"REPORT."
"High Gul, I have seen many corridors, but I saw no windows. There are science labs, at least three that I found—"
"Their purpose? What do they analyze or build?"
"I don't … know that, Excellency."
"Go on, then, Koto."
"But one of them is an infirmary!"
"Good. Go on."
"Turbolifts go everywhere, horizontal and vertical, as well as a honeycomb of accessways behind the walls."
"What is the architecture?"
"Pardon me?"
When the young soldier became confused by the question, Elto stepped forward to their leader, who was a head shorter than any of them yet could put them all spine-tight to a wall with a glance. "High Gul, it is Cardassian architecture."
"You're certain of this? I wouldn't want you to be mistaken, or our decisions will be bad ones."
"I recognize the corridor structure and the building material."
"Rhodinium?"
"Yes, High Gul, rhodinium sheeting with some molybdenite and other alloys used for structural support members. The power conduits and computer stations are clearly Cardassian. I can read them. But, Excellency … we see no Cardassians here. Many aliens of many kinds, but no Cardassians."
"Have you done a sensor scan for other Cardassians?"
"We are trying, but these controls have been altered and we don't trust them."
The High Gul tipped a glare at him. "No Cardassians in a Cardassian installation."
"None that we can find. And we see no one here who is Taldem either."
"None of our own people … none of the planet's natives … then who controls this place? Did you see anyone you recognize?"
"Yes, Excellency. Ferengi, Bajorans, and others who may be Bajorans, but have no ear cuffs."
The High Gul stood in one place and resisted his urge to pace. Any movement could give them away, and if he seemed nervous, then his men would become nervous. "Bajorans," he thought aloud. "Slaves from halfway across the sector. Why would they populate a Taldem installation? Unless, of course … we are no longer on Tal Demica."
"You mean someone has removed us from the planet?" Koto gasped, with such bald shock that he seemed like a child in spite of his bulk. "But why?"
"My political enemies have long claws," the High Gul said. He held his voice down, and managed to keep the venom out of it. They would all take their cues from him, from his attitude, and from his anger. He must stay calm until he understood the situation.
Then, however, his men would expect him to act, and he would do that. But there were so many questions here, and he would have some of them answered first. They were awake now, but they might as well still be in the sleep, as little as they understood about their surroundings. Elto, Koto, Malicu, and Ren were back with their perplexing discoveries, but Fen, Clus, Ranan, and a few others were still out on reconnaissance. Entertaining a fleeting hope that they would manage to keep themselves unseen on a populated installation with no other Cardassians behind whom to hide, the High Gul kept his posture in check. His demeanor was critical. Confidence, even if it was a lie, a temporary one.
"What else, Elto?" he asked, breaking into his own thoughts. "Reach for conclusions. Jump, if necessary."
Elto paused to think, as if determined to come up to the task demanded of him. "Excellency, the communications setup and computer junctions are Cardassian design, but there is something that disturbs me. These are modern devices, all up-to-the-minute technology, and some is even beyond my skill as an engineer, yet everything here is … old … showing signs of wear."
"Old?" The High Gul swung to face his bulky second-in-command. "New science that is old? How old?"
"I would guess by the wear," Elto said hesitantly, "fifteen, twenty years."
The High Gul turned from him to keep the worry on his own face from shining too sharply on Elto. With one hand he touched the gritty knuckles of the other and felt the silt of time.
"And dust …" he murmured, his gaze unfocused. "All this dust … twenty years …"
Koto's eyes bulged suddenly and he shuddered with realization and choked, "My wife! My daughters!"
The youngest of them, their thick-skulled, eminently devoted Inos, stepped forward with his fists balled. "High Gul! Who would dare keep us suspended for twenty years! To keep you suspended? You, who started it all!"
"We were put in suspension by our own command, to be the final gauntlet," Elto said. "To rise again from the talons of the enemy and destroy him! How did our enemies gain control of us?"
"We cannot assume it was only our enemies," the High Gul said grimly. "This may have been done to us by fellow Cardassians."
"What Cardassian would do this to another Cardassian?" Koto stammered, shaking violently now, seeing in his mind only visions of his wife and children.
"None," Elto snapped back.
"There are those," the High Gul corrected. He could provide a brave image for them, but he would not deceive them. All the evidence indicated that they had been stolen from their original place of suspension, taken right off the planet, moved to another planet, and hidden away in this vault.
But why?
