COMMANDER BENJAMIN SISKO strode on deck of the Defiant. He had discarded his deep-cold gloves and stripped his uniform to its essentials. Still, he felt the chill that had gone into his bones on the Nibix. It felt as if he would never be warm again.
Ensign Kathé vacated the commander's chair the moment she saw him and returned to her post. Ensign Coleman nodded a welcome, his features tight with fear. Ensign Dodds was staring at her monitor, her fingers moving on occasion. Ensigns Harsch and Ba'M'eel watched him from battle stations.
Sisko took the commander's chair, wondering if his reluctance showed. It had taken all his personal strength to leave the Nibix especially after discovering that the Supreme Ruler was still alive. His stomach jumped at the thought, and he thanked all the gods on all the planets that Dax was still down there. She at least understood—on a deep level—the importance of the discovery. O'Brien saw the entire thing as an engineering challenge, and Bashir would look upon it as a medical curiosity, not the potential intergalactic disaster it was.
"Is Dr. Bashir on the surface?" Sisko asked.
"He arrived a moment ago," Ensign Dodds said. "The supplies arrived just before him."
"Excellent," Sisko said. Cardassians. He hated the sound of that. And he didn't know what had tipped them off. Obviously, Kira and Odo hadn't been able to seal off the station quickly enough. It meant potential disaster if Sisko couldn't hold them off.
"Ensign Coleman, have the Cardassians noted the Defiant?"
"I'm almost certain of it, sir," the ensign said. Almost certain was the best Sisko would get from this cautious ensign. "As you were beaming up, sensors picked up a long-range scan. It came from their direction."
"Good," Sisko said, and Ensign Kathé looked at him in surprise. Of all the ensigns on this voyage, she was the one with the most hope of taking a leadership position in Starfleet. He noted the way her sharp features caught every nuance of his command. "Ensign Kathé, plot a course back to Deep Space Nine."
She whirled, her rainbow mane flickering in the light. Her fingers danced across the console. "Done, sir."
"Ahead warp factor five." He leaned back in the chair as the ensign followed his command. The Defiant responded immediately. She was a wonderful ship, with tremendous capability. He only wished he had more opportunities to use her. Although he could have forgone this one. His heart and his dreams were back on the Nibix with that green glowing staff.
He forced himself to concentrate. As the stars whizzed by on the viewscreen, he mentally charted the coordinates himself. Sometimes he felt as if he had this part of space memorized.
"In ten seconds, Ensign Coleman, I want you to cloak us."
"Aye, sir," the ensign said.
"Commander," Ensign Harsch said from his battle station, "the Cardassian fleet has crossed the border. They're pursuing us."
Sisko nodded. They would do that. The only logical place he could run to was Deep Space Nine. They would expect him to go there. And they would pursue at leisure. Losing him on this voyage would be something they expected.
Their presence made him nervous. If they went after the Nibix, they would be in violation of the peace treaty.
"We're cloaked, sir," Ensign Coleman said.
Sisko turned to Ensign Kathé. "Swing us in a wide arc and place us between the fleet and the Nibix."
"Aye, sir," she said.
The screen in front of Sisko showed the change of direction as the Defiant moved around into position. No one spoke on the bridge and the tension seemed to grow with the silence. Sisko was pleased with his young crew. He had picked five of the best. They were responding well to an unusual situation.
"Sir," said Ensign Ba'M'eel, the only Orion on the crew. His uniform clashed with his green skin. "The Cardassians are continuing toward the station."
"Mr. Harsch, conduct a full-range scan of the asteroid belt. I want to know if any ships are hiding there, waiting to find the Nibix. Assist him in his efforts, Dodds."
Both ensigns bent over the task. They worked furiously—a little too quickly actually—but that was to be expected from such a young crew as this one.
"No, sir. The system is clear," Harsch said. He was barely out of the Academy, a thin blond human who had chosen a deep-space assignment over working his way up the ranks of a starship.
"My readings are the same, Commander," Dodds said.
Sisko hoped his spur-of-the-moment decision was the right one. He also hoped Kira was ready for a fleet of Cardassians to descend upon her. It amazed him that the station could go from calm to near disaster in a few short hours. He hadn't even had a chance to tell Jake he was leaving.
