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CHAPTER
        1

THIRTY YEARS AGO

THE BULLETIN-TEA in Legate Migar's headquarters
droned on and on, stretching into its fourth tedious
hour. Sister Winn and the other Bajoran ser-
vantsmShimpur Arian, who served Gul Feesat;
Lisea Nerys and Alahata-something, who were
brought down to the planet by Gul Dukat; and the
six servants of Legate Migar who cooked and
served the food (one was a true collaborator, Winn
was certain)--were at last allowed to eat their own
lunch in the kitchen... after they had waited
upon the high-ranking Cardassians, served,
fetched, and cleared away.
    Alone with themselves now, the Bajorans let
their bitterness erupt; like a baby spitting up,
thought Sister Winn, surprising herself with her
own cynicism. Alahata spoke of his anger at servi-
tude. He was nearly as young as Gul Ragat, but he
had grown up in a village not far from Winn's,
Riesentaka on the Heavenly Blue River. Winn tried
to calm him with homilies from the Prophets, but
the boy would not be placated. He'll learn, she
thought in sadness, noting the interest of two of
Legate Migar's valets, one of whom was probably
the snitch.
    The others spoke of domestic issues. Nerys was
worried about the rains, which had come too soon
for her father's farm. But even in the simplest
conversation, Sister Winn could practically cut the
tension with a knifetif Bajorans in service to a gul
had been allowed knives. They each knew who and
what they were, and how precarious was the thread
by which their world dangled.
    The Bajorans fell silent as Winn blessed the
food, and they ate; the food was too rich for the
priestess, not the simple, country fare she had
grown up with, but the elaborate, spicy meats the
Cardassians preferred among Bajoran foodsfood
from the Northern Islands, Winn said to herseld
Her mother had come from there, but her father
had forbidden spice in the family meals, as he had
a weak stomach.
    The kitchen was gigantic but cozy. Legate Migar
had not built his own house, but taken over the
house of the original governor of the subcontinent,
Riasha Lyas. Riasha had disappeared thirteen
years ago and was rumored to have been sent up to
Terok Nor,' but no one who returned from the
station orbiting Bajor had ever reported seeing
him. A stained-glass window facing northwest
allowed in much natural light in the afternoon, but
Winn could not see outside. A smaller, plain win-
dow set above the stained glass afforded an abbre-
viated view... assuming the priestess were to
stand on a chair. The men used the plain window
to look out for arriving VIPs.
    Red and blue shadows crossed the kitchen table
as Winn pushed her food from one side of the plate
to the other, hoping to fool the cook into thinking
she had enjoyed the meal. She answered automati-
cally whenever one of the other Bajorans would ask
her religious advice, or beg for a prayer or benedic-
tion for the weather, the crops, a sick cousin, the
soul of Bajor. But she smiled and turned her face
full on whoever was speaking, seeming to give
undivided attention; inside, Sister Winn was think-
ing dark thoughts and wondering how she could
pull off her mission without ending up the Head-
less Sister of Shakarri.
    At last, the table was cleared by the probable
collaborator, whose name she learned at last:
Revosa Anan. She filed away the information for
future use. Sister Winn rose, gave a final blessing
and thanks to the Prophets, and bowed her way out
of the kitchen, saying she had to return and see if
her master needed anything.
 She stepped lightly toward the conference room
but paused in the courtyard; no one appeared to be
watching; the house felt heavy, sleepy after the
midday meal. Bowing her head and walking with a
firm step, Sister Winn turned to the right and cut
across the short angle of the courtyard toward a
small, forbidden door she had observed from its
other side when she first arrived at Legate Migar's
palace. The door opened to her firm touch; she
entered, smiling and readying an obsequious apol-
ogy if she ran into an overly dutiful Cardassian
guard. Not that an apology would matter. If the
door turned out to lead where she prayed it did,
and she were caught inside, then the next stop
would surely be Terok Nor... and GUl Dukat's
tender ministry.
    Sister Winn entered the small antechamber that
led to the formal reception room, and in the other
direction, to the entrance hall. The walls were done
in bloodwood paneling, very dark, and the only
light came from two "electric candle" light fixtures
at opposite sides of the outer wall. Between the
fixtures was another door, this one soundproofed
and sealed with a push-button combination lock
popular among the erstwhile Bajoran military mis-
sions... like the house of Governor Riasha.
    Swallowing hard, the priestess approached the
lock. Her steps faltered. If she were caught in the
next few seconds, no amount of bowing and scrap-
ing could save her from interrogation, followed by
execution--and disgrace and exile for Gul Ragat;
but quite frankly, Sister Winn could not have cared
less what happened to her Cardassian "master."
His own conscience was in the hands of the Proph-
ets; either he would see and save himself, or he
would remain in ignorance and be forever barred
from their embrace.
    The strangest thing about Cardassians, Winn
pondered, is how thoroughly they believe their rules
of conquered and conquerer.t They had won the
battle; they had won the war. Simple honor among
soldiers required that the Bajorans accept their
status and work to achieve full recognition as
eventual citizens of the Cardassian Empire.
    It certainly never occurred to Legate Migar to
run around replacing all the locks in his house. It
never penetrated his bony Cardassian skull that
although poor Governor Riasha was probably in
the arms of the Prophets a decade since, and the
officers of the Bajoran Army were all executed or
imprisoned in penal colonies or mines around the
planet and even on Terok Nor, that many of the
governor's former civilian engineers had also
worked in the palace... and some had frequent
occasion to work in the communications room.
And the legate, who had never been any kind of an
engineer, civilian or military, was evidently un-
aware of the disdain with which such people treat
security precautions.
    In particular, Legate Migar had never heard of a
lock having a "back door," used by the engineers if
the military men changed the lock and neglected to
tell the civilian contractors. He had ordered the
combination altered, of course; but he never real-
ized that there was more than one combination.
    Licking her dry lips, Sister Winn took a deep
breath, stepped up to the lock, and punched in the
back-door code she had received from her cell
leader. The lock clicked twice, and the red lights on
the side turned green. Sister Winn pressed firmly
on the door, and it pushed noiselessly open, expos-
ing a dark room whose walls were lined with
communications equipment. In front of the six
chairs were lists of common frequencies, map
displays, and miracle of the Prophets, a current
codebooM
    Please protect me, she begged; then she stepped
into the room, pushing the door nearly shut, and
felt in the heel of her knee boot for the tiny, digital
holocam she had carried for four months, waiting
for just such an opportunity. The bright displays
beckoned, but Sister Winn knew her first goal; she
activated the codebook and began to click through
it, snapping pictures of every screen.
    When Sister Winn finally finished holocamming
the book, a wave of relief flooded her brain. She
wasn't "off the mountain," as her villagers used to
say; she still had to exit without losing the holocam
and get the images to her cell--or some cell, at
least. But at least, even if she got nothing else, her
mission was successful.
  But in a lapse of security that would be incredi-
ble to anyone who hadn't lived with the Cardassi-
ans for years and didn't know the depth of their
disdain for the "lesser races," the communications
room remained unattended for another ten min-
utes. During that time, Winn took holopictures of
every screen and all the frequency settings; she
even dared project different maps on the coder's
viewer and holocammed them as well; though her
mouth was so dry, she was having trouble breath-
ing. If there were a history file, somebody was going
to be awfully suspicious... and if there were secu-
rity viewers, she could be under fatal observation
as she brought up map after map, caught and
convicted by her own hand.
    Then Winn heard what she had expected to hear
minutes earlier: the bootsteps of the Cardassian
guard returning on his rounds. With a lot less
coolness than she would have liked, she rested her
boot on the console and rotated the heel outward
with trembling fingers. She replaced the holocam
and swung the heel shut, hearing it lock into place.
She exited the room just as the guard turned the
corner, but she didn't dare pull the door shut...
the guard would hear the click of the lock and be
alerted.
    He paused when he saw her standing with her
back to the communications room door, staring
with a vacant expression as if she were in a trance.
"Bajoran slave! What are you doing here?" he
demanded.
 Winn turned toward the guard, blinking as if she
had never seen a Cardassian before in her life and
wasn't quite sure whether it was alive or not. "Sir?"
she asked, striving for an intelligence level some-
where above imbecile but well below normal.
    The Cardassian was only too happy to oblige,
seeing her as a conquered "animal." He spoke very
slowly, enunciating every word in Bajoran (but
with a barbarous accent). "Whymare--you--
here?"
    Winn brightened. "Oh! Can you help me? My
master needs the activity reports on Resistance
action for the last month. He's very important."
    "Activity reports? I don't know anything about
that! I have received no word. Who is your master?"
He paused, and Winn stared at him uncomprehend-
ingly. "Who--ismyour--MASTER?" shouted the
impatient guard, raising his clenched fist.
    The priestess cringed away from the man, bury-
ing her face in her hands and falling heavily to her
knees. "Please don't hurt me! My master is Gul
Ragat, subgovernor of Shakarri and Belshakarri!
He is here to meet with their lordships Legate
Migar and Gul Dukat for the bulletin-tea."
    The guard, wearing the uniform of a sergeant
major and carrying only a hand disruptor at his
belt, paused to ponder the new information. He
was evidently aware of the bulletin-teas, but didn't
seem to know for sure which guls were on the
invitation list. "Well," he snarled, "where are you
supposed to find this report? You're not allowed to
be in this part of the building!"

 "Please, sir! My master told me to report to the
 duty officer of the communications room."
    The sergeant's gaze strayed immediately to the
door, still open a crack. His eyes widened.
"What--!" Rushing to the door, he threw it open,
seeing only the dark room with a few illuminated
controls and the main viewer showing the Cardas-
sian insignia, the neutral "background" image
when nothing else was displayed.
    A moment later, he returned to the hall, staring
down at Sister Winn with a new light of crafty
intelligence. "Did you enter this room, Bajoran?"
    "I wanted to," she blurted out, "but I was too
afraid! I don't know what the report looks like,
and--and I was afraid to go poking around where I
wasn't--I didn't know what to do, so I just waited
until..." Winn began to sniffle, making hemelf
cry real tears and sneeze; it was a talent she had
learned as a child, always good for eliciting sympa-
thy from sympathetic adults. It didn't work quite
as well against Cardassian conquerers; but still, it
was the only weapon she had. Her knees hurt,
which helped the deception.
    "Look, stop that sniveling! Did--youmenter--
this--roorn? Just answer the question!"
Winn shook her head vigorously. "No, sir, but
I . . 9,


 "Yes?"
 "I didn't, but I..."
    "You WHAT?" The sergeant major was rapidly
losing what tiny bit of patience he had.
    "I--I--I touched the door/Oh, Prophets pre-
serve me, I pushed it, and it swung a little, and I--I
looked inside for a minute/"
    The guard sighed and seemed to slump a little.
He looked away, starting to be embarassed by the
sight of a but still somewhat pretty, young woman
sobbing hysterically on the floor. The priestess
peeked through her fingers and saw the man chew-
ing his lip and staring at the door, probably wonder-
ing whether he's going to get in trouble over the open
door, she understood.
    "Stupid civilian com-techies," he muttered in
Cardassian. Then he looked back over his own
shoulder, reached out, and pulled the door shut
tightly. "Look, you couldn't get the report thing
you wanted because there wasn't anyone in the
room. You got that? Do--you--underSTAND?"
The sergeant major nodded his head affirmatively.
    "There wasn't... I couldn't get the report?"
Winn put on a look of bewilderment.
    "Therewwasn'tmanyone--here! Oh, for good-
ness sake, it's sommeasy!" He used an obscenity
Winn had heard before, but only from lower-class
Cardassian soldiers.
    "Oh! I couldn't get the report because... be-
cause..." Winn paused, tapping her forehead as if
thinking through the scheme. "... there was no-
body in the room!"
    "Yes!" he exclaimed, pushing her back against
the wall. "Open your foolish Bajoran ears next
time! And"--he leaned close to snarl directly in
the priestess's facem"don't you ever push open a
door like that again! Never/You understand me?"
For emphasis, he put his metal-shod boot on Sister
Winn's back; she made no move to push it away,
merely drawing back in terror, and the sergeant
major didn't put his weight on it, either.
"Yes, sir! I understand, sir! Thank you, sir!"
He let her up but made no move to help; Winn
rose shakily to her feet, bowed and cringed in the
most servile manner she could manage, and backed
awayinstill bowing and thanking him for correct-
ing her. As soon as she rounded the same corner
whence the guard had come, she turned and bus-
tied as fast as she could manage to the "allowed"
section of Legate Migar's house. She didn't meet
any more Cardassian guards along the way; this
deep inside the pale, the gul had no fear of Resist-
ance action, and he seemed to take an austere pride
in living virtually alone with his family and only a
skeleton force of soldiers. She had already returned
to the conference room, where her master was
desperately trying not to nod off during an intermi-
nable supply report by Gul Feesat before the reality
struck her full, starting her trembling all over
again: I did it/she screamed inside her mind; I
actually did it and got away/
    But another voice answered back, the voice she
usually used to correct her behavior when she
violated the word or spirit of the Prophets: You've
not gotten away yet, child; or haven't you noticed
whose house this still is?

    She couldn't help smiling, praying that the worst
was over. But her inner nag warned that the worst
had just begun. Sister Winn was now officially
"hangable."

    The young Gul Ragat was still brooding over his
possible elevation, and annoyed that nobody men-
tioned anything at the bulletin-tea about it: Legate
Migar and Gul Dukat simply spoke to him as they
normally did, with no special winks or nods, noth-
ing to indicate it was other than ordinary that
Ragat be invited to such an unordinary meeting.
He complained--or hinted at his irritation, actu-
ally-to Sister Winn in a long soliloquy in the
garden that evening, while Winn did her best to
appear sympathetic and hopeful.
    Her own agenda was somewhat different. "My
Lord," she said soothingly, "I'm sure you were
right in your original thought, that you are being
groomed for the higher grant of honors. Surely you
see the hand of the Prophets in this?"
    "The Prophets?" Gul Ragat blinked at Winn. "I
don't quite follow. How do the Bajoran Prophets
figure into my elevation?"
    "They know what a compassionate man m'lord
is; they must know that of all the Cardassians, Gul
Ragat is most concerned about the physical and
spiritual ills of the Bajoran people! Surely they have
brought your qualities to the attention of Legate
Migar for a reason."
  Ragat paced agitatedly. "A reason? Because I
 will be a more compassionate master than, say, Gul
 Dukat, with his iron fist and heart of stone?"
    "Oh, you most certainly would be." She won-
dered whether he would catch the significance of
the reference to the spiritual ills; Winn had heard
that somewhere in the Cardassian Empire, scat-
tered and powerless but there, was a group of
Cardassians who argued bitterly against the occu-
pation of Bajor, and indeed all the other planets
forcibly "civilized" into the empire. She knew Gul
Ragat was not a member of that outlawed group--
he certainly wouldn't be given even a subgovernor-
ship if there were the slightest hint in his back-
ground check!--but if Winn had heard of them,
then Ragat had heard of them... and she would
not give up hope that the Prophets would in time
lead those Cardassians with even the slightest hint
of decency to the moral position.
    "Yes," he mused, "I suppose I could do much to
alleviate the needless suffering of your people, were
I to be granted a higher position in the administra-
tion of Bajor."
    "My Lord," said Sister Winn, bowing her head
and looking intently at her feet, "may I speak
frankly?"
    "Of course, of course! I allow all my servants the
freedom to say what is truly on their minds, in
private."
    "My Lord, if your people continue along this
path they have chosen, there will certainly be
bloody resistance against Cardassian rule. My Ba-
jorans are a proud people, and we do not take well
to the leash."
    "Winn, you are a priestess! A spiritual leader!
How can you threaten such a terrible thing?"
    You young fool.t "My Lord, I do not threaten; I
predict. I know my own. And I know that a few
hundred thousand Cardassian troops will not hold
against an entire planetful of bitter, determined
freedom fighters. I shudder at the images my mind
conjures, fantastic scenarios of mass destruction.
But I cannot turn my face from the inevitable."
    Gul Ragat turned his back to Sister Winn. "I
cannot listen to a prediction of such betrayal!
Sister, I'm surprised at you, giving credence to the
juvenile boasting of that Resistance rabble. You
know what would happen: those who revolted
would be wiped out, as well as their family and
probably their friends, even if innocent."
     The garden was dark and cool, but Winn saw it
 full of menace and unfriendly, grasping tree
 branches--though it was the same, friendly garden
 as in the days of Riasha Lyas. Evil had escaped
 from the Cardassian garrison inside the house and
 permeated the trimmed paths and hedgerows of
 the pastoral arboretum. "And it would be such a
 waste of resources," sighed the young subgovernor,
 almost to himself.
     Winn was glad the garden was dark, so Gul
 Ragat could not see her rolling her eyes in disgust.
 She quickly and silently apologized to Those who
 did see, because They saw all. Then her young
 "master" made one more offhand remark that
 electrified the priestess: "Perhaps it would secure
 my advancement and serve the true interests of
 your people both," he mused, "if I were to bring in
 a few of these rabble-rousers myself... the ones
 who incite peaceful Bajorans to bloody revolution
 and cause us no end of trouble."
    There was nothing, nothing that Sister Winn
wanted more desperately than to get away from
Legate Migar's palace and relocate somewhere she
could pass along the priceless content of her holo-
cam. But Bajoran servants--slaves, she corrected
herself unemotionally--simply did not travel
alone without travel documents issued by the Car-
dassian Planetary Authority... not even priest-
esses on a religious mission. There were only two
ways for Winn to remove herself from Migar's
estate without exciting attention: get her gul or
another, higher-ranking gul to send her on an
errand; or else, get Gul Ragat to travel with her.
    The first was virtually impossible; anything im-
portant enough to go get was by and large too
important for a Cardassian to leave to a Bajoran.
The invaders had skimmers; they had shuttles; they
had starships with beaming facilities. If Gul Ragat
really wanted something physical, an artisan's vase
or a barrel of sunberry wine, he would either
transport it to him or transport himself to it; he
would not send Sister Winn.
    But ff Ragat wanted to personally capture some
antiCardassian Resistance leaders--especially with-
out alerting other guls who might want to elbow
into the credit--he was pretty much restricted to
moving by skimmer, as he came... and moving
his entire entourage in the direction of home.
Anything less, or moving in any other direction,
and the Planetary Authority would demand his
travel documents! Since he didn't have enough
skimmers for everyone, he and his household
would ride, while everyone else, Cardassian honor
guard and Bajoran domestics, would go as they had
come, on foot, as befit their station as a subject
race.
    It's amazing how many opportunities a lengthy
walk presents, thought the priestess craftily. But
before she could plan an escape or rendezvous, she
first had to start the wheels in motion: Winn had to
persuade Gul Ragat to take the trip in the first
place.
    "My Lord, I..." Winn trailed off, then tried to
look as though she had said nothing.
    "Yes, Sister Winn?" Gul Ragat waited; Winn
could feel the tension in his body, and she realized
she had struck just the right tone: I've got a terrible
secret, but I don't know whether I can tell you!
    She fidgeted. She opened her mouth and sucked
in a breath, then let it out without saying anything.
"You can tell me anything when we're alone,"
soothed the gul, deliberately standing far enough
away from her that she wouldn't feel crowded.
Again, the priestess almost spoke and didn't.
  Finally, she pretended to come to a resolution.

 She sat slowly on the bench, despite the fact that
 her gul was standing... a terrible breach of proto-
 col! "My Lord, I know of a rise that's planned for a
 few days from now--but I cannot tell, I cannot!
 Not even to secure your advancement."
    Now, Gul Ragat couldn't contain himself. He
spun to face her and asked breathlessly, "You do?
You know? You have? You will?"
    "I cannot violate the trust of my people, even if
it means your grant of honors, Gul Ragat. I just
can't!" Come along, chiM. . . convince met
    The gul stepped back, seeming to stop himself by
brute force from grabbing Winn's shoulders and
shaking her vigorously. "But, Winn--Sister
Winn... you wouldn't be doing it for me; you'd
be doing it to help your own people!"
    "My own people? How do you mean?" She
allowed a note of hope to creep into her voice.
    "Your own people, whom you would save from
the brutal retaliation sure to be inflicted upon them
by the harsh and stern military leaders of the
Empire! Imagine what will happen to the Bajorans
living in that province or prefecture if you allow
this insane rebellion to proceed!"
Sister Winn gasped. "I never thought of that."
"You must! You must think on it, and you will
see that the only thing to do is to tell me now,
quickly, so I can stop the troubles from ever
starting by arresting the callous, uncaring leaders."
  "Must I?"
 Ragat shook his head sadly, sorrowing with her,
not at her. "There is no other honorable course for
you to take. You are a leader, the voice of the
Prophets. You must look after your--your flock;
yes, that's the word. They look to you for guidance!
Exercise your moral leadership to lead them to
acceptance of the inevitable, and think of how
much happier they will be."
    Sister Winn suddenly jumped to her feet, pre-
tending guilt at suddenly realizing she was sitting
while her "master" stood. "Forgive me, My Lord!"
she cried; Gul Ragat waved away the infraction,
intent upon the information she might give him.
Winn felt like a fisherman reeling in her catch.
    The problem, Winn realized nervously, was that
she actually had the information to give. In her
position as spiritual leader for all the Bajorans who
lived at Ragat's compound and many in the village
of Vir-Hakar, in the county of Belshakarri, she
always heard rumors of Resistance activity... of-
ten well-founded. She knew, for instance, that
there was a planned meeting in precious Riis, a
meeting that would probably lead to action against
the spaceport ten kilometers away--a facility now
used by the Cardassians to transport high-ranking
members of the military and important visitors to
and from the planet. A bombing was likely, and a
full-scale assault was not out of the question.
    It was the only such action that she knew of; if
she wanted to give Ragat something he could
substantiatemand it was clear he would check it
out through his own intelligence network--there
was nothing else for her to give. The attack could
probably be postponed without much danger, if she
got word to the Resistance in time! If not... then
Sister Winn would have just committed a real,
honest-to-Prophets act of collaboration which
would surely result in the violent deaths of many
Bajoran freedom fighters. It was a terrible choice!
    But really, she thought anxiously, I have no
choice. With the information digitized in her holo-
cam, such blows could be struck as to completely
eclipse the strike at the Riis Spaceport, called the
Palm of Bajor. If she could get the holocam to her
cell leader; as always, IF!
      "My Lord," she whispered, "I have heard that
there is to be a rising very near to here."  "Yes?"
"Between here and our own home, in fact."
"Yes?" Gul Ragat's excitement was palpable;
Winn fought hard to keep her expression neutral,
her eyes cast respectfully downward, and to sniffle
a bit.
 "It will be in--in Riis. That is what I heard."
 "Riis? On the Shakiristi River?"
 "That is what I heard, M'Lord."
    Now Ragat sat suddenly, wearing a goofy grin
and staring into space... staring at his grant of
honors, thought the priestess bitterly. After a mo-
ment, he remembered himself and grew solemn.
"You have done a noble and brave thing, Sister
Winn. You have saved many of your people from a
terrible fate. The Prophets would be proud of
you... I'm certain of it."
    Oh Prophets, she prayed, please grant me that
same certainty! But the Prophets, as was often the
case, remained as mute as the stones on the issue.

    Once more, Kai Winn woke in the night, the
tendrils of the past wrapped around her. Now, at
least, she knew there was some reason--that the
Prophets were sending her a message, something
that she must, must, be clever enough to grasp.

CHAPTER
        2

"LISTEN UP, away team," said Captain Sisko, stand-
ing before his away team on a dark red bluff
overlooking a shady, indigo valley; Worf came to
attention, awaiting the new orders. A hundred
meters below them, "Mayor-General" Asta-ha and
her commandos--the Terrors of Tiffnaki, the
name suggested by the hereditary mayor's daughter
Tivva-ma--ran the rest of the Tiffnakis through a
heavy set of drills, trying to beat into their posteco-
nomic heads some sense of the danger they were in.
Worf had designed the drills himself, and he was
pleased at how quickly the Natives were learning
how to fight as a unit.
    "All right," asked the captain, "what's it going to
be, then? We cannot reach the main planetary
power stations and destroy them on foot; they're
thousands of kilometers away. We need transpora-
tion, and the Deftant seems to have left orbit. So,
do we try to overwhelm a small patrol by force or
by stealth?"
    Days earlier, the away team had finally left the
natives of Sierra-Bravo to continue training them-
selves, for all the good that would do. Worf had few
doubts what he would find upon his return: ragged,
threadbare, unarmed, frightened, cowering, starv-
ing refugees crouching in the bushes like animals.
But what could he do, stay forever with Asta-ha
and her "Terrors" of Tiffnaki? The captain was
right: it was time the Starfleet team took direct
action against the Cardassians who had invaded
this world and routed themthe inhabitants.
    The handful of Cardassians and their Drek'la
footsoldiers had struck upon the perfect tactic...
The Natives, though not technological themselves,
somehow had access to bucketsful of technological
toys left over from a previous higher civilization.
But everything worked off of broadcast power from
central power plants relayed by local stations. The
Cardassian-led assault teams simply blew up the
relay stations, obliterating all power to a given
region; and all the deadly toys used by the Natives
instantly ceased operation, leaving them utterly
defenseless, stunned, confused, ready to be har-
vested like scything wheat.
    The captain's plan is bold, thought Worf; it is
Klingonlike. No other Starfleet officer would have
dared! Sisko had decided, after much agonizing, to
take his team to the central power plants and knock
them off-line himself, plunging the whole planet
into darkness. The Natives, forced to react to the
loss of power for weeks or months before the
invaders got to them, would be over the shock and
better able to resist conquest.
    The only problem, however, was that the power
plants were thousands of kilometers away... and
the away team was on foot. They would need to
find an enemy camp, somewhere, and liberate a
skimmer to have any chance at all.
    Worf, as usual, was first to express his opinion on
the purely military question of tactics once they
located the Cardassians. "I have nothing against
stealth, Captain; as you know, Kahless himself
often used stealth against a superior enemy--it is
entirely honorable."
    "For once," said Quark, "I totally agree with the
wise commander."
    "However," continued Woff, glaring at the Fer-
engi, "in this case, I do not think we can manage to
steal a skimmer without being detected. We do not
look anything like Cardassians or Drek'la."
    "Oh, I don't know, Worf." The Klingon turned
and immediately fell into a defensive posture: the
speaker was a very mean-looking Cardassian wear-
ing a face mask and the uniform of a gul. Worf
grabbed the Cardassian infiltrator with one hand
while he drew his d'k tahg knife with the other, but
his brain finally caught up with his warrior's body,
and he realized he was about to plunge a knife into
the absent heart of Security Chief Odo.
    "Odo!" he snarled. "You fool, I could have killed
you!"
    "Not unless your d'k tahg can penetrate a centi-
meter of titanium," replied the changeling laconi-
cally, tapping his breastplate.
    "Odo makes a pretty compelling argument, if
you ask me," said Chief O'Brien.
    Taking a deep breath and calming his violent
impulse, Worf decided it was honorable to admit
when one was in error, despite the merriment that
might give to the wretched Ferengi. A glare from
the Klingon following the admission silenced
Quark.
    The captain smiled. "Odo has given us the seeds
of an excellent plan. Now let's see if we can't make
them grow into something tactically usable."

    Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax quickly ran
through a pro forma departure checklist with Jul-
ian Bashif; most of her mind was busy living
anywhere but the present, crammed into a tight
and motion-constricting dry suit, an air tank back-
pack, mask, and flippers within easy reach. The
Nylex gloves made her palms itch, and the rolled
up hood pressed uncomfortably against the back of
her neck. I'll bet Julian is as comfortable in Nylex
as he is in a uniform, she griped inwardly.
    Her mind ranged ahead and behind, worrying
about everything in the quadrant. She worried
about Joson Wabak, the jaygee now in command of
the submerged Defiant; she had issued final orders
for him to follow another suggestion from the
strangely helpful Julian Bashir: the seventeen-
hundred-meter-tall antenna that would poke into
the air.
    Subspace communications between the ship and
the surface had been swallowed up as soon as the
planetary defenses spotted them; but perhaps they
could still transmit along the surface. If not, both
Julian and Jadzia had modified their combadges to
send and receive in the radio frequencies of the
electromagnetic spectrum... just in case. In ei-
ther event, she would probably need line-of-sight
with the raised antenna, unless they could bounce
the radio signal off the cloud cover.
    Jadzia fretted about the hull integrity of the ship,
even though she herself had supervised the con-
tainment field modifications; if the hull began to
buckle, Wabak would have to order them to up-
ship and face Cardassian pounding again. She
nervously wondered how long the runabout hull
would withstand the ocean pressure; she was terri-
fied of the possibility of having to scuba to the
surface, despite two run-throughs in the holodecks
with the good Dr. Bashir. And she still fumed
about her performance in the battle, poor enough
by her own standards that she had relieved herself
of command.
    Get a grip, girl, she commanded herself; your
mind is everywhere but here and now. Julian fin-
ished the departure checklist and segued immedi-
ately into the launch checklist; Jadzia absently
responded.
    She touched all the right touchplates, slooshing
with every flex of her dry suit, and got the engines
spun up to speed; then she said, "Off the checklist,
Julian; let's flood the launch bay."
    She glanced at the doctor--always too cute by
half to attract her; she liked her men rugged and
perhaps a little cruel 1ookingmand both of them
took deep breaths as Jadzia pressed the transmit
touchplate: "Amazon II to Defiant; open the flood-
gates, Joson."
    "Aye, aye, Commander," said the Bajoran jaygee.
Dax heard a loud bang, followed by a prolonged
clanking; she imagined an immense anchor chain
winding up somewhere, pulling open the locks to
let the seawater rush into the bay. Looking out the
front viewscreen, she rotated the fish-eye lens to
show the hastily improvised "floodgate"; a stream
of blue green water shot through the small holes,
kicking up a turquoise froth as it poured across the
deckplates and began to fill up the launch bay.
    "I guess around here," said Julian, tugging at his
own hood, rolled and circling his neck, "the Na-
tives go blue-water rafting." Jadzia debated making
a witty comeback, but decided the doctor's joke
was feeble enough not to warrant response. It's just
his way of warding off anxiety, she told herself.
  Soon, the water was crashing around the runa-
bout's legs, and in a few moments, climbing up
high enough to start filling the viewscreen. After
four minutes of flooding, Joson Wabak said,
"Flooding complete; you're clear to launch. Good
luck, Commander."
    "Don't forget about the giant antenna," said
Dax, "and don't hesitate to take off if you have to.
You can probably leave orbit before the Cardassi-
ans spot you."
    "Come on, Jadzia," said Bashir, "he knows what
to do."
    "And Joson. Listen on both subspace and radio
frequencies for our signal ... we might need you
in a hurry."
"Aye, aye, Commander," said the Bajoran.
"Goodbye, Lieutenant," shouted Dr. Bashit,
killing the corn-link. "Jadzia, are you going to
release the docking clamps? Or are we taking the
Defiant with us?"
    Jadzia Dax sighed and touched the release light.
The ship shuddered and immediately began drift-
ing towards the overhead; though she'd been some-
what expecting it--the ship was essentially an air
bubblerathe rapid movement still took her by
surprise. By the time Dax corrected for the drift
and brought the Amazon II under control, they
were dangerously close to the ceiling.
    "Dax to Wabak; open the launch bay doors." The
doors slid open with a grinding noise, much louder
than normal because the seawater conducted sound
so well. The commander piloted the Amazon H
perfectly through the dilated aperture and shot into
the open ocean. Behind her, she knew, the doors
were slowly contracting and the seawater being
pumped out of the bilge. For good or ill, they were
committed to their ocean adventure.

    Ensign Joson Wabak tried desperately not to
tremble under the crushing weight of sixteen hun-
dred meters of seawater above him and a crew of
seventy-eight below. In cornmand! He was twenty-
three years old, a newly minted ensign in Starfleet,
and in command of the U.$.S. Defiant. It was an
awesome and shuddersome thought. Command
might have been intoxicating were they in orbit,
instead of scuppered at the bottom of a purple sea.
    "Containment shields down to forty-six per-
cent," announced his erstwhile classmate, Ensign
N'Kduk-Thag, or Ensign Nick, as Commander
Dax had dubbed it, in its uninflected voice; un-
like Vulcans, who experienced emotions but
suppressed them (Joson had been told), the
Erd'k'teedak literally did not experience emotions
the way Bajorans like Ensign Wabak did. Under
extreme stress, their rational centers might shut
down, and they could begin acting what would be
called mad were it any other race: Joson had
personally seen N'Kduk-Thag marching naked in a
circle around the flagpole at the Academy, chanting
Starfleet general orders at the top of its lungs, in the
middle of finals week one year. Joson steered his
 friend inside before the other cadets could see and
 misunderstand.
    "Measurement of hull distortion up to one point
three percent water seepage detected on outer hull
behind containment shield alongside decks four
through nine suggest ship is in danger of collapse."
    Joson's mouth was dry. How wonderful... my
first command, and I to preside over the Defiant
being crushed like an egg in a clenched fist! 1,640
meters of seawater above them translated to about
a hundred and sixty atmospheres of pressure on a
hull never designed for more than one! Normally,
the Defiant drifted through mostly empty space,
bumping into only the tiniest wisps of hydrogen or
the occasional micrometeor. In a pinch, the ship
was also designed to plough its way into the atmos-
phere of a relatively Bajorlike planet, dealing with
air pressure of perhaps as much as two atmos-
pheres.
    But the water pressure outside was more,than
e'~hty times that maximum rating. The only reason
the ship wasn't already smashed to a mangled hulk
of metal was that Commander Dax had personally
modified the shields to strengthen the external
containment surrounding the hull.
    But not enough, thought Joson glumly. "Ensign
Weymouth," he said, catching the attention of the
third commissioned officer on the bridge; everyone
else was a chief petty officer or below, and refused
to make command decisions--though they often
were overeager with advice.
  "Yeah, Joss?"
    Joson waited, frowning down at her from the
command chair.
  "I mean,--yes, sir?"
    "Instrument check?" She was supposed to follow
with a readout of all the pertinent instruments as
soon as N'Kduk-Thag finished its readout of engi-
neering diagnostics.
    "Oh, sorry!" Stung from her contemplation of
the forward viewer, whose image of the seafloor
(color-corrected for water transparency) seemed to
mesmerize her, Tina fluttered her hands over the
combined navigation and science console. "Uh,
uh, cloak is holding fine; nobody's detected us, I
think--at least they haven't scanned us. Scanning
around the ship; no, nothing but a big..." Wey-
mouth's voice trailed off, and she stared bug-eyed
at the scanner display.
    "Ensign, what is it?" demanded Joson, feeling
tentacles of fear wrap around his own head. Just
what I need, more trouble! Now what? But Wey-
mouth merely sputtered. Blood of the Prophets, it's
just like at the Academy/Cadet Weymouth barely
graduated at the bottom of the class; in fact, she
had to repeat her first Academy cruise, because she
"downed" it--received a failing mark from the

instructor for freezing a several critical junctures.
"Tina, snap out of it! What the hell do you see?"
  "It's... it's huge! And it's coming this way!"
  "What's huge? What's coming this way?"
  Weymouth turned completely around in her seat
to stare at acting-Captain Wabak. "Joss... it's a
sea monster!"
    Both Wabak and N'Kduk-Thag stared at the girl.
"By a sea monster do you mean a large aquatic
creature?" asked Ensign N'Kduk-Thag.
    "By a sea monster," snarled Weymouth, "I mean
this/" She touched a light on her console and put
the short-range scanner image on the forward
viewer.
    Joson Wabak stared at the shadowy, fluctuating
image of a creature more than two kilometers in
length, with thousands of hundred-meter tentacles
waving about, and a gaping maw that was doubtless
the thing's mouth. The "aquatic creature" was
fifteen klicks away but moving fast enough to arrive
within the half hour.
    "N'Kduk-Thag," said Joson weakly, "could you
please do a computer search through the Starfleet
first-contact manual for any references to--ah--
sea monsters?" The ensign-in-command was only
half joking.



0

CHAPTER
        3

"READ ME OUT the hull pressure and containment
integrity, Julian; thirty second intervals."
    "Aye, aye, Jadzia." The doctor unbuckled from
his seat and slooshed to the midsection of the
runabout, reading the strain gauges directly rather
than trusting to the helm instruments; high pres-
sure and strange minerals in the water might mess
up the electronics, but the strain gauges themselves
were so simple as to be virtually foolproof. "One
hundred and sixty-two atmospheres on the outer
hull," he said, "containment field integrity is...
well, call it ninety-six percent. Looking good so far,
Dax."
    She checked her own instruments, and they
differed from the gauges by only three or four
percent, within expected tolerance at this depth.
For the first time, she breathed a sigh of relief; we
might just make this without having to put our
flippers on.
    With every ten meters they rose in the runabout-
submarine, they bled off another atmosphere of
pressure on the hull. Soon Julian was calling out "a
hundred and fifty... hundred forty-nine..."
Dax realized she was sweating; it~just the suit, she
told herself. But the suit wouldn't explain her
pounding heart and the fact that she caught herself
clenching and unclenching her fist so much, her
forearm started to ache.
    "Pressure one forty," said the doctor, "contain-
ment integrity is--"
    The suspense became unbearable. "Yes? Is
what?"
"Well, I don't like the looks of this, Jadzia."
"What? What don't you like?" Dax started to
breathe too quickly, to shallowly; she took a deep
breath, forcibly calmed herself down.
    "Well, it was holding nicely at ninety, ninety-one
percent, but it just dropped to eighty-five in the last
minute. Whoops, eighty; it's dropping fast, Jadzia.
Can we ascend any faster?"
    Dax pointed the Amazon II virtually nose-up
and increased the thrusters as much as she dared;
the ship was never intended to "fly" through water,
just a single atmosphere or the vacuum of space.
She couldn't push the engines any faster than the
fraction necessary to move at ten meters per
second.
    "Wait," shouted Bashit; "pull back, slow
down!"
    Shaking, Dax cut engine power to nearly zero;
vertical motion slowed to a crawl, one meter for
every three seconds... same speed a diver is sup-
posed to ascend, she remembered from the doctor's
scuba instructions. "Julian, talk to me. What's
going on?"
    "It's the speed. The water drag is sapping the
containment field; it's down to sixty percent...
but the drop-off has slowed. We might still make
it. Pressure one hundred atmospheres and fall-
ing."
    Briefly, Jadzia Dax wished she were a Bajoran, so
she could pray to the Prophets. Dry-mouthed, she
increased the rate of ascent to balance field collapse
with reduction of hull pressure.
    Julian continued to call the numbers: "Hull
ninety, field fifty-four percent; hull eighty, field
fifty; hull seventy, field forty-five... we're going to
make it, Dax."
    "Yes we are, yes we're going to make it," she
mumbled. Then she felt a drop of water on her
forehead. Her breath caught in her throat; it's just
sweat, she said, as it rolled down her face and into
her mouth. It tasted of saltwater... but of course,
sweat was saltwater. She spat it out, suddenly
remembering the high cyanide content in the local
flora.

    But after several more seconds, she felt another
drop, then a steady trickle of them. "Julian," she
croaked, "we're leaking."
    "Yes, here too," he confirmed. Jadzia risked a
glance back; the thin, dapper doctor was actually
holding his hand against the skin of the runabout,
swiveling his head back and forth between the two
main gauges. "Fifty atmospheres, thirty percent.
Jadzia, pull your hood on and don mask and
backpack; I'm going to start a controlled flooding
of the cabin."
    "You said we were going to make it," she said,
trying to make light by clicking her tongue.
    "We will," said Julian, with equally false bon
homie; "but I didn't say the Amazon H would."
    Dax said nothing more, just pulled on the rest of
her scuba gear as quickly and efficiently as she
could. By the time she finished, water was spraying
into the cabin from every seam, and several of the
instruments on her panel were giving obviously
fractured readouts.
    She pulled up her regulator, blew a few experi-
mental blasts to clear it, and clamped her teeth
around it. By the time she was ready, the water was
above her waist. She looked at Bashir, and he gave
her the scuba diver's "okay" circle of thumb and
finger; Dax returned it, feeling nowhere near as
okay as she put on.
    Julian removed his regulator long enough to say,
"It's going to be colder than the holodeck. Don't
panic; just do it exactly as we practiced. I'll stay
with you every meter, and I'm an expert diver, so
don't worry."
    Dax could barely hear him, and she felt a sharp
pain in her ears. Of course, she realized; the air
pressure inside the Amazon II was climbing. She
held her nose and blew gently but firmly, clearing
first one ear, then the other with a sharp pop.
    The icy water touched her exposed chin; Julian
was right... it was freezing. The rest of her body
was comfortable in the insulated, electroheated
suit, but she gasped at the coldness on her face and
forgot to breathe for a moment. The water quickly
filled the rest of the air pocket, and the runabout
was entirely full of dark, turgid seawater.
    Without worrying about her buoyancy compen-
sator vest, she joined Julian at the emergency door
crank; he opened the door slowly. Dax felt her ears
plug up again; she checked her depth gauge, and
realized that they were actually sinking. Engines
must've died, she understood. Then Julian tugged
at her arm, and she followed him out the partially
opened door into the darkly luminescent, alien
ocean.
    The doctor reached across and pressed a button
on Jadzia's chest; she seemed to shoot away from
the runabout... but checking her gauge (which
she could barely see, though it was lit) it was the
other way around: she had come to a halt, while the
Amazon H sank rapidly back toward the oblivion
of the ocean floor. That's it, she thought; we're on
our own, for good or ill. After several seconds, the
lights from the runabout faded into the dark,
murky depths.
    She cleared her ears again, twisting her neck to
stretch the Eustachian tubes. Then Bashir caught
her attention and gave a thumbs-up--which in
scuba signalling, she remembered, meant "Let's go
up."
    Dax felt another wave of panic: they were fifty-
five meters deep. That was much deeper than even
expert divers usually went, and Jadzia Dax was
a rank amateur. She started to bolt for the surface,
but Julian anticipated her misstep, and he caught
her by the weight belt. She tried to kick him away,
but she was hampered by the dry suit and the
fluid water, and the doctor was a lithe and wily
wrestler in any event. After several moments, she
calmed down somewhat, though her pulse still
pounded so loud, it shook her entire body with
every beat.
    Julian held up three fingers: "Three," he seemed
to say, "three seconds per meter when ascend-
ing... no faster."
    He started off in a thoroughly improbable direc-
tion-he was going the wrong way. Then Jadzia
noticed the air bubbles expended from her regula-
tor with every strangled exhalation went the same
direction as Dr. Bashir. Well, I might be confused,
but I'm sure the damned bubbles know which way is
up. She followed the doctor, laboring to make each
flipper stroke slow and cautious.
 The darkness terrified her for some reason; she
had never been afraid of the dark before. But this
wasn't just the absence of light; it was palpable, it
reached out and enveloped her. She saw flashes of
bioluminescent fish (or plants; she couldn't quite
tell), but that only made the surrounding darkness
seem lonelier and more solid. Her buoyancy com-
pensator (BC) vented air automatically to maintain
neutral buoyancy.
    She continued to breathe, in and out. "If you
hold your breath when you ascend," the good
doctor had told her, "the compressed air can
expand inside your lungs and force bubbles
through your alveoli and capillaries into your
bloodstream." Additionally, ascending too quickly
caused the nitrogen gas in the diver's blood to come
out of solution and form more bubbles. He went
on to describe the symptoms of "the bends" (rather
gleefully, thought Dax), and pointed out that the
only known cure--putting the victim in a hy-
perbaric pressure tank and taking him "down" to
the point where the gas bubbles dissolve into the
bloodstream again, would be impossible on the
surface of Sierra-Bravo 112-1I (which did not, as
far as they could tell, have any local hospital
facilities).
    Dax watched both her chronometer and pressure
gauge. After a minute, they were still thirty-five
meters deep, but the light was growing steadily
stronger. Things were looking up. Then something
brushed her leg... something enormous.
  She didn't want to look down and see what it
was, but the image drew her eyes against her will.
She saw the dim outline of something vaguely
turtlelike, but at least twenty meters long: there was
a hard shell, and dozens of flipperlike legs sticking
out along the sides.
    The monster swam into the darkness, and Jadzia
gave a startled yelp into her regulator. She grabbed
Bashir, pointing the direction it had vanished, but
he evidently hadn't seen anything. He shook his
head, pointing up.
    They began to ascend again, but Jadzia Dax kept
looking in every direction, hoping to spot it before
it was too late. So big deal, what good is that going
to do? You don't want to be eaten without being
instantly aware of it, eh?
    The monster turtle loomed out of the gloomy
water directly in front of the pair, and this time
there was no mistaking it by either party. The head
suddenly filled Dax's entire field of view; or rather,
heads--there were four of them, each with its own
neck poking out from under the carapace.
    First one then another head pressed close,
opened its mouth, and unrolled a snakelike tongue
with its own eyeball and set of needle teeth at the
end. The tongue-mouths prodded at Dax and
Bashit, feeling them, probably tasting them. Nei-
ther officer dared move. A pair of tongues wrapped
around Jadzia and began pulling her closer to the
mouth.
    She reacted without thinking, reaching down to
draw her dive knife and slashing at the only
tongue she could reach. Julian saw what was
happening and joined her, hacking at the same
tongue as she; he grabbed it and began sawing
back and forth.
    Reacting sluggishly, the head the tongue was
connected to finally uncoiled and jerked back; the
head squirmed left and right, banging into the
heads on either side: they appeared to forget their
prey and turn on each other, and Dax immediately
guessed that rather than being one monster turtle
with four heads, she was looking at four turtles that
shared the same shell.
    As soon as it--they--let go, she almost bolted
toward the surface, but she maintained adaman-
tine control. They continued their slow ascent, and
the monster turtles swam away, still bickering
among themselves. By the time they faded from
view, Jadzia Dax was shaking like a Trill pacheepa
rat that had just escaped an owl.
    A minute and a half later, the light suddenly got
brighter and bluer; she saw the surface of the ocean
above her head like a shimmering, undulating glass
ceiling. Giant Sierra-Bravo kelp loomed in the
distance to one side, and Dax guessed that was the
direction of the ocean shelf they had mapped from
the Defiant; after all, the kelp had to attach to
something, and the trench into which the ship had
settled was much too deep for such large plant
life--not enough sunlight.
  It was harder than ever for Jadzia to restrain
herself and not drive for the surface, glittering just
fifteen meters above them; such a panicky dash
could easily kill her in the absence of effective
medical care. Gritting her teeth (and feeling phan-
tom tongues nipping at her flippers), Jadzia as-
cended, if anything, even more slowly for the glass
ceiling.
    Jadzia Dax spit out her regulator, letting it fall
back down by her side, but before she could get the
snorkel into her mouth, a swell washed over her
head, choking her. She bit down hard on the
snorkel and did all her coughing into the mouth-
piece; after a few moments, she was breathing
without obstruction... her heart pounded, and
she made a mental note for the doctor to examine
her for cyanide poisoning.
    Julian tapped her on the shoulder and removed
his own snorkel for a moment. "Are you all right?"
    She nodded, then shook her head, not wanting to
talk.
    "Ready to head for shore? It's that direction."
He pointed toward the kelp, now visible as thin
stalks that looked almost like celery rising two
meters out of the ocean. Dax nodded again.
    Julian unreeled a thin cord and connected them
together; then he rolled onto his back, making
sure Jadzia did the same, and activated the jets on
their backpacks. They began to chug toward the
shore at the stately pace of one kilometer per
hour.

    Jadzia just kept breathing in and out, with deep,
slow breaths, trying to dispel the last remnants of
her anxiety. Julian hooked his arm in hers to keep
them close enough not to snag the tether on the
alien kelp. By the time she began to see lots of
bright-blue, four-legged fish swirling around her
wake, she felt a bump against her feet; then
realized it was a rock near the shore. Within a few
more seconds, her heels were dragging in the silt,
and she cut her motor at the same time Julian cut
his.
    "Well, Jadzia," he said brightly, "we seem to
have arrived."
    She smiled weakly, stripping off the dry-suit and
submitting to a medical exam; the hard part was
over... now all they had to do was find Benjamin
and the away team somewhere in hundreds of
square kilometers of trackless wasteland.

    Julian Bashir hunched protectively over his
friend, his comrade, his--professionalism, profes-
sionalism. Jadzia Dax was curled into a fetal ball,
clenching her arms around her throbbing, aching
belly. She had evidently swallowed a mouthful of
the poisonous seawater at some point; probably
while on the surface, thought the doctor, The sea-
water contained relatively high traces of cyanogene
and radical cyanogens, which changed within the
human (and Trill) body to a substance uncomforta-
bly close to deadly cyanide. That she had only
partially recovered from the battle wound she had
 recieved only days ago wouldn't help her condi-
 tion.
    Dax had evaded Cardassian ships and the plan-
et's own automated defenses to plunge the Defiant
deep into the deadly ocean waters. Communica-
tions with the away team were impossible through
the electrolyte-laden water, and too dangerous to
boot: if either Cardassian attackers or electronic
planetary defenders intercepted the signal--well,
it would take only a single concussion bomb to tip
the balance, tear away the containment field, and
allow the ship to be crushed beneath hundreds of
atmospheres of pressure.
    It was Dax's idea to replicate a long wire and
send old-fashioned radio waves to communicate,
but of course, there was no way for the away team
to know what was required. So Dax, accompanied
by the obvious candidate, the dashingly brilliant
and resourceful chief medical officer, made a
break for the surface in a runabout. They barely
made it alive--one more alive than the other,
thought Dr. Bashir, looking sadly at his patient,
wondering whether she would make it. Now,
dressed in replicated clothing similar to that of the
native "Natives," they sat on the surface,
grounded, one struggling to live, the other strug-
gling against despair at his own helplessness to
help.
    From his emergency medikit, Bashir extracted
his hypospray and reloaded another dose of the
supposedly all-purpose antipoison supplied by the
Federation--and modified slightly by Dr. Bashir
back aboard Deep Space Nine. He injected the
antipoison and another muscle relaxant near her
lungs (biggest concern) and her stomach (where
most of the pain came from), and Jadzia relaxed as
her pain eased. She was still unconscious from the
sedative he had given her earlier; there was no
reason for her to be awake to fight this mild
poisoning.
    "Correction," said the doctor aloud; "it's not
Deep Space Nine any longer. It's..." What did
the Kai say she was going to call it? Oh yes,
Emissary's Sanctuary. Stupid name! But Bashir
shrugged, trying to make the best of a life that
always seemed balanced on one precipice or an-
other. If he wasn't dreading possible exposure as a
DNA-resequenced freak of unnature, he was being
uprooted and probably split from all his friends
and colleagues and sent to some forsaken
hellhole--possibly to serve as the doctor on a
Rigelian penal colony, perhaps, or worse, as per-
sonal physician to some pompous, overstuffed
admiral nearing retirement.
    What he really wanted, if he could no longer
have his home on DS9-- Yes.t Deep Space Nine, by
no other name.t--would be a berth on a Galaxy-
class starship, like the Enterprise that Miles had left
to join the station (and Worf, too, remembered
Bashir with a touch of a grimace, looking down at
Jadzia).