"If this is true," he went on, "then our families are grown, our wives are old. We were left to molder here while our civilization, our families, our fellows went on without us. Worst of all is the probability that our suspended forms were used as bargaining chips or artifacts, trophies in some twisted struggle—used against Cardassia—I can scarcely think it! Our anger is easy and I am angry, but there will have to be action, too, and we must calculate very carefully our actions. We have advantages here … we must be clever to use them. Elto …"
"Excellency?"
"You say you can read the systems on this installation?"
"Yes, Excellency, though some of them have been integrated with new systems."
"Does that mean you can shut them down?"
The large young officer was taken by surprise, hesitated, then his expression changed. "I can surely try."
"I wish you to try. Shut them down slowly, one by one, so it appears to be a series of malfunctions."
"Which systems, Excellency?"
"It doesn't matter. All of them. This will serve to distract attention from us and also confuse those who occupy this outpost. No windows … we seem to be in an underground facility. Close down the lighting, the air circulation, power conduits, service umbilicals, turbolifts, or even just the turbolift doors. Anything to cause chaos. Enjoy yourself, Elto, shut down everything. If you make a mistake, we'll deal with it. The rest controls this place. Learn your way around. Malicu and Koto, I want the two of you to scout us a new headquarters. Someone knows we are here, so we shall not stay here."
"Yes, High Gul," Malicu answered, for Koto was still shuddering in his personal horror.
"Tactically," the High Gul went on, "hiding in these lower chambers and in the access walkways, we are in good shape. Try to keep your faces hidden, but if anyone sees you, kill them and hide the body. But kill as few as possible—we may have an ally or two here. Elto, shut down the internal sensors first. That will prevent them from finding us with biosignals. Yes, my strong young men, this is your chance to do what you were so carefully trained to do. Better than a simple battle, this is stealth conquest. We can gain control by chaos … and when the building is debilitated and the people suffering, we will all escape to the surface and leave the invaders to suffocate."
"Uff! What the—"
There were dignified ways to break a nose, crack a tooth, or scratch a smooth ivory cheek, innumerable manners through history for valiant cranial injury, but smashing full-front into the doors of a stalled turbolift wasn't one of them.
Kira Nerys felt her arms flail out to her sides and little lights blow in front of her eyes as she hit the flat surface of the panels. They rattled dully, but didn't budge. Too bad. She'd been in a good mood until now.
Every day, every hour of her presence on this station, the Ops turbolifts had slid graciously open no matter how hard she strode, ran, or dived toward them, except today. She clamped a hand over her face and stumbled backward.
Watching her from across the Ops deck, Jadzia Dax sat at her station and remained eternally calm, the humanoid embodiment of the low notes on a French horn. Soft overhead lights cast shines on her tied-back black hair, backcombed a little too high and a little too smoothly—well, that's probably what happened when a pretty young woman used to be a shriveled old man. But even a Trill who'd forgotten four lifetimes ago what it was like to be a woman couldn't muss up the fluid classic beauty of Jadzia.
Sure wish she'd try once in a while.
Suddenly feeling skinny and tomboyish, Kira hated the perfect hair and the perfect lights and the fluids and all that general perfectness as she stumbled back toward the control panel, fingering what was left of her nose and her aching front teeth. "Whu'muppen toofa turfolifs?"
"I don't know," Dax said as she worked her controls coolly, though her perfect brows were drawn. "But look at this. I'm getting red lights from all over the station. Two-thirds of the turbolift doors on the station just froze."
"Tell Dzoolian to get ready for a vunch of 'roken novves."
Dax looked over her shoulder. "Are you okay?"
The question only irritated Kira as she pressed her fingers in a peak over her nose and throbbing mouth. "No! I cut the infide of my yip. My mouff iv gonna fwell up now, I bet."
"Well, don't worry. We'll find the perpetrator and string him up. You can hold the rope."
"Iv anyvuddy ftuck infide a lif?" Kira forced herself to lower her voice and put her hands down, sufficing to explore the inside of her lip with her tongue between sentences. "Better check."
"Yes, I am checking. I'm not getting any emergency blips for anyone trapped in a lift. Not yet anyway."
"Have Security check them personally." Sniffing, Kira pressed one finger to the side of her nose. "Ow … that's never happened before. We've had our share of problems, but that's never been one of them. Why would the turbolifts freeze?"
"It's not the lifts," Dax said, tapping elegantly upon her controls. "It's just the doors. The lifts are still in operating order."
