"THERE IT IS … a mass exodus. They have left from their hiding places and hurried into the docking ring. Soon the inner core will be ours. Hard radiation is a great fear for soft-tissued beings."
The High Gul of the Crescent Order peered between the massive shoulders of Elto and Ren at the tiny auxiliary screens in their covert headquarters. Shuttle after shuttle, craft upon craft, even down to the small single-pilot traders, had abandoned the station.
"Elto, tie me in to the general broadcast system. I wish to flush out any stragglers and squeeze the bravery out of those huddling in the docking circle."
"Yes, High Gul."
Elto picked at the bare circuitry inside the wall, made a mistake, hunted for the correct connections, then tediously made them.
"Go ahead, Excellency," he said ultimately, seeming relieved thathe hadn't taken any longer.
The leader drew a sustaining breath, clinging to the significance of even small accomplishments for a man so long dead to his culture. Now his men would hear what they had long deserved to hear.
"This is the High Gul of the Crescent. I have control of your command center; of your engineering section, from which I have access to all your reactors; and of your entire central core. I have retaken this sector of space in the name of the Crescent Order. Once again, as it was in the deepest beginning, this is Cardassian space. Any who remain on this station and wish to surrender will be mercifully sent out of Cardassian jurisdiction. Any who resist will suffer the scorch of radiation poisoning, as did those bold lingerers in the contaminated sections. In a symbolic gesture of my complete control, I am now putting the station's communications systems back on-line—" He paused to gesture for Elto to comply. "—so that you will be able to notify us of your surrender and your location. I will wait ten seconds. If I do not hear from those of you who are hiding, I will begin to wash the docking circle with radiation, and there will be nowhere left to hide."
Elto glanced up at him, hope lurking in his sunken eyes.
Since the haze of reawakening had fallen from the Gul's mind, his young men had all seemed more sunken, more skeletal than they had been in all those years past. He knew now that they weren't changing, but only that he had seen them through his affection for them and the sheen of their loyalty, as if seeing long-lost children and wanting desperately for them to be healthy, radiant, and well.
These young Elite were devoted to him and that was charming, but now, as the glaze faded, he saw the clear etching of skull plates, the depressions of nasal passages, the thinness of skin around bony arterial shells, and the shadowed cavities of their eyes.
Again, he wondered how he looked to them and hoped their devotion would haze their vision.
"Ten seconds, High Gul," Elto said. "No response from anywhere in the outpost."
"Perhaps there are none left," Clus offered from behind them. "Perhaps they're all out!"
"Then the station is ours," the High Gul told them simply. "This massive marvel is Cardassian once ag—"
"Attention, intruders."
They stopped, listened. In an instant the universe changed again.
"This is Captain Sisko of Starfleet, commander of Deep Space Nine and regional supervisor of this sector. We have not abandoned the operations center of the station. Repeat—we have not abandoned Ops. We have control of this command center, of weapons, of main engineering, the infirmary, the Promenade, the docking ring, and we have secured all reactor chambers against further tampering. We know your radiation leak was faked. You have invaded Federation property, you've killed my people, you've assaulted my Security chief and you've laid siege to my station. I'll give you time to surrender, but not much. Turn yourselves over immediately. Sisko out."
A hush cloyed them as the deep voice fell away. Suddenly all they could hear was the faint murmur of ventilators that normally no one ever really listened to.
"High Gul …" Ren's astonishment littered his voice. "But—but—"
Elto pushed and jabbed at the naked controls as if deeming them liars. "Why is he still there?"
"He didn't abandon his command center," Clus gulped, abashed. "He dared the radiation!"
"No," the High Gul corrected. His arms tightened at his sides. "He dared me. He gambled not only his life, but all his people's lives. It could easily, easily have been no bluff!"
He paced away from them, his mind boiling. Anger pushed at his lungs as they heaved in his chest, still sore from reawakening.
