AS THE DEFIANT drew near the asteroid, Sisko tensed. He sat in the commander's chair, hands gripped on the armrests, and watched the monitors.
The asteroid looked as it had when he first saw it, a pockmarked ball floating among a dozen other pockmarked balls in the darkness of space.
No ships. No one had followed them. No one had preceded them. The Nibix was safe.
For the moment.
"Ensign Coleman," he said, "are we alone?"
Coleman had been monitoring the other ships in the area ever since they left the space around the station. Even so, his cautious nature demanded that he double-check. Sisko waited a beat too long as Coleman ran the scans again.
"No one followed us, sir."
"Good." Sisko leaned back in his chair. Even though no one followed them, they had to be cautious. The asteroid belt itself bothered him. Ships could hide easily here—he had used asteroid belts for that himself. "Keep an eye out. We don't want anyone to sneak up on us."
"Yes, sir," Ensign Coleman said.
Sisko stood. The immediate danger had passed. Now he had to discover how the away team did in reviving the Supreme Ruler. He didn't want to risk a subspace transmission, even encoded. But he would risk a quick transport beam. Besides, if he were going to be honest with himself, he had to admit that he wanted desperately to return to the surface. No amount of justifying would change that.
"I'm going to beam to the surface to see how we're doing," he said. "Ensign Kathé, you have the conn. I want you to decloak only during the time it takes me to get to the surface. Then stay cloaked. Keep the transporter locked on me at all times. If there are any problems at all, I want you to beam me back to the ship immediately."
Ensign Kathé stood. Her long rainbow hair wrapped around her like a shawl. The colors shimmered in the bright light of the bridge. "Yes, sir," she said, her tone reflecting her pleasure and terror at being in charge. "I'll do everything I can, sir."
"I know you will." He made sure he spoke gently, wishing that he had brought one more crew member, someone else he could trust. It surprised him that there were so few members of the DS9 crew that he trusted on this deep level. Kira and Odo had to remain at the station. Jake wasn't qualified. And the others were on the surface below.
If he told that concern to Dax, she would laugh at him and tell him to be thankful he trusted so many people on his staff. They both knew that some leaders had no one to trust but themselves.
He took the turbolift. On his way, he grabbed his cold-weather gear. Then he walked into the transporter room and smiled when he saw transporter veteran Vukcevich at the controls. Vukcevich had been a member of the DS9 crew from the beginning, but he usually worked in the docks. When the Defiant came to the station, Vukcevich petitioned Sisko for a position on the ship, saying he had always wanted to work a transporter, and the luck of the draw had put him on a space station instead. Sisko had put Vukcevich in charge of all the duties concerning the transporter ever since and had not once regretted it. Seeing the slight man hunched over the control pad made Sisko revise his earlier thoughts.
He trusted his crew. All of his crew. Some, though, had earned a deeper trust than others had.
"Commander," Vukcevich said, speaking so softly he was hard to understand, "I have the coordinates for the away team, but they are not where they should be."
Sisko stopped, one foot on the step leading to the transporter pad. He leaned in, hoping he had heard incorrectly. "Where are they?"
"Using the ancient schematic Lieutenant Dax superimposed over the wreckage, I would guess that they're in what used to be the control room."
The worry that had dogged Sisko all day grew worse. A chill ran up his spine. "Are there problems at their previous coordinates?"
"No, sir, not that I can tell."
"And they're alone on the surface?"
"According to my scans, sir. You might want to check with the bridge."
He had checked with the bridge. And double-checked with the bridge. And didn't want to check with the bridge again. He stepped onto the pad. "Beam me down there."
"Aye, sir," Vukcevich said. Sisko watched. Vukcevich manipulated the controls and that slightly warm, slight prickly feeling of transport began. A second later, Sisko was standing in a poorly lit, freezing cold cavernous control room. He pulled on his gloves and his deep-cold jacket, wishing he had some sort of protection for his face.
The control room had a high domed ceiling open to the stars. Some type of clear material—probably the same glasslike substance used for the cold-sleep chambers—arced overhead, unbroken by the crash. Faint starlight filtered in. Sisko looked up first, half searching for the blip that would be the Defiant in orbit, even though he knew the Defiant was cloaked.
Then he made himself look down. The control panels glowed a soft but insistent green, the same green as the Supreme Ruler's glowing staff. An overhead light spotted on the center control panel, a thin black board in a boomerang shape that filled the center of the room. Dax stood beside the board, one hand on its panels. Bashir was in the chair beside her, arms behind his head and his head tilted back as he gazed at the stars. Sisko couldn't see O'Brien anywhere.