    "Modern medicine!" he derided; all he could do
was ease her pain a bit and help her own body fight
off the invasion of a toxic foreign substance. If she
were going to survive--and he was now sure she
would--it wouldn't be because of Dr. Julian
Bashir, dashing lieutenant of Starfleet in the
United Federation of Planets. Whether she lived or
died had actually been determined however many
years ago it was that Jadzia was conceived, when
egg and sperm combined with a set of chromo-
somes that decided Jadzia's future resistance to
infection, poison, and injury.
    Though come to think on it, the syrnbiont Dax
might also be helping against the poison. Not even
the Trill themselves knew everything about the
complex interactions between host body and sym-
biont.
    Julian sighed. Modern medicine! Now he had
much more precise and less invasive methods...
so he could monitor his patient's own body desper-
ately fighting off cyanide poisoning. Such progress!
With a full laboratory, he might actually have been
able to do something
    But sitting on the sands of an alien seashore,
staring at the deep, deadly ocean of violet waters
full of poisons and four-headed monster turtles,
lost on a planet already under invasion by
Cardassian-led forces, caught in the gaze of who-
knew-how-many dangerous native life-forms,
helpless in the shadow of technology so vast, it
practically dwarfed the Federation--but so frag-
ile, the Cardassians could turn it off like a light
panel on the Defiantre Julian Bashir felt like a
child lost in a zoo in blackest night, knowing that
all the cage doors were left open for the beasts to
feed.

CHAPTER
       4

JULIAN BASHIR jerked awake, groping wildly for his
medikit. He had been dreaming that Dax was
convulsing herself to death, dreaming he was
asleep and dreaming, but unable to rouse himself
from the dream (in the dream) to save her. He
finally shouted himself awake and grabbed his
kit... but Jadzia was nowhere about.
    He stumbled this- and that-a-way, performing
the "drunkard's walk" of a man just risen, thinking
he had a terribly important task to perform but not
remembering what. Gods, what I wouldn'tpay for a
coffee just now, he thought through a bleary cere-
brum.
    The first evidence of the missing lieutenant com-
mander that Dr. Bashir found was a pair of boots
that looked suspiciously like Dax's. Toiling up a
nearby hilltop in the direction pointed by the
shoes, dropped one then the other, he discovered
her hooded robe. Shirt, pantaloons, and undergar-
ments followed.
    "What now, O mighty one?" the doctor asked
Jadzia.
    She shook her head. "The only obvious course is
to head toward the original landing site. The away
team doesn't have a vehicle, so they can't have got
too far." She looked pensive. "Unless they com-
mandeered something."  "From the Natives?"
    "Natives? No, so far as we could tell, they'd
never even heard of vehicles."
    Bashir stared skeptically at the landscape, im-
possibly rich-blue mountains, brittle clouds, chill,
white sun struggling up a vermillion sky. "This
whole planet smacks of..."  "What?"
     The word wouldn't come for a moment, elusively
 dancing just out of reach of the doctor's cerebrum,
 like the sweet odor that enticed his nostrils, or the
 metallic taste of latinurn and other minerals and
 salts on his tongue. Suddenly, the word he sought
 ventured too close, and he reached out and snared
 it. "Artificiality. The way you described it, they
 have massive amounts of technology but no under-
 lying infrastructure, and no scientific understand-
 ing whatsoever. Does that strike you as likely?"
 Julian was thinking of the implausibility of stone-
 age humans with hyposprays and medical scanners
 but without even the germ theory of disease.
     "Well, I was thinking about that myself. If
 they're the degenerated descendants of an earlier,
 technological worldre"
    "Then there would be broken pieces of techno-
logical infrastructure all over the planet," finished
Julian. "Roadways or launching ports or massive
industrial structures. Not a bunch of high-tech
stone huts and a random scattering of useful tools
and weapons."
    Dax sat down, chin in hand; her neck spots were
dark, almost iridescentmpossibly a sign of intense
thought, figured Julian. "There would also be vehi-
cles," said Dax, "either operative or crashed, and
warp drivemyou knew that some of the toys we
found used elements of warp field technology,
didn't you?"
    "They did?" The doctor was surprised; he had
been too busy with casualties to read all the reports
the team sent up seemingly every few minutes.
"Well, that's all the more reason the whole situa-
tion seems artificial!"
    Dax looked up. "You're right, Julian. I think
these people were put here by someone... and the
entire planetary ecology was transplanted to feed
them. The keepers, whoever they were, sprinkled
the rock with enough toys that the Natives could
play whatever games they wanted, but not enough
for them to leave... or even travel around their
own planet much."
    "But there was never any struggle for survival,"
said Bashir quietly, finding the whole idea creepy
to the point of being frightening, "and without that
struggle..."
    "They never developed a culture, a civilization,
or any consciousness of groups larger than those
who lived in the villages."
  "The planned communities."
    Dax chuckled. "So does that mean the experi-
ment or whatever it was succeeded or failed?"
    Bashir felt a shiver slowly crawl along his spine
like a frozen centipede. "I wonder whether the
Tiffnakis--is that what the villagers you met called
themselves?--are even the same species as the rest
of the Natives? Could they interbreed? Or have
they been separated so long, they're no longer a
single people?" The question seemed a natural to
the doctor.
    She shrugged, dismissing the speculation before
Bashit could finish chewing on it. "Well, no matter.
That makes the case stronger: the only way the
away team could have a skimmer is if they bor-
rowed one from the Cardassians. And my friend,
dear Doctor Bashit, that is exactly what we are
going to have to do."
     Julian smirked--to hide his increasing nervous-
 ness, he realized. "You think they're going to be in
 a generous mood, our Cardassian friends? Or was
 one of your hosts a Drek'la and you remember the
 secret password?"
  "No, but I'm sure if we ask them correctly, they
won't even miss it. Come on, Julian, start a slow,
careful, long-range scan to find the nearest Cardas-
sian military unit. rll scan for ion trails left by the
skimmers. Let's see just how far we're going to have
to walk."

    The sea monster--we're all calling it that now,
thought Joson Wabak with a gulp--continued to
approach the Defiant directly. There was now no
question, as N'Kduk-Thag unemotionally in-
formed him, that the monster had detected them
somehow and was coming to investigate... or
feed.
    Heedless of how it would look to his "troops,"
who after all, were barely less-senior ensigns than
he himself, Joson paced in front of the command
chair, feeling anxiety creep on kitty feet around his
stomach. He hadn't fought in the Resistance; he
was too young when the Cardassians pulled out,
and his mother wouldn't even entertain the idea of
him trucking with the freedom fighters before then.
Joson was uncomfortably aware that he had never
been tested; the swordsmith had never struck him
against the anvil to see which broke.
    Well, neither has any other officer herat he
thought defiantly--a thought that didn't comfort
him, the more he considered it. "Ten minutes to
contact do you have any orders," reported and
asked N'Kduk-Thag, "Ensign Nick," as the beauti-
ful but hard Commander Dax had nicknamed the
sexless Erd'k'teedak, only the fourth of its species
to graduate from the Academy (and only barely; its
academics were not exactly stellar).
    Well, Wabak, you'd better say something!"How's
the containment shielding, Tina?"
    Her own voice was nearly as uninflected as
Ensign Nick's, but in her case, it was probably
because she had resigned herself to death, thought
the Bajoran. "Shields down to thirty-four percent
and not holding."
"You diverted power from the enginesw"
"From everything not necessary for life sup-
port," she reported gloomily. "We've got maybe
thirty more minutes before we're crushed to death.
So maybe we'll have time to be eaten alive by the
sea monster first."
     "That will be enough of that talk, Ensign Wey-
 mouth." Joson was pleased that he sounded more
 confident than he felt. "Prepare to launch from the
 ocean floor and head for the surface."
     Weymouth turned to stare at him. "Joson! The
 structural stress of movement will crush the ship
 immediately!"
     He stared back. "Better to die trying, Ensign
 Weymouth, than huddle here and wait for death to
 hunt us. "As he said the words, Joson Wabak felt an
 amazing sensation flood his senses: fear was
 stamped out like an old campfire; he felt the surge
 of excitement that his brother must have felt when
 he undertook his first mission for the Resist-
 ance... the one that got him captured by the
 Cardassians.

    But Jaras SURVIVED! shouted a triumphant
voice in Joson's head, and the mission was a
success, the entire Occupation Ministry of Justice
was destroyed by three packed-photon bombs smug-
gled inside, and Jaras was one of the smugglers/The
thrill of being a Bajoran who had lived under the
Occupation and seen it thrown off by his own
people, the passion of knowing what he was doing
was right, the certainty of command flooded the
veins and arteries of Ensign Joson Wabak, and he
knew then why he, not Tina and not N'Kduk-Thag,
was chosen to command in Dax's absence.
    "Launch the Defiant, Ensign," he commanded
calmly. "Let's meet our giant friend face to face. If
we're going to die, we'll die like Starfleet officers,
not like a shellclaw being cracked open by a sivass
worm!"
    The command tone shocked Weymouth out of
her torpor; shaking, she jumped to touch the lit
squares on her panel and ramp the engines up to a
hundred and four percent. The Defiant began to
shudder as the landing pods shook loose from the
silt into which they had sunk.
    "May I suggest dropping cloak and powering up
the shields? Better to take the chance of being
detected by the Cardassian ships and defend our-
selves in case the sea monster launches an attack."
    "Excellent suggestion, Mr. N'Kduk-Thag."
Joson waited, but the ensign didn't object to being
called "mister," evidently not truly caring what
gender was arbitrarily assigned. N'Kduk-Thag took
the praise as authorization to proceed; the shields
wouldn't protect against the horrendous pressure
from the water, of course, but if the sea monster
used electromagnetic or other means of attack, or
even tried to ram them, it might save their hides.
Sure hope the spoon-heads have stopped looking for
us, thought Joson; strangely, he felt more nervous
about the Cardassians than about the more imme-
diate dangers of sea pressure and the monster. He
shrugged; tradition, I suppose.
    The Defiant rolled peculiarly as they cruised
forward, and Ensign Weymouth expressed re-
peated frustration at her lack of full helm control.
"We are in the water one should expect a certain
loss of attitude control," remarked Nick; Tina
didn't seem pleased at the unasked for lecture.
    "Can you search ahead with the sensors,
N'Kduk-Thag?" asked Joson; "look for strong cur-
rents that might push us into an underwater moun-
tain."
  "Aye, aye sir."
    "Tina, tie your helm viewer into Nick's sensors;
set it up so the currents are color-coded by intensi-
ty." When the junior ensigns carried out their task,
the ship's motion smoothed out; Weymouth was
able to dodge the strongest currents as if navigating
down a bickett warren. Still, Joson Wabak felt a
peculiar, hollow feeling in his stomach, and his
mouth grew dry; it took him several moments to
diagnose himself: Seasickness! I'm getting seasida
How wonderful. He had known he was subject to
the nausea and dizziness ever since he and his
brother went out fishing in choppy waters one day,
but it had never occurred to him that he would
suffer from motion sickness in a modern-day star-
ship. The inertial dampers were doing their job...
Joson was being nauseated by the visuals through
the forward viewer.
    "Creature constant bearing decreasing distance
contact in three minutes," reported N'Kduk-Thag.
The ensign helpfully called out every thirty sec-
onds, then counted down the final thirty.  "Is it stopping, Nick?"
  "No, sir. Should we halt engines?"
  "Not until it does?
    Tina gritted her teeth. "Oh m'God," she
breathed, "we're playing chicken with a sea mon-
ster?"
    The Bajoran ensign had no idea why Weymouth
was talking about chickens, so he ignored the
question. "Hold your course and speed."
  "Thirty seconds twenty-nine eight seven six..."
  "Sir!"
  "Hold course."
 "Twenty nineteen eighteen--"
  "Joson, for God's sake.t"
    "Eleven ten nine..." Ensign Nick suddenly
stopped speaking. "The creature has stopped con-
tact in twenty-two seconds beep at current rate of
closure."
    Twenty-two seconds aqorn the beep, I suppose.
"Weymouth, wait ten seconds, then all stop." YES!
Wabak grinned, pleased to have won the first
round. But only the first round, warned a little voice
in his head.
    The Defiant pulled to a stop, much more quickly
than it would have in empty space, of course,
because of water friction. The two entities faced
each other: the Federation starship, fully armed but
crippled under the pressure of more than a thou-
sand meters of water still above them--and the
amoeboid sea monster two kilometers long with
thousands of vicious-looking tentacles just waiting
to scoop up the bite-sized morsel and shove it into
the creature's mouth.
    "Let's get a good look at the thing, shall we?"
said Joson, without the shakiness he actually felt.
"N'Kduk-Thag, launch a probe across the mon-
ster's bow, have it circle around and get a good
holo from every angle."
    "Aye aye sir." Nick reached across to the empty
science officer's console and touched a few lit
squares; in the main viewer, Wabak watched the
tiny probe streak away from the ship. The hun-
dreds of tentacles nearby rippled with the probe's
bow wave, and the ripple passed along the crea-
ture's body as the probe circumnavigated it, but
there was no other reaction from the monster,
which continued to regard the Defiant motion-
lessly. The ripples created a gentle, pink current,
which the viewer still obligingly displayed. "I don't
think it can see something as small as the probe,"
ventured Ensign Wabak.

    Just as he finished the observation, and the probe
rounded the back of the sea monster and headed
back toward the ship, a pair of the tentacles un-
coiled and lashed out, grabbing the probe as it
streaked past. The force of the probe's momentum
actually tore off one tentacle, but the other held
fast, dragging the probe, despite its impulse en-
gines, into the maw of the monster.
    Fascinated, the three officers and two security
petty officers on the bridge stared at the probe's
visual transmission: they watched in awe as the
probe was caught by hundreds of thousands of
headless serpents or worms; Joson realized with a
shock that they were tongues, each the size of a tree
trunk! The tongues acted like teeth, pulling the
probe apart and forcing the pieces down the gullet.
After three minutes of wormy mastication, one of
the tongues got hold of some vital piece of electron-
ics, and the probe ceased to transmit.
    "Tell me about the biology of the monster," said
the ensign-in-command, trying to wrench every-
one's attention back to the crisis. "Oh, and Wey-
mouth--how's the hull integrity holding out?"
    "Hull integrity not dropping as fast," said Tina,
cutting off N'Kduk-Thag. "It's down to thirty
percent, dropping one point every minute and a
half, now that we're not so deep."
 Silence. "Defiant to Nick, hello?" asked Joson.
 "If you are ready to hear my report."
    "Yes, N'Kduk-Thag; we are ready to hear your
report." For all that Erd'k'teedak insisted they
experienced no emotions whatsoever, they were
well known to get miffed now and then... in a
distant, intellectual sort of way. Weymouth's re-
port had been the more important, but Nick was
still irritated that she had cut him off.
    "The probe sensors detected meter-thick muscle
striations coiled with veins filled with latinurn--"
"Latinum!"
    "--that would doubtless impede photon torpedo
penetration and of course the heavy mineral and
electrolyte concentration in the seawater would
interfere with the phasers in my judgment we have
little chance of damaging the sea monster in
combat."
    "Thank you, Nick," said Tiny angrily, "that was
worth waiting for."
    Joson abruptly stood again, but stopped himself
from pacing. Think, think, think/What would Sisko
do? "I need options, people. How about a tractor
beam? Can we push it away? Or push ourselves
away from it?"
    Nick played with his console. "No, sir. The
seawater disrupts the beam as it would a phaser."
    "Joson--I mean, sir, why don't we start ascend-
ing very slowly? Maybe we can at least reduce the
pressure on the ship so we don't drown while this
thing is making up its mind whether to eat us."
    Damn/ I shouM have thought of that/ "Do it,
Weymouth."
    The internal com-system chirped. "Engineering
to bridge," said a disembodied voice that Joson
vaguely recognized from the watches he had stood
down there.
  "Wabak," he said absently.
    "Sir, Lieutenant Abdaba here. We finished repli-
cating that floatable antenna the commander or-
dered. Deploy?"
    And may the Prophets ensure that neither the
planetary sensors nor the spoon-heads will think to
check the electromagnetic spectrum for low-tech
radio broadcasts, breathed Joson Wabak silently.
The ionized salts and heavy metals suspended in
the deadly ocean waters would prevent sensors
from picking up the Defiant, especially at such a
depth, but the tip of the antenna would necessarily
have to be "hot," and in a radio-source scan, would
stand out like a magnesium flare in a midnight
marsh.
    Licking his lips, the Bajoran ensign continued.
"Nick, as soon as the antenna clears the shields, I
want you to start transmitting on the radio fre-
quencies of the EM spectrum--get me in contact
with Commander Dax!" "Aye, aye, sir."
    "Sir, we're ascending at one meter per second;
I'm hoping that's so slow we won't attract the
monster's attention."
    "Excellent, Tina. Keep a weather eye peeled." It
was one of the few human expressions he had
learned, but he couldn't tell whether Weymouth
understood it. Maybe she's from a different village
on Earth, he thought.
    Three tense minutes ticked slowly by on the
ship's chronometer; the Defiant had risen slightly
less than two hundred meters, and now they were
even with the center of the sea monster's squirming
mass of tongues. Several flicked out to touchm
taste?mthe ship, but didn't get through the shields.
Then suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, more
than thirty tentacles lashed out and wrapped them-
selves around the ship, wrenching it to a halt and
hurling Wabak to his hands and knees before the
gravitic stabilizers could adjust.
    "Damn it!" he blurted, then caught hold of
himself and stood, lowering himself with dignity
back into his command chair. "Damage report,
Nick?"
    "There is no damage. We have been brought to a
halt. All upward motion terminated. The impulse
engines are unable to break us free of the creature's
grip. I am still transmitting but there has been no
response from the secondary away team."
    "Okay, this is it," said Joson, feeling a horrible
sense of peace and calm permeate his body. "If that
thing pulls us toward its mouth, we open fire with
everything, and to hell with latinum muscles and
electrolytes in the barbarous water."
      Just then, Tina gasped. She half stood, staring
down at her sensor display. "Joson!"  "Ensign, what is it?"
    She stared wildly back and forth from Wabak to
N'Kduk-Thag. "Nick's wrong, sir; there is a re-
sponse to our transmission."
"Dax? You have Commander Dax? Patch her
through!"
    "No sir," said Ensign Weymouth, turning dis-
tinctly pale, "the response isn't from the com-
mander."
    "Then who's responding?" asked Joson, feeling
his preternatural calm vanish in a rush of adrena-
line. He knew what her answer would be a fraction
of a second before she said it.
    "She is," said Tina, pointing at the cavernous,
serpent-toothed mouth that filled the entire for-
ward viewer. "She wants to know where our moth-
er is."
    I wouldn't mind knowing that myself, thought
Joson at first; his next thought was, by the Prophets,
I wonder how they're going to write THIS one up in
my fitness report?



0

CHAPTER
        5

WITH GREAT MISGIVINGS, Captain Benjamin Sisko
had left the Tiffnakis four days behind. I want to
stay and train them, train them some more, keep
training them until they can overwhelm the invaders
like fire ants pulling down a sunbathing lizard/But
he knew it would be an unconscionable waste of his
time: Asta-ha--the hereditary mayor who had
misunderstood the military ranks that Worf had
taught her and had dubbed herself "Mayor-
General"mwas capable all on her own of turning
the remaining two hundred Tiffnakis into soldiers;
she had the help of her commando squad, the
"Terrors of Tiffnaki," whom Sisko and his away
team had finally shocked into recognizing real-
ity... and into recovering their lost legacy of
intelligence, creativity, and tactical thinking.
    She wouldn't do as good a job as the captain and
Worf could, and it would take longer. But there was
a more urgent task for the away team: they had to
knock every power generator on the planet off-line.
Only in this way could the rest of the Natives on
Sierra-Bravo be forced to confront real life... life
without the toys that had been their source for
everything they needed. Otherwise, the invaders
would continue moving from village to village,
cutting the local power and overwhelming the
Natives while they were still in shock from the loss
of their entire, "new tech"-driven world.
    With one stroke, we can shatter their dream,
thought the captain; they will wake up--because
they HAVE TO wake up. By the time the Cardassi-
ans meet them, weeks will have passed for them to
get used to life without the Power. Visions of bow-
and spear-armed Natives ambushing Cardassians,
who shot back with disruptors and concussion
bombs, polluted Sisko's thoughts; it was a horrible,
ugly sight... but not as ugly as the vision he had
seen in reality: Cardassians mowing down abruptly
un-armed Tiffnakis like a farmer scything wheat.
    Sisko closed his eyes against the burning, orange
sun: Please, he prayedmperhaps to the Prophets,
since he was still the Emissary--please, this time,
let me be right.t The other possibility, as Chief
O'Brien had cheerfully pointed out, was that
knocking all the power off-line would result in
mass starvation, death by exposure, and a quick
and craven surrender to the Cardassians by the few
remaining survivors. Well, somebody has to find the
dark lining, I suppose, and it always seemed to be
the chief, for some reason.
    For four days, the away team had made excellent
time. The toys that Sisko had forbidden to the
Tiffnaki commandos and confiscated off their per-
sons came in handy to smooth out the trail the
Federation crew followed: the force beam flattened
a path through scrub; the antigravs got them up
and down cliffs; and the death rays worked won-
ders in cutting down small blue trees for bridges
across rushing, metal-sparkling rivers whose waters
were deadly to anybody but the Natives.
    But in four days, despite the advantages, the
team had made only sixty kilometers, a remarkable
showing but not enough, not nearly fast enough! At
the moment, they sat atop a bluff overlooking a
deathly hot valley of bright, latinum-laced sand
they would have to cross--all sixty klicks of it--
and they were already running lower in com-rats
than Sisko had estimated.
    O'Brien sat on the edge of the cliff, dangling his
legs over and staring bleakly at the wasteland
below. Quark paced round and round a circle,
mumbling to himself something that sounded sus-
piciously like "latinum, latinurn everywhere, nor
any strip to spend." If Coleridge were alive today,
he'd be spinning in his grave, thought the captain
mirthlessly.
    Odo was a puddle, far away and secluded from
the rest of the team; they had stopped ostensibly
because the changeling had stayed too long in a
solid state and was desperate to collapse and liqui-
fy. But Sisko knew the rest of the away team,
himself included, were grateful for the chance to
rest a complete day, sleeping as they could in the
bright sunlight, readying themselves for the three-
night trek across the desert.
    The captain himself sat cross-legged on the bluff,
by choice too far from the edge to see the sands
below, squinting against the sun as it crawled in the
direction they had arbitrarily labeled west. "Worf,"
he said, his first word in an hour.
    The sleeping Klingon rose grunting, looking
about to see who had called him from dreams of
siege and liege. Sisko repeated the soft command,
and Commander Worf struggled to his feet, joining
the captain. "Yes, sir?"
    "Worf, we are still a hundred and forty kilome-
ters from the Cardassian landing spot, and sixty of
those kilometers are across that." Sisko nodded
past O'Brien toward the cliff and the sands below.
"Yes, I am aware of that fact, sir."
    "You are quartermaster. How many days rations
do we have left?"
    Wolf worked his face, reluctant to answer. "Four
days if we stretch it, Captain."
"And how long would you estimate it will take us
to reach the launch facility?"
    Worf said nothing; Sisko continued the narrative
himself, wishing he had another answer. "Three
days across the desert, if we're lucky; then Kahless
knows how long to cross that mountain range. At
this rate, Commander, we're not going to make it,
are we?"
  Worf stopped figiting. "No. We are not."
    "And the damned invaders are going to win."
Worf didn't speak; Sisko waited a beat, then turned
to his real purpose. "Worf, you know all the
legends and histories of the ancient Klingon wars,
don't you?"
    "I would not say all, sir; I do know a great
many."
    "We need that expertise now, Worf. Think,
think! How would Kahless have gotten us to the
enemy before our food ran out?"
    Lieutenant Commander Worf stood, folding his
arms sternly, staring at the horizon, the distant
mountains they eventually would have to cross.
"Even the Emperor Kahless had mechanized ar-
mor," mumbled the Klingon petulantly.
    "Then think back farther! Think of the age of
heroes, before any of the technology we take so
much for granted. How the hell did they move
armies around in those days?"
     Worf turned back to Captain Sisko. "We used
 pack animals, of course. Riding beasts, and beasts
 to carry the gear."