"This man thinks like a demon … he risked all their lives that I wanted to occupy the command center more than I wanted their flesh. And he knows I'm Cardassian and require air and warmth as much as he does, for we looked into each other's eyes once and we understood each other. They're subtle sacrificers, these Starfleet people. They would've died writhing at their posts if he inclined that they should."
"We would do that for you, High Gul!" Fen blurted, a spray of saliva anointing his promise.
"Yes, High Gul!" two or three others echoed.
"But you are the Elite Guard! These people are no such thing!"
As the words shuddered out of him and he felt the rage build, he clamped his lips tight, paced himself, and demanded control of himself. Fooled! Imagine being fooled! He had been defeated before in battles, but only by the finest soldiers and strategists ever known. Not by outpost administrators, and he had never been made a fool.
Abruptly the narrow corridor fell to darkness, taking away the reassuring faces of his Guard. As blackness enclosed, the power within the walls dropped silent. Even their meager utility lights winked to darkness. Within the walls the faint noise of ventilators, generally so ignorable, sputtered and moaned to a halt.
Out of the darkness Elto's voice scratched, "Environmental support is off!"
"Off?" the High Gull swung toward the sound of Elto's voice. "What does this do to us?"
"We only have a few minutes of air, Excellency. With his hands upon the life-support controls, this man can drive us like animals through the outpost in any direction he pleases."
In the blackness the High Gul heard his men's breathing, every breath precious, but every breath filled the bellows of his fury.
No life support. No life. The station leader had turned the tables on them. Fooled!
For decades they had been held in hibernation, without heat, without air, and they had survived. Now, for want of a few more minutes of life support, he might be forced to falter away his advantage.
"Very well. Very well!" The High Gul balled his fists and struck at the walls on either side of him. Thud. Thud. "I should have killed him myself when I had the chance! I should've put my hand in his brain! Why did I hesitate? I place too much value on my own words. I gave them their chance as I promised Garak I would and they spurned it. We are now fully at war. Then very well! If he wants to drive us, then we will let him. We will take advantage of information Garak provided. We will let Sisko drive us, section by section, but he will drive us where we want to go—to the one place he thinks we don't know about. Ren! Fen! You wanted the honor—you have it. We'll entice Sisko to track us, then you will bear away, head him off, and kill him."
"Yes, High Gul!"
"Painfully, High Gul!"
"How do you know it will be Sisko himself tracking us?" Elto asked.
"He's not the type to send others to do his work. And I know how to make him come to us. I know the one thing he will protect even more than this station itself. And we'll need someone familiar to help us with unfamiliar machinery … Telosh, Coln, you go with them and capture one of the command staff from this station. Any one at all—an engineer or something. A pilot or mechanic. It's time to abandon this outpost and launch our offensive into space, my young men. We will kill Sisko, then we will hail his supplicants from the bridge of their sequestered prize … their battleship Defiant!"
"How much does the crew know about where we are going and why?"
"I kept the number of crew to a minimum, sir, barely enough to run the vessel, and then I did tell them the nature of our mission—about the High Gul and the hibernation. It was the only way they would abandon their assigned posts without proper orders. However, I also told them that the High Gul and his Elites had been kidnapped by Starfleet and are being held on Terok Nor. That way, they'll willingly fire on the station."
"A nicely spun tale, Renzo. I commend you for that line of thinking."
"Thank you, but I don't know how much they believed me. I saw doubt and suspicion in many eyes. Some of them know you were the High Gul's student, later his rival. They're sifting their memories for rumors and lessons long forgotten."
Glin Renzo kept his voice low, very low. There were only two others on the bridge, a navigator-helm and a science officer running the Galor-class ship's bridge, and he thought he could trust the two he had posted here, but certainty was a slippery fish in these circumstances. Not until he started choosing crew for this mission, started explaining to them the shaded facts, did he see just how twisted memories had become, how whitewashed the situation of eighty years ago was in their minds.
