocked by what he had said. He
never would have dreamed of saying such a thing to
anyone on the station, not even Miles O'Brien. Malach
was the only person he could talk to about this dark,
forbidden subject... Malach, the last remaining link
between Worf and a time when his father, his real father,
was still alive and the focus of his aspirations.
 In so many ways, Captain Benjamin Sisko reminded




LJAFYDD AB HUGH

Worf of the father he had known for such a short while,
at once deep and lighthearted, poured from equal parts
grim determination and practical jokery. Worf often
heard his father's voice, whispering amusing stories, but
he kept them to himself, not out of fear for his dignity,
but out of simple selfishness: Worf wanted to keep all of
his father for himself, sharing none with his colleagues--
especially not with Jadzia Dax, who shared too much of
Worf's life as it was! He wanted just one thing that was
his and his alone, and that one thing was his father, still
imprinted on the lieutenant commander's memory.
    But now, he had shared... with a man he had just
formally declared his enemy. I am a fool thought Worf
bitterly, he will now use this weakness against me.
    "You fool," began Malach, echoing Worf's own
thoughts, but then, the broken general surprised Worf. "I
am not dying because a single raid failed! I have suffered
defeat before. I am not so fragile."
    "Then why? Why, my brother? Why have you chosen
Mauk to'Vor?"
    Malach sighed, looking deckward toward his feet. "It
is you who does not understand, brother. I lost a minor
raid. My men will be returned to the Empire eventually,
and so would I have been. Gowron will shout at his wife
and kick his personal aide, but I am not afraid of
Oowron's temper."
    The general paused, but Worf did not interrupt. He
had begun to realize what Malach was saying.
    "I lost a minor raid, Worf, but I have also lost my most
important campaign." Worf said nothing; there was
nothing to say. He knew what campaign Malach meant,
and it was not the raid, or even the chance to gain true
glory for House of Razg (probably for the first time,
thought Worf) that motivated Malach. It was me; I was
Malach ~ final campaign. He sought to bring me back...
and he has lost. Worf looked away, so as not to allow his
emotions to seize hold of his face.

             VENGEANCE

    "Fare well under your Sword Oath, brother," con-
cluded Malach, "as the Defeated One, I claim my
rights."
    Without speaking another word or waiting for Worf's
answer, General Malach pressed his feet against the lock-
stacked boxes and pushed himself backward. He passed
through the door a few seconds beyond the five minutes
he had planned. If he breathes slowly, thought the blood-
brother Malach left behind, he can still have his full
minute to appreciate the cold, unwinking brilliance of the
stars.
    Worf watched the body as it receded, until it was no
longer visible to the naked eye. Malach did not speak for
the last minute of life, but he did spread his arms in the
sign meaning, I journey to Sto-vo-kor with no weapon but
my warrior~ heart.
    Gowron would deny any involvement in Malach's
"scheme," Worf knew. He sighed. Young as he was, he
remembered a time when the High Council had enough
honor at least to admit their own misdeeds when caught
red-handed. But Gowron would insist he had no knowl-
edge of what Malach intended, the Council would back
him up, and the Federation, recognizing a feint but
having no evidence of anything beyond one renegade
Klingon warrior, would diplomatically conclude that
they had no quarrel with the Empire. In other words,
Worffs blood-brother Malach would have no more effect
in death than he ever did in life: it would be as if General
Malach of the presumed-to-be-noble and honorable
House of Razg had never even existed. As Malach faded
from view, he likewise faded from history. He became an
un-Klingon, falling down the infinite memory hole.
    Is that the end my destiny holds for me, too? What
place in history was there for a "traitor" to the Empire?
    Is it truly better, he wondered not for the first time, to
know one is an outcast? Or would it have been better to
live like his brother, his real brother--once Kurn, now




UAFYDD AB I-IUGH

Rodek--who had survived this battle uninjured, but
also undistinguished. And still unconscious of his true
heritage. Still bereft of his true self.
    When Worf could no longer see Malach, he turned and
headed back toward the Promenade, thinking more than
was good for him, for any Klingon.