"It would be nice if you said hello to your commander," Sisko said softly and smiled as Dax and Bashir started. They hadn't heard him beam down. A large bang echoed in the room, followed by a soft curse. Then O'Brien emerged from beneath the boomerang. Black particles filled his curly red hair and dotted his face.
"Benjamin," Dax said, "we didn't expect you for another day, maybe more."
"I can see that," Sisko said with a smile. He walked over toward them. The air was so cold that it made his boots squeak. "At least I didn't catch you treasure hunting."
"Something far more interesting," O'Brien said.
"I trust the Cardassians are no longer watching us," Bashir asked.
"We lead them to the station," Sisko said, "where they were greeted by three Starfleet starships and will soon be joined by a fleet of Jibetian warships."
"Poor Kira," Dax said softly. "She was hoping to avoid diplomatic duty for a while."
"Sounds like she'll put in enough diplomatic duty to be promoted to ambassador," Bashir said. "How did all those groups converge so quickly? I thought this was supposed to be a secret mission."
"So did I," Sisko said. "Their presence makes our actions here even more important. I am surprised you're not with the Supreme Ruler."
"We don't dare touch the Supreme Ruler with the equipment we have here," Bashir said. "His cells have deteriorated, and while he's technically alive, I'm not certain he's revivable. I would like to take him to the station's medical facilities before I proceed any further."
"We don't always get what we want, Doctor," Sisko said.
"Well, sir, I'll be blunt. It's my belief that should I attempt to revive him here, he will die. Totally and irrevocably. At the station, I'll have the equipment to give him a fighting chance."
Sisko's stomach tied itself in knots. Dax smiled at him, her look understanding. She knew, as he did, that to lose the Supreme Ruler now might not just destroy the careers of the people around him, but it might have serious—and fatal—repercussions for the Federation as well.
Sisko took a deep breath, hoping to calm himself. "Let's beam him aboard the Defiant, then, and post a guard here to prevent scavenging."
"I'm afraid it's not that easy, sir," O'Brien said. "We can't remove him from his sleep chamber, and if we tamper with the chamber itself, it'll stop working. We'll have to move the room itself."
Sisko closed his eyes. A slight shiver ran through his system, brought on, he hoped, by the cold. He needed a few moments to think. "Tell me what you're doing here," he said.
"Now that's the question, isn't it?" O'Brien said with more enthusiasm than he had ever shown for the Nibix or the Supreme Ruler. "We got to talking about what made this ship crash on the asteroid. Cold-sleep ships have fail safes—"
"I'm familiar with them, Chief," Sisko said gently. Not only was he familiar with them, he had made them a special point of study during his early interest in the Nibix. Some of the theories of the Nibix were that its fail safes had been improperly constructed, allowing the ship to disappear without awakening any of the crew.
"Good then." O'Brien glanced at Bashir. He had sat up in the chair, and looked in this light like a spotlit piece of Renaissance art.
Dax was watching O'Brien, a frown on her face. "You found something, Chief?" she asked.
"Just when the commander showed up. I was about to call you down, Lieutenant." O'Brien took a deep breath as if to control his emotions, and then he grinned. "Forgive me, sir. Dax explained how important all this is. It's just I feel like Sherlock Holmes. The clues are so subtle, and yet they're there, clear as anything."
"What clues?" Sisko asked. His stomach had knotted so tight it felt as if he had swallowed a rock.
"The Nibix was sabotaged." O'Brien rocked back and forth on his feet as if he couldn't contain his excitement.
Sisko let out the air he'd been holding. "You're certain, Chief?"
"As sure as I am of anything, sir. This ship was never intended to reach its destination. From what I can tell, as soon as it left Jibetian airspace, all its navigational systems went off-line. Then the automatic awakening systems were disconnected."
Bashir stuck his hands under his arms, an obvious defense against the cold. "If someone did all that," he said, "why not just shut off the cold-sleep chambers?"
"That would activate a different fail safe, Doctor," Sisko said. "It was simpler to do this."
"That's my theory," O'Brien said. "Besides, this way the saboteur didn't commit actual murder."
"Because the cold-sleep chambers should have kept everyone alive as long as the ship ran." Bashir shook his head. "Ingenious."
"And nearly perfect." Sisko rubbed his hands together. They would have to go somewhere warm, too. "If the ship hadn't passed through this asteroid belt, no one would have found it."
"The Nibix would have stayed a part of history," Dax said. She looked at Sisko. "This means extra trouble for us, doesn't it, Benjamin."