Their images of the High Gul were opaque and polished, had become history in all its grandeur or its coldness, and their opinions depended upon the loyalties, dreams, or sacrifices of their parents. He couldn't judge from their posture or the stiffening of their expressions whether their knowledge of this would turn sour. Yet, how many times had they both asked, "Is it true?"
And he had been forced to assure them that it was.
"Shall we run the ship silent, sir?" Renzo asked, suddenly eager to drive the fears from his mind.
"Silent?" Fransu leaned sideways in his chair and gazed into the open space on the screen. "No … they know we're coming. They couldn't miss the sectorwide communications block. Certainly they anticipate some action and will be ready. There is no such thing as silent approach to a facility with ears."
"They'll be powered up. They'll fight us with that station's weapons. Starfleet-installed weapons."
"I've fought before."
"Not with Starfleet."
"No, not with them."
"You're not worried?"
"Terribly."
"And the High Gul himself? He's formidable."
"Formidable and probably won't be sweetened when he finds out what I did to him."
"We don't know how much he knows."
"He'll know. He'll conjure it out of the past, Renzo, like a sorcerer conjuring a pot of smoke.
That's the way he is. And the smoke will have my face on it. Say, how do you think I would look as a ball of smoke?"
"Not well, but you could make Gul Ebek cough."
"There! A bright spot in everything."
"Sir, have we considered—"
"Renzo!"
Fransu caught a movement in his periphery and was delivered a signal from his deep training, from the days long past of action in the field. No matter how frosted over by time, the flicker of assault was recognizable, if only resting in his memory like a fossil shape in dust.
He vaulted from his seat with a younger man's leap, shouldered Renzo out of the path of a descending blade, and took the blade himself. Pain erupted through the tip of his shoulder, numbing his entire left arm, but his right was his stronger arm and with that he drove their navigator staggering back against the helm console. His fist pressed upward against the navigator's jaw until the man grimaced, frustrated that his attack had been discovered an instant too early.
The navigator managed to squeeze his knee up between them. Fransu saw the knee push upward, but there was nothing he could do in time. With his enemy's leg pressed against his chest, soon his grip was broken and he was flying backward.
His head struck a hard object—he wasn't sure what—and the wince clamped his eyes shut for a moment. He knew that was a mistake. That moment was crucial. His skin crawled with anticipation.
He forced his eyes open and his right fist upward to be ready for the attack he was sure was coming, but all he saw was Renzo's flexing back.
The incessant spew of a sidearm whined across the cramped bridge. Echoing on the blunt walls, the sound was maddening because he couldn't tell what was happening.
"Renzo!" he shouted—pointless. Dangerous, too, to distract Renzo from what was going on.
So foolish. In his youth he would never have shouted so. His instincts were better.
Whose weapon was it? Fransu couldn't remember whether or not Renzo carried one today.
Seconds plodded past. Every movement of Renzo's form before him was gaudy, nightmarish, and when the speed finally returned Renzo stood gasping over the smoldering puff that had moments ago been a supposed loyal crewman.
The air around them bloomed with the stink of dissolved flesh and a pulse of heat from dispelled weapon energy.
Renzo's hands were shaking when he turned to Fransu, his lips parted in surprise, his eyes wide, and the weapon in his hand shuddering. It had been a long time for him, too.
He pointed at Fransu's shoulder and croaked, "Bleeding."
Fransu nodded. He climbed to his feet.
At the science console, their science officer stared in numb shock. Shock—but not lack of understanding. He knew what had just happened.
For that knowledge, Fransu sighed, took the weapon out of Renzo's hand, turned it on the science officer, and fired.
The astonished science officer raised his hands to cover his face and chest, wailed his protest, then sizzled into a puff of energy as his wail died away.
Renzo stared at the empty sacks of smoke that instants ago had been their two bridge attendants, and for a moment fear crashed across his face that Fransu might turn the weapon on him, too.
