HE FELT LIKE he was sitting in a crypt. Julian Bashir climbed the stairs to the Supreme Ruler's sleeping unit. The man's face hadn't changed. He still looked serene. It seemed odd to Bashir that the man before him looked younger and was actually hundreds of years older than Bashir was. If the Supreme Ruler ever did wake up, the shock of being so far into his own future might just kill him.
Bashir smiled at the thought. Earlier O'Brien had told him he was thinking five steps ahead. Now he was thinking twenty steps ahead. If the Nibix lifted off the asteroid, if they made it back to DS9, and if they managed to revive the Supreme Ruler, then the shock of surviving might kill him.
Seemed ridiculous to worry over.
But then it might be the cold.
He hadn't ever been this cold, and except for a small unit on the effects of temperature in medical school, he didn't know much about it. Perhaps it made a man find humor in situations that were essentially humorless.
Or perhaps that was simply the mind's way of dealing with too many stresses, too much information.
That seemed more logical.
He sighed and sat on the platform. Its chill soaked through his deep-cold pants. O'Brien's words about never being warm again after cold sleep returned to him.
No one had ever been in cold sleep for eight hundred years. No one knew the effects. Maybe Bashir could revive the Supreme Ruler only to discover the man had permanent frostbite or that the cold had gone to his head, literally.
He sighed. It wasn't the cold or the number of events that made his black humor appear.
It was fear.
Dax had told him his entire career would be on the line when it came time to wake up the Supreme Ruler. His future, his post at Deep Space Nine, his ability to face challenges like this one, might all go away if he failed here.
And even that wasn't as important as the Supreme Ruler's life.
Bashir put his gloved hand on the cold-sleep chamber. He could do nothing to guarantee the man's condition if he lived. He remembered this twisting in his stomach from prolonging Vedek Bareil's life unnecessarily, turning a warm and generous man into a machine, bit by bit, for the political benefit of the Kai.
Bashir wasn't sure whom the Supreme Ruler's survival benefited. Not the Jibetians, because his presence would cause internal turmoil of unparalleled degrees. Not the Federation, because they would have to deal with that turmoil. Not even the ruler himself, who would be a man out of time, a man whose life was literally centuries in the past. Even if he were resilient enough and flexible enough to survive that change, to expect him to rule over a world so changed from the one he left would be complete folly.
Yet Bashir had taken an oath. And even if his career and his own future did not depend on saving this man, he would do so. He had learned and he deeply believed that each life was important.
Somehow, though, he would have to find a way to make the Supreme Ruler's life worth living.
If the ship got off this asteroid.
If they managed to sail past the warships.
If the Supreme Ruler could be revived.
If. If. If.
Bashir sighed and waited. He would monitor the Supreme Ruler and make certain that liftoff did not disturb the sleep chamber. His equipment was nearby in case something went wrong at this early stage. Although he knew, Dax knew, and Sisko knew that if it did, the Supreme Ruler would not survive.
His comm badge chirruped. He hit it. "Bashir."
"Doctor." The voice belonged to Sisko. He had arrived on the Defiant then. "How's the patient?"
"I can safely say that there's been no change at all."
"And you?"
He sighed before he answered. "I'm as ready as I'll ever be."
"Good," Sisko said.
"Commander?"
"Yes, Doctor?"
"Go lightly. I don't know how liftoff will affect my patient."
"I'll relay your concerns to the chief," Sisko said and signed off.
But the chief already knew his concerns. They all did. Bashir just had to voice them one final time.
Because he truly believed that this ship would never rise from this asteroid. His patient and his career would die here in the cold barren darkness, on a ship that should have remained a part of myth forever.
Dax finished setting the antigrav unit to full spread and force and crawled out of the tight passageway. Her hands were shaking as she finished but not from the cold. The entire passageway was lined with jewelry, all of it contained behind the same glasslike substance that formed the top of the cold-sleep chambers. The jewelry had traditional Jibetian settings, some in gold and some in that glowing green, and all of them were priceless. The Curzon part of her cited rarity and begged to touch one. Just one.
She ignored it as best she could.
And that meant allowing her hands to shake, because they needed to move. If she allowed them any more movement, they would touch a glass panel and all would be lost.