"I don't see how it couldn't," he said. He understood her concern. He felt it, too. The sabotage was important. The Nibix's influence had always reached through history. The sabotage wouldn't be any different.
Jake sat on the only chair in the room, his arms crossed over his chest. The little surveillance room had grown stiflingly hot, and he worried that air wasn't circulating through it. He didn't tell his worries to Nog, though.
Nog hadn't spoken to him since Jake kaboshed his uncle.
Nog and Rom hovered over Quark, who had only recently regained consciousness. He had been out over thirty minutes, during which time Nog had repeatedly berated Jake for his stupidity. Jake had let him; he had been around Ferengi long enough to know such verbal abuse was a way of blowing off steam and tension. Besides, it was safer for Nog to blame Jake than to take the blame himself. Quark's punishments could be bizarre and severe.
Jake's stomach growled. Their situation had grown desperate. The hunger wasn't that bad. The heat and the lack of water concerned him the most. The red alert showed no signs of abating. Jake had hoped that Kira would shut off the alert quickly and then the doors would open, but so far that hadn't happened. During Nog's beratement, Jake had watched the screen showing Ops and realized that the situation there was growing worse, not better.
Which meant that the red alert might continue indefinitely.
Quark moaned. Rom was murmuring soothing words, and Nog was hovering over both of them, occasionally throwing helpless glances over his shoulder at Jake. It felt as if Nog wanted Jake to make Quark better. Jake didn't have that skill. The only thing he could do was figure out a way out of here.
He had tried to talk to Rom about how they had opened the door from the outside, but Rom had said Quark had done that. And Quark wasn't answering any questions. Yet.
Jake stood and walked to the panel of screens. Watching Ops would get him nowhere, and he had already apologized to Nog. Jake had to go back to what he was doing before the other Ferengi arrived. Studying the panel.
The setup made no sense to him. It seemed to be some sort of surveillance system made to spy on the station, but who set it up and why? And where was the information going out? And for that matter, how? Jake didn't know that much about station security, but he couldn't imagine Chief O'Brien, Odo, and his father not discovering some sort of signal leaving the station from this panel.
Jake stood back from the panel and tried to really look at it. Chief O'Brien had taught him a lot about machinery. A general rule, he said, was to examine the pattern. Anything that didn't fit into the pattern bore investigating. So Jake stared at the panels and let what he was seeing form patterns.
It took a moment, but then he saw it. The screen in the lower corner really didn't show a strategic area of the station but showed instead a hallway just outside a docking bay. And the main focus of the picture wasn't the door to the docking bay, but a communications wall unit near it.
"Why would that be?" he said to himself.
"Why would what be?" Nog asked.
Jake started. Nog was standing beside him. He hadn't even heard his friend approach. And Quark had stopped moaning. He was still holding his head, but now he was watching Jake. Rom crouched beside him, his small eyes bright.
"Did you find a way out of here?" Quark asked. He didn't sound like he was in as much pain as he had been in a moment before.
"I don't think so," Jake said. "But this screen is focused on only a communications panel near a docking bay while the others show main areas of the station."
"So?" Nog said.
"It's a relay station," Rom said.
"Shut up, Rom, and let Jake work on this," Quark said. "We don't need your stupid comments."
"He wasn't being stupid," Nog said. "He knows more about machinery than all of us put together."
Jake frowned. He remembered his father mentioning that. Rom had wanted to use his mechanical skills. He had never wanted to go into business. Such an attitude was sacrilege for a Ferengi, but it had worked to Nog's advantage. It had given his father enough courage to fight for his son's desire to go to the Academy.
"What makes you think it's a relay station?" Jake asked Rom.
Rom glanced at Quark. Quark waved his free hand dismissively. "You brought the subject up. You defend it. And no long-winded theories. We need to get out of here."
Rom swallowed. "I think it's a relay station because that's how I would have set it up."
"But you're not known for your intelligence," Quark said.
"Give him a chance," Nog said fiercely.
"He's the only one with an idea," Jake said in his most placating tone. "Let's hear it out."
Rom twisted his hands together. He wouldn't look at the boys. "A relay station near a docking bay is in the perfect position," he said. "It can send the information to a nearby ship—and it doesn't have to be the same ship every time. Just one that knows the right band. Then the ship can send the information out without the station sensors picking it up."
"That makes perfect sense," Jake said.
Nog smiled at his father.
Quark shoved Rom. "Why don't you come up with something like that for me?"
"You need spy equipment?" Jake asked.
"No, not exactly," Quark said. "I just meant that we should be able to use his expertise to help the—"
"You don't want to hear my theories, Brother," Rom said. "You always tell me to be quiet."