"Now we know," Fransu said, his throat raw. "Now we know, Renzo. There it is. Someone from my own handpicked crew. Now we can be sure of what will happen if news of this gets out, if it's discovered that the High Gul of the Crescent wasn't dead after all … that I didn't preside over his funeral, but in fact betrayed him and retook the planet he was about to take at a lesser cost … took it at great cost in my own favor, then claimed he died in the glorious battle and took the credit he deserved … that I slaughtered the two thousand of the Elite Guard … aren't these delightful memories, Renzo? Wouldn't you be proud if you were me? No wonder I've spent all my nights banishing the past. Ah, the things we do, Renzo."
The ship bucked over some gust of space wind, possibly from a nearby sun as they passed it, or possibly a belt of asteroid dust. There was no helmsman anymore, and therefore no one to report on the cause of the buck.
Handing the weapon back, Fransu began, "Perhaps we should man that position."
"The helm? Perhaps." Hesitation showed in Renzo's eyes as he settled the weapon in its holster again. His hands were still trembling.
"Call another helmsman and engineering assistant up from the lower decks." Fransu picked at the wound in his shoulder. "Someone you think you can trust."
"I … don't trust any of them now."
"Do your best. Just give the ventilators time to clear that stench from the air."
Renzo nodded, tapped the communications console on the science station, and passed the responsibility to the next in command to choose a helmsman from the engineering deck. When he was finished, he came once again to stand near Fransu, but not so near as before.
"Two more will be here in a few minutes, sir," he said.
"Thank you," Fransu responded, seeming distracted. "Do you remember those old uniforms, Renzo?" He plucked at the stiff shoulder pad of his jacket where the blade had sliced it. "How bright they were, the patches of color? Loose and comfortable, more elastic to the body … not stiff and metallic like these. Do you remember wearing those? You were so young."
Tactfully Renzo said only, "I remember, sir."
Fransu sighed. "Now you and I and this crew, we must all live with my actions from those days. I must destroy the High Gul and everyone who has seen him, which means the entire Terok Nor station. If he gets away and speaks to the Central Command, or if someone else speaks for him or about him, we'll be quite lucky if all they do is execute us."
Stepping near, Renzo pressed an elbow to the back of Gul Fransu's command seat. "How will we explain the destruction of a Federation outpost without orders? Or a war? Or provocation? Or communication?"
Fransu gazed at the enormous screen showing open space before them. How black it was.
"I don't know," he said. "Everything is an unknown. I have no plan other than to kill him as I should have before. Kill, kill, it's all I do well."
"Nonsense," Renzo said flatly, then grinned. "You're a wild master at rotation minutie."
Fransu pressed back against the chair and bellowed in laughter. "What would I do without you?"
"Flounder."
"Ah, I wish I had a hundred like you. I wish I had ten. Even two."
"I could move around faster."
"You move fast enough." Fransu chuckled again, but there was remorse in his manner. "I hope we have luck today. This episode with the navigator—it shows the crack in this attempt. I had no chance to construct a plan, to build a web of confidences or a scaffolding of support. I have no one who will help me explain this or tell lies for me in the depths of the Central Command. Who besides you, Renzo, could I ever dare to trust?"
"There's something else we must consider," Renzo said evenly, without even attempting comfort for that other question.
Fransu looked at him. "Which is?"
"That perhaps the High Gul isn't on this station where we hid him at all."
"How do you think that?"
"Only because this tiny signal we received is indeed only a tiny signal, not really confirmation of reawakening. There could be a malfunction, there could be a mistake. The High Gul's body may have long ago decayed or been moved, and something may have still triggered the signal device in the warming palette."
"But we saw his body eighteen years ago when the station was built, when we hid him there. All was functioning then."
"Yes, then. But even eighteen years is long, and the chamber where we put him was unheated. I don't know if the suspension palettes would continue to operate in space-zero temperatures. He may not be alive, may not be on that station at all. We may be attacking Starfleet without a reason."
