"FIRE! FIRE!"
"Firing." Kira heard her own voice as if in a distant crowd. She lunged into the phaser mechanism and blasted freely, but Fransu's ship barreled down upon them from inside the bright disk of the sun.
"Our phasers are only skimming their shields," Elto reported, gripping the edge of the console in front of him. "At this angle, we need photon torpedoes."
As if in bitter mockery, Fransu's ship opened fire with its own photons, and the Defiant boomed like a cannon going off in a cave as she was hit by Rugg'l's strafing run. Fire broke out in three places around the bridge, sparks fanned from deck to ceiling, and smoke boiled along the starboard side.
"Fire again!" the High Gul blazed.
Kira abandoned her controls and swung around to him and fought for stable tone.
"We've got to get out of here. You've got to accept the fact that we can't fight him without deflector shields. You can't outthink a photon torpedo! Let me veer off!"
With her fierce expression she dared him to respond, to cough up some poetry that would shield the ship.
Stiff in the command seat, the High Gul's voice was ragged. He looked from the screen to her, then to the screen again, at the far-distant silver scratch of Fransu's ship swinging about to come back at them.
"Very well, veer off. Any course."
As she swung back to the helm, Kira felt a sudden stinging pain run up her left arm—the port side lateral sensor array subsystems station had just blown up. The carpet beside her was burning!
She managed to stay in her seat and field the hot sparks that scorched her face and left hand, winced, and wiped the sparks off on her leg. She turned the ship up on its blunt nose like a clumsy dancer and struck off with full impulse speed straight Z-minus around the bottom of the sun—the course the High Gul had fancied would surprise Fransu. Now it was just an escape route.
The Cardassian legend gripped both arms of the command chair. "Why did we not see him coming? These modern sensors should've been able to pick up anything moving toward us!"
"I tried to tell you!" Kira shouted over the crackle of shredded electrical systems. "It's eighty years later. He can get a lot closer to the sun than you think! That's how he came around without being seen! The reason we don't play this game is that our shields have gotten better than our sensors!"
"I see no particular wisdom in what's happening here," the High Gul said. "A battle is a battle—time-tried methods should operate in any age. And Fransu is a known element. . . ."
She cranked around, still keeping both hands on the controls. "Well, maybe the raw technology's improved in eighty years! And maybe he's got eighty years more experience than the last time you saw him! And maybe, just maybe, he doesn't think of you as a hero-god anymore!"
Pure gut fury blew into the High Gul's face as he stared at her.
Uh-oh … trouble. She'd hit a sour chord with that one.
He rose from the command seat and glowered down at her, his arms arched out at his sides, hands slightly raised as if he were about to backhand her. But she didn't care. A crack across the face wouldn't change anything.
She stiffened her jaw, ready to take it.
But abruptly the turbolift door swept open and raw orange phaser fire creased the bridge. Not just outside on the bare naked hull, but right here, inside, ten feet way, where no one could possibly get away from it.
Phasers blared like stampeding macaques across the bridge of the fighting ship. There wasn't even time for Kira to plunge out of her seat once the turbolift opened and the lightning started. She could only duck forward over the helm and cover her head—a silly instinct that could do nothing against the attack of hot phasers. But it was one of those things that made a person feel better just before dying.
None of the phaser energy hit her, though—a mind-boggling surprise during moments in which she prepared to be vaporized. When the sounds fell off, she was still sitting at the helm, digging her fingernails into her hair, peeking up from the crook of one elbow.
"Sir?" Slowly she let go of her hair.
Before her was a ghost of Ben Sisko, drenched in blood, plastered head to foot with dust, hunch-shouldered, gruff, armed and dangerous.
Such a death mask … Sisko was furious. Ghastly and sunken with purple bruises, his eyes were ringed in white and boiled with anger. Sweat cut shining trails through a blood-flecked gray plaster of dust on his face and neck, and his soaked uniform was torn in front and across one shoulder, revealing a slate-blue bandage over half his chest and secured to the bare corded muscles of his shoulders and upper arm.
On the starboard helm deck, the High Gul was kneeling at a smoldering collapsed body.
"Elto …" he called softly. He lowered himself to his young guard's side.
A long purple burn cut across the front of Elto's smoldering uniform. His eyes were open, his mouth gaping in amazement, but he never took another breath.
"Oh, Elto," the High Gul moaned. Grief-stricken, his face flushed, he looked up and motioned to the body. "This was unnecessary … this wasn't in my plan!"
Sisko gazed down at the High Gul and spoke to him in person for the first time. "I didn't read your plan."
The High Gul looked at the body of his assistant again. "I would have protected him over my own life. I'd rather you had killed me instead. Whatever you think of me, he deserved to live."
"You made that choice for him," Sisko said. "I didn't."
The old soldier nodded, then shrugged and accepted what he had just heard.
"Thank you for leaving his body for me to touch in the end. I wouldn't want him disintegrated. He has a family."
Sisko kept his phaser up. "I wanted physical proof of all this. And of who did it."
"And you came back from the dead to get proof." The High Gul patted one hand on the lifeless chest of his assistant. "I understand. My others … in the engineering area … gone also?"
"Yes, gone."
Keeping one eye on the High Gul, Sisko sidestepped along the perimeter of the bridge until he was over Kira now and looked down.
"You all right?" he asked.
From behind the hand across her mouth, she actually felt a moist laugh blurt between her fingers. The laugh was pure nerves and naked relief. She looked up. "I'm so happy to see you."
"Same here. Stand by."
Abruptly light-headed as the weight of responsibility poured off her shoulders, unable to take one more shock, she could only manage a silly nod.
"She's a scrappy one," the High Gul said. "Your sentinel, here. I played to her fears, but she had none. She was as fearless as an Elite. I told her I would cut out her heart as I tried to cut out yours, and she gave me the knife. I was an inch from success, and a woman stood in my way. I'm very impressed."
"Fransu was lying to you, you know that," Sisko said. "You've been betrayed."
"Yes. So you tapped into our conversation?"
"Some of it. The part about the two thousand soldiers. I'll bet he never awakened anybody. He probably slaughtered anybody associated with you."
"I know. He likely took over the conquest of Tal Demica and took credit for what I and my men had built. Today he comes to make sure the truth never shows itself. The battle between us has been for nothing. He's going to destroy the station."
"Attacking the station with a foreign-flagged ship is an act of war," Sisko said.
As she watched him, Kira thought he was testing the water, trying to see what the High Gul thought of the prospect.
"That doesn't frighten Fransu," the old warrior said. "Your Federation will have only a melted-down hulk in space and a mystery." He shrugged with his eyes and faced Sisko. "The strong taste of battle shows on your face. You're too good at this not to enjoy it, Captain. Instead of standing against me, stand with me and we will rule here."
"It's my duty to stop you," Sisko said.
The High Gul held out a beckoning hand. "Stand with me, and duty will be what we say."
Sisko didn't offer an answer, but only looked at Kira.
Aware of the High Gul, she responded to Sisko's silent question. "Sir, the other ship is bearing down on us and we don't have shields."
"I know we don't. Take the helm, Major. Come about one half, then give me a two-second warp-speed burst, heading four-one-one-four."
"Aye-aye, sir! Coming about!"