    Sisko nodded; it was the germ of a thought that
had been scratching at his own forebrain for
days... Worf had pulled it into the open so Sisko
could finally examine it. "Yes... yes! That's it,
that's what we're missing. If we were a cavalry unit,
we might actually be able to make a hundred and
twenty kilometers in four days... especially since
we could feed and water the horses on native grass
and native water!"
    O'Brien had turned around during the conversa-
tion; now he said in excitement, "Captain! I think
I've seen creatures here that might make almost
adequate horses!"
"Which animals are you talking about?"
O'Brien stretched his arms to indicate great size.
"They're huge beasties, they've got six legs and I
think some kind of fur, unless it's needles. Their
heads are kind of split down the middle, so they
look like a double-barreled phaser?"
    "Those giant six-leggers?" asked the captain,
picturing the terrifying beasts in his mind. "Can
they be domesticated?"
    "Beggin' your pardon, sir, but do we have any
choice?"
    The Ferengi abruptly ceased his pacing and
stared back and forth among the other participants
in the conversation. "Have you people lost your
minds? You expect me to ride on top of some
hideous, two-headed, six-legged monster for hun-
dreds and hundreds of kilometers? You're insane!
Forget it!" His fear was so palpable that Sisko
almost felt sorry for the little fellow.
    Almost. But there really was no other option.
"Quark, you're just going to have to deal with it!"
snapped O'Brien, saying essentially what the cap-
tain had been about to say--but a lot less diplo-
matically.
    Worf grinned wolfishly. "I am sure the captain
would allow you to stay behind--and leave your
combat rations to the rest of us." Quark snorted
indignantly and turned his back on the Kling-
on... something he never would have done had
the two of them been alone in a dark corner of the
station.
      "Gentlemen," said Captain Sisko, "I believe we
have a plan: Chief, you'd better get busy."
  "Me? Doing what?"
    "You've got a couple more hours before Odo
rejoins us... and I want you to become an expert
in lassoing wild monsters."
    The explosion from the chief was enough to keep
the captain amused for more than half an hour, by
the end of which O'Brien was furiously hurling a
loop of rope from the survival packs the Defiant
beamed down; he hurled the loop at a tree trunk
that Worf held aloft with the antigravity device--
the method the pair had settled upon for lassoing
the local "horses." Next couple hours of training is
going to be absolutely RIVETING, decided Benja-
min Sisko.
qc ~

    Kai Winn woke suddenly in the night. She
sat bolt upright in bed, listening for the noise that
had shaken her from her memories; but it was
elusively absent. Her heart raced... at first, it
was all she could concentrate upon, for the doc-
tors had warned her that she very much needed to
keep herself calm if she didn't want another "cor-
onary incident," as they euphemistically put it.
No, no~ she warned herself; that's not the way to do
it!
    Instead, the Kai commenced a prayer to the
Prophets, a child's exercise, actually; she recited
the first syllable, then the first two, then the first
three, and so forth, finally reciting the prayer song
in its entirety on the thirty-third repetition...
then repeated. It worked to slow her heart, but her
nerves still jangled like an iron bell suspended in a
stiff breeze.
"Kai Winn to Major Kira," she said.
"Kira--Kai, either come take command or leave
me alone! We're in the middle of a fire fight here!"
In the background, Winn heard the shout of orders,
damage reports, too indistinct to make out over the
com-link. She briefly considered rising, but she was
dead tired... and if the station were in imminent
danger of being lost, Kira would have awakened
her.
 "Are we holding our own, child?"
    "Yes, damn it! I sent out the militia in pressure
suits and it's hand to hand, Well, phaser to disrup-
tor between DS-Nine--I mean, Emissary ~ Sanctu-
ary and the alien ships. We still don't know who
they are. Now please, my Kai, clear the line so I can
direct the fight!"
    "I trust you, child. Awaken me in two hours or
immediately if there is a breach."
    "Aye, aye, Kai. Kira out." The major rudely cut
the link herself, but Winn forgave her young pro-
tege; Nerys had much to learn... and she was
learning even now. Calm patience was the priceless
gift of the Prophets.
    The Kai rose, pushing her pudgy feet firmly into
the slippers she had owned since--well, since she
was a sister in service to her "master," Gul Ragat.
She walked to the shelf that used to contain a stack
of Starfleet manuals on data clips when the Kai's
quarters used to be the Emissary's office. Now the
shelf had an infinitely higher purpose: it supported
a large, nondescript box with a split front, a front
the Kai touched reverently.
    I must never turn to Them for trivial or personal
matters, she thought to herself, as if once again
lecturing in a religious school, a task she had not
performed for many, many years. This is not a
personal matter, she told herself firmly, and this is
no trivial question. The survival of Bajor may be at
stake!
    Nervously, fearing that she may have everything
all wrong and could be offending the Prophets, Kai
Winn took a deep breath and opened the doors
wide. The Orb was so brilliant, it burned right
through her eyes, searing the back of her skull. She
grimaced; she was, after all, a middle-aged wom-
an-no longer in her physical prime, and not the
Emissary. But she was the Kai; and the Prophets,
though they burned and battered, had never failed
their people.
    "Show me," she whispered against the light,
"show me Your will. Show me what I must know!"
    Shocked, Winn found herself not looking into
the minds or hearts of the enemies still attacking
the station, not at the Federation or the Domin-
ion, not even in her own time; she found herself
back in the selfsame dream from which she had
lately escaped by a panicked leap into conscious-
ness. The Prophets wanted her to remember; the
Prophets wanted her past. I will give it to Them,
she yielded.
    It made no sense to Kai Winn. But then, did it
need to?


CHAPTER
        6

THIRTY YEARS AGO

THE CARAVN of Gul Ragat assembled in the court-
yard outside the keep of the palace that once
belonged to the town of Shiistir and served as the
home of ex-Governor Riasha Lyas; now, the same
building of light and color sheltered the conscience
and the ears of Legate Migar from the lamentations
of Sister Winn's people. What a shock, thought the
priestess, that the stone walls of this bloody place
don't tumble to the earth in horror at what they've
seen! They looked as solid as ever, ready to stand
for centuries of tyranny or freedom, uncaring, pink
and cold as stone.
    The outer wall was retained, but it was largely
ceremonial; the protective function was taken by a
force shield the Cardassians had erected, since they
(unlike poor Lyas) had much to fear from assassins
and saboteurs. The interior wall was shaped like a
pair of octagons connected by a wide, rectangular
circus maximus used for the bloody sports of the
current masters--blood games that remained bar-
baric, no matter how refined and decadent the
rules. I cannot understand why the Prophets have
not crushed this place/she screamed to herselfi
    Sister Winn was the only cleric among the Bajor-
an mass of Gul Ragat's household; she had no idea
whether she had a religious counterpart among the
Cardassians... in fact, she wasn't even sure
whether they even had a religion beyond worship
of the state. If there were a Cardassian holy man or
woman, he had not seen fit to knock elbows with
the Bajorans. Among the gul's Cardassian retinue
were two majors and his captain of the guard (one
Colonel Baek); sixteen sergeants and soldiers
astride individual skimmers; Neemak Counselor,
the gul's personal secretary and attorney; a brutish
Cardassian valet, Gavak-Gavak Das, who oversaw
the Bajoran servants (Sister Winn's immediate
boss, except that Gul Ragat had taken a liking to
her, and she generally reported directly to the gul
himself); Ragat's skimmer pilot; and a pair of
mechanics/secretaries operating under the com-
mand of Neemak Counselor.
    Gul Ragat also traveled with his household staff
of Bajorans, numbering forty-two, including Sister
Winn... who should have been considered the
"slave overseer," since she was the nearest thing to
an authority figure; but she eschewed the job,
claiming a complete lack of "command presence,"
and Hersaaka Toos, a luckless impulse engine
repair-crew foreman was given the task.
    No command presence! The reality was that
Sister Winn was already looking ahead to the days
when Cardassia would be expelled from Bajor; she
had seen the vision in her dreams, the coming of
the Emissary, the intervention of the Prophets--
and very frankly, she wanted a place guiding the
destiny of her people when they were free. Politi-
cally, Sister Winn could never allow even a hint
that she might have collaborated with the Cardassi-
ans; it would spell the death of her personal ambi-
tions.
    Winn was supposed to report with the others at
zero-eight hundred (Cardassians were enamored of
military time), but she had a guess how long it
would take old Gavak-Gavak and Hersaaka Toos to
muster sixty-five people in some semblance of
order to satisfy the farewell inspection by Legate
Migar and Gul Dukat; she wandered onto the scene
a half hour late and stepped into her place, and she
was not the last.
    The contrast between the twenty-five Cardassi-
ans and the forty-two Bajorans was remarkable,
though hardly worth remarking: Cardassians mus-
tered at attention because they were a proud race of
lordly conquerers who had yet to suffer any signifi-
cant defeat in their drive to expand the Empire to
Hell and back; the Bajorans stood glumly still in
the cold wind because they didn't want to be lashed
by Gavak-Gavak Das, who enjoyed his work all too
thoroughly.
    Still, even when squat Gavak-Gavak expertly
flicked his whip end to graze the priestess's cheek,
stinging but not drawing blood this time, she found
herself hating him far less than she hated and
despised the kindly, thoughtful Gul Ragat! "At
least Das is an honest racist," she had told a
divinity student three years earlier, when he passed
briefly through Ragat's household. "Das is a brutal
beast and he expects us to hate him for it. But the
gul wants not just our obedience but our love."
  "That's worse?"
    "He oppresses us, child, but he bears false wit-
ness against himself, absolving himself of the
charge of slavery by being a nice old slavemaster!
His is infinitely the greater evil in the eyes of the
Prophets." The student never quite got it; Sister
Winn was saddened to hear that he was caught
raiding the next year and was hanged.
    When Gul Ragat and sixty-five lesser mortals
were finally mustered under the chilly, gray sky,
Old Migar and cold-eyed Dukat inspected them.
Migar cared only for the ritual; it was power-
hungry Dukat, the master of Terok Nor, orbiting
Bajor like the grim hand of contagion (for wherever
its shadow fell was death), who pulled Cardassians
and Bajorans alike out of line and set them to
perform brutal physical exercise in the frozen,
muddy courtyard for such heinous crimes as un-
polished boots, misaligned buttons, or "a surly
attitude." The gul had one eye on the prefecture of
all Bajor and the other on the advancing age and
retirement (or sudden death) of Legate Migar,
which still left him the eyes in the back of his head
to spot treacherous malingerers and slackers. Even
Gul Dukat, however, passed lightly over Sister
Winn; he knew her to be her "master's" favorite,
and as the saying went, Rank Hath Its Privileges.
    Eventually, even Dukat was satisfied with the
shininess of the glittering, silver filligree across
the doublets of deepest military purple, with the
velvet-red uniforms of the servants, and with the
polish on the personal skimmers and armaments of
the soldiery, little though they could shine on such
a gloom day; and he passed in quick review one
more time before vanishing back inside the
house--to the banquet and open bar that Winn
knew awaited him there. Migar sighed and fol-
lowed Dukat, who technically outranked the gover-
nor, and at last, Gul Ragat could breathe in relief
again and order Gavak-Gavak to get the splendid
column moving--theoretically toward the village
of Vir-Hakar in Belshakarri, their home... but in
reality, on the road to Riis--where all threads of
this tapestry shall join, thought Sister Winn.

CHAPTER
        7

WINN THOUGHT she knew the route that Gul Ragat
would follow; there was one obvious road from the
palace to the river and Riis: along Surface 92, as
the Cardassians called it. The Bajorans had a more
colorful name: the Way of Wallows, because of the
soft, marshy ground surrounding the road that in
ancient times had been used to wallow tiraks being
driven to the slaughter pens in Riis; there were
slaughter pens no longer in peaceful Riis, but the
road to the city founded three millennia ago by the
holy man Kilikarri remained. Sister Winn had
followed the road many times, though usually at
many kilometers per hour skimming two or twenty
meters above the ground, and she visualized the
entire road in her mind, trying to figure the best
place to desert.
    She knew her holos were much more important
than a single action in Riis, a few cell leaders who
could not betray the Resistance even if they
wanted--and the Cardassians could, of course,
make them want--because of the elaborate organi-
zation ofcutouts and false fronts; for all that, Winn
found herself unable to condemn her fellow free-
dom fighters to capture, torture, and death, no
matter what the cause. There were others, even
other priests--Vedek Opaka sprang to mind--who
were much more ruthless than she, and she knew,
intellectually, it was a failing. But I just can't do it!
she railed. She had to find a way to warn the Riis
cell to call off the raid.
    Her best chance would come during the second
half of the march; Surface 92, which the Cardassi-
ans had straightened, now ran directly over the
wallows across a series of high, arched bridges,
some rising fifty meters above the surface. But
there were places where the drop was only ten
meters into soft mud, and Sister Winn decided that
even she, not the most athletic of women, could
survive that.
    But then what? she pondered; getting off the road
without being spotted was the easy part; traversing
kilometers of slick, deep mud and swampy, stag-
nant lakes on foot would be the real test. She knew
of a swamper, Velda Reeks, who was friendly to the
Resistance; the woman had hidden fugitives be-
fore. But she lived four kilometers from the
road... and those would be four kilometers of
ghastly effort and terrible risk: if Gul Ragat missed
her and thought to scan the surrounding swamp
before she made it to Velda's shielded cabin, he
would spot her in an instant and send soldiers to
pick her up. She would be searched, the holos
found... and not only would she be executed, but
the cell at Riis would be thoroughly compromised,
and perhaps even ¥elda Reeks to boot!
    Sister Winn would have to be over the wall, into
the mud, and away for several hours before anyone
noticed she was missing; that meant a night escape,
of course... but where would the gul decide to
camp? He was restricted to the foot speed of the
Bajorans, since no Cardassian in his right mind
would leave his servants behind and rush on ahead;
thus, it would take three days to get to Riis, which
waited like an open hand upon the Shakiristi and
its tributaries. But would they camp near enough to
Velda's cabin that Winn could make it, assuming
everything else went well?
    She thought of one more stratagem: if she some-
how could get into a skimmer, she might be able to
program it to head out over the swamp in some
other direction; then, when she turned up absent,
the Cardassians would assume she had stolen the
vehicle and would waste time following it. That
might confuse them enough that they would never
institute a thorough search that might uncover
Velda's cabin.
    The road to Riis was painful; there was no grassy
median, as had been the case when it was a small
Bajoran road, because Cardassians never traveled
by foot; Surface 92 was constructed of a specially
hardened plastic that could withstand the wheeled
and tracked vehicles the Cardassians used for
trucking heavy military equipment where antigrays
were unavailable or not powerful enough. Winn
wore only household shoes, and her feet were
rubbed raw within the first few kilometers.
    She had never walked so far without a rest. The
gul was anxious to get to Riis before the uprising
that only he knew about, and he drove his house-
hold mercilessly. Coming to the bulletin-tea was
much easier; there was no rush, and they made
only eight or nine kilometers per day, with plenty
of time to sit and eat, sip refreshments, and other-
wise "bathe their toes," as the saying went. Now,
Gul Ragat pushed for twice that pace, and Sister
Winn grimaced with every step.
    Others were hardened to the pace, having lived
rougher lives than the priestess; she didn't allow
herself to complain, since she only suffered because
she hadn't suffered as much as the others! But the
blisters were real, and her pain was hard to bear.
Only Winn's incessant prayers to the Prophets
allowed her to endure that first day.
    In the first of the two nights they would spend on
the road, she showed her feet to Hersaaka Toos,
and he sucked in a breath through clenched teeth;
they did look ghastly. He sent her to the healer,
Daana, who prescribed balms and a foot wrap that
soothed much of the pain and allowed the priestess
to walk relatively normally again. Already, howev-
er, the whole "survival-evasion-resistance-escape"
scenario was smelling less exciting and more im-
plausible.
    While the Bajorans set up the gul's camp, Sister
Winn cased the field in the guise of hearing confes-
sions and administering prayer and penance. Car-
dassian camps were uniform, and it was a matter of
pride within Gul Ragat that his camp would break
not the slightest letter of the law or breath of
tradition. The night's camp centered around the
manor of an unfortunate Bajoran farmer, who had
stupidly chosen to live alongside a trade route and
foolishly built up a successful farm: Mr. Farmer
and his family were temporarily exiled to a small
inn thirty kilometers away, driven in the gul's
personal skimmer, while the entourage of Gul
Ragat began pitching tents on one of the farmer's
fields.
    In an effort to be nice about it, the gul ignorantly
picked a field that looked empty, but in reality, it
was newly planted, a fact not brought to Gul
Ragat's attention for half an hour and the signifi-
cance of which took him another half hour to
understand. By the time he moved the camp, the
newly planted seeds were trampled and scattered;
if they grew at all, they would grow haphazardly,
not in rows, and be almost impossible to weed and
water properly. Winn spent the time wincing and
desperately praying to the Prophets that the farmer
wouldn't be completely ruined, as so many others
had been.
    Gul Ragat situated himself in the main house, of
course, and his soldiers pitched tents in orderly
rows upon a field that had been ploughed but not
yet planted; it would have to be reploughed, but
that was only a matter of a few extra days work for
the owner. The Bajoran servants were a special
concern of Gul Ragat's; he worried constantly that
they, too, were well weeded and watered. In conse-
quence, he ordered Gavak-Gavak Das to house the
Bajorans in the livestock barns... which the over-
seer promptly did by turning out all the stock and
chasing it away.
    "Ah, they'll come back, you whining priestess!"
snarled Gavak-Gavak to Sister Winn when she
protested. Winn stared after the departing rumps
and hooves; true, the farmer would probably be
able to get most of his dairy herd back again, but at
what cost? It would probably take weeks to round
them all up and truck them back to the farm!
    The farmer's land--Winn never did find out the
man's name--was at the edge of the mud flats, the
Wallows; for the next two days, Surface 92 trav-
ersed a causeway... and the cabin of Velda Reeks
was just about halfway between the farmer's hold
and Riis. Please, please, prayed the priestess fer-
vently, let us stop tomorrow night near enough that
I can at least try!

    Winn slept fitfully that night. Not only was she
unused to camping out--she hadn't slept well on
the road to Legate Migar's palace either--and not
only could she not tolerate the dirty smell of
animals, which permeated every cranny and crev-
ice of the barn like a miasma, along with much
animal by-product; but worst of all, she felt more
strongly than usual the restless ghosts of Bajorans
slain by evil Cardassians, by faceless bureaucracy,
and especially by well-meaning apologists like Gul
Ragat. She felt surrounded by the indifferent effi-
ciency of the Cardassian soldiers, who joked about
the inhumanity of the Bajorans without the least
concern for the Bajorans at their backs, who out-
numbered them almost three to one! And of
course, no Bajoran servant dared even raise an
angry glance at a Cardassian, lest he be made an
example for the rest.
    Hersaaka Toos, the Bajoran foreman, seemed the
most oppressed by the burden of serving his plan-
et's tyrants, and Sister Winn felt a terrible twinge
of guilt that she had refused the job herself, thus
forcing Hersaaka to be the hated emissary between
Bajor and Cardassia, in the person of Gavak-
Gavak. The stink of collaboration was already
starting to follow Hersaaka about as the odor of
animals now adhered to the priestess... and it
was entirely unjustified, since Hersaaka had no real
choice in the matter. Winn prayed for guidance:
ShouM I have accepted the stain upon myself and to
blazes with the consequences for Bajor when we're
finally free of the Cardassian blot? The Prophets
enigmatically remained silent.
    Sister Winn had heard of the Orbs, of course;
every priest knew of them. Perhaps someday, I'll
look into one and let the light of the Prophets shine
fully on me... and then I'll know, once and for all.
"For all" was right: if the Prophets found the
gazing eye wanting, they were rumored to burn it
out, along with the brain of the unworthy owner.
    She shook her head, sweeping out the cobwebs of
guilt and self-doubt; she couldn't afford those now!
Sister Winn had a job, a job that would have been
impossible were she as closely monitored as was
poor Hersaaka Toos. On her peregrination, she
paid especial attention to the movements of the
sentries. Like virtually everything else Cardassian,
the sentries had ritualized their task to the point of
predictability: she watched for only a few minutes
and was able to predict where every guard would
be at any moment.
    In any task that became routine to that extent,
there were gaps where nobody was looking in a
particular direction at a precise moment; there
were several, in fact. Winn knew the pattern would
be repeated exactly at the next camp--they were
Cardassians, after allmsubject only to the limita-
tions of the terrain (no farmhouses in that section
of Surface 92, for example; Gul Ragat would be in
his own pavillion, which was still carefully stowed
at the moment).

    By the time she finished her circuit of the camp,
talking to each Bajoran, as was her primary duty,
Resistance or no Resistance, Sister Winn had con-
structed what she hoped was a good escape plan.
Because Ragat was so "benevolent" a master by
Cardassian standards, escapes from his plantation
were quite rare; Bajorans knew the penalty for
running away from Gul Ragat's honor farm was
either execution, or if the slave escaped that fate,
transportation up to Terok Nor... which might
actually be worse: Gul Dukat's cruelty was legen-
dary across all five points of the globe. But the
consequence had lulled Gul Ragat's sentries to the
point of somnambulation, and she hoped any slop
in her plan would fall unnoticed.
    When she returned to her own tent, which she
shared with two other women, she collapsed sud-
denly onto her sleeping mat, so exhausted she
surprised even herself. As she lay on her back
feeling her legs and especially feet throb with every
beat of her pulse, she tried to understand her
fatigue: she was always tired after a long march, but
not this tired! And she had been fine a few mo-
ments before, circumnavigating the camp. It~fear,
she realized at last; my body is starting to under-
stand just how deadly a game I'm planning. But
there was nothing she could do about that; a
priestess could not allow fear of physical death to
interfere with a duty of the soul--as she was
convinced the fight for Bajor's independence truly
was. I think I know how the holy martyrs felt,
thought Winn bitterly, and she knew the thought
was not even blasphemous.
    Sister Winn had one more duty that evening, to
lead the Bajorans in their prayers over supper. She
roused herself at the proper time and led the
prayer, then forced her eyes to remain open long
enough to eat some food and engage, somewhat
incoherently, in a little light banter. She always
believed in the necessity of keeping up appear-
ances; appearances were more important than a lot
of people admitted: morale was based almost en-
tirely upon the most superficial aspects of one's
spiritual leaders, for example. Then as soon as she
could reasonably excuse herself, she stumbled back
to her tent and fell instantly into a deep sleep, at
least two hours before the others.
    She woke with a start, heart racing and breath
coming quick and heavy, an hour before dawn--a
time she rarely saw on a normal day. She could
hear only the Bajoran cooks stirring, banging pots,
and of course the ever present, clockwork plodding
of the Cardassian sentries. She rose too quickly and
had to wait for a wash of dizziness to depart as her
blood pressure increased. Then, for decency's sake,
she wrapped a morning cloak about her already too
warm body and walked into the middle of the
camp to begin the morning prayers... rather ear-
lier than was usual for her.
    One of the Cardassian sentries noticed; he was
new, and his shift always ended before Sister Winn
normally bestirred herself, so he had never seen
her move through her rituals. He approached,
scowling.
  "What d'you think you're doing?"
  "I think I'm praying, most gracious sir."
  "Why?"
    Winn looked up at the boy, no more than twenty,
his face stamped with the permanent, ugly sneer of
the bully. I'll bet you tried to join the Obsidian
Order and were rejected because of a low IQ, she
thought--then instantly apologized to the Proph-
ets for the uncharity. "Sir, I am praying because I
am the sister, the priestess you would say, to all
these Bajorans. It is my duty to pray to the Proph-
ets at certain times of the day, morning being one
of those times. Overseer Gavak-Gavak Das will
vouch for my duties, most benevolent corporal."
    She waited politely a moment or two for re-
sponse, but the boy was still thinking; she returned
to her prayers, but he interrupted her once more.
"All right, then... but get to it! Stop 1ollygagging,
or I'll have you reassigned to hauling luggage." He
could do no such thing, of course; Gul Ragat would
never allow it. But Winn knew how to handle such
bullies as this young corporal: she bowed deeply to
the boy and thanked him profusely, promising to
speed up the prayers if he so commanded. Then she
took exactly as long as she always did, of course;
how was he to know? The corporal of the guard
stalked off, seemingly pleased that he had pushed
around another Bajoran.
 Winn started to worry; if the same guard were on
duty tomorrow night when she was to make her
escape, he might be especially alert; he was young
and only recently transferred to the service of Gul
Ragat from... from where? Sister Winn remem-
bered with a sinking heart: the corporal was just
transferred from the orbital station, Terok Nor; he
had received his training in the security forces of
Gul Dukat! Yes, this angry chiM is definitely one to
avoid, she told herself.
    The second day's march was so much easier than
the first that Sister Winn almost considered com-
mencing an exercise program at the gymnasium at
Gul Ragat's; I must be terribly out of shape! She had
noticed a lot of her clothes getting rather tight in
recent months, but she had assumed they were
shrinking for some reason.
    Healer Daana's footwraps worked wonders.
Winn's feet stopped hurting entirely after the first
few kilometers, when the circulation really started
reaching her toes; Daana had added pads to strate-
gic points in the priestess's shoes as well as wraps
to prevent her toes from sliding against each other.
By the time Gul Ragat called a halt for the midday
meal, Winn felt her excitement growing: I'm really
going to do it/she nearly said aloud. The horizon
seemed so close in the still, chilly air, she thought
she might be able to reach out and touch its line.
    Surface 92 was so straight and level, it was
virtually impossible not to become hypnotized by
the steady tramping. The air was too cold for heat
mirages, so Winn was denied even that slight solace
of illusory motion. But she kept track of their
progress by the distance markers. She spent some
time mentally calculating where was the closest
point to the cabin of Velda Reeks... she wasn't
sure of the numbers--math was never the priest-
ess's highest subjectrebut it didn't appear as
though they would get quite that far before camp-
ing for the night.
    Sister Winn felt an expletive without even quite
vocalizing it to herself, so well-trained was her
mind. It meant quite a bit of extra travel through
the thigh-deep mud, and more of a chance of
misjudging the direction and missing the cabin
entirely. It was shielded against Cardassian sen-
sors, after all, so the best she could do was head in
approximately the right direction while beaming a
tight, low-amplitude message saying who she was,
hoping that Velda Reeks found her.
    IF, she thought, I can steal a sensor-
communicator from the Cardassians, that is. That
made two overt acts before she could escape: break
into a skimmer and send it along a false trail and
liberate some communications gear. But with her
feet feeling so good, Sister Winn was convinced she
could do anything!
    An idea occurred to her; she increased her pace,
passing several ranks of Bajorans and then the gul's
Cardassian honor guard. No one moved to stop
her; she was well-known among all the gul's inti-
mates.
  "My Lord," she said, hurrying to catch up with
Ragat's open-top skimmer limousine, "M'Lord, I
must speak to you! It is urgent."
    Gul Ragat looked about in surprise; seeing Sister
Winn walking beside his car, he automatically
tapped the code to open the bird wing door. His
bodyguard and Neemak Counselor each grabbed
an arm and hoisted the priestess into the car with
them.
    The guard was just another Cardassian soldier,
one of the commissioned officers selected for the
honor that day. But Neemak always made Winn's
flesh creep: his face was too smooth for a Cardassi-
an, for one point, and he had the faintest sugges-
tion of nose ridges, giving Winn the disturbing
impression that he might actually be a cross be-
tween Cardassian and Bajoran. His eyes were set
too far apart, and his mouth a slight bit too wide;
Neemak Counselor had a tendency to look to the
left of the person he was addressing, and when he
wet his lips, which was frequently, his tongue
darted in and out like a reptile.
    He didn't dress like a Cardassian, either; he wore
a simple red smock with no markings, nothing even
to indicate planet of origin. Winn had no idea how
good an attorney he was, but he was reputed to
"know everyone," which in Cardassian courts
probably made him very successful indeed.
Neemak stared to the left of Sister Winn while she
addressed the gul... she knew he was watching
her.
 "Now, now," said Gul Ragat, making calming
gestures as though she were a frightened child.
"What is so important, Sister Winn? Come now,
speak up!"
    "My Lord, I--" Well, smart-shoes, what IS so
important? At once, Winn's mind went totally
blank. She had thought of something, and it was
such a good idea!
    "My Lord Gul," said Neemak, his mouth twitch-
ing as he stared out the window of the skimmer,
"surely your benevolence toward these servants
knows no bounds. For I am unaware of any other
personage of your exalted rank who would take one
of them into his own skimmer. Perhaps we should
inquire whether another Bajoran's feet hurt?"
    "Yes, ah, yes," mumbled Gul Ragat, tugging at
his collar, "I'm sure there's no need to discuss this
with anyone... is there?" The sudden revelation
that the gul was afraid of his counselor startled
Sister Winn's memory back. "Winn!" snapped
Ragat, "what is the urgent news you need to deliver
to me? Quick, now! Then you must alight and
continue on foot, as is proper."
    "My Lord, I have had a most disturbing vision
regarding... ah, the matter we discussed earlier."
She pointedly did not look at Neemak Counselor;
Gul Ragat stiflened and licked his lips nervously.
So he didn't even tell his personal secretary! That
clinched the matter; Neemak was connected. De-
spite the hideous possibility that he was a cross-
breed between Cardassian and Bajoran, somebody
in the high command--probably either Legate
Migar or Gul Dukat--was using Neemak as eyes
and ears upon Gul Ragat... and Ragat knew it
well.
  "What about the matter, Winn?"
    "I had infor... I mean, I had a vision that
things might happen sooner than we thought; as
soon as tomorrow morning."
  "Morning? You said morning?"
    "Yes, My Lord. Late morning. Or so said my--
my vision."
    "Heh heh her heh," chuckled the gul, quite
unconvincingly, "these superstitious, simple peo-
ple and their visions!" He leaned close to Neemak
and stage-whispered, "She seems to think my pal-
ace is going to burn down."
    Neemak raised his brows and stared to the left of
Gul Ragat. "Indeed, My Lord? Does she not know
of the sprinkler system and the fire suppressors?"
He turned his head to almost look at Winn. "I pity
the poor Bajoran terrorist who might plot arson
against a gul of the Cardassian Empire. So treason-
ous; so pathetically ineffective."
    "Actually," muttered Winn, "my vision was of a
lightning strike, Lord Counselor."
    Neemak gazed placidly out the window at the
bright blue sky; a single, small cumulus cloud
drifted lazily across the dome like a seed pod blown
from a Prophet's Breath flower. "I recommend,"
he said, "in my official capacity as my 1ord's
counselor that we consider long and hard before
replacing Cardassian meteorology with Bajoran
visions of the supernatural, My Lord Gul."
    "Yes, quite. Quite so. Yes, quite so." Ragat
nodded vigorously. He gestured at the door; with-
out waiting to be ordered, Sister Winn opened it
and stepped out, having to jog a bit as the gul's
driver sped up slightly... probably on purpose,
thought the priestess in annoyance; again, she
quickly apologized to the Prophets for her unchari-
table thought. She slowed to a walk and dropped
back to her proper place in the processional, won-
dering whether the seed she had planted would
germinate. I'll know soon enough, she thought; the
sun was starting to sink, and ordinarily, the "kind-
hearted" Gul Ragat would call a halt early to give
his servants on foot more time to rest. But this day,
they continued on into the bone-chilly night.
    Four hours later, deep into a black-dark, moon-
less night, Gavak-Gavak Das finally stopped the
column. The grumbling, footsore Bajorans sank in
their tracks, massaging calves and wetting their
aching, throbbing feet. Beneath the starry canopy
of brilliant, pinprick jewels, most yellow white, but
a few red giants or blue dwarfs among them, Sister
Winn rubbed her own sore feet and tried not to feel
guilty for putting her flock to such extra tramping.
Sometimes it is necessary, she remembered, to
sacrifice a finger to save the hand,' it was a saying
attributed to the greatest of all the Prophets...
but in reality, it could have been said by any
 doctor, freedom fighter, or tyrant on any planet in
 the galaxy.
    The gul had bought her ruse; he was pushing to
reach Riis by early to midmorning, rather than
afternoon. In reality, Sister Winn was taking a
terrible gamble: arriving earlier, the Cardassians
had a greater chance to catch the Resistance cell
unaware, if Winn weren't able to warn them in
time. But the extra four hours put the night's camp
much closer to the sensor-shielded shack of Velda
Reeks, and actually gave Winn a fighting chance of
finding the woman and alerting her, so she could
communicate with the cell and call off the strike on
the spaceport.
    It felt like a fifty-fifty proposition to Sister Winn,
but it was the best she could do. All that remained
were three impossible feats: liberating a communi-
cator from the Cardassians, reprogramming one of
the guard's skimmers, and escaping across four
kilometers of foot-sucking mud to find an invisible
cabin in a trackless wasteland.
    Sister Winn felt a great peace settle upon her; it's
all in the hands of the Prophets now, she
thought... but my faith wouM certainly be
strengthened by a personal cloaking device.