"There's a chilling thought."
"Yes."
"But we have no choice. We can't go in and ask, 'Pardon, are you keeping our living Gul, or is our Gul dust?'"
"No, we can't do that."
"So we have to find some other way to justify the shattering of a Federation outpost, don't we?"
Fransu looked at him. "Yes."
In silence Renzo thought and nodded to himself, thought longer, then nodded again and went to sit at the helm, the seat still warm from the dissolution of the navigator's body. He spread his hands across the unfamiliar control panel and picked out the keys he needed.
"So … we discovered a distress call from a Cardassian vessel in this area. Here—I'm logging it now. When we arrived, it turned out to be a trap. We don't know if it was Starfleet or who, but they took over the station, lured us in, and attacked us. What could we do but defend ourselves? A lucky shot hit a reactor and completely demolished the station. We regret this tragedy. There."
He looked around, to see his longtime commander smiling at him.
"Most clever, my friend," Fransu said sincerely, chuckling as blood trickled down his arm on the inside of his jacket sleeve. "Lovely and simple. But don't worry— I know he is there. He's alive, he's there, and we shall dust the station. It's always easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. I'll apologize later."
"Only one ship? What kind of invasion strategy is one ship? Dax, confirm that."
"Scanning … confirmed. I'm only picking up the one Galor-class vessel, and that's all. There's no fleet behind it, not even any minor support vessels. It's coming in hot, not acting as if it's waiting for anyone else to join it."
"One ship … what can that possibly mean? Whatever it is, it's not a full-scale invasion. That changes everything."
As Captain Sisko prowled Ops, Kira watched him and tried to avoid asking questions every time he said something, but she decided she'd rather be embarrassed by ignorance now than foul up because of it later.
"Sir," she began, "what does it change? What was our strategy?"
"I deliberately didn't launch the Defiant until I knew what this was all about. I wanted to keep it inside the station's deflector envelope as long as possible, assuming an invasion force was on its way. If six or ten ships were coming in, what good would it do to get the Defiant cut apart? I was waiting for Starfleet to show up, then launch and join up with them. You have to understand, Major—if there's a war coming, a heavily armed ship like the Defiant could be more valuable to the Federation than this whole station." He held an open questioning hand toward Dax's board. "Now I've got one ship coming in. What's that supposed to mean?"
"Benjamin, they're moving," Jadzia Dax interrupted, fixing on another monitor than the one displaying the incoming vessel.
Sisko turned to her. "Who's moving? Mr. Crescent and his men?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure it's them you're picking up?"
"I've got partial internal sensors back on-line. O'Brien must be working pretty hard down there. I've got a faint biological reading on a cluster of what could be Cardassians moving inside the access conduits."
"It's cat and mouse," Kira said as the three of them huddled over the one screen, and she looked at Sisko. "Except now you're the cat."
"The computer thinks the station is flooded with radiation," Sisko murmured thoughtfully, "and that's reduced the number of places he can hide. Now all we have to do is further limit the funnel he can run through."
Dax played the keys of her panel. "They tapped deeply into the computer systems at the database level. That's how they faked the reactor rupture. I've just learned to trust the computer and believed what I heard and saw."
"It's not your fault, Jadzia," Julian Bashir uttered quietly from behind Kira.
It was the third time in five minutes that Dax had tried to explain what had happened. Since they'd so nearly been fooled, she'd become forbearant. She seemed even embarrassed that she'd accepted what she had seen in front of her and had nearly been driven from her post.
"He could've flushed the atmosphere out of these areas any time," Sisko said, tilting the subject in another direction. "But he didn't. Why didn't he?"
Kira paused to think. "Because they want us alive for some reason. We're valuable. Maybe hostages?"
"Maybe," Sisko said.