Someone would bring him up to speed.
"Ensign Kathé, follow the Cardassian ships to a point exactly halfway between the Nibix and the station."
"Yes, sir." She frowned as she plotted in the coordinates. The Defiant turned sharply and then righted itself. "Done, sir."
"Good," Sisko said. "Hold this position. Mr. Harsch, continue monitoring the asteroid belt. I want to know if anything changes nearby."
The crew bent over their tasks. Now the tough part of the mission would occur. These young ensigns would realize that they were part of a space battle, and they would learn that the fighting was easy. Waiting was hard.
And Sisko was prepared to wait days if he had to. Protecting the Nibix was his top priority. Kira would take care of the station, and the Supreme Ruler's life was in Dr. Bashir's hands.
What Sisko wouldn't give to still be on the Nibix walking the corridors while Bashir did his work. Sisko could still remember the glow of the green staff beneath his gloved hands. He had read thousands of articles over the years about what would occur when the Nibix was found. Almost all of them had assumed everyone aboard would be dead. The handful of other articles, written by less reputable scholars, speculated that the Nibix had found its planet, and a long-removed descendent of the Supreme Ruler lived there, awaiting discovery. But not one article speculated that the same Supreme Ruler who was overthrown eight hundred years ago would still be alive.
And if Bashir was half the doctor that Sisko knew him to be, the Supreme Ruler would be up and moving around very shortly. What would they do then?
Sisko had no idea.
And he wouldn't even allow himself to think about the possibility of the Supreme Ruler dying as Bashir tried to revive him.
Half an hour ago, Sisko had thought finding the Supreme Ruler alive was his worst nightmare. Having the Supreme Ruler die on them would be much, much worse.
Bashir had expected a lost ship to be dark. The bright light over the cold-sleep chamber was a bigger surprise to him than the chamber itself. He had seen a hundred cold-sleep chambers, some in the Federation's space museum and even more in the rudimentary ships he'd practiced on in his training. In his sophomore year of medical school, he had devoted an entire semester to the science of cold and cold sleep to fulfill his history of medicine requirement.
Nothing had prepared him for the grandeur here.
Nor the cold.
O'Brien was crouched near the side of the coldsleep chamber. Dax was holding a tricorder next to him, pointing it sideways in a most unusual manner. They hadn't unpacked the supplies that the commander had beamed down for them.
Bashir shivered in the chill, reached into the supplies, and pulled out deep-cold jackets for all of them. With the Cardassian threat above, there was no telling how long they would be down here. He would make certain they rationed their three days of supplies.
"Well, here you are, Julian," O'Brien said as if they hadn't seen each other in days instead of hours. "This chamber is still working."
Bashir picked up his equipment. He glanced at the two cold-sleep cocoons near the platform. One look at the occupants told him they had died a long, long time ago.
"Is it empty?" Bashir asked.
"If it were empty, do you think the commander would have sent for you?"
"Well, he should know that the odds of reviving an eight-hundred-year-old cold sleeper are about as good as you winning two dart games in a row." Bashir mounted the platform.
"I won twice this afternoon," O'Brien said.
"Thanks to a riot and a few other distractions." He set his equipment down on the opposite side of the cold-sleep chamber and then pulled out his tricorder. His hands were freezing. He pulled gloves out of his pocket, gripped them with his teeth, and tugged them on finger by finger.
Dax had turned her tricorder toward him. "Forgive me, Julian," she said, "but the commander insisted that we record all our efforts here."
"Including my first statement, I suppose," Bashir said, feeling a flush creep into his cheeks.
Dax smiled. That soft smile always made her a vision of loveliness. "I'm afraid so."
He shook his head slightly, then glanced at the opaque lid of the cold-sleep chamber. The man inside belonged to a race Julian had never seen before. On the trip, he had brushed up on Jibetian physiology, but his material was on current Jibetian anatomy, not anatomy from eight hundred years before. He didn't remember much about the shallow-ridged cheekbones, although he did remember reading about the redundant internal organs that had been common among the royal family. Some scholars claimed those organs were responsible for the family's longevity.
"Dr. Bashir," Dax said, "You'll have to explain each procedure. This tricorder isn't set up for in-depth recording."