"Not without doors, they're not. The safeties won't allow them to move without doors. No doors, no lifts. Get the chief on the comm for me."
"All right. Ops to Chief O'Brien, come in, please."
Kira drew a breath to talk to engineering when the chief responded, which ordinarily would be virtually instant. But nothing happened. She let out her breath and had time to draw another. "Well?"
Dax frowned. "Chief O'Brien, please respond."
"O'Brien here … sorry. We've got our hands full down here."
"Doing what, Chief?" Kira leaned forward over the controls as if that would help.
Another ten seconds trundled by.
She glanced at Dax. "Chief, what's going on down there?"
"—isolinear op—cal chips—without any—and the internal sensor sys—shutting—"
"Chief!" Kira blurted. "You're breaking up. Are you using your comm badge or the main unit?"
"—hear you, Major. It won't—any—ence. There's a damper wash of—kind and I can't—cate it. Do you read?"
"Stand by, Chief, stand by." Frustrated with insufficiency, she realized she was raising her voice as if that would help. She looked at Dax. "Did you get any of that?"
"If there's a damper wash coming over the internal sensor system," Dax said, "it'll shatter all forms of communication whether coming through the main systems or through our comm badges. It'll crackle the signals on the fly."
Straightening, Kira glowered. "I guess you got it, didn't you?"
"That's my job, Major."
"Come on, don't gloat."
"Am I gloating?"
"Well, your hair and eyelashes are gloating. What could cause a thing like that?"
"Nothing I know of short of sabotage, but once in a while these old Cardassian systems find ways to feed into the new Starfleet mechanics, even though they're not really compatible. It's like an old warhorse trying to get back into the battle, not realizing its days are over. I'll see if I can't track it. Maybe a process of elimination—"
"And with the lifts out of order, we can't go down there to see what the chief is doing or tell him what we're doing. I hate little technical annoyances … I'd rather fight the whole Cardassian fleet. I'll flip you to see who reports this to Captain Sisko."
Dax passed along her sedate half smile that had an underlayer of pure devilry. "There are advantages to not being second-in-command."
"Oh, thanks, thanks very much. You just helped me decide not to tell him until we get this figured out. Mechanical glitches—what waste of time! We try to be a legitimate space outpost, and when we hit a stride, we fall back into hell's kitchen. If we can't keep control over this Cardassian tortoiseshell, we're just another semiautonomous jerkwater town with nothing to offer anybody at all. All right … now that I've gotten that out of my system, let's start with square one and figure out a way to get messages back and forth to engineering. Anybody got a string and a couple of tin cups?"
"You'll find string in the open cosmos," a heavy voice announced from behind, "and tin cups in my old camping pack. What's going on?"
Approaching the central control console, the heartbeat of Ops, Benjamin Sisko appeared out of a shadow as if he had materialized behind them. As Kira turned, it struck her how often she saw him that way, just popping in out of nowhere, like the ghost of cultivated grief that he once reminded her of, vacant, tranquil, grave, yet somehow second-sighted. If he didn't know what was going on, then he always suspected, and the suspicion put him one step ahead of everybody else.
Kira straightened and almost went up on her toes to meet his considerable height. "How'd you know anything was going on?"
"I saw your expression through my office viewport. You've got a lousy poker face, Major."
"A poker face doesn't do a resistance fighter much good, sir."
"No, I suppose not. What've you got?"
"Frozen turbolift doors," Kira said, waving a hand at the lift car that had attacked her, then at the console board, "and some kind of crackling in the internal communications."
"It's a damper wash, Benjamin," Dax filled in. "Breaking up any form of nonhardwired broadcast, including that from console to console."
"So we can't talk to the rest of the station and we also can't get to the rest of the station. Are all the lifts malfunctioning?"
"Ninety percent now, with others continuing to jam."
"Anyone trapped inside a lift?"
"Not that we know of," Kira said, "but with the communications going haywire, I'm not making any assumptions. I was going to have Security check every lift, but now I can't even do that. Anyone who's trapped is on his own for now."
"I don't like that very much," Sisko grumbled, circling around behind Dax's console. "Break out the old hand communicators and see if they've got enough gain to bust through the damping wash. Have Security assign two dozen yeomen to be communications runners and use the spiral stairways, cargo aisles, and crossover bridges to deliver messages around the station."