They all looked to their collective right as sounds scratched in the open tube leading to the rest of the station. Odo's masklike face appeared, his skin like melting candlewax, blue eyes dull and exhausted as he peered through.
How strange … Kira drew a sharp breath and found her stare drawn to him and she couldn't look away. He wasn't humanoid, this form was artificial, yet his fatigue was showing itself on the canvas of his mask as clearly as it would on her own face if she hadn't slept in a week. His features were less defined than usual, blurred at the edges, making him like a watercolor painting that had run in the heat. How many more hours could he go like this?
He lowered his head briefly, both hands on the rim of the tube, then summoned the strength to pull himself out.
"Odo," Bashir began. "I don't approve of your leaving the infirmary. You don't look good."
"Thank you," Odo sputtered, not attempting to hide his bitterness. "There's nothing the infirmary, or you, or anyone can do for me."
Silence fell and the words rang and rang. He was saying he would be dead soon, and had accepted that there was no help for him. In her periphery Kira saw Sisko glance for silent confirmation to Bashir, but thankfully no one said anything about getting him off the station. Their restraint was diplomatic, but no one, including Odo, was fooled.
Kira found herself shamefully glad that she wouldn't be the one to give that order. Like the old days in Bajoran history and Earth history—sending a loved one to a leper colony to die without the comfort of family. Through Sisko's calm exterior she saw the bitter rage that comes from the death of a friend.
Being crusty had helped her in her life, steeling herself and refusing to fall apart as others had, but she had changed. Being an adult was a lot different from being a teenager. Teenagers were indestructible, self-shielding, and took one day at a time. Over the years, her shielding had thinned, and she constantly gazed at the future.
How much could she take?
This was like being a fugitive in the Bajor's caves again. She didn't want to live that life again.
Sisko moved out of her periphery and came around behind her. "Constable, how are you holding up?"
The Security officer's weakness was palpable. He had to support himself on walls and consoles and chairs every step of the way to them. "Poorly," he admitted, his voice scratchy. "If I can concentrate on my job, I may be able to hold this form longer."
"You have to hold it," Bashir said. "Either that," Sisko added, "or I have to put you off the station for the protection of everyone else."
"I understand."
"You were with the Cardassians for a while, so tell me—do you know anything about 'the High Gul' or something called the Crescent?"
"Crescent?" Odo tilted his head in puzzlement. "There's no such thing."
"But what about in the past? Seventy or eighty years."
Shivering with strain, Odo pressed both hands to the back of an empty chair and stared into the floor. His fingers blurred into solid mittens, then separated again as he concentrated.
"Crescent …" He sharply looked up. "The Crescent Order? You can't be talking about that!"
"Yes, I am. What is it?"
"It was the strongest order ever created in the Cardassian hierarchy! It was almost unanimous in its endorsement—the leaders were nearly deified in their own times. But it was almost a century ago! What's that got to do with us?"
"That's who we're dealing with."
Odo stared at him. "You're mistaken."
"Not a bit. That's who those corpses were. Some special force or ultimate unit, led by this individual who calls himself the High Gul."
"High Gul," Odo whispered, suddenly breathless.
"High Gul! The High Gul? There's only one person with that title in Cardassian history!"
"And he's like George Washington or Christopher Columbus for Terrans," Sisko ratified. "Hard to see through the haze of legend and reputation that's grown around him over the years. But he's eighty years behind the technological times. That's got to work in our favor."
"I don't know," Kira interrupted. "He's learning pretty fast, to be able to take control of our computers that way."
"But he didn't get complete control over them," Odo picked up, "or he would've had atmosphere control and would simply have killed us all."
"Yes!" Kira blurted. "That makes sense! That's why he tried to trick us into leaving!" She looked at Sisko. "He didn't have all the control we thought he did!"
"And now we're getting control back on the inside," Sisko said, "while on the outside we've got one ship coming in, but only one. I still don't understand what that means."