The passageway opened into a wide sleep chamber. The dead in this room had a completely different appearance than the other dead. Here, her tricorder told her, the sleep chambers had stopped functioning centuries before the Nibix landed on the asteroid.
She wondered who was in here and when—or if—the saboteur had planned for this entire room to fail early. Probably not. It was beyond anyone's reasonable expectations for the cold-sleep chambers to survive as long as they had.
She climbed around a few chambers to the wider aisle in the center. Still, she couldn't prevent herself from looking through the clouded glass. The clothing was formal and as rare as the jewels in the hold. Most of it was made of a velvetlike material, deep and thick and beautifully embroidered. The dead looked as if they were going to a party instead of planning a seventy-year nap.
Until she looked at their faces. The faces had mummified. The skin was wrinkled and dried. It adhered to the bones. The eyes were sunken inward, and she was glad they were closed because she didn't want to see the condition of the eyeballs. The lips were pursed in a mock pucker as if they were all waiting to be kissed.
She was glad that she didn't believe in ghosts. This ship would be ripe for such things.
She tapped her comm badge. "Chief, I've got my two set."
Her voice echoed in the room. No one had spoken in here in eight hundred years. She could almost see the dead opening their eyes in surprise.
The comm line made a faint hiss. Then O'Brien said, "I'm ready here, too."
She was glad he was still on the ship and would be throughout this. She had a lot of skill but not nearly as much as Miles O'Brien. Julian was guarding the Supreme Ruler, even though they all knew that one mishap in that area would be a disaster not even Julian's talents could ease.
"Let's meet back in the control room, Chief," she said and signed off without waiting for his answer.
She had moved one of the heaters to the control room earlier. She hoped it would be warm there now. Or warmer. This cold was deadly.
As she made her way to the corridor, she tapped her comm badge again. "Benjamin?"
"Sisko here," he said in his command voice. He had to be on the bridge of the Defiant. She could hear the dampened excitement in his tone and knew that his movements were a little sharper, his features a little more fluid, than normal. She felt the same way.
"The chief and I will be in the control room in one minute."
"Good," Sisko said. "We're nearly ready here. But I want you to do one more thing."
"Yes?"
"There seems to be power around here. See if you and the chief can get any systems running in the ship. Especially the communications system. If that doesn't work, rig one up. It might come in handy."
"We'll do what we can," Dax said. She didn't want to make many promises. The systems hadn't been used in eight hundred years.
"And Dax?"
"Yes?"
"Stay away from the controls for the cold-sleep chambers."
He didn't need to tell her that. She already knew to stay away. But this was a delicate mission, and each word, each order, was being recorded into the logs. If something happened to the cold-sleep chambers and that command was missing, the blame for this entire mission would fall on Benjamin's shoulders.
"Absolutely," she said. Then she signed off.
Dax flashed her light around for one last look at the cold-sleep chamber. Deep black shadows wavered as her light moved. She could almost imagine the cold-sleep chambers popping open and the desiccated bodies getting out. She blew out a deep breath of frosty air and made herself relax. She was getting fanciful in her old age.
Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that they were trying to move an entire graveyard.
And the dead didn't want to be moved.
Instead of sitting in the command chair, Sisko paced back and forth in front of the screens showing the asteroid and the Nibix. At the moment the Defiant was still cloaked, having only decloaked long enough to get him back on board and to send down the supplies needed to secure the Nibix for lifting. Even that had felt like too long. He had Ensign Coleman monitoring the space around them, looking for any sign of mercenary ships, Cardassian warships, or Jibetians. So far, no one.
But that didn't mean they were safe.
He would conduct this mission as if the Defiant were already discovered. He would use that much caution. Although caution wasn't the word to use in describing this mission. A cautious commander would have notified the Jibetians of a possible discovery of the Nibix and let the cards fall where they may. A cautious commander would never attempt to haul the ship back to Federation space with an eight-hundred-year-old sleeping man aboard.