0

CHAPTER
        8

SISTER WINN'S greatest fear, she was ashamed to
admit to anyone but Those she served, was that she
would fall asleep for real and sleep right through
her own escape. She had to feign sleep--closed
eyes, rhythmic breath, inert body, sneaking not
even a scratch of the side of her nose or wiping the
thin trail of drool that trickled down her chin.
    Her roommates were several girls from the vil-
lage and one, Mali, from the palace itself; and
Winn suspected that at least one of the girls was a
Cardassian informant: her cell leader, whose name
she never heard, told her it was "SOP"--standard
operating procedure--for the Cardassians to con-
stantly monitor all Bajoran leaders... even down
to the village mayor level. Surely a full, ordained
 sister priestess, one of the youngest ever invested,
 would qualify for such surveillance!
    She kept awake by running through all seventy-
seven prayers of the Book of Amakira, a test she
had passed as a young girl while studying for holy
orders; each prayer comprised sixteen syllables, so
it took quite some time to pass through the entire
book, especially while fully comprehending the
meaning of each verse: Sister Winn had great need
for the heart-comforting revelations of Amakira.
When she finished, the camp was silent, save for
the omnipresent tramp of the guards; same rhythm
as last night, thank the Prophets.
    Winn had made sure she took the sleeping mat
closest to the tent flap. She rose so excruciatingly
slowly and quietly, she was actually startled when
her elbow joint cracked. Winn rolled to her knees,
then pressed back to the balls of her feet. Techni-
cally, it was forbidden for a Bajoran to leave his
tent during the night; but Gul Ragat, though terri-
bly youngreno more than twenty-one years old!m
was aware that many older folk had only half-a-
night bladders, and he never strictly enforced the
rule, so long as the trek was straight to the relief
station and straight back to the tent. If challenged,
or even if spotted, Winn was prepared to abort her
plans and head straight for the privy.
    She gingerly plucked her shoes from beneath the
pile of other girls' footgear and ghosted through the
tent flap before putting them on. Outside, she
stepped into the shadow of the tent and surveyed
the scene.
    She had picked a good night for an escape. The
moon was new, and they were far enough along
Surface 92 that no city lights illuminated the clear,
star-spattered sky. The road itself occupied the
central strip of the causeway; there was a parade
ground or picnic area (Winn wasn't SUre why the
Cardassians had built it) extending like an apron
on either side of the actual road, widening every so
often, and it was on the eastern side of the apron
that GUl Ragat's entourage was encamped. The
parade ground was paved with a plastic-polymer
that was somewhat springy to the foot, and it was
colored green... a creepy, Cardassian imitation
of a grassy sward, Winn supposed. In any event,
her soft shoes made no noise as she slid from one
end of the tent to the other, peeking around the
edges at the guards.
    Her heart pounded so hard, her chest actually
hurt. She stared hungrily at the parked skimmer
cycles of the guards; probably have a communica-
tions wand on one of the skimmers, she told her-
self... though it was really just a guess. If the
Prophets were with her, it was an educated one.
     Timing her movements to the disappearance of
 all three guards behind various tents, Winn
 hunched over and ran as quickly as she could
 manage to the cycles. She was already huffing and
 blowing by the time she covered the short distance,
 wishing she had paid more attention to such fleshy
 matters as her weight and physical conditioning.
 There's such a thing as being too spiritual, I guess,
 she decided.
    The cycles loomed much larger up close than
they had when they hummed past her on the
march; Cardassians tended to be larger than Bajor-
ans--or taller, anywaymand Sister Winn was
somewhat on the short side even for her sex and
species. She stole in between the first two: If I'm
caught now, she realized, there is no possible way to
explain... nobody ~ going to believe I got lost on
the way to the privy! The machines hulked black
and menacing in the moonless dark, but the metal
was actually shiny enough that if she raised her
head and looked at the top of the stabilizer wings,
she saw the constellations dimly reflected. She
smelled ozone as the fuel cells recharged the batter-
ies in preparation for another day of travel.
    She heard the tramp of boots; a sentry ap-
proached along his normal route. Winn couldn't
move; it would only attract his attention. She
wasn't fully in shadow, but she stilled her body and
held her breath.
    The sentry strode into view; he was close enough
that she could have hit him with a stone. If he
turned his head just slightly to the right, he
couldn't help seeing her!
    Winn looked down, superstitiously worrying
about "catching his eye" by staring at him herself.
She envisioned herself shrinking inside herself, like
a snake swallowing its own tail until there was
nothing left but a faint puff of displaced air.
    The measured crunching of boot steps continued
unwavering past the priestess and into the night.
The sentry had passed her by unnoticed. She had
several minutes before he returned, and Sister
Winn had every intention of taking full advantage.
    She had seen the Cardassians using their com-
munication wands, and it was an article of faith for
the priestess that anything a Cardassian could learn
to operate would be child's play for a Bajoran. But
would they leave them on the cycles or take them
inside their own tents?
    She found no wand on the first two cycles,
though she was somewhat hampered in her search
by not being able to rise up and lean over to look at
the other side of the first skimmer; taking a deep
breath and gritting her teeth, as if she were diving
into the ocean, she slipped around cycle number
two and explored its left side and the right side of
cycle three.
     At last, the priestess struck a vein of pure ore: she
 found not one but two communication wands
 stuck into the left saddlebag of cycle number seven.
 But then she heard the tramp of the sentry, now
 coming in the opposite direction. Again, she didn't
 move, didn't breathe, and visualized herself
 shrinking to a dust mote, smaller and smaller to the
 vanishing point. Evidently, the sentry was either
 asleep on his feet or else he simply had no reason to
 look at the parked skimmer cycles; once again, he
walked past her, almost close enough for Winn to
reach out and untie his bootlaces (were he wearing
any).
    When her heart returned to only a moderately
fast beat, she slipped one of the com-wands into
her voluminous sleeve pocket. Then, licking her
dry lips, she commenced the second part of her
adventure.
    The program controls on the cycles were easy to
comprehend... assuming one understood Car-
dassian. Winn had made a point of it when she
studied for her holy orders; all official communica-
tions to the Cardassian High Command for any-
thing or about anything had to be written in High
Cardassianmand the only alternative to learning
the language herself was to hire someone to trans-
late every time she had some important request to
make, which was not only expensive but danger-
ous, considering her "night job." The seventh cycle
was locked, but the eighth still had a key card in the
active slot--a common enough lapse of security for
which one of the Cardassian soldiers was going to
pay dearly!
    She slid the card out and in again, and the
console cover slid open with a noise that was
probably tiny, but which sounded to the priestess's
ears like a dozen pots and pans rattling down a
chimney. She scanned the instructions on the in-
side of the cover, then programmed the cycle on a
course that would take it due east for a while, then
veer off course in several erratic directions, climb-
ing and diving, finally (if all went well) burying
itself in the mud at peak velocity hundreds of
kilometers from Surface 92... followed, she
hoped, by a parade of frantic Cardassians, desper-
ate to stop the Amazing Escaping Priestess.
    In fact, the A.E.P. would be heading on foot the
opposite direction, equally desperately trying to
locate the Amazing Invisible Cabin of ¥elda Reeks.
Winn had only to set the timer, then cut across the
road without being run over by the occasional
truck or troop transport, and jump off the western
edge without killing herself in the fall. Simplicity
itself, she thought, clenching her teeth to keep them
from chattering with fear.
    She calculated the distance across the eastern
apron, the road--assuming she didn't become
roadkill--and the opposite apron, then over the
side to the mud, and came up with a ludicrous
figure that sounded more like the time required by
the Bajoran sprint champion. She doubled the
time, then on second thought tripled it, and pro-
grammed it into the cycle's control panel. She was
about to activate the timer when she realized she
would run smack into the sentries if she didn't time
the run exactly right.
    Winn waited, following the sentries' position by
the sound of their boot heels on the springy surface
of the parade ground... she wouldn't have heard
them at all except for the metal heel-and-toe pro-
tectorsmCardassian soldiers disdained the idea of
stealth, though the priestess was fairly sure the
spies of the Obsidian Order didn't wear steel-shod
boots. When she judged they had reached about
halfway between the nearest point (where she
would have to run directly past them) and the
farthest point (where they turned around and
would be looking right at her as she fled), she
punched the button and took off.
    Halfway to the edge of the apron, Winn realized
she had severely underestimated the time it would
take for her to run that distance! She felt her heart
pound and she was gasping for air, so she slowed to
a trot, too frightened even to appeal to the Proph-
ets for assistance. When she passed the last row of
tents and could see the backs of the two sentries
receding, she panicked; spurred by terror, she
stepped up the pace to a sprint again... but after
only a dozen steps, she stumbled and fell to her
face.
    The soft, springy surface prevented her from
scraping herself or making much sound, but she
landed on her belly and knocked the wind from her
lungs. She tried to stagger to her feet, while her
bruised diaphragm fluttered, unable to expand to
suck in a lungful of air. She felt dizzy, so she
remained on hands and knees and crawled toward
the center road section of Surface 92.
    Just as she reached it, she heard a roar; looking
to her left, she saw the lights of an onrushing truck,
skimming a mere hand's breadth above the road
surface; it was almost as wide as the road itself.
Winn mentally cursed her luck--if the truck were
going south instead of north, it would have been
traveling high enough to clear the northbound
trucks, and the priestess could have run directly
beneath it! Instead, she was delayed precious sec-
onds while the truck lumbered past at half the
speed of a passenger skimmer. Ironically, it had
doubtless slowed down because the sensors de-
tected the encampment, and the polite driver (who
was probably Bajoran) didn't want to wake them
up with loud engine noise.
    Winn waited, lying on her belly; though the delay
surely meant the skimmer cycle would take off
before she was off the opposite side, it did give her
a chance to catch her breath. With the help of the
Prophets, the sentries might not even notice the
cycle launching. Sister Winn prayed earnestly for
just such a stroke of good fortune.
    Evidently, the Prophets were unmoved by her
prayers. Just as the truck cleared her path, Winn
heard an awful racket back at the camp: the cycle
was taking off just as she programmed, with one
slight addition: it had automatically activated its
flashing lights and warning siren. With a sinking
heart, she realized she must have picked, by sheer
bad luck, the lead cycle of the procession.
    Winn stared back in horror as the riderless cycle
rose into the air, screaming bloody, blue murder
like a hysterical child and lighting up the entire
camp with its red-and-green strobe lights. Within
seconds, every Cardassian soldier was stumbling
out of his tent more or less dressed, each with a
weapon in hand; the Bajorans rushed out, too,
adding to the chaos. Everyone stared at the ghostly
apparition... and that meant that no one would
mistakenly believe Sister Winn had stolen the
skimmer when she turned up missing.
    She hesitated at the edge of the road, not know-
ing what to do. Then, hoping that she wouldn't be
missed for quite some time in the hullabaloo, she
resumed course for the opposite side of Surface 92,
this time walking quickly and keeping her heart
rate down.
    She crossed the road and the western apron and
stared over the opposite side; it was a drop of ten
meters, a hard fall but not likely to permanently
damage her, if she landed well. She felt no fear; she
had totally drained whatever glandular secretion
caused it. She turned about and lowered herself
over the side, dangling by her hands.
    It was a posture she couldn't hold for more than
a few seconds; she had only time enough to take
one last look back at the cavorting, screaming mob.
It was an unfortunate whim: just as she looked, one
of the sentries, her old friend, the young, bullying
corporal, turned on a whim of his own toward the
priestess. Their eyes locked for a moment; before
he could react, the strength gave out in Winn's
hands, and she dropped heavily into the mud. Her
only thought as she fell was, Oh dear, I really have
made a mess of the whole thing.
  She landed on her back in the mud and again
knocked the wind from her sails. She remained
perfectly still, waiting for the dizziness to stop and
staring at the lip of the road above her, wondering
whether she would be able to move before the
demoted corporal peered over the edge and saw
her. She was so shaken, the possibility of being seen
again didn't rouse her to any greater effort.
    What shook her awake at last was the cry of a
child--a child! Instinct took over, both as a woman
and as a representative of the Prophets, and the
priestess struggled up to her feet. She walked under
the road, the mud sucking at her feet with every
step, threatening to pull her under like tar; the
child could be no more than a few years old,
judging by the sound... but Winn could tell noth-
ing more about it.
    She looked but saw nothing; there was one large
support pillar big enough to hide a small person,
and Winn headed for it. The child was crouching
behind, the only place it could be. Mud was caked
so heavily on its face that Winn couldn't even tell
whether it was a boy or girl... not that it would
have been easy in any event, since the child (like
Gul Ragat's counselor) was another abomination:
half Cardassian, half Bajoran.
    For some reason, however, this mixture aroused
only pity in the priestess's soul, rather than the
revulsion she usually experienced. Because it~ only
a child, she thought to herself, but it was more, and
she knew it. Unlike Neemak Counselor, this child's
face showed only fear and shame, not the cynical
cruelty stamped on the face of the other cross-
breeds she had seen... a cruelty incubated by the
way such mongrels were treated--by both sides,
thought Winn with a very large thrust of guilt.
    "It's all right, honey, I've got you," she said
soothingly. The child only cried the harder; slightly
cleaner channels ran down its cheeks where
streams of tears had partially washed away the
mud. "You're going to be all right, child; I prom-
ise." Winn smiled. "I know ! don't look it, but
under all this mud, I'm a sister, a voice of the
Prophets. I'm not going to hurt you."
     "Going to turn me over," said the child... and
Sister Winn decided it was probably a girl. "To whom, little one?"
    The gift looked away. Above, Winn heard shouts
and the engines of several skimmers; the corporal
had obviously reported what he saw to the captain
of the guard, and the Cardassians were coming
over the edge of the road to hunt for her.
    "I won't lie to you, child. The Cardassians are
about to come down here hunting for me, and
they're going to use sensors, and they're going to
find you, too. There's nothing either one of us can
do about that."
    "Why're they after you?" asked the little gift,
eyes wide; she sniffled, but she seemed to have
forgotten about crying. She could be no more than
four years old.

    Winn shrugged, deciding on the truth--as much
as the gift could handle. The Prophets obviously
brought us together,' there must still be a task for me
ahead. "I ran away, child. I'm a slave. I wanted to
leave, and now they're going to bring me back."
      The little gift smiled sadly. "I guess they're going
to send me back to father. But you're a nice lady."
  "Thank you."
    The girl looked at Winn; her eyes held the
priestess in a gaze so intelligent, so intense, that
Winn suddenly realized the Prophets themselves
were about to speak through the child's lips. She
had heard of such things but never seen it directly.
All sound seemed to cease; she could hear nothing
but the words from the little gift: "Tell them you
heard me crying and jumped down here to help
me, Mother Mud. Then you won't get in trouble.
My father is very important."  "Who is your father?"
    "He lives in the sky," she said, pointing upward.
"He's very important, and they'll be happy you
found me." Her face took on a look of urgency.
"Tell them! Promise me you'll tell them you
jumped down to help me!"
    Sister Winn bowed her head. "I promise, child."
A moment later, the fist skimmer roared up to her,
followed by three others. One was ridden by
Gavak-Gavak Das himself, and Winn braced for a
lashing with the electrowhip the overseer always
carded.
    "I heard the cries of this child," said the priest-
ess. "I jumped off the road and followed the cries
to this little girl."
    "She found me," added the girl. "I want to go
home." Winn knew that both of them were liars,
but perhaps it was in a good cause.
    Gavak-Gavak paused astride his cycle, his mouth
open and his hand already having drawn the pain-
ful whip. Struck by sudden concern, he replaced
the electrowhip and drew a scanner instead. Play-
ing it across the girl, he gasped and spoke urgently
but softly into his communications wand; Winn
couldn't hear a word he said.
    Then the overseer grinned, and Winn recognized
the expression: pure, unadulterated greed. There
must be a reward out for the little girl, thought the
priestess sadly.
    "Excellent work, Sister Winn!" said Gavak-
Gavak unexpectedly. "I'll see that you're com-
mended to the gul for this!"
"You'll tell Gul Ragat what happened?"
"Ragat?" The overseer looked startled. "Oh! Yes,
that's what I meant... I'll see that you're com-
mended to Gul Ragat for your diligence in find-
ing--ah, this little girl here. I'm sure her master is
terribly anxious to get her back, ah, whoever he is."
    Nobody ever accused Sister Winn of mental
sluggishness. She noticed the quick change of sub-
ject; Gavak-Gavak had originally meant another
gul, but he preferred she think he was talking about
her own. And she noticed another strange anom-
aly: Gavak-Gavak referred to the girl's master, but
the girl said that her father was very important. We
are not given to understand all the ways of the
Prophets, thought the priestess; we are bound only
to obey them. She said nothing else, only climbed
aboard the back of one of the other skimmers to be
carried back to servitude, back to the road to Riis.