Kira struggled for answers. "It could be they've launched a full-scale attack over a wide area and can only spare one ship for this station."
"That's not how the Cardassians work, Major," Odo wheezed. His face was glazed with effort, and he held on to the console as he spoke. "They have their logistical quirks, but spreading their troops or their vessels too thin isn't one of them. They'll launch their entire fleet at a square inch of space rather than fight a battle on a wide front. It's why they concentrated so hard on Bajor for so long."
"Benjamin," Dax quietly interrupted, "I'm getting a hail from the incoming vessel now."
Sisko stepped past Bashir to her. "Put it through. Let's hear what they have to say."
Dax nodded, tapped her panel, and said, "This is United Federation of Planets Station Deep Space Nine. Identify yourselves and state your intent."
"This is the Cardassian Imperial Warship Rugg'l. Who speaks for the station?"
Sisko blinked at Kira for a moment. He murmured, "What kind of name for a ship is 'Rugg'l'?"
Behind them, Bashir shrugged. "A Cardassian one."
"Sounds like a barn dance." He cleared his throat and spoke up. "This is Captain Benjamin Sisko. Just who the hell do you think you are?"
"I am Gul Fransu of the Cardassian Central Command and I'm ordering you to surrender peacefully or be boarded by force."
"You're in Federation space without authorization, announcement, or Starfleet escort. Please explain yourself. You have five seconds."
"We have come to rescue our greatest battle lord, the High Gul of the Crescent Order, whom you have kidnapped and are holding hostage in your facility. We demand that you hand him and the soldiers of his Elite Guard over immediately or your station will be laid wreck."
"I've had about enough of these people," Sisko said. "Major, fire up the Defiant's engines. Get her ready for launch. Odo, if you're well enough, track those Cardassian intruders. We know the station better than they do—that's got to work in our favor. See if you can trap them somewhere."
The exhausted Security chief pressed his thin lips in determination, grumbled, "I'd be delighted," and struggled to the internal systems console.
"Open frequency," Sisko said.
Dax moved only one finger. "Frequency open."
"This is Captain Sisko. I refuse to drop my shields for any beaming purposes. This is Starfleet jurisdiction and I'm not handing anyone over to you. Any crimes committed on this station will be dealt with by Federation statutes. Any persons occupying this station are entitled to Federation sanctuary."
"Even if they are there to conquer the very sanctuary you offer?"
"Yes, even then."
"Perhaps I could lend you some soldiers who would be able to deal with the invaders on a Cardassian level."
Sisko smiled, but not nicely. "Thanks, but no thanks."
"Sir—" Kira interrupted.
"Stand by," Sisko said and signaled for Dax to cut off the channel. Then he looked at Kira. "What?"
She held out a beckoning hand. "Let's do it! Let's just hand the Crescent and his people over to them? That would solve all our problems! Let the Cardassians deal with these parasites!"
Sisko's black eyes hung on her as he contemplated the ups and downs of what she was saying. Could he see the eagerness in her face—how badly she wanted to get rid of the Cardassian scourge on their station? Sure he could. She wasn't hiding it.
"No," he said after a time. "Whatever their game is, I refuse to play it. They've made me part of the equation and I am not cooperating with either side until I sort out what's really happening here. Or until Starfleet arrives, whichever comes first. Dax, put me through again." He waited until the channels were open, then said. "There will be no compromises to my authority here. Stand down your weapons, turn your ship around, and consider yourselves evicted from this sector."
A long pause. The open channels buzzed faintly with effort, trying to override the damping effect.
Ultimately the voice came again.
"No."
Sisko vocally shrugged. "I thought you might say that. All right, we do it the hard way. Close frequencies. Phasers three quarters. Open fire. Let them know I mean business."
Kira bruised her hip as she slid hard into the chair beside Dax, once occupied by one of the officers she'd sent below to effect evacuation. The controls felt right under her hands as she adjusted the firing mechanisms, homed in on her target, took a fix, and struck the enable pad. It felt good, really good.