Kira watched him thinking his way around their problems, or straight through them, which sometimes worked better, and though itchy with these breakdowns and unready to run on vague feelings, she felt a sting of gratitude. She had accepted the Starfleet field commission for Bajor's sake and she would spit it back the day Starfleet abandoned the planet. But Starfleet hadn't yet. She'd almost stopped wincing when the long-range comm twittered. The Federation had done what they promised, never mind the rare vacillation, each stepped on in turn by Ben Sisko.
She always watched him carefully, trying to read the explosion underneath, for that explosion would either destroy or defend her home planet.
"What ships have we got docked here at the moment?" Sisko was asking Dax.
"Three Ferengi traders, a supply ship from Starfleet, and two Bajoran mining transports."
"Try to contact all of them. Have them attempt to route communication through to other parts of the station. Find out who can talk and who can't."
"What should I have them say?"
"Well, first of all, have them tell people to stay out of the turbolifts."
To Kira's irritation, Dax broke out in a complicatory grin. Sisko wasn't smiling, but he did seem only slightly bothered by the situation.
Why didn't he get mad? Was he storing it up? He stood slightly away from the main console, watching as Dax fed her messages through with notable difficulty, only getting about twenty percent of them to the ships docked around the station. As dark as a shadow, with that cocoa skin and that gunmetal uniform, Sisko seemed hardly more than a human yawn, unplagued by the glitches that teased Kira until she wanted to kick something.
"Benjamin," Dax ultimately said, "I'm getting a telemetric communiqué from the captain of one of the Ferengi ships, who says they have a message from Chief O'Brien."
"Have him send it through."
"Sir … he wants to know what we'll offer them for it."
Sisko's incurious eyes came to life, suddenly bright with the audacity of the tease. "Tell him … I'll let him keep both his legs."
Dax smiled that reserved smile again.
For the first time today, Kira felt a grin break out on her own face—any chance to give a Ferengi a bad moment. That was worth having the communications crackle anytime. There was a certain beauty in imagining the simpering face and bloated head of a Ferengi captain throbbing with sarcasm, but twitching with that one immutable doubt, because they all knew Ben Sisko now, knew he was as much storm trooper as sentry and as likely to ignore regulations as live by them.
"Benjamin," Dax said suddenly, and her smile fell away, "I'm getting a relay from O'Brien through the Starfleet supply ship. We're getting malfunctions in our environmental support system—thermal control is shimmying … and atmospheric processing is being compromised."
Sisko's bland expression turned sour, and he pressed both hands on her control panel and leaned forward as if to double-check what he already saw. "Is anybody besides me absolutely certain that those Ferengi aren't doing this to cause us trouble, because I'd be perfectly happy to be dead wrong."
"No, it's not them," Kira said. "They wouldn't dare."
Ignoring both her and his own previous statement, Sisko said, "Go to auxiliary backups."
"Yes, sir," Dax said, slipping instantly into professionalism and working faster as she and Kira caught the caution in Sisko's bass voice.
"Are the backups coming on?" he pressed after two minutes of clicking and tapping.
"Seem to be, so far," Dax said. "Subsystems are pulling support from auxiliary, though I'm still getting some flux in the stability of the systems."
"What's causing it? Can't be the same damper field as what's affecting the communication."
"Or what's freezing the lift doors," Kira threw in immediately.
Sisko glanced at her as if agreeing. "Could there be some kind of general virus doing all this?"
"Yes," Dax said.
Unsatisfied, Sisko pulled to his full height. "That's not enough of an answer, old man."
The elegant woman turned to look up at him, and her voice was quiet. "But the accurate one. Yes, a single virus could theoretically affect all these unrelated systems. It's not usual, but it's possible. Do I know what variety of virus or where to begin looking for it? Not yet."
"What was the first thing to malfunction?"
"The turbolifts," Kira filled in.
"Then start with those."
Dax nodded, but said nothing as she bent to her work.
Sisko paced around behind them again. "Where's Odo?"
Following him, Kira said, "Off duty, sir."
"Does that mean he's resting in his quarters, or sitting around in the bar, irritating Quark?"
"I think he's at the bar. Quark never gets as many patrons when Odo's there, at least not at the Dabo tables. Odo knows that and he likes to cause Quark as much harmless, legal grief as he can."
"I know he does. See if you can get a message through to him somehow about all this."
"Why?" Kira asked. "It's not a Security problem, is it, sir?"
"Potentially. At least, until we find out it's definitely just a mechanical glitch and not sabotage."