CHAPTER
       9

THE BLUFF from which O'Brien and the away team
had looked out across the Desert of Death (as the
chief had cheerfully named it) sloped backward a
dozen kilometers to a grassy sward; the team had to
backtrack several hours before Odo, flying above as
a hawk, caught sight of a herd of the creatures...
split-heads, Chief O'Brien dubbed them. The con-
stable circled overhead while the rest of the team
caught up; Odo landed, and the away team re-
mained behind an outcropping of blue black rocks
to observe the nine split-heads.
    Two different families, guessed the chief; that is,
if they followed the pattern of Earth horses, or the
other horselike creatures O'Brien had read about.
There were two larger split-heads with short, tube-
like tails, and each was surrounded by three small-
er monsters with no tails. One of the groups
included what looked like a foal: tiny, with overly
long, skinny legs that followed around one of the
smaller split-heads. Captain Sisko began speaking
of the larger as male and the smaller as female, and
the nomenclature stuck, though they had no real
idea about the beasties' gender traits.
    Their coats ranged from sky blue to teal, and
they could bristle their spiney fur, possibly for
cooling or defense or both. O'Brien hadn't seen any
of them jump, but he suspected they could deliver a
vicious kick if you got behind one; he had once
been kicked in a sensitive spot by an ordinarily
placid mare back home, and he still squirmed
when he remembered the experience. "Sir, are you
sure this rope will hold those things?" he asked
nervously.
    "Chief, you know the tensile strength of the
polyfiber better than I! It could hoist a runabout
without breaking." Captain Sisko seemed quite
irritated... possibly because the chief had been
hedging and hesitating for several minutes. The
truth was, even the sight of the horrible beasties
terrified him: Quark was right; the split down the
center of their skulls really did make them look
two-headed. And the six bowlegs that seemed to be
as common on the planet as four (the Natives were
four limbed, of course) still made the chief squirm;
it looked a little too insectoid for his taste.
 "All right," said the chief, straining to keep his
voice steady and his teeth from chattering, "let's
do it. Commander?"
    Worf stared at the herd. "I recommend we try for
the male with the dark hindquarters; it is smaller
than the other."
 "Sure, whichever; go ahead, sir."
    They had necessarily opted against using phasers
because of the danger of being spotted by Cardassi-
ans in orbit. O'Brien fidgeted, fingering the lasso,
while the Klingon waited until the target wandered
away from the other split-heads; then Worf acti-
vated the antigray and levitated the great beast into
the air.
    Miles O'Brien stood and jogged into the clearing,
keeping an eye on the other creatures. He was just
about to fling the loop of rope, when he stopped
dead: he heard voices, and they seemed to come
from the split-heads surrounding him:  "Arrk fly!"
  "Fly! Fly in the air!"
  "Look at Arrk! He flies in the air!"
    With horror creeping along his skin like a fun-
gus, Chief O'Brien realized that the universal trans-
lator was automatically translating what the
animals were saying... and that meant they were
talking. Arrk himself, from his position about three
or four meters in the air, began screaming; the
universal translator left most of it inarticulate, but
did translate "help" and "get Arrk down."
    O'Brien backed slowly away from the herd,
which totally ignored his presence, so focused were
they on their compatriot's sudden levity. The chief
finally stumbled backwards over a rock, falling
onto his rear where the rest of the away team
waited.
    "Well?" demanded Worf; "what is the prob-
lem?"
    Sisko was even more irritated. "Chief, you had
better have a damned good explanation for this!"
    O'Brien turned to the captain. "They're intelli-
gent! They were talking... words, not just growl-
ing or barking or somesuch!"
    Sisko tightened his lips and stroked his beard;
everybody else stared at O'Brien as if he were
addlepated. "Of all the idiotic excuses!" snapped
Quark; "don't be afraid of them... just get out
there and rope a few!" Nevertheless, the chief
noted that Quark made no offer to do the job
himself.
    "I'm telling you, those things are talking!
They're out there screaming about how 'Arrk' is
flying around in the sky. If you don't believe me,"
he added huffily, "just wander closer and you'll
hear them yourself."
    Sisko frowned. "This changes everything, Worf.
Put the creature down."
    With a sigh of complete exasperation, Worf
lowered Arrk to the ground. The bull split-head ran
around in circles for a few minutes, followed by the
others; then they all seemed to calm down and
return to grazing... seeming to have forgotten the
incident. If they are sentient, thought O'Brien, it's
only just barely.
    "Wait here," said the captain; O'Brien was only
too happy to oblige: the only thing worse than a
two-headed, six-legged horse was one that talked.
Sisko stepped forward, gesturing to Worf to follow.
The pair crept closer to the herd; when they got
within twenty meters, the split-heads looked up
one by one. Then they returned to their grazing,
paying no attention to the two Federation inter-
lopers.
    The captain and Worf returned, the former pen-
sive and the latter frowning. "Chief, I owe you an
apology," said Captain Sisko. "I should have be-
lieved you, no matter how crazy it sounded." Worf
merely grunted, but O'Brien took it as the closest
to an apology he was likely to get from his Klingon
colleague.
 "What did they say, sirs?"
    Worf took up the tale. "When we approached,
they queried each other whether we were four-
legged or six-legged. After some discussion, they
settled that we were four-legged; after that, they
ignored us completely."
    "I would guess," chimed in Odo, "that all their
natural predators have six legs, as they themselves
do."
    "So," mused Quark, "not only can they talk--
they can count..." His eyes rolled up, and
O'Brien imagined he could see stacks of gold-
pressed latinurn whirling around, like the spin of a
Dabo wheel. "I wonder," continued the Ferengi,
"whether any of these split-heads has any interest
in a small exhibition we might--"
    "Quark!" snarled the constable. "We have more
important considerations at hand, if you don't
mind!"
    "Exactly," said the captain, sitting on a rock in
plain view of the herd. "I'm afraid these creatures
pass the threshhold of sentience... we cannot
simply yoke them to a wagon and force them to
carry us across the desert."
    "So now what?" asked the chief. "Correct me if
I'm wrong, but don't we only have three or four
days of rations left? If we don't get to a Cardassian
outpost by then, we can kiss both the mission and
our own, lovely selves goodbye." It was a simple
conclusion: as disgusting as it was, Cardassian food
was the only thing on Sierra-Bravo 112-II that any
of them could eat and remain alive.
    "Time," said Captain Sisko with a twinkle and a
half smile, "to open negotiations."
    "Negotiations?" demanded both the chief and
Commander Worf in astonishment.
    "And to send in our chief negotiator," concluded
the captain. "Ambassador Quark, front and
center!"
    "Ambassador Quark?" sputtered Constable Odo,
with even greater astonishment.
    Sisko clapped the Ferengi on his shoulder. "You
wanted to come along on this expedition," he said;
"it's time you earned your keep: start bargaining,
and don't come back without an agreement to
convey us to that outpost!"
    Quark said nothing. His mouth opened as he
stared at the monstrous creatures. Better thee than
me, thought Chief O'Brien with a smile.

    The Ferengi had never felt tinier and more
helpless as he crept toward the enormous, two-
headed monsters. Among Ferengi, Quark was actu-
ally rather on the tall side, and even among the
giants on Deep Space Nine, under whatever name
they chose to operate it, past or future, he always
knew he was in control: the man at the helm of his
own destiny never feels small!
    But these creatures, Quark was convinced, were
too stupid to recognize their own self-interest...
and they could very well trample him to death
before he could even finish making his opening bid.
Quark looked back at the sheltering rocks; the
other members of the away team were gesturing
him forward impatiently. Sure.t Of course...
THEY'RE not the ones facing death by hoof
stomping.t
    He felt a faint movement from behind him and
whipped his head back so quickly, his neckbones
cracked, and he felt a sharp pain. The split-heads,
as Chief O'Brien so quaintly called them, were
staring directly at Quark.
    Centimeter by centimeter, the Ferengi snuck
forward across the blue gray grass, feeling his legs
weakening with every quasi step. He raised his
hand, only belatedly worrying that the monsters
might consider that an attack. So far, they hadn't
said anything... if indeed they really did talk; he
hadn't quite ruled out the possibility that the whole
thing was an elaborate and pointless practical joke
played upon him by the Federation goons.
    "How--how--how do you d-do?" The horrible-
looking monsters stared uncomprehendingly at
him. "I am Quark," he added, "I... come in
peace." No response. "Shall we, ah, open negotia-
tions?"
    Suddenly feeling utterly stupid, Quark realized
he was, in essence, talking to a herd of barnyard
animals. His face turned bright pink, and he began
to yell. "Say something, damn it! I'm feeling like an
idiot here!"
    One of the large split-heads, a male, Quark
supposed, turned to the other. "It is Quark the
Idiot!"
    "Yes~ yes," bleated the other male; "Quark the
Idiot! What is an Idiot?"
    The females took up the refrain, repeating "Idi-
ot! Idiot!" over and over. They seemed positively
fascinated by the concept... if the universal
translator were doing its job, it might be the first
time the thought had ever occurred to them.
    "A small-head," suggested the first male, who
seemed to be the leader. "That's what an Idiot is."
    "Yes, yes! An Idiot is a small-head! Look, it's
head is small. Look how small its head is! And
look, look... no hornst"
    The animals proceeded to make a series of
gronklike noises that Quark rather stuffily took to
be untranslated laughter.
    "Does it have four legs or does it have six legs?"
asked the junior male.
    "I will count the legs," responded the alpha.
"One leg, two legs, three legs, four legs. It's a four-
leg! A four-legged, small-headed Idiot called
Quark."
    "Four legs," sighed the beta male that O'Brien
claimed they had called Arrk; once he realized
Quark had only four limbs, Arrk immediately lost
interest. The steel-blue grass beckoned the rest of
the split-heads; the alpha watched the Ferengi for a
few moments, then joined the rest of the herd in
grazing. One of the presumed females--who had a
smaller head than the other monsters--began to
trot round and round the herd, chanting, "Small-
head! Idiot! Small-head! Idiot!" The others ignored
her.
    "Oh, this is going just perfectly," muttered
Quark to himself. His annoyance battled against
fear and won; he walked a little closer, but the split-
heads still ignored him. "Listen!" commanded the
Ferengi.
    One by one, the monsters stopped grazing and
raised their heads to look down their split noses at
Quark. "We want a deal," he enunciated clearly,
wondering whether the word would even translate.
Evidently not; the creatures all looked to the alpha,
who stared at Quark in puzzlement.

    "We want to go... past the sand," said the
Ferengi, pointing upslope.
  "It wants sand," said the alpha male to Arrk.
  "It eats sand," suggested the latter.
    The alpha said, "Yes, yes! It eats sand so its head
is small! It should eat grass."
    "I don't eat sand!" shouted Quark, stamping his
foot. That, he realized, was a bad move; the alpha
lowered its head and snarled.
    "Challenging, challenging, challenging!" it said.
"Small-head is challenging Ruut!"
    Uh-oh... Staring up at the huge, many-toothed,
horned monster that looked as if it could tear his
(tiny) head off in a single bite or crush his rib cage
with a kick, Quark's Ferengi instincts took over: he
dropped immediately into an approved cringe,
almost a grovel, as if he stood naked before the
Grand Nagus himself with a highly negative bal-
ance sheet. Quark did it quicker than conscious
thought, but if he had had time to plan, it was
exactly what he would have done anyway.
    The posture worked; the alpha--Ruut--instant-
ly relaxed, muttering, "Small-head loses, Ruut
wins."
    The female began to trot again, repeating her
chant of "Small-head! Idiot!"
    "Small-head wants a favor from Ruut," said
Quark, wrinkling his nose at the name he seemed
to have acquired.
    "What does small-head want?" asked Ruut, sur-
prised. Evidently, a favor was not unheard of---
probably has to do with not killing an annoying
female, thought Quark. But it seemed uncommon.
    "Small-head and, uh, small-head's herd want to
get to the grass on the other side of the sand."
    "The grass is better?" asked Arrk; Ruut didn't
seem put out by the interruption.
  "Well... it's bluer," improvised Quark.
  "The grass is bluer!" shouted Ruut.
    "Where? Where?" bleated the females; Arrk took
up the chant, evidently not quite following the
conversation as well as the alpha.
    "In the meadow on the other side of the big
sand!" exclaimed Ruut. "Across the sand, bluer,
tastier grass! Small-head knows!"
"But small-head is an Idiot," objected Arrk.
Ruut thought a moment, then extended his face
until his mouth was pressed practically against
Quark's nose. The Ferengi was too terrified to
move or even speak; he smelled a sweet odor with a
faint whiff of what he could swear was latinurn...
and the trace braced him. "How does small-head
know the blueness of the grass?" asked Ruut.
    "A wise question," said Quark, his voice shak-
ing. "I--uh--I was--told about it," he finished,
lamely.
    "Who told small-head about the grass?" per-
sisted the ever suspicious Ruut.
    A brilliant idea whispered into the Ferengi's
lobes. "I was told," he said, "by a BIG-head! A
great, big head... head the size of Ruut's whole
body!"

    This information was suitably relayed by Ruut to
the rest of the herd, who needed some explanation
before they all got it. The trotting female changed
her chant to "Small-head! Big-head! Small-head!
Big-head!" and Quark wasn't quite sure she under-
stood the fine point he had made. But the others
seemed satisfied.
    "But small-head has a problem," said the Fer-
engi. He waited, having learnt that one couldn't
rush the monsters' sluggish brains.
    "Small-head wants to go to the grass on the other
side of the Big Sands," said Ruut.
    "But small-head is too slow," said Quark, "and
Ruut's herd is much faster. Small-head's herd
wants to sit on Ruut's herd while Ruut's herd runs
across the Big Sands." The complexity of the
suggestion took many minutes to negotiate, but
Quark was starting to catch the rhythm. Experi-
mentally, Ruut allowed Quark to sit on Arrk's back
while the split-head walked, then trotted, then ran
around the meadow. Quark clutched the spiny fur
on the monster's back, closed his eyes, and prayed
to the Final Accountant not to kill the deal by
letting Quark fall off and be trampled to death. The
creature had a peculiar, rolling gait not unlike an
Earth camel that Quark was once obliged to ride in
a customer's holosuite program, but when it got up
to speed, the wind whistled past the Ferengi's
lobes... the split-heads were fast when they
wanted.
 Ruut and Arrk had a long conversation after-
ward, the slow pace of which frustrated the Ferengi
no end; he consoled himself by thinking, The
riskier the road, the greater the profit, and other
gems from the Rules of Acquisition. At last, Arrk
convinced Ruut that he had barely felt the "small-
head" on his back, and there was no reason not to
carry the small-head's herd across the Big Sands.
    Shaking with exhaustion and the remnants of
fear, Quark concluded the deal. As he structured it
in his mind, in exchange for the knowledge that
there was much bluer grass across the desert, Ruut
and his herd would carry Quark and his herd
across said desert as quickly as possible. The only
snag, of course, was that the grass might not be
bluer on the other side; Quark shrugged... the
thought that a customer might not be satisfied with
his end of the bargain concerned a Ferengi not at
all (in fact, it was Rule of Acquisition Number
Nineteen). Quark would let Captain Sisko deal
with possible future customer complaints.
    Ruut figured they would start immediately--did
he even have the concept of time or waiting?--and
Quark didn't want to tip the precarious deal; he
assumed the split-heads' attention span was lim-
ited, and he was afraid that any delay would cause
Ruut to forget everything. Quark frantically waved
Sisko, O'Brien, Worf, and Odo to approach.
    A new problem erupted: Ruut and Arrk balked at
allowing the away team to ride the females. Small-
head's herd huddled to solve the last-minute di-
lemma.

    Odo sighed. "I suppose I could change into one
of these creatures myself," he suggested. "That
eliminates one of us needing a ride."
    "Two of us," corrected Captain Sisko. "I hate to
say it, Constable, but you'll have to carry one of us
on your back."
    Odo shrugged. "I can do that... so long as it
isn't him!" He glared at Quark.
    "Captain! I object to the continual calumnies
and unfriendly insinuations cast by Odo against
me!" He folded his arms and turned half away,
making sure everyone saw how his feelings were
wounded. "And after all I've done for this team,
tOO."
    "You've 'done' at least four serious felonies on
this expedition so far," snarled Odo, "and the
mission has barely begun! I'm keeping an arrest
report," concluded the constable, ominously push-
ing his malleable face close to Quark's.
    "Gentlemen, settle it later," said Sisko. "Quark,
you'll double up with me on one of the males, while
Worf, who weighs as much as the two of us com-
bined, will ride the other male. That leaves O'Brien
for Odo, and you two will be our guides: the chief
with his tricorder, the constable by changing into a
bird as necessary and finding the fastest route
across the desert. Any questions?"
    Worf looked at Ruut, the alpha, and Quark
would have sworn he saw nervousness in the Kling-
on's mouth; of course, the Ferengi said nothing--
Klingons were generally not appreciative for hay-
ing such facts pointed out to them. "I have no
questions, Captain," said Worf in a tougher-than-
usual voice. Good, thought Quark, at least I'm not
the only one who's scared to death! O'Brien made
no attempt to hide his relief at drawing Odo
instead of Ruut or Arrk, but the captain was as
enigmatic as usual.
    Quark was trembling as he climbed back aboard
Arrk, and the addition of Captain Sisko seated
behind him did not sweeten the deal: the Ferengi
suspected it made the whole arrangement even
more top-heavy and subject to collapse than when
Quark alone had ridden the monster!
    Worf mounted Ruut. The constable wandered
away behind a tree, then returned as a split-head;
neither Ruut nor any of his herd seemed to care
much or wonder at the transformation. O'Brien
climbed aboard Odo, and the caravan set out. They
traveled not up the bluff, of course, since that
would have required leaping off a hundred-meter
cliff, but around it to the left; Ruut seemed to know
the way to the Big Sands.
    By the time the double herd reached a downward
slope, where the grass became sparser and inter-
spersed with sand and the occasional boulder, they
were fairly flying; Quark forgot everything except
hanging on for dear life and dearer profit. He
stopped screaming when his voice became so
hoarse, even his sensitive lobes couldn't hear it.
    The mob of monsters hit the desert sands and
kept going, their monstrous, splay hooves barely
sinking into the dunes. They ran tirelessly for
hours, then stopped so abruptly, they almost un-
seated their riders. Odo ran on a few paces before
realizing Ruut had called a rest stop.
    After a drink at a stream and a short rest, the
caravan continued its break-your-neck pace across
the sand dunes... and after many more hours,
Quark discovered that when a Ferengi is exhausted
enough, he can doze off anywhere.




CHAPTER
      lO

LIEUTENANT COMMANDER Jadzia Dax was very,
very, very tired of walking, but they still had a few
more kilometers to go until they reached the spot
where Bashir had detected a crossing of ion trails
from Cardassian skimmers of various sizes. A
crossing means a depot, Dax told herself... the
wild promise being the only way she could will her
exhausted feet to keep moving. Julian, of course,
seemed as fresh as a teenaged boy on a prom date.
    The road they followed was obviously not built
by the Cardassians; it wound around hills where
the Cardassians would simply have burnt right
through them with excavating tools. In places, the
road was little more than a footpath, zigzagging
steeply up a hill and dropping equally suddenly
down the far slope. The up and down burned
through Dax's energy far more than a simple, level
path would have; she couldn't help a sidelong
glance or two at the doctor. Oddly, the good doctor
seemed much less fatigued than she would have
expected from the hike.
    They were currently on a section of the road
where the trail had virtually disappeared, visible
only as a slightly trampled line of steel blue among
the rest of the knee-high grass; but at least it was
still heading roughly the right direction. Gnarled
trees surrounded them, black in the gathering dusk;
under the bright, noon sun, they had appeared
more vermillion. The long shadows reached to-
ward Dax and Bashir from behind, like clutching
fingers; the commander shivered, wishing she
hadn't thought of the image: they still had little
idea what dangerous fauna (or even flora!) existed
on Sierra-Bravo 112-I1.
    A large set of hills blocked their path, and Dax
sighed audibly. They rested before beginning the
climb. Bashir insisted, claiming he was "fatigued,"
but he didn't look it. Then she led the way, setting
her sights grimly on the summit and trudging up
the twenty-degree slope.
    As she neared the top, she slowed; they were
close enough that if there were no intervening hills,
they might be able to see the intersection... the
"depot." At the peak of the trail, she found a grove
of trees; slipping within them, she worked her way
forward, Bashir at her elbow, until she looked out
across a plain crossed with natural orchards and
watered by a sluggish, winding river.
    Most of the valley was already in shadows from
the hill Dax and Bashir stood upon. Two strings of
bright, artificial lights crossed near the center,
lighting the darkness, and a contingent of four
Cardassians stood guard at the crossroads: they
had found their depot.
    "Any skimmers?" asked the doctor, trying to
peer past Dax's head.
    "I see a couple, one single-seater and a large car,
but there's a couple pairs ofgoons guarding them."
Damn, she thought, I'd give a lot for a good, old-
fashioned spyglass/
    On a hunch, Dax pulled up her tricorder and
performed a passive scan for broadcast power
sources of the frequency used by the Natives. "Yep,
I suspected as much," she announced. "They cut
the power from the nearest two transmitters...
none of the native technology will work anywhere
within a dozen kilometers or more."
    "So they think they're totally secure," said
Bashir, seeing the point at once.
    Dax looked back at him. "Would you say Cardas-
sians are apt to be overconfident under any circum-
stances?"
    "I'd say," said the doctor with a smile, "that the
guards are probably asleep on their feet from
boredom."
    "How good a shot are you with your phaser,
Julian?"

    "Using a sweep, I can pick off a Cardassian or a
Drek'la at about two hundred meters, I would
expect."
    "Two hundred? That's a little ambitious. Let's
get a little closer than that," she decided. "We'll
take them at a hundred. One clean sweep apiece,
phasers on stun, nobody left standing."
    Dax considered for a moment. "But we have to
make sure they don't wake up any time soon."
    That is, unless we leave our fingerprints some-
where--like here. Jadzia pondered for a moment;
what would the Cardassian commander believe?
"Maybe we can make it look like they got drunk
and deserted? What have you got in that little black
bag of yours that might do the trick?"
    Julian thought for a moment. "I could inject
them with a stasis sedative that will keep them out
for about eight hours."
  "What will they remember?"
    "Nothing; microamnesia will almost certainly
wipe out any memory they have of events for the
last three or four hours before they're injected."
    "That'll be perfect. If we find any Cardassian ale
in the depot storehouse, we'll pour it all over them;
if we're lucky, they won't bother with a medical
scan. Then we'll stick them in the big skimmer and
program it to head out over the hills, landing about
three hundred klicks away." Dax grinned at the
thought. "Let's see them try to explain that to the
CO!"
  The pair of double shots from a hundred meters
 required only coordination between Jadzia and
 Julian; Dax gave a countdown from five with her
 fingers, then depressed the trigger. She was wide by
 about a half meter--not bad, she thought--and
 she swept the phaser beam sideways to brush both
 her targets before either could draw a weapon or
 get off a communication to the planetary com-
 mand. She made sure that she fired at a slight
 downward angle, striking the Cardassians about
 knee high... both to avoid the battle armor on
 their torsos and to make sure the phaser beam
 grounded into the dirt rather than flashed across
 the sky like a beacon.
    She didn't look over at Julian's targets until her
own were down, so she didn't know how precise he
had been, but all four Cardassians were stunned
into unconsciousness. Jadzia cautiously led the
doctor the last hundred meters; while she scanned
for approaching enemies, Julian examined the Car-
dassians, gave medical treatment to one who had
injured himself falling, and then injected all four
with the stasis sedative. "Its purpose," he ex-
plained, as he worked the hypospray, "is to stabi-
lize an injured patient for transport to a medical
facility; I'm sure they'll be all right." His voice
didn't sound as certain as his words, but frankly,
Dax cared little about how safe the Cardassians
might be: she had seen them mow down women,
children, and old folks without a second thought in
the battle of Tiffnaki.
 Nobody showed up. Dax and the doctor bundled
the Cardassians into the large skimmer, splashed
liquor all over the soldiers and the interior of the
vehicle, and sent it on a wild ride across the fruited
plain at maximum speed, veering wildly and ca-
reening up and over hills and through passes. As
the driverless car took off and accelerated, Jadzia
Dax couldn't help throwing them a salute; the
program was set to erase itself shortly before land-
ing... not a trace would remain of two Federation
agents on Sierra-Bravo.
    They stocked up on Cardassian food, unpleasant
tasting but edible, and hopped aboard the remain-
ing skimmer, a cycle that normally seated only one.
Dax insisted upon driving, with a dubious and
nervous Julian hanging on behind. "Point me in
the right direction and look out," she yelled, firing
up the noisy engines. "I was born to ride!"

    Joson Wabak tried not to let it show, but his
frustration was rising like a core breach; having a
conversation by radio waves, of all the primitive
things, with a sea monster was like... It's not like
anything/he concluded; they never taught us any-
thing about this sort of situation at the Academy. In
a dark recess of his mind, Joson was already
composing the strongly worded letter to the Chief
of Starfleet Education and Training, Captain
Bruchenheimer, about the need for more sea-
monster simulation training for upperclassmen.
  "Weymouth, give me a rundown."
  "Nothing's changed since last time, sir."
 "Just the rundown, Ensign--not an editorial
 aside?
     Tina cringed a little, but Joson was getting tired
 of her attitude. "The, ah, sea monster doesn't have
 a name; it thinks we're an egg from another like
 itself; it thinks we're about to hatch--something
 about the way we taste, from what little the not-so-
 universal translator can translate--and it wants to
 help us. We've convinced it to hold off, that crack-
 ing us open would prevent our character growth or
 something, and we're currently trying to make it
 understand that we need to get to the surface--but
 it doesn't get it."
    "That is to be expected," said Ensign N'Kduk-
Thag. "If this creature were to ascend to the surface
it probably could not survive the light and low
pressure. Perhaps it thinks we are confused and
wants to protect us."
    "Well, we'd better do something quick, Joson."
Tina hunched over her console, staring at a gauge.
"We're down to a containment-field strength of
seventeen percent. The hull could rupture any
moment--Below twenty percent, there's a measur-
able chance every minute of a sudden, catastrophic
collapse of the containment field, the hull, and all
the contents... what they kind of quaintly refer to
as a 'phase-change singularity' in the manual."
    "The ensign is quite correct," confirmed Ensign
Nick. "We must ascend immediately at least five
hundred meters."

    "Open the channel again," said Joson, rubbing
his tired eyes. At least it's an audio-only broadcast,
he thought; I'm not sure she couM deal with crea-
tures that look like us actually talking to her in her
own language.
    Weymouth hissed to get his attention, then nod-
ded; Joson Wabak began to speak.
    "Defiant, speaking to our friend. You must re-
lease us and allow us to continue toward the
surface. We will not be harmed! Our... mother
lives near the surface; it's where we come from."
    He waited, but the monster didn't respond; one
of the frustating things about the conversation was
the long lag time between their transmission and
the response... evidently, the sheer size of the sea
monster's nervous system made for slow, deep,
sluggish thoughts.
    "Let us ascend," added Joson. "Our--shell is
too fragile to survive at this depth. We need a lower
pressure, or our shell will crack, um, prematurely."
Great, I wonder whether she's getting ANY of this? It
seemed unlikely; Joson wasn't an engineer and
didn't exactly know how the universal translator
worked, but he knew all it could do was form
"word pictures" that would be translated by the
receiver's own brain into language... assuming
the two brains weren't too dissimilar. It was hard to
imagine two more dissimilar brains than his own
and that of a two-kilometer-wide sea monster who
lived a thousand meters deep in an inky-black
ocean. The vast majority of concepts that a surface
dweller such as himself took for granted--sunlight,
color, the sky, air!--would be so utterly alien to
her, how could she possibly understand a word he
said?
    We might just be fooling ourselves. He caught
Ensign Weymouth's eye and ran his finger across
his throat; she closed the transmission channel...
all they could do now was wait for the Old Girl to
respond.
    And she was old, too. N'Kduk-Thag occupied
himself scanning the creature, integrating the holo-
scan information from the abortive probe they had
launched earlier. "I believe this creature is at least
thirty thousand years old," he announced out of
the blue.
    "Why?" asked Joson. "What makes you say
that?"
    "I carbon-dated deposits found on the inside of
the entity's intestines."
 "Maybe she ate some old rocks."
    "Joson," said Tina with a smile, "thirty thou-
sand years would be incredibly young for a rock."
    "I believe the deposits were produced by organic
material ingested by the creature. There are depos-
its of every age up to approximately thirty thou-
sand years but none older than that age."
    Joson shrugged, watching the maw of the sea
monster open and close on the forward viewer.
"Well, no wonder she takes so long to answer."