    "There," said Master Chief Miles Edward O'Brien,
making the final adjustment to his portable field-
generator, "that should just about--" With a loud pop,
the small machine died and went dark. O'Brien stared
for a moment, then gave it a solid kick. The porta-gen
burped and flickered back to life. "Just about do it," he
concluded.
    "Com restored!" shouted Dax, and the ragged crew in
Ops cheered, except for Captain Sisko, who only smiled
as if he had known all along that the chief would come
through.
    Instantly, the message programmed by Major Kira on
the Defiant began to repeat, apprising Bajor that the
station had been seized by Klingons and requesting
urgent help. Until O'Brien activated his field-generator,
Kira's emergency beacon was swallowed by the Klingon
comm-damping field before it could reach even as far as
the station, let along Bajor. The Bajorans responded
immediately: "Evening Sky to Defiant, we're already on
our way; ETA twenty minutes. We detect no Klingon
ships near your station."
    Already on their way? thought Chief O'Brien, puzzled
for a moment, then he broke out into a broad grin. It had
worked! Quark must have gotten clear of the damping
field and caught the attention of the Bajoran planetary
defense perimeter! "So that's why our young general
finally gave it up," he muttered.
    "How's that?" asked Constable Odo, standing beside
the chiefi
    "Nothing. I'll tell you later. I have to keep this thing
constantly adjusted, matting out the comm-blanking

VENGEANCE

field, or we'll lose communications again." O'Brien had
generated a field the same frequency and amplitude as
the one used by the Klingons, but phase-shifted exactly
180 degrees. The net effect was to create pinpoint
"holes" in the field where waves perfectly canceled out
troughs, holes through which they could receive and
transmit comm signals--fiddled with static, but intelli-
gible.
    The repeating message abruptly ceased, and Kira's
own voice cut mto the corem link. "They're cloaked!
There might still be a ship... advise caution."
  "Major Kira? This is Jad Davas."
  "Captain Jad?"
  "Lieutenant colonel."
 "Davvi! When did all this happen?"
    "Kill the audio and monitor, Old Man," said the
captain. Dax cut the feed and allowed Kira privacy to
chat up her old chum. As soon as the loud ship commu-
nications ceased, they heard what at first sounded like an
annoying buzz. They could barely make out words.
    "Dax? What is that?" asked Sisko, leaning forward
and cocking one ear. He turned to O'Brien. "Chief, is
that insect-buzzing a voice communication?"
    You bet your sweet pips it is, thought O'Brien. "Yes sir,
and you can thank the insect himself for saving your
station."
 "You will explain that, won't you, Chief?."
    "Let me just isolate it and crank up the gain, sir. You'll
see what I mean." With gravity and atmosphere restored
and O'Brien safely ensconced in his engineering pit once
more, he set the computer to cheerfully contact each
comm circuit using the encryption key-code on the
handset, thus restoring normal functionality, then he
turned to the specific task of isolating Quark's weak
comm signal and boosting it to pull it through the
dueling comm blanking fields.
    Worf was up in Ops, and Dr. Bashir as well. In fact,
everyone who was anyone found a duty station (or at




least a seat) in Ops, wanting to savor every moment of
their sweet victory. The doctor had just joined them a
few minutes earlier, after stabilizing Ensign Janinc
Wheeler's concussion and healing Ensign Taryak Amar's
broken humerus.
    "Worf," asked the doctor, standing just behind
O'Brien, "how did you know I was with the chief?."
    "I did not know you were present, Doctor. I knew only
that O'Brien had taken a handset and decrypted the
signal."
    "But, why did you send the Kobyashi-Maru message,
then? What made you think Chief O'Brien would under-
stand the reference? He never went to Starfleet
Academy."
    There was a long, long pause, during which O'Brien
stopped working and tilted his head to hear better. Yeah,
what about that? I didn't have a clue what that was all
about.t
    When Wolf spoke at last, the voice was reluctant and
irritated, in that singular, "embarrassed-Klingon" way:
"Because, Dr. Bashir, I... forgot." The last word was
said so softly, O'Brien could barely overhear it.
  "What?"
    "Because I forgot that O'Brien never went to the
Academy.t Is that what you wanted to hear?"
    "Good heavens," muttered Julian. "Well, thank good-
ness for a faulty Klingon memory!"
    The chief's body shook with the struggle to hold back
three days of pent-up laughter. He finished extracting
Quark's message.
    "Help," said the listless, Ferengi voice. "Oh, don't
bother. I know no one can hear me anyway."
    Everyone stared at Dax for some reason. Dax stared
back at O'Brien, who shrugged and said, "It's Quark.
He's still out there, you know."
    "How much air does he have?" snapped Sisko, all
business again.