"Sabotage! Sir, why would you suspect that?"
"Any time more than two things go wrong at once, I always suspect somebody's doing it on purpose. I don't believe in coincidences, Major."
Kira shrugged. "It's a pretty ragtag station, sir … half the technology cannibalized from Starfleet, the other half left over from the Cardassians—things are bound to go wrong, aren't they?"
"That's fine, if it's the turbolifts and communications. But when it's environmental support, I don't take chances. Hanging out in space we can't exactly just open the windows for a breath of fresh air."
Kira didn't argue. Past experience had taught her about the underlying Sisko, the man underneath the cool mask of the arbitrator, always shy of collision, feeling as if he had to hang on to DS9 by the fingernails.
What must that be like? At least she was only miles from her homeworld, could comprehend what she was fighting for, and know that people like her and with the same background were right out there within reach. She'd never been to Earth, but she knew it was far enough away to cause nightmares of loneliness. For Kira, distance had always been a matter of hours, maybe days. She knew that for the captain and his teenaged boy, home had better be here, in this calcimine firedog at the wormhole's hearth, because it was many long, cold weeks away otherwise.
As she watched Ben Sisko stalk the Ops command center and poke at the controls, she suddenly wanted to go home for a day or two and knew that every morning he got up avoiding random thoughts like that. He'd run away from too many sadnesses after the war between the Federation and the bitter-cold Borg. As a Starfleet veteran of a particularly vicious war who was raising a son by himself, he wanted shelter and safe haven, but he wanted it on a windblown cliff.
Just how worried he was on any given day, during any given problem, was hard to read. Kira wore her biases on her belt and had no problem drawing them, but Sisko was more closed.
So she ended up watching him a lot, sifting for interpretations.
She didn't always get them.
"How's the auxiliary going?" Sisko designed his patrol back to Dax's station.
"I'm focusing on rerouting the connection to Chief O'Brien. I've almost got it … try now."
Sisko swung around toward the comm panel. "Chief, can you read me? Chief O'Brien?"
"This—infirmary, sir. I'm—up your—Chief"
"You've picked up Bashir," Sisko said to Dax, then spoke again into the comm. "Doctor, I'm trying to get through to engineering. Are you picking this up?"
"—es, I am, sir."
"Can you relay to engineering?" While Sisko talked, Dax fingered her controls with determination.
"I'll do my best, sir—have to say?"
"Tell them we've got malfunctions stationwide, nonrelated systems. This might include environmental control. Do you copy that?"
"Yes, sir … malfunctions, possibly environmental control. I'll see what—do. Bashir out."
"Well, that's progress," Sisko sighed. "Most of that got through. Good job, Dax."
"Sir, why don't you let me try to get through the service crawlways to engineering?" Kira suggested.
"I will, but before I send you crawling through those cobwebby shafts, let's wait a few seconds and see if the doctor can make contact."
She grinned at him. "Don't think I can take a few cobwebs, sir?"
"No, I think the cobwebs would have their lives at stake from you, Major, but let's do one thing at a time. If Dax manages to clear communications, we can tackle everything else in order."
At the panel, Dax shook her head as her long ivory hands played the board like a piano. "I doubt I'll clear it entirely, Benjamin. And then, not for very long. Conduits are still flashing on and off throughout the system. If I get you in contact with engineering, I may not be able to hold it, so be ready with what you have to say."
"Acknowledged. I'll be—"
"Captain? Do you read?"
"Chief! Affirmative, we copy you. Are you reading these malfunctions?"
"I can barely hear you, sir, and I don't—how long this'll last. Every time we mend something, something else goes down. We're—essing subsystems—oxygen supply and the thermal levels. The internal sensor system is flickering too. I'm chasing down each glitch as it rises and trying to backtrack or bypass."
"Understood," Sisko said clearly. "We'll continue to—"
"Sir!"
Kira had almost let herself fall into the trap of being the second-in-command, of handing the trouble over once the captain showed up, and she'd been hovering at the other side of Dax's control panel, glancing from readout to readout, mindlessly watching the ones nobody was paying attention to. Everyone was minding the internal readouts as systems flickered and baubled within the complex, but nobody was watching the external ones.
When Sisko and Dax and the other officers manning Ops all looked at her at once, she realized what hammered-in training had made her do.
And she stuck by what she saw.
"Look!" She pointed at the screen that had caught her attention. "It's not just internal communications—there's a complete sector-wide blackout!"