 "Sir... Joson, we haven't got much time."
    He settled back, closing his eyes. "We haven't got
much we can do, either, Tina."
    "A full barrage of photon torpedoes will at least
get the creature's attention. It might be surprised
into letting us go."
    "Or it might get mad and crush us! Nick, no
torpedoes... not unless I order it." Ensign Joson
Wabak, acting captain, opened his eyes and sat up
straight again. "Look, Dax left me in charge, and
unless things change drastically--"
    The ship lurched abruptly, knocking the enlisted
security crew to the deck. The three officers man-
aged to keep their seats, but only barely. Weymouth
grabbed the edge of her console to steady herself
until the stabilizers could catch up with the unex-
pected movement. "Jesus, Joson! She's dragging us
into her mouth.t"
    Ensign N'Kduk-Thag emotionlessly played his
fingers across his own station. "Photon torpedoes
armed and ready for your command, sir."
    "Belay those torpedoes!" hollered Wabak, star-
ing at the forward viewer. Something was strange,
different, something he couldn't quite... "The
tongues!" he exclaimed. "Look at the tongues!"
    "What? What?" Tina sounded confused, pan-
icky. "What about the tongues? They're not doing
anything!"
    "Exactly... they're not doing anything!" No-
body responded; Ensigns Nick and Weymouth
stared at him without comprehension. "Don't you
get it, guys? It's swallowing us whole... it's not
chewing us!"
    "This is your last opportunity to fire the torpe-
does. After this point we shall be too close for safe
operation."
    "Stand down the torpedoes, Nick. That's an
order."
    Unemotional to the end, N'Kduk-Thag turned
back to his weapons board and disarmed the torpe-
does. The maw loomed closer, soon filling the
entire viewer. Behind Joson, the enlisted man with
the mustache started shouting: "Sir, do something!
It~ swallowing us/"
    "Shut him up, now!" snapped Wabak; he heard
the chief hushing her terrified third-class, then he
tuned the pair of them out. "Tina! Hull integrity?'
"Dropping, down to fifteen percent, but--"
    "Hull pressure?" Please, he begged the Prophets,
hoping they could hear his prayer so far away, so
deep beneath the waves, please let my hunch be
right[
    "Hull pressure is..." Ensign Weymouth faded
into silence, then cleared her throat and continued.
"Hull pressure is dropping," she said in a small
voice, "down to sixty atmospheres... fifty-five."
    Ensign N'Kduk-Thag slid across to the science
console and began a level-two scan. "The creature
has closed its mouth and is expanding its alimen-
tary cavity. The increased volume is resulting in a
drop in the atmospheric pressure on the hull."
    Joson breathed a sigh of relief. "She's not eating
us. She's... carrying us." Ensign Wabak was
struck by a sudden worry. "Nick, what's happening
to the antenna?"
    "The antenna is trailing behind us but I cannot
determine whether it extends outside the creature's
mouth or has been severed. In any event it should
still be usable though it may not be long enough to
reach the surface of the ocean."  "Can we still talk to her?"
    "The radio channel is still open," said Tina,
seeming to have recovered her wits. "The carrier
signal sounds the same; I suppose it still works."
    Weymouth continued to call the numbers; the
atmospheric pressure of the seawater surrounding
the Defiant continued to drop, finally leveling out
at approximately fifteen atmospheres. The crew
proceeded with emergency repairs to the contain-
ment field, which they were able to turn off: the hull
itself could withstand that much pressure for a
brief period without significant damage.
    "Sir, we appear to be ascending," said N'Kduk-
Thag, still seated at the panel usually occupied by
Commander Dax, the science officer, when the ship
had a full crew complement. "We have risen to a
depth of seven hundred twenty meters we are
ascendingapproximately twenty meters per
minute."
    Suddenly, Joson Wabak felt a terrible fatigue. He
collapsed back in the captain's chair, shivering
from the suddenly chilly air on his sweat-drenched
uniform. Ensign Weymouth interrupted his relief:
"Joson, it's the sea monster. She's asking if we're
feeling better--and asking where we want her to
take us. At least, I think that's what she's saying...
the translation isn't particularly clear."
    "Nick, can you track the runabout that Com-
mander Dax and Doctor Bashir took up?"
    After a moment, N'Kduk-Thag responded. "The
crushed debris from the runabout lie at the bottom
of the ocean approximately ten kilometers on a
bearing of two-thirteen. There is no evidence of
human or Trill remains."
    Prophets guide them... I hope they made it
safely! "They were heading toward the land mass.
Tina, open the channel." Joson waited for her nod.
"Defiant to sea monster. Our health is improving.
We are grateful to you. We wish to be placed near
the shoreline, but if you cannot ascend that high,
let us go at as shallow a depth as you can tolerate."
He gestured, and Weymouth cut the jury-rigged
radio transmitter.
    "We should remain somewhat underwater for
cover," suggested Ensign Nick. Joson nodded, dis-
tracted by his own thoughtsrathe watery grave
they had almost shared with the Amazon.
    There was no further communication from the
sea monster. Twenty minutes later, she gently dis-
gorged the "egg" at a depth of somewhat less than
four hundred meters. The pressure increased
slowly as she contracted her "stomach," rising to a
high but manageable thirty-eight atmospheres of
pressure. The patched containment field rode
steadily at seventy-four percent, and the Defiant
continued her climb up the underwater slope until
she rested only seventy meters deep at the edge of
the continental shelf, which towered above them to
within ten meters of the surface. A runabout trip
from their present position to the shore itself
would be simple and safe... that is, thought the
ensign, unless the Cardies catch us.
    "Extend what's left of the floating antenna,
N'Kduk-Thag. We'll sit here and wait for the
commander to call us. I don't want to take any
chances with the spoon--with the Cardassians. In
the meantime..." Joson gestured vaguely. "Go
get some sleep, everyone. I'll be in the captain's
ready room."
    Exhausted, the bridge crew stumbled toward the
turbolift, while Joson Wabak wondered whether he
would make it all the way to the bed before
collapsing into a deep and dream-troubled sleep.



0

CHAPTER
      11

MAJOR Ki~ NERYS walked unsteadily toward the
turbolift; the last sight she saw before the platform
disappeared below the deck of the Ops level was
Kai Winn on her "widow's walk" balcony over-
looking the prime-team of combat technicians. The
middle-aged woman, far from looking haggard,
was serene, as if she had taken a full night's sleep
instead of the four hours of Kira's watch as CDO,
Command Duty Officer. Then the turbolift picked
up speed, rushing Kira down to the Promenade,
then along one of the crossover tunnels to her own
quarters.
    The aliens had shifted to a waiting game. Their
ships still surrounded the Emissary's Sanctuary,
what once had been called Deep Space Nine (and
Terok Nor before that), but the shattered ruins
of eight Bajoran cruisers testified to the inability
of Bajor to come to the station's aid. Kai Winn
had issued orders, with First Minister Shakar's
concurrence, that the heavier ships still in dry
dock be completed with all deliberate speed...
but that would take at least two weeks, and Kira
personally doubted the station could withstand a
siege of that length. Sooner or later, the aliens--
whoever they were--would find a weak point and
burst inside.
    Maybe they'll run when they see the new
Freedom-class starships, the major consoled her-
self, walking around the habitat ring to her door.
Maybe they'll just get tired and go away. She
smiled. Maybe the Prophets will put in an appear-
ance and smite them with lightning from the
wormhole. The possibilities seemed equally un-
likely.
    Shaking from fatigue and too much watchful-
ness, Kira lay faceup on her rack, dimming the
lights but not killing them entirely. Then she
remembered the message she had gotten out...
despite the Kai's orders, again seconded by Shakar
(to Kira's dismay), not to ask the Federation for
help, Kira had fired off a heavily encrypted sub-
space message to a Bajoran friend of hers in
Starfleet, a former Resistance fighter in another cell
she trusted utterly. Two days had passed, long
enough for the fleet to receive the forwarded sub-
space message and reply.
    She rose painfully and limped to her computer
console. Working entirely by touch, saying nothing
aloud--she wasn't sure why, but it seemed appro-
priatewKira found the incoming message and
displayed it with the sound muted.
    She saw her friend, Bel Anar, and he looked
terrible. Probably as bad as I looked, she thought
grimly. He had clearly been in combat for several
hours. His lips moved, and Kira read the subtitles
supplied by the computer in the absence of audio.

Got your message, Nerys. The Kai, may the Proph-
ets bless her, has officially told the Council that she
doesn't want any help. Hang on... don't let them
kill you! FleetIntel says they're not Cardassians and
nobody's ever seen that ship design--probably
not Dominion, but who knows. Starfleet will be
keeping an eye on the situation. Prophets bless
you, my sister-in-arms. Good luck.

    With downcast eyes, Anar terminated the mes-
sage.
    Shaking her head in frustration, Kira deleted the
message using a security override that she was
pretty sure the Kai couldn't break. Since her at-
tempt at circumventing Kai Winn's isolationism
had failed, she sure as hell didn't want the Kai to
find out she had tried.
    Kira had just padded back to the bed and laid
herself down to sleep when the door chirped.
"Computer, who is it?" she asked.
 "Jake Sisko," said the melodious voice.
    "Come," she said, rising up to a seated position.
She heard the door hiss open and footsteps enter;
there was a bang, followed by soft cursing. "Lights
three-quarters normal," said Kira belatedly.
    Blinking in the sudden illumination, Kira
walked into the living room of her two-room suite.
Jake was rubbing his shin and staring disgustedly at
the Bajoran "primitive period" tea table. "Where
did you get that stupid thing?" he demanded.
    "It was a gift from Shakar," said Kira, actually
enjoying seeing the young man squirm in embar-
rassment.
 "Uh... sorry. It's, urn, really nice."
 "I'm trying to sleep, Jake."
    "Oh! I can come back in a couple of hours if
you'rew"
 "Just tell me what you want?'
    Jake stood as tall as his father, but probably
carried only two thirds the muscle mass; Kira
couldn't help seeing him as she had the first day
they arrived at the station, newly liberated from
the Cardassians: the superimposition of a young
boy over a young man's figure was eerie. I'm just
tired, she decided.
    "I..." Jake paused, collecting his thoughts. "I
want to join the defense militia."
    Kira raised her eyebrows; for more than a year,
Jake had been acting strangely~sometimes taking
wild, unnecessary chances, then seemingly afraid
of his own shadow. "So? Why come to me? Kai
Winn organized the militia herself?'
    "That's just the point!" exclaimed Jake. "She's
only allowing Bajorans to fight!"
    Ah, the sting of offering to help and being ignored.
Get used to it, kid; welcome to the universe. "Jake,
it's her station and her militia. Why do you want to
join anyway? You're not a soldier."
  "They won't let Garak join, either!"
    "Hah! Well, what a shock. Kai Winn doesn't
want a Cardassian in the Bajoran militia? Outra-
geous!"
    "Well, you don't have to get sarcastic about it."
Jake sat sullenly on Kira's couch.
    She felt bad; Jake, at least, seemed sincere in his
desire to protect the station. (She was never so sure
about Garak, tailor to the Obsidian Order.) "Look,
I'm tired; I shouldn't have made fun. Jake, there
are two problems here: first, like it or not, this is a
Bajoran station now. The captain's not in charge
anymore... and I don't have a lot of influence
over the Kai, no matter that she seems to like me
for some strange reason."
  "I just thought maybe you couldre"
    "And second, you are the Emissary's son! Even if
Kai Winn were accepting nonBajorans, she'd prob-
ably invite Garak before she would invite you...
you still don't realize what your father means to us!
The Kai would never take the slightest chance of
angering him by putting you in harm's way."
    "But--but how can I look Dad in the eye if I
don't do my part?" His voice sounded hollow,
defeated, as if he saw a chance to prove, well,
something slipping away like a spring deer into the
woods. "How can I look at myself in the mirror?"
    "You can't look either of you in the eye if you're
dead, Jake."
    Jake's face fell; it was finally sinking in that
whatever he needed to prove to himself, he wasn't
going to be given the chance. Not this time. Jake
rose and left with a mumbled goodbye.
    Kira felt terrible; she had been younger than Jake
when she began fighting for the Resistance. She
knew exactly what he felt... the burning need to
do something, to stand up for what was right. But
Bajor was desperate and needed anyone who could
hold a gun or plant a bomb; at this point, thank the
Prophets, Emissary's Sanctuary was still holding
its own against the unknown raiders; traditional
rules that were broken during the Occupation
would be more rigidly enforced.
    Kira drifted back to her rack, wondering who
would be next to disturb her five hours of alleged
rest.
    It was, surprisingly, Garak the alleged tailor.
This time, Kira had not so much as closed her eyes
before the door chirped, sounding somehow polite
and imperious at once. "Why not?" asked the
major aloud; the computer did not recognize that
as an answer and chirped again; this time, Major
Kira said the customary.
    "Garak," she said through clenched teeth, "what
do you want now?"
"Now? My dear Major Kira, I have asked for
nothing, nothing, during this entire dreadful
siege!" The Cardassian tried to look blameless but
succeeded only in a smug, condescending expres-
sion.
    "But you have something now. Right?" Kira
was beyond weariness, painfully aware that Garak
was allowed to remain on the Bajoran station only
because there literally was nowhere else for him
to go, but the Cardassian, not surprisingly, had
been the target of countless curses, epithets, and
even a few violent assaults since the turnover. He
had some claim to victimhood... a LITTLE
claim, she amended, thinking of who he had once
been.
    "I understand," said Garak with a smile, "that
the tiny, inadequate Bajoran fleet floats in ruins
near the station and that the Federation will not
send aid so long as Kai Winn refuses to ask for it."
    Kira could not help staring. "How the hell did
you know that?"
    Garak fluttered his hands, a dismissive gesture.
"Oh, I like to keep in touch. The point is, the
raiders haven't left... which means they, too,
know that they are in no immediate danger."
    Kira said nothing, merely stared coldly, waiting
for the former member of the Cardassian Obsidian
Order to get to the point.
    "And the fact that they've stopped their ineffec-
tual shooting," he said, "implies that they're work-
ing on something more significant, a siege engine,
to use an ancient term. Do you understand what
I'm saying?"
"You haven't said anything worth hearing yet."
Garak shook his head. "So impatient. No won-
der you were so easy to conquer." The major
resisted the temptation to push her fist through
Garak's smug teeth. "Major Kira, there comes a
time when the best defense is to fold up one's tent
and steal away."
    Kira was tired, but not too tired to catch the
drift. "You're suggesting that we surrender the
station to these scum?"
    "To these very enterprising scum who hold for
the moment a decisive military advantage."
    "They're just sitting out there! They're not doing
anything."
    "They are sitting out there... but I would be
willing to bet my auto-hemmer that they are doing
something. Major Kira, if we wait until their next
attack, we may not be given the option of sur-
render. They have not made any attempt to com-
municate with you or respond to your own
communications, is that not so?"
    "You seem unusually well informed about our
secrets. You tell me."
    "I don't think it's because they can't hear you;
it's far more likely they don't care to listen. But if
you offer them something worthwhile to listen
tO..."
  "Terms of surrender?"
    Garak shrugged. "If you will. Perhaps that will
catch their attention. You could evacuate the sta-
tion, and all our lives would be spared."
    "You mean your life would be spared. I doubt
you care much about the rest of us .... "
    "Kira! You malign me. Think instead of the
Bajorans on the station. Have you thought, per-
haps, that only your own stubbornness and pride
are preventing you from saving all those Bajoran
lives?"
    "And handing over the station to raiders from
the Gamma Quadrant, for them to launch attacks
on Bajor itselfl No thank you, Garak. Good night."
    The tailor spread his hands, shaking his head.
"Major, Major, who but you and the Kai would be
in a better position to sabotage every system on
Deep Space Nine? Oh, I beg your pardon... Emis-
sary's Sanctuary,' or is it back to being Terok Nor? I
never can keep those names straight."
  "Sabotage the station?"
    "Bajor would lose the high ground, but at least
these raiders would have nothing to show for their
audacity. We should never think of rewarding
criminal actions."
    Kira stood. "Good night, Garak. This station
will never be surrendered."
    "You will at least discuss my suggestion with
your superior?"
    "Good-bye!" Major Kira thumbed the door open
and firmly pointed at the corridor beyond. Garak
sighed deeply, as a man much misjudged and
chivvied by the entire universe; then he skulked
through the doorway and strode away, probably to
plant more seeds of doubt in the minds of fright-
ened, vulnerable Bajoran civilians. Well, he won't
find us so easy to manipulate, she thought deci-
sivelymwondering whether it were true or merely
a salving boast.
    At last, she was left alone, but she could not fall
asleep. One thing only that Garak had said stuck
with her: no one currently on board knew as much
about the station systems and subsystems as Kira
Nerys... and if the worst came to pass, and the
station lost the siege and was conquered (she did
not think for a moment it would ever be surren-
dered), could she allow these faceless raiders to get
hold of such a powerful weapon? On the other
hand, surely Kai Winn would never allow Kira to
sabotage the station in advance! That would be
seen as defeatist, and possibly undermining their
defense.
    Kira made a decision: she would set in motion a
series of computer programsmviruses, actually--
that could be activated in a few minutes and would
shut down everything that could be shut down...
permanently. And she would not tell the Kai; it
would be Kira's own little secret.
    But what if Kira herself died in the defense, as
was likely? Better yet, she amended, the viruses
will require a code word from me NOT to activate
automatically. It was popularly called a "dead-
man switch"; unless Kira spoke her code word at
regular intervals, the sabotage would proceed all
by itself, and the raiders would never know what
hit them. It was a dangerous move: if Kira died or
became incapacitated before the station surren-
dered, the autosabotage would end any prayer the
Emissary's Sanctuary had of surviving. But the
alternative--quantum torpedoes raining down
upon Bajoran cities--was too horrible to contem-
plate.
    Nervous, unable to stop her mind from racing,
Kira rolled and thrashed on her bed, readjusting
the temperature and calling for soothing music and
ocean noises in a fruitless attempt to get some
sleep. At some point, she drifted off into a
nightmare-filled doze, but it was not restful. When
the alarm sounded, alerting her to her next shift,
she felt as if she had spent the night wrestling with
a particularly slippery vole in the pay of the Obsidi-
an Order. She wasn't sure which of them had won
the match.

    "Good afternoon, child," said Kai Winn as her
young protegee rose on the turbolift; Nerys looked
haggard and bitter; is that how she looked during
the Occupation? wondered the Kai. It's almost
funny... one of my DUTIES was to look as fresh
as the morning dew. My flock wanted to look at
their Sister and see hope, not despair. The hard-
bitten Resistance fighters may never have realized
how much easier a job they had than the secret
spies, the deep-cover operatives, who had no infra-
structure, no weapons but their wits, no bolt-hole
for flight if everything went wrong. And WE had to
do it with a smile.
    Kai Winn smiled now, just as she had so many
years ago, lending hope in an even more hopeless
situation. It wouldn't be fair to deprive Major Kira
of the security she so desperately needed, the
reassurance that everything was going to be all
right. She needs serenity; I must be serene, no
matter what I feel. I must be the wings of peace
enfolding her--and the rest of my flock on this
station.
    "What's so good about it?" snapped Nerys,
glowering all the harder at the Kai's smile; but
Winn knew that deep inside, Nerys was grateful as
a child reassured by her mother.
     "We are alive, child, and we still walk with the
Prophets. What could be better?" "We may be about to die!"
    "Everyone dies, Nerys. Be thankful you've lived
as long as you have and played such a role in the
great events of history."
    Major Kira said nothing, her mouth contorting
in an effort to remain grumpy. She took a cup of
ratageena from the replicator and hovered over the
shoulders of the Kai's combat team, checking the
situation (and obviously snubbing Winn upon her
balcony). "I will retire now," said the Kai. Nerys
looked up then, her face vulnerable, frightened for
a moment; then she hardened into Major Kira
again, nodding curtly.

    Kai Winn stepped inside her quarters, what once
had been the Emissary's office--it still smelled of
His Holiness; she stepped more lightly and grace-
fully than her heavy heart truly felt... perhaps a
lie, but a necessary lie. She knew and dreaded what
awaited her: for reasons known only to Them-
selves, the Prophets had chosen this moment for
Kai Winn to relive her days under the Occupation
in her dreams, and she could not deny those
dreams. She must face them and try to learn from
them what lessons the Prophets taught.
    She thought of delaying her sleep, returning to
Ops and telling Nerys in detail everything that
hadn't happened while the poor girl had been
trying to sleep, but it would just be an evasion of
the inevitable. The major would read the log; she
would note that the unknown raiders had crept
slowly closer, perhaps believing their movement
was not detected. Nerys was a good leader, even at
such a tender age, on all such routine matters...
though she knew nothing as yet of the subtle
interplay between personality and policy that she
would learn, over time, from the mentor she didn't
even know she had. It will be a blessing on her to
teach her the art of politics, thought Winn with a
smile. How else will she hoM her own with her
chosen, First Minister $hakar?
    Sighing, her heart already starting to pound and
her forehead already damp, Winn lay on her rack
and tried to wet her lips. She was afraid her old
body might not cooperate, keeping her awake de-
spite her resolve, but the Prophets knew what They
wanted. She blinked twice, and found herself
standing again on Surface 92, the long, straight,
Cardassian road leading from one world to the
next.
 The dream started again ....