"Yeah," Nog said. "Maybe you should listen to him more. He's a lot smarter than you give him credit for."
The last thing Jake wanted was to be trapped in this tiny room while a Ferengi family quarrel raged. He had to focus the three of them. "Do you think the relay is working while the station is in red alert?" he asked Rom.
Rom glanced at Quark, then at Nog. When neither of them said anything, he came forward and studied the screen. "I can't tell," he said. "But I would design the relay to dump its information on an exact schedule, every few hours or maybe twice a day. It wouldn't be logical to not have information going out while the station is under alert. But if I were designing this—"
"Which you aren't," Quark muttered.
"—I would make sure everything is being recorded very carefully while under alert, more so than normal."
Jake studied the screens for a moment. Whomever was monitoring this would learn that Kira and Captain Higginbotham had planned strategy before the other ships arrived. They would hear confidential conversations from Ops to Security. Jake didn't know what had been discussed, but whatever it was had been important enough to cause the station to go to red alert. Having anyone learn about station business at a time like this had to be dangerous. And who knows when the information would dump next.
"If this works the way you say it does," Jake said, "then we need to get out of here and make sure no information leaves the station."
"How do you expect us to do that," Nog asked, "with us locked in here and my uncle mortally wounded?"
"I'm not mortally wounded, Nog," Quark said. "That would mean I'm dying, and I'm not." He touched his head gingerly. "Although I wish I were."
"I'm sorry," Jake said for what seemed like the thousandth time.
"I'm just glad you're on our side, kid." Quark grinned. "You pack a mean chair." Then he snapped a finger at Rom. "Help me up."
Rom put a hand under Quark's arm. Nog did the same on the other side, and together they heaved Quark to his feet. He swayed for a moment, rolled his eyes, and sagged against them. They staggered under his weight.
"I'm all right," he murmured. "I'm all right."
He stood again and shook them off, swaying for a moment and then using the wall to catch himself. He kept one hand on the wall for balance as he made his way to the door he and Rom had entered. Quark studied it for a moment, then put his free hand against his head.
"Not a chance," he said, and sat down against the steel plate. "At least until someone cancels this emergency."
"And when they do, it might be too late," Jake said.
"Yes." Rom managed to get a lot of worry into that one word.
"But," Quark said, "I doubt if it will help the Cardassians."
"Cardassians?" Jake and Nog both asked at once.
Quark nodded and then flinched. "Who do you think built that panel? Little space ghosts?"
"Hasn't this been here since we came to the station?" Jake asked. He couldn't reconcile that thought with the efficiency of his father's team. The chief wouldn't allow random signals and strange energy feeds in his station. Neither would his father. And if they failed to notice it, they had Dax. She always saw what was different.
"No, it hasn't been here that long. It wasn't here six months ago, I can tell you that." Quark tapped the door he was sitting against. "And neither were these."
The lump on Quark's head had to be more severe than it looked. He was imagining things. "I don't see how the Cardassians could install these doors and this kind of surveillance system under Odo's and Chief O'Brien's noses," Jake said.
Quark laughed, then winced, touched his forehead, and moaned. "First," he said, his voice small as if he were in pain, "I said the equipment was Cardassian. That doesn't mean they installed it. Anyone could have done it for them at the right price."
Jake gave him a harsh look.
Quark opened his hands. "Why does everyone suspect me first?"
"There's profit in it," Nog said.
"Not for my brother," Rom said. "He doesn't know a laser bolt from a light tack."
"Right," Quark said. "I think." He glanced at his brother and nephew as if he knew they had said something unusual, but he didn't know what it was.
"But people can't just crawl around the station without someone noticing," Jake said.
"You have," Quark said. "We just did. No one's hurrying to our rescue. No one thinks about these tunnels."
"Chief O'Brien does," Jake said.
"And where's he, hmmm? Off on the Defiant searching for treasure."
"Treasure?" Nog asked.
"But he's not always gone," Jake said.
"He's been gone a lot this year," Quark said. "And so has your father and Dax and Odo, for that matter. All it would take is a few afternoons. I think there's been plenty of time to install this little spy shop."
Jake glanced at the wall. Kira was pacing around Ops. The red alert was still sounding, and his father was nowhere to be seen. Quark knew something about the mission they were on, and he still hadn't explained his own presence in the tunnels.
"How did you get here?" Jake asked.
"I crawled, same as you," Quark said.
"Why?" Jake couldn't keep the suspicion out of his voice.
"I forget," Quark said, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back. And no matter how many times Jake tried to rouse him, Quark refused to utter another word.