Of course, if he hadn't taken this action, no one would have learned that the Supreme Ruler survived. The treasures would have been lost to treasurer hunters and private collections, and the Nibix would have become the biggest political crisis since—since—
Well, that part was no different. He at least was preventing this from becoming an even bigger disaster than it already was. The actual discovery of the Nibix, no matter how it happened, was bound to create problems.
He could feel the ensigns watching him surreptitiously, all except Coleman who was studying the scanner as if it were the final fifty-point question on the Academy entrance exam. His pacing made them nervous. But he had too much energy to contain. Only Dax knew that. Dax, who felt the same way. Dax, who had thought their days of outrageous adventure over.
His senior team was all geared toward taking this risk. He didn't much like the thought of leaving crew on board that old ship as they tried to pull it free of the asteroid, but both Chief O'Brien and Dr. Bashir had argued that he had no other choice. And even Dax had agreed. Sisko needed to be on board the Defiant, and they needed to stay on the Nibix if this was to work at all.
Sisko turned to Ensign Harsch. "On my mark, trigger the antigrav units at exactly the same time."
Ensign Harsch nodded without turning from the board. Sisko had been over the process with him detail by detail. He had chosen Harsch because he had specialized in tricky antigravitational maneuvers in his Academy days. Harsch knew more about the units than anyone else on board. Sisko should have had faith in this—his team on the Defiant was young but among the best in the station—but he didn't.
The survival of the Nibix wasn't just important to the Jibetians and the Federation. It was important to him and not for any glorified career reasons.
Because he was walking through a dream. A dream that had turned more difficult than he had ever expected. A dream that in his waking hours he never imagined would happen. But a dream nonetheless. He had to honor it and his own excitement. For his own happiness, he had to do this right.
Sisko tapped his comm unit. "Doctor, brace yourself."
"Braced," Bashir responded.
Sisko next tried the control room. "Dax, is the chief with you?"
"In the control room and ready to fly into history. Sir," she said. He could hear the edge of excitement in her voice as well. She felt the same way he did: reckless and cautious at the same time.
"Transport, do you have a lock on the three crew members below?"
"Yes, sir," Vukcevich said from the transporter room. That was the most crucial aspect of all. If the Nibix broke up as it lifted off, Sisko wanted to beam his people to safety.
Sisko turned to Ensign Harsch. "Drop the cloak and start the antigrav units."
"Aye, sir," Harsch said.
Sisko watched the viewscreen in front of him, knowing that he wouldn't be able to see anything happening at first. And that if he could see, they had a disaster on their hands. The four antigrav units would never be able to lift that ship on their own.
Without turning, Sisko said, "Tractor beam, wide span. Cover every meter of that ship."
"Done, sir," Ensign Kathé said.
"Ease that ship off that rock, Ensign," Sisko said, wishing he could do every part of this operation himself. Hands on each station from the transporter to watching the Supreme Ruler to running the tractor beam. "Ease it off there."
For a moment nothing seemed to happen. Then slowly he could see a change in the readings from the ship.
"It's holding together," Ensign Harsch said.
"She's flying, Commander," Chief O'Brien said. His voice rose with exaltation. "And I can't see a single problem down here. Not one. Oh, she's a lovely ship, sir. Just lovely."
"That she is," Sisko said, hoping their luck would hold a bit longer. Sisko let himself breathe as the huge ship lifted from the asteroid.
He punched up the magnification on his viewscreen to show the approaching Nibix. He had never seen anything more beautiful in his entire life. The Nibix flying again.
"Move us away slowly," Sisko said. And then he watched.
The Nibix in flight was a sleek black oval. It actually resembled the sleep chambers within. Its command center, with the clear dome, reflected the ambient light. Sisko felt that if he brought a shuttlecraft over the dome, he would see a giant sleeping within.
The ship had a charm most modern ships couldn't hope to attain. From this distance, none of the damage was visible. The Nibix looked as she was designed to be, as he had always imagined her, elegant against the backdrop of space.
"Dr. Bashir," Sisko said as he watched the ship grow in size in the screen, "how is our patient doing?"
"Sleeping like the dead," Bashir said.
Sisko shuddered. "Excellent."
"It's none of my doing, sir. I'm just baby-sitting."
And he would continue to watch, as would they all. The liftoff was only the first hurdle. The rest was yet to come.