"Oh, couple of hours, I figure," said the chief, "unless
he's been thrashing about."
    "Advise the Evening Sky, Old Man. I think it's safe to
pick up Quark before they come here."
    "Aye-aye, Benjamin," said the lovely Trill lieutenant
commander.
    "Chief, open a channel to our ballistic hero. I want to
reassure him that he's going to be fine."
    "Wait, sir!" cried Odo, grinning like a... like a solid,
thought O'Brien. "I request permission to make the
Quark contact."
    Captain Sisko raised his eyebrows. "If you wish. Be
my guest, Constable." The captain sat back in his
command chair and crossed his legs, smiling in anticipa-
tion.
    O'Brien opened the channel, then gestured to Odo.
Before he could speak, however, the Ferengi's voice
came over the comm link again: "This is Quark, and I
know now I'm going to die. Out here! It's an outrage! But
there you have it; that's what comes from dealing with
hu-mans. All right then, I approach the Divine Treasury
with head high and pockets stuffed with latinum. Con-
sider this my final last will and testament, which super-
sedes the will of Stardate... well, whatever four days
ago would be.
    "I, Quark, being of fiscal solvency, a business owner,
and of sound mind--"
"That is debatable," sneered Odo over the comm link.
There was a long pause, then, astonishingly, Quark
began again.t "I, Quark, being of fiscal solvency, a
business-owner, and of reasonably sound mind, except
for an occasional auditory hallucination, do sol-
emnly-"
    "Quark, you idiot! This is no hallucination, this is
Odo, and we've restored full functionality of the station.
The Klingons are gone. You saved the day, much as it
pains me to say."




    "Odo... Odo! Is that you? No, scratch that, you're
the only person who could insult me and praise me all in
the same breath. Odo, you've got to get me out of here! I
mean, into there! For greed's sake, beam me back aboard
the station!"
 "Why Quark, you want to come back?"
    "Yes of course I do, you stupid cop! No, wait! I didn't
mean that! I just want--"
 "You just want me to beam you back aboard."
 "Yes."
 "Now."
 "Yes!"
 "Rather as a favor, would you say?"
  "Yes!"
    "Certainly, Quark... so, how much is it worth to
you?"
  "What?"
 "Everyone has his price, Quark. You could go insane
out there, all alone, just you and stars ....Just how
much is your sanity worth to you, Quark?"
"Just rescue me out of simple gratitude?
    "Well, that's not the Ferengi way, is it? How do you
expect me to get to, oh, the Divine Treasury if I got
caught doing free favors for every Tom, Dick, and
Quark?"
    "All right," gasped the Ferengi, defeat evident in his
voice even to O'Brien. "What do you want? Latinurn? I
have sev--I have three bars to my name. You can
have... one."
"Why, Quark! Are you trying to bribe a peace officer?"
"Of course I'm trying to--I mean, no! It's the furthest
thing from my mind! Uh, if you don't want latinum,
then, urn, what do you want?"
    Odo smiled, clasping his hands behind his back. "I
think I would like... a name. No, make that three
names, one for every bar of latinurn you intend to
fondle."

  "Names?"
      "Of three of your smuggler friends intending to pass
through this station in the next, oh, forty-five days."
 "But I don't know any smugglers!"
    "Have a nice trip, Quark. We're having a wonderful
time. I'd say, 'Wish you were here,' but you know I never
lie."
    "Wait! Wait! I think I might remember one or two, ah,
rumors I've picked up about... that sort of thing. Is
anyone else listening, Odo?"
    "No, Quark," reassured the constable. "We're entirely
alone." The rest of the Ops personnel snickered. Chief
O'Brien quickly filtered out the sound, lest Quark hear it
and clam up.
    "All right, then, and remember: you never heard it
from me. Here are the names..."
    While Odo took them down, O'Brien noticed the warp
signature of a Bajoran ship approaching fast. The Eve-
ning Sky swooped upon the station, closing on the
comm-source dot that the chief had already identified as
Quark. The dots merged, but still Quark hadn't said a
word. O'Brien scratched his head in puzzlement until he
realized that the ship must be nearly on top of the
Ferengi, but behind him, where he couldn't see.
    Not wanting to interrupt the entertainment, O'Brien
caught the captain's eye and mouthed the words, Ba-
jorans here now. Sisko nodded, as did Constable Odo.
    "Thank you ever so much, Quark," said Odo. "Per-
haps your 'friends' will understand the pressures you
were under. But just in case they don't..." Odo smiled,
closing his eyes. "You're about to be swallowed by a sea
monster, Quark. Perhaps you'd do well to stay inside and
let it digest you all the way back to Bajor." "What the--? What are you..."
    "Oh, just think of it as a leveraged buyout. Goodbye,
Quark. I'll let you know when it's safe to come back."
  "Signal just died, Captain," said O'Brien.




    Dax spoke up a moment later. "Evening Sky reports
one sputtering Ferengi requesting transport to Bajor."
    "Oh please," whispered Odo. "Don't let the alarm
clock ring."
    Chief O'Brien scratched his head about the bizarre
remark for a moment, then returned to the task of
rebuilding Deep Space Nine from the engineering levels
on up.