On the screen, red streaks of phaser fire broke from the station's weapons ports and chipped sparks out of the deflectors of the Galor-class vessel. Electrical results crackled bitterly around the vessel, then glanced off into space and dissipated into a salmon-colored fog.
"Direct hit on their forward screens." Kira gazed at Sisko appreciatively.
"That was pretty sudden, sir," the doctor commented, but didn't clarify what he meant.
Sisko didn't look at him, but continued scoping the ship on the main screen. "I gave them a chance. They were lucky to get the one."
"I'm all for that," Kira ratified.
"I thought you would be, Major."
"Damage is nominal," Dax said. "They've got their full screens up. They knew we'd fight. They're turning away now … coming to a new attack position."
"They're firing!" Kira pressed her feet flat to the carpet and the heels of her hands against the edge of the console, but when the station shook with impact she still felt as if the world were falling apart around her. Planets, fine, ships, fine, but this station, hovering somewhere between land and vessel—she still wasn't used to fighting a battle from the free-floating halls of DS9.
"They fired!" Kira blurted. "They actually fired with their own people on the station!"
Sisko nodded. "That tells us they don't care as much as they're letting on about their Gul and his Crescent."
Dax reported, "Hit on our starboard deflector shield generators."
"Doctor," he said, "would you take the attitude control thruster position, please."
"Oh—of course, sir."
"Quark!"
The Ferengi cast him a fishy stare. "What! I didn't do anything! I've just been standing here!"
"Sit down over here and take these controls."
"But I don't know how to spin this top!"
"We'll tell you what to do."
"I protest strongly!"
"Go right ahead. Major, put the phasers on full power and fire at will."
Fingers tingling, Kira bit her lip and fired away freely. The Cardassian ship on the viewer took the body punches well enough and returned every shot, but didn't dare turn its strong forward deflectors away from the station while being bombarded from the strong weapons sails. From her vantage point before the monitors, Kira saw the heavy-bodied Rugg'l taking strike after strike, hovering just out of full-impact range, and returning fire between the station's shots. A straightforward siege, hit and be hit, head-on.
"Captain Sisko!"
His face melting for an instant until he got control, Odo swung around in his chair and almost fell before catching himself.
"The Defiant! That's where he's headed! He's figured out that we have a fully-armed warship docked here!"
Sisko glowered at him, then thumped the console with a knotted fist, not very hard, but hard enough to give away how he felt. "Dammit."
"How?" Kira pierced. "It doesn't show up on any schematics! It's not even logged in the station computer!"
"Officially, it's not here at all," Dax muttered. "Yes, it is," Sisko said, "but it's a need-to-know property. It's pretty hard to hide a whole starship from incoming and outgoing traffic."
Sitting as if waiting to have her fingernails done, Dax let her eyes twinkle at him. "Not if you arrange the approach and departure vectors just so. You'd be surprised how many ships have come and gone without ever seeing the Defiant."
Returning the cagey look, Sisko rumbled, "Old man, you are a devil in disguise."
"I know."
"So how could someone lurking around the bowels of the station, using sketchy plans and logged schematics to find his way around, discover that we've got a starship docked here?"
A few seconds went by before, then at the same time all five of them chimed, "Garak!"
Leaning away from her console in fury, Kira thrust all her fingers into her hair and grabbed on hard. "That snake! I should've locked him up at the first sign of trouble! That double-crossing, ungrateful snake!"
"Come now, Major, Garak's not all bad," Bashir protested. "He's been treated well here, he's got friends here, he's lived a decent life here—"
"And he's in exile here!" Kira seized. "He'd do anything to change the balance of power in the Cardassian government!"
"Kira," Sisko said sharply, "you come with me. Odo, you too. Let's get down to the Defiant before he does."
As her blood began to race, Kira pushed out of her chair. "Aye, sir!"