"I'm not going to talk my way through each stage," Bashir said. "It would take too much time."
"But you'll at least have to give us an overview."
He glanced at her, biting back his annoyed comment for the sake of posterity. She was positioned well behind the tricorder, and so when she shrugged, she added a bit of mischeviousness to her movements.
She was amazingly joyful for a woman trapped on a crashed space ship, eight hundred years old.
Bashir didn't want to think about that. If he were Dax, he would be exploring the ship. She didn't know the great luck she had, being able to see all these new places. He beamed down for crisis after crisis, rarely got a chance to explore his surroundings, and usually had to concentrate on some new type of medical emergency.
Like this one.
Something bothered him about this cold-sleep chamber. But the technology was just unfamiliar enough to his Federation-trained eyes that he couldn't quite pinpoint the problem right away.
He flicked on his medical tricorder, then nodded toward Dax. "I am going to do a basic medical scan of the man inside this chamber. I need to make an overall assessment of his condition."
O'Brien had almost disappeared on the side of the chamber. He seemed to be working on something as well, probably examining the technology to see why it was still working. Bashir couldn't concentrate on that, nor could he think about the reasons behind Dax's intensity or the commander's unusual order to record their proceedings.
Instead, he focused on the readings from his medical tricorder. He hit a button that would record the readings for later use. If the commander could be that cautious, so could Bashir. The findings were just as he suspected, but for the sake of the unseen people who would review this case, he reached into his bag and pulled out a different tricorder, running the scan all over again.
Then he shook his head. "This man has massive cell damage from eight hundred years of cold sleep. I doubt anyone will ever be able to revive him."
Dax's expression changed from mischievous to one of pure horror. O'Brien popped his head up from the side of the chamber. "You can't make that kind of diagnosis from two tricorder scans, Julian," Dax said.
"I'm afraid I can, Lieutenant," he said, keeping everything formal. "Cells are cells, whether they belong to Jibetians or Trills. Everything in the universe does run along the same plan. Cells have a particular life span. A cold-sleep chamber slows that span, but it does little else to lengthen it. Had this man slept the requisite number of years planned for the mission, he would have awakened aged only a few months. I dare say he's been here much longer than they ever planned for. His cells have the equivalent of freezer burn."
"Doctor," O'Brien said, "that's not any patient. That's the Supreme Ruler of eighty worlds."
Bashir started. They could have warned him about this before he came down. "Nonetheless," he said, "my analysis stands. It will take nothing short of a miracle to revive this man."
"Well," Dax said, her voice jaunty even though her expression was haunted, "time to add miracles to your repertoire, Doctor."
"This would be much simpler if we could beam this chamber onto the Defiant and take the whole thing back to the station," Bashir said. "If we did that, I might have a chance at saving this man. As it is, you're expecting me to do delicate work with thermometers and comm badges."
"With what?" Dax asked, stunned.
"It's just an expression," Bashir said. He rummaged in his bag, hoping he had brought everything he needed.
"I'm sorry, Julian," O'Brien said, "but I've been examining this chamber, and even if we wanted to beam it to the Defiant, we couldn't. This platform only carries half of the systems that are keeping this man alive. The rest are imbedded in the floors and walls of the room, and this room would take up more space in the Defiant than we have available. Even if we had the opportunity to beam it aboard, we simply couldn't. You'll have to work with the equipment you brought along."
Despite the cold, Bashir felt nervous sweat form on his back. He felt like he had when he took the final test for his medical license, the day after he had finished his finals at the Academy. He wanted to practice frontier medicine. It didn't get any more frontier than this.
"Then, Chief, please get the cold-sleep equipment I brought with me. I'll need your help rigging this up." Bashir glanced at Dax's tricorder. "We may have already had our miracle," he said, addressing his remarks to the tiny piece of equipment in her hand. "No cold-sleep system was ever designed for this many centuries. The fact that it even works is astounding."
"I'll say." O'Brien's voice echoed from below the platform.
Bashir removed three devices he hadn't used in a long, long time. Time to forget the impossibility, forget the expectations, forget the importance of his patient. It was time to get to work.
"Well, your highness," Bashir said softly, turning back to the cold-sleep chamber. "Let's see what I can do to save your life. All eight hundred years of it."