CHAPTER
      12

THIRTY YEARS AGO

Rlis! thought Sister Winn, as the column crested
the last rise of Surface 92 before descending into
the river valley that held the town.
    Riis, the mighty "hand" on the rolling Shakiristi
River, where four other tributaries joined and
swelled the Shakiristi to a three-kilometers-wide
forearm thrusting between the Granite Prayers and
Lakastor mountain ranges to the Cold Sea. Riis
extended its fingers up each of the four tributaries
and the thick Shakiristi itself, and downstream an
additional kilometer, the wrist of Riis.
    The Riis docks handled more cargo than any
other city west of the Granite Prayers, its spaceport
often called the Palm of Bajor. But for all that
activity, it was still a quiet, quaint old city corn-
pared to other industrial giants. There were sub-
urbs but no urban centers, not as Sister Winn
understood the term; jobs were plentiful, and the
crime rate was noticeably lower than in the wild
mining cities near where Winn had grown up. By a
trick of the weather, a gentle breeze blew often
across Riis, not only cooling the city but blowing
away (into nearby North Riisil) the inevitable by-
products of an industrial civilization: smog and
soot. (Once every few months, there was instead a
stiff back-breeze from the north, sending the pollu-
tants back where they came from redoubled; na-
tives of Riis called such a wind "Riisil's Revenge.")
    Riis, Winn remembered, was said to have been
founded three thousand years earlier, when a holy
man named Kilikarri went fishing in the Shakiristi,
cast his net, and miraculously caught not only a
hundred fish but the third Scroll of Prophecy,
written in jet-black letters on a golden parchment.
The scroll was supposed to be on display in the
vault of the Temple of the Emissary Kilikarri, but a
newly minted sister was not likely to be admitted
by the temple preceptors or the father vedek.
    As Gul Ragat's household descended into Riis,
the sun was newly risen, bathing the slumbering
city in a golden red glow through the cloud cover. A
permanent rainbow arced across the Palm of Bajor
as a gentle mist rose from the rapids; the mist fell
as a drizzle, and when the corner of water reached
the column, Sister Winn said a grateful prayer to
the Prophets for their cooling touch--which she
chose to interpret as a sign that she wasn't straying
from her duty, that all would work out well, that
she wouldn't end up accidentally betraying the
Resistance and getting a whole cell captured.
    Surface 92 led directly into the outskirts of Riis,
but there it ended abruptly where the jurisdiction
of the Cardassian civil engineers had run into the
military jurisdiction of the governor of the prefec-
ture. The caravan had made excellent time; it was
barely two hours past sunrisemand still many
hours before the actual planned time of the strike
at the spaceport, which would come at sundown,
just before the changing of the Cardassian sentries.
The Prophets, thought Sister Winn, I hope will
forgive me my lie to Gul Ragat.
    The Shakiristi River was so important to Riis
(and Riis to the river) that the city extended itself
right into the water; many "streets" in Riis were
waterways, plied by motorboats and even a few
that were rowed. "Sidewalks" floated upon the
water, making a journey by foot perilous through
parts of the city, especially for priestesses who had
never spent time on boats or at sea.
    The Cardassians on their skimmers (one pair
riding double) were unaffected by the rocking,
heaving sidewalks, of course, and even Gul Ragat
seemed oblivious to the difficulty his Bajoran ser-
vants had; the household had to trot briskly to keep
up with the impatient gul, and a maid and a
skimmer mechanic slipped on the supposedly non-
skid surface of a floating sidewalk and took an
unexpected swim together. Hersaaka Toos, the
Bajoran overseer, fished them out; Winn made sure
neither was hurt before hurrying after her
"master."
    The Heavenward Prayer Spaceport--now
charmingly renamed Collection Point Onemstood
not in the center of Riis but on the outskirts, dating
from a time when space travel was unfamiliar and
frightening to many Bajorans and the farmers
demanded that rocket-based ships not fly over their
land. Gul Ragat decided his mob would lurk in the
town until close to the moment of the expected
raid, so they wouldn't scare the "rebels" away.
    He stopped his limousine skimmer and stepped
out to speak to Sister Winn. "You said the attack
would come this morning... late morning. Before
noon, surely?" The eagerness shone from his eyes;
Gul Ragat was dazzled by visions of his own glory,
his ascension to the full governorship--the young-
est governor on Bajor!--and perhaps an early
promotion to legate. Young though Winn felt, she
knew she was older than the gul, and not just
chronologically.
    "I said it may come as early as this morning, My
Lord. They could easily hold off until the afternoon
if there were problems, or even until nightfall, to
take best advantage of the darkness." In fact, the
raid was meticulously planned. "But please, My
Lord... are you sure I'm doing the right thing? I
feel so very like a--a betrayer!"
 She stared anxiously at Gul Ragat and allowed
him to reassure her that ratting out her own people
was in fact the very best thing she could do. Can't
appear too eager, she warned herself. The gul didn't
look at her as he spoke; he stared around him at the
people walking across the huge, floating merchants'
square, probably wondering which of them was an
agent of the Resistance. Sister Winn wondered the
same; she was not from Riis, had been to Riis only
twice, and knew none of the cell members or
protocols--of course! The whole point of a cell
structure was to minimize the damage if one
should turn or be captured and tortured: what you
didn't know, you couldn't spill, no matter what the
reason.
    Gul Ragat was a child in a sweetshop, staring at
everything with big round eyes. He had never
before involved himself in the counter-Resistance,
never felt the quickening of his pulse, the dizziness
of anxiety, wondering whether he would give him-
self away and frighten the rebels away... or even
be assassinated. Winn watched him openly, since
he was not looking at her; he shrank suddenly into
the shadows, drawing his coat closer about his
shoulders, though the day was heating up with the
rising sun. Gul Ragat had abruptly realized how
vulnerable he was... a young gul with only six-
teen guards in a city admittedly crawling with
Resistance fighters!
    Winn felt a malignant presence behind her;
turning, she saw Neemak Counselor. He pushed
past her without a glance and approached the gul,
speaking in low tones that she could not hear. She
didn't need to; she knew what he was saying: he
grew suspicious at the gul's behavior; the counselor
desperately wanted to figure out what Ragat
planned so Neemak could report it to his true
superior. But the gul knew the game, at least in
theory, and would keep his own counsel, even from
his counselor. In Gul Ragat's fantasy, when the
smoke cleared, who was to say that he hadn't
simply been in the right place at the right time and
shown proper, Cardassian initiative to thwart a
damaging rebel attack?
    Winn, however, had her own designs. She eye-
balled the square, watching citizens step aboard,
conduct their business, and step off. She, the gul,
and Neemak hovered in the shadow of a teahouse
that also served food, and the smell was almost
holy after two days of traveler's rations. But Ragat
was much too excited to think of eating, and it was
not Winn's place to suggest it. In any event, she was
intent upon finding someone she recognized and
getting a message out somehow; the smell and the
sizzle of breakfast was just a distraction.
    The Prophets finally heard the priestess's prayer.
A young man--still a boy, actually--stepped
across the gap between the floating sidewalk and
the merchants' square; she recognized him as
Barada Vai, whose older sister, Barada Mirina, was
a prospect for Winn's own Resistance cell some
months back. "Prospect" was probably too lofty a
term; the priestess's ears reddened at the thought
that the gift was more than likely an "anybody's,"
passed around from man to man in the cell. In any
event, Sister Winn had met the Barada family, and
¥ai might well remember her; a visit from a sister
or brother was an important social event in a
traditional Bajoran family.
    But how can I talk to him without Ragat panick-
ing? She stared hungrily at the boy, aware that she
had only a few moments before he finished pur-
chasing whatever he came to buy and hopped
across to the sidewalk again. Thinkfast./she com-
manded. There is your brother, within an easy shout
or a couple of long steps... do something/
    It was as if the Prophets Themselves suddenly
whispered into Winn's ear, so swiftly did the plan
form. She gasped with the wonder of it, and the gul
heard her, but that was fine, it fit well with the
scheme.
    "My Lord," she whispered, "this is... this is
dreadful!"
    "What is? What's happened?" The gul was al-
ready jumpy; now he grew quite agitated, worried
that his opportunity might slip through his fingers.
  "That boy there... he's my brother!"
  "Your brother? Your real brother?"
    "My half brother on my father's side," said the
priestess in agony, "and--and he must be working
at the spaceport!"
 "The spaceport? Wait, didn't you know?"
    She turned to the gul, trying as hard as she could
to blanch. "No, no! How could I have known? I
haven't seen him for three years! But he wrote to
my father and told him he had gotten a job at a
spaceport, for he's always wanted to be a pilot...
but I didn't know where. But if he's here, at Riis,
then he's--My Lord, he'll be directly in the line of
fire! He may be killed! Oh master, I beg of you,
spare this boy's life--he's no Resistance fighteft"
    "Hush!" ordered Ragat, aghast at her indiscre-
tion. "Keep your voice down, I order you!" He
looked fearfully where Neemak had been but a
moment before, but the shifty counselor had slith-
ered away, as he often did without asking leave.
This time, as with many others, the gul looked
relieved rather than affronted.
    "Please, My Lord, let me warn the boy... let
him be away from that place when your lordship
springs his surprise."
    "Sister Winn, you can't warn him of my trap!
What can you be thinking? He'll run straight to the
rebels, whether he's in the Resistance or not."
 "He won't!"
    Gul Ragat rolled his eyes. "Any Bajoran boy
would." He considered a long moment; he liked to
think of himself as a compassionate man, and
Sister Winn was one of his favorites. "This far will
I let you: you may tell some plausible lie to keep
him away from his job for today, but we will work
it out now, and you will not deviate from the
script." He lowered his brows and tried to look
menacing, a task quite easy for a Cardassian; his
scowl shook Winn and scared her. "I would not like
to have to arrest you on a charge of aiding the
rebellion against rightful authority."
    She inclined her head submissively. "My Lord,"
she agreed. "Shall I... tell him you need him tom
take holos of some event you're sponsoring? A
banquet, perhaps?"
    "Yes, that might--wait, a party; my birthday
party."
  "Is it your birthday, My Lord?"
    "No, there's no birthday, but there's no party,
either! A perfect match. Yes, that will do. Let's go
to him and get it over with; I don't like standing in
the middle of the square attracting attention."
    Winn had hoped to get a chance to talk to the
boy alone, but that was a silly thought. For all that
Gul Ragat thought of himself as a kind, gentle
master, he was still a Cardassian untroubled by the
thought of owning slaves. With so much at stake,
he would not allow one slave to conspire with
another outside his hearing!
    The pair approached Barada ¥ai, and Sister
Winn attempted to feel as serene as she looked; like
all priests, she had learned to wear the mask: it was
necessary when comforting the dying, for example.
But sometimes, the mask crept inward, and this
was one of those times. With every step, Winn's
certainty increased that the lad would not blow the
game.
    "Barada Vai," said Ragat, "you recognize this
woman, do you not?"

    Vai looked at Winn's habit, recognizing its cleri-
cal significance but no more. "A sister," he said
uncertainly.
    Winn smiled broadly. "Has it been so long, my
brother? You were so much younger when I left
home, but I'm your sister, Winn. Didn't mother
tell you I was to take holy orders?"
    Barada Vai froze for a moment; then the natural
guile of youth took over, and he fell very naturally
into the game, swiftly aware that they were playing
a joke on a hated Cardassian. "Sis!" he cried, his
entire face suddenly breaking into a grin. "I didn't
recognize you..."
    "Vai-lak, you may trust this fine lord completely.
He is truly a prince among Cardassians, a natural
master, and he treats well those of us marked by
nature to be subservient. He has an important task
for you." Winn worried she might be laying it on a
bit thick, but Ragat was too busy preening to
realize what any other Bajoran would understand,
that Winn was really saying: "Don't believe a word
the son of a bachelor says!"
    She was about to explain about the holos, but Gul
Ragat seized control of the conversation. "Lad, I
have an important task for you. Your sister says you
are handy with a holocam; I need holos taken of my
birthday celebration today. You will return home
and get your holocam, then run to..." The gul
trailed off, evidently not familiar enough with the
floating city of Riis to suggest a location.

    "To the Hall of the Legion of Prophets," sup-
plied Sister Winn smoothly; every large Bajoran
city had one.
    "I'm sorry," added Ragat, "but you can't go to
the spaceport today."
    "The--spaceport?" asked Barada ¥ai, suddenly
puzzled.
    Winn interjected smoothly, confident the Proph-
ets would whisper into the boy's ear. "Your job
there is important, I know, but you cannot be there
today. There is something much more important to
do: the holos are important; the holos are very, very
important. Much more important than whatever
trivial task you perform at your job at the space-
port." She snuck a glance at Ragat to see if he had
noticed the special emphasis she placed on the
holos; he seemed thoughtful, and she felt a tendril
of fear. But she pressed on; a priestess could not
allow fear to override duty.
    Ragat took control of the conversation again; his
tone indicated some distress, perhaps the intima-
tion that something had been passed... but he
could not place his bony, Cardassian finger on it.
"Be at the, ah, Hall of the Legion of Prophets
within the hour, and wait there until I or my men
arrive. Do you understand the order?"
    "Yes, My Lord," said Barada ¥ai, all earnest eyes
and nodding chin. Dismissed, he sped away, carry-
ing Sister Winn's hopes with him.
    She had confidence that he would figure out at
least the overt part of the warning: Don't go to the
spaceport/was clear enough. If the boy had main-
tained his connections to the Resistance, he would
promptly report the unusual command, even if he
had no knowledge of the raid. But will he compre-
hend the second, deeper message? wondered the
priestess. The words that had fretted at Gul Ragat,
"the holos are very, very important," were the
heart of Winn's own mission... which indeed
was more important than a trivial raid on a space-
port. Sister Winn's holos, still lodged semisecurely
in her trick boot heel, contained the key to Cardas-
sian military codes, plans, and bases that would
lend solid effectiveness to the Resistance for years
to come, if used cautiously. And everything now
rested in the capricious understanding of a child
barely past puberty whose connection with the
movement was less than savory.
    Gul Ragat stepped away from the publicity of the
floating market square toward the landed portion
of Riis, there to resume his vigil for intelligence of
the raid. He did not even glance back to see that
Winn followed... which she did meekly, never
having given cause for Cardassian offense. He
seemed to have left off pondering the weight of her
words about the holos; her cover, she decided, was
still intact.
    For how much longer? wondered the priestess,
having the first, faint intimations that she might be
on her last mission, even if successful. If the
Obsidian Order ever realized how they had been
compromised, an investigation would commence
the likes of which had rarely been seen on Bajor.
The legate would probably be withdrawn; and
chance encounters, recalled, such as Winn's brush
with the guard in the code room. The priestess
would have little in her future but a tortuous trial
and torturous detention on Terok Nor, in the loving
ministration of Gul Dukat, assuming she were
allowed to live that long.
    She swallowed, stumbling on the heaving side-
walk behind her "master." The consolation would
be the utter ruin of the young Gul Ragat before her
and of his smug acceptance of his own superior-
ity... and this time, Sister Winn did not even
apologize to the Prophets for her uncharity! She
still reveled in the image.

PRESENT DAY

Eyes downcast, trying his best to look humbled and
shaken, Benjamin Sisko shuffled forward behind
the abrasive and abusing Cardassian lieutenant,
who had Sisko and the others in tow on a long rope.
Not the usual arrangement, to be sure; there were
no handcuffs or strength-sapping cerebroclamps on
their heads. But still, the Cardassian sergeants at
the gate of the landing zone braced to attention as
the unrecognized but thoroughly Cardassian officer
passed them by, returning their salutes with noth-
ing but an imperious snort.
 The sergeants did not look too closely at the
motley prisoners-- Thank fortune! thought Sisko; if
they had, they would have wondered what two
humans, a Klingon, and a Ferengi of all people
were doing on Sierra-Bravo. But the bored sentries
saw only a Cardassian lieutenant dragging behind
him four prizes of war, clothed and hooded like
many other Natives. Why shouM they be alarmed
and alert? thought the captain, the Defiant must
already have left orbit--there is no reason to suspect
there is anyone here but the Natives... if indeed,
they truly are native.
    Ahead of Sisko, Quark began to grumble. "Did
you have to tie our hands so tight, you sadistic
thug?" he snarled.
    Cardassian Odo turned his head back. "What
makes you think I tied anyone else's hands as
tightly as I did yours, Quark?" Sisko couldn't see
through Quark's hood, but he was sure the Ferengi
was flushing pink with anger.
    They were lucky with the clothing. The hoods
had come with the scouting backpacks, attached to
parkas in case of rain. Chief O'Brien--now di-
rectly behind the captain and grumbling quite
convincingly--cut the hoods off at the shoulders.
Added to the replicated homespun they had worn
since first beaming down to the surface, the hoods
looked no more bizarre than the costumes of many
other Natives, and of course, they hid Klingon,
Ferengi, and even human features from prying
eyes.
 Odo himself had suggested the ruse: he had been
practicing shapeshifting to a Cardassian since DS9
was Terok Nor. His facial features hidden behind a
mask, he could pass cursory muster as a "generic
Cardassian." So long as they moved fast and the
sentries were not particularly alert, there should be
no alarm, thought Sisko.
    "Are we alone?" he whispered behind him; the
column paused while the chief, shielded by the
other "prisoners," scanned with his tricorder.
    "Besides the two we just passed and the other,
there are eleven Drek'la in this structure, and I'm
picking up electromagnetic leakage of the frequen-
cy used by several models of Cardassian skim-
mers." O'Brien put away the tricorder and nodded
appreciatively to the captain. "You were right, sir; I
think it's a vehicle pool."
    The structure was one of nine hastily erected
buildings ranging from a small Quonset hut with
sleeping arrangements for four to a large building
emitting a stench that clearly marked it as a Car-
dassian mess hall. Sisko found the structure that
was most centrally located. He couldn't see any
vehicles from the angle they viewed, poking their
heads over the last rocks of the hilly range against
which the split-heads had carried them, but the
empty bays he could see looked like loading docks.
Captain Sisko made the intuitive leap that they
would find skimmers in this building if they found
them anywhere.
    They left their mounts grazing excitedly on the
near side of the hills, chattering among themselves:
evidently, the grass really was bluer on the other
side of the desert, or so the herd decided. Ruut and
Arrk chomped happily while the females cavorted;
within seconds, the entire herd had utterly forgot-
ten the "small-head Idiot" Quark and his own
herd ... which is just fine with me, thought Sisko.
The split-heads did not exactly go silent.
    Creeping down from the hills and cutting around
a quarter circle to appear to come from the road,
Odo, disguised as the Cardassian lieutenant, led
the rest of the away team as prisoners past the
sentries, another guard, and now the garage. Sisko
looked around in wary satisfaction; the first stage
had gone well, and they were in the building
without raising alarm. "So we're in," he ventured.
"Anybody have a plan now for getting us out?"


CHAPTER
      13

"WORF, ODO, secure the corridor," said the cap-
tain, worrying that at any moment, some Drek'la
might take it into his head to check out a skimmer
and go cruising. The Klingon and constable parted,
each taking position at the closest intersection in
each direction. Sisko stood still and quiet in the
center, absently stroking his beard--/desperately
need a trim, he noted--and pondering the unde-
tected removal of a large skimmer from the com-
pound.
    "Sir," said Chief O'Brien, interrupting Sisko's
thought processes, "wouldn't it be better to leave
thievery to a professional?"
    "How dare you!" exclaimed Quark, putting on
Innocent Look Number Five. "Must I continually
be insulted, when I've done every task required of
me? Risen above and beyond the call of profit,
even!"
    O'Brien smirked. "But you instantly knew who I
meant, Quark. If the shoe fits, and all that."
    Suddenly realizing his vulnerable position, the
Ferengl made a sour face and lapsed into awkward
silence. He broke it himself after only a few sec-
onds. "Well, actually," he muttered, "I do have a
thought. Not through any experience in--in theft,
but simply because Ferengi businessmen are eter-
nally resourceful and not hampered by useless
codes of altruism or chivalry."
  "Or honesty," added the chief.
    "There's nothing more dangerous than an honest
businessman," quoted Quark loftily.
    "Rule of Acquisition Number Twenty-Seven,"
said the captain, startling both disputants. "Now
be quiet, Chief, and let the man have his say."
Sisko nodded at the Ferengi, who snorted in
O'Brien's direction and continued.
    "It occurred to me," said Quark, with a bitter
glare in the direction of Odo, still shapeshifted into
a Cardassian visage, "that the Cardassians would
never believe that the--the Natives would have the
initiative to steal a skimmer. They've obviously
figured out how passive the Natives are about their
technology, which is why the Cardassians are doing
what they're doing."
     "True enough," said the captain; so far, Quark's
 reasoning was sound.
     "So if a skimmer, one skimmer, suddenly turned
 up missing, they might think first to a Drek'law
 until they located them all. And then, somebody
 would remember the Defiant and jump to the
 obvious conclusion."
     "That we had managed to beam an away team
 down before the ship left," said Sisko, seeing where
 the Ferengi was leading.
    '~1 skimmer?" asked O'Brien. "You said if a
skimmer, one skimmer went missing."
    "Exactly!" Quark smiled benignly as if compli-
menting a child on his first bit of profit earned. "If
a whole batch of skimmers disappeared simultane-
ously, they would first suspect a bizarre computer
malfunction."
    Sisko grinned broadly, enjoying the image. "If
we were to reprogram the routing computers here
in the hangar to generate spurious requests for
transport and send out all the vehicles, the Cardas-
sians might well think their problem was faulty
electronics, not sabotage."
    O'Brien seemed none too pleased that Quark
had, in fact, thought of a brilliant plan before the
chief did, but he had to admit it would be spectacu-
lar, if nothing else. Sisko collected Worf and Odo
and called them into a huddle. "Worf, you are
familiar with Cardassian military-outpost layouts,
aren't you?"
    "Of course I am," said the Klingon, sounding
faintly offended that the captain would even have
to ask.

"Being Cardassian, I'm sure they follow a preset
and unwavering plan."
    "I must admit, the enemy is a model of efficiency
and order that the Federation could do well to
study."
    "Lead us to the main transportation computer,
Commander. Chief, you'd better start figuring out
exactly what glitch you're going to program while
we're en route; we won't have much time between
security sweeps."
    As was usual in a Cardassian military facility,
the corridors were straight, poorly lit by human
standards, and scrupulously clean, smelling of
ozone and disinfectant from the automated clean-
ing robots that periodically scuttled past. In case of
surveillance, Sisko had Constable Odo lead the way
and the rest of the away team act the part of
despondent prisoners of war. Worf was directly
behind the "Cardassian lieutenant," quietly giving
directions.
    The Klingon was competent as always, and the
crew came to an interior door with markings that
read "Transportation Communications Only" in
Cardassian. The door was, of course, locked, but
the chief began immediately to poke at the touch-
pad next to it. The door was flimsier than a
permanent structure would be, but it was not so
weak that they could force their way through...
everything depended on Chief O'Brien.
     Captain Sisko began to count silent seconds as
 O'Brien worked; there was no way they could
explain why a supposed prisoner was being allowed
to try to open a locked door! But the captain had
barely reached sixteen when the door slid open.
    "I bypassed the security protocol," said O'Brien
casually. "Don't know why any of us even bother,"
muttered the chief, half to himself. "Everybody in
the whole, bloody quadrant seems able to bypass
security codes in half a minute or less."
    "It keeps out teenaged joyriders," Sisko couldn't
help responding.
    The computer room had the best environmental
controls of the entire temporary structure, since
Cardassian technology (as Chief O'Brien so often
reminded the captain) was extraordinarily finicky.
The room was maintained at a constant tempera-
ture that felt comfortable to Captain Sisko, which
meant their hosts would probably have found it
chilly. The computers themselves looked far more
modern than the systems on Deep Space Nine--
which made sense, as the Cardassians had built the
station many years earlier.
    Looking quickly around the room, Sisko saw no
permanent sentries, a stroke of good fortune he had
anticipated: there was no reason for the invaders to
expect to be invaded in turn, and sentries wasted
watching an empty room could better serve harry-
ing the population (and grabbing for themselves
whatever technology they could lay their hands on).
But there might be an occasional roving watchman;
best to hurry with their task.

    "Chief," said Sisko, gesturing at the nearest
coilsole.
     "Wait, don't tell me," said O'Brien. "You want
me to bypass the security protocols?"
"If you have half a minute."
    The internal security must have been more com-
plex than the door entry code; it took Chief
O'Brien close to four minutes to find a path around
the fire walls. But eventually, he announced he was
in and began to enter his virus program. "Six
skimmers," he said. "Two of them are the big, ten-
person troop transports; the rest are personal cy-
cles." O'Brien continued to work, teasing informa-
tion out of the console on the fly; Sisko watched in
rapt fascination, barely following the blur of coded
query, response, and instruction. The man knew
his work, no question!
    "The years you've spent on the former Terok Nor
seem to have paid off," said the captain admir-
ingly. O'Brien did not respond.
    "Worf," O'Brien asked a few moments later, "do
you know where the vehicles are housed?"
    "We saw none in the south loading dock," said
the commander. "They must all be at the north."
    "Good, because we've got three minutes to get to
our ride." The chief stood abruptly, absurdly
smoothing his rumpled, homespun disguise.
    Worf wasted no time. "Back out the door and
turn right," he said to Odo, who once more took
the actual lead. The Klingon hesitated only twice,
but each time, Sisko's heart leapt up his throat. If
the three minutes passed, and the computer or-
dered every vehicle to shove off on mysterious
errands before the away team could get to the
loading dock, the Federation visitors would be in
serious trouble indeed; they might still make it out
in the confusion, but the camp would be aroused.
    Left, right, through a doorway... then there
was a footfall ahead of them along a corridor, and
the captain grabbed at the nearest door. They
hustled inside, Sisko waiting to be last, and only
then did he realize he was in the pantry. Ordinar-
ily, he would have waited until the sentry passed,
but they had no time: risking the light from
torches, Sisko silently pointed to the food stores
and indicated every man to stock up. It was a
timely serendipity; they were down to their last
rationed meal of the food they brought with them
on the mission.
    No, don't stop! shrieked Sisko inside his skull, as
the idiot guard loitered outside the door to the
larder. Then an even more worrisome thought
occurred: What if he decides he's hungry and opens
the door for an illicit snack?
    But the guard grunted, slapped his belly loudly,
and moved on down the corridor. His footsteps
had barely faded when the captain threw open the
door.
    There was no one to see them, and they were
down to seconds on the time clock. "No time for
stealth," said Sisko. "Run for it! Worf, take point."
    "Aye, aye, sir," said the commander, and set off
up the replicated-steel hallway at a pace halfway
between a jog and a sprint. Odo brought up the
rear, still maintaining his Cardassian form--just
in case.
    They reached the north loading dock. "Damn,"
said the chief, looking at his tricorder, "we've only
got fifteen seconds!"
    "Which skimmer did you program for manual
control?" demanded Captain Sisko, staring at the
parked vehicles.
    "All, I picked Troop Transport Six," said
O'Brien, staring around. "The others are all set to
random courses that--"
    "No time! Find it!" Even as the captain gave the
command, he realized it was unnecessary; there
were only two skimmers large enough to be troop
transports, and one of them was unmarked...
probably the personal property of the gul or legate
who was in charge of the invasion, a household
vehicle rather than military issue. They bolted for
the one with military markings, and Chief O'Brien
madly pecked at the touchplate.
    "Damn it--damn it--damn it!" he swore. "Sud-
denly, I can't bypass a bloody door lock!"
    Odo pressed past the captain and yanked
O'Brien away from the pad, just as the running
lights illuminated and the engines started. Sisko
stared at the constable's hand: Odo had turned it
into a slim rectangle of plastic with a hook at one
end. "Let me try something," mumbled Odo, push-
 ing his shapechanged hand into the door crack,
 sliding it up, and pulling back. The door opened
 with a hiss as the troop transport rose slightly from
 the dock and began to edge out the open end
 toward the other buildings of the compound.
    The away team leapt inside the moving vehicle;
again, Sisko insisted on being last... and he
found himself running full tilt alongside the accel-
erating skimmer, making a final, desperate leap at
the portal. Odo extended his arms like tendrils and
caught the captain, reeling him in like a ship in a
tractor beam.
    The transport picked up speed, and the roar of
wind past the open door became deafening;
O'Brien, up in the cockpit and swearing like a
drunken Klingon, finally found the right command
to close it. At last, they could breathe easy; in the
rear viewscreen, Sisko watched half a dozen vehi-
cles shoot off in as many directions, followed after
a moment by shouting Cardassians on foot, waving
their arms and running after the skimmers in a
futile attempt to make them turn back.
    Quark was staring at Odo. "If I had known you
would need a SlikPik," grumped the Ferengi, "I
would have brought one."
    "Oh?" drawled the constable. "And just where
would you get such burglar's tools?"
    "I use it when I lock myself out of the bar," said
Quark austerely.
    "Worf," said the captain, cutting off further
rejoinder by Constable Odo, "you're Pilot in
Charge. Chief, I want you to get busy with the
sensors and find us a central power plant. It's time
to put phase two of this mission into effect... call
it Operation Blackout."

    Major Kira Nerys was on duty when the demand
came, the first verbal contact they had received
from the elusive attackers. Kira stared at the cryp-
tic figures that danced across her threat board; until
the computer deciphered them, they had no idea
what the aliens were trying to say--or even who
they were. Still, even an unintelligible message
conveyed information... at the least, the aliens
were no longer sure of being able to overcome the
station before help arrived.
    The major slapped her combadge. "Kira to Kai
Winn," she said.
    "Yes, child?" asked a sleepy voice from the ether;
the Kai had just gone to sleep an hour ago.
    "They just sent us a message, probably a demand
of some sort."
"I shall be right down. Make no response."
Kira shrugged; without knowing what the attack-
ers asked, how could she make any response? It
took Kai Winn two minutes to appear in Captain
Sisko's "crow's nest," as Chief O'Brien sometimes
called it; probably struggling to put the "serenity"
mask back on, thought the major. During that
time, the message from the attackers repeated
twice.
  Winn said nothing, merely stood behind Kira
and looked at the symbols crawling across the
screen. The universal translator struggled, swap-
ping out pieces of the message for jumbles of
nonsensical words. The computer took its time, but
finally, after an additional six minutes, it had a
translation. The words began as "idea sets" in
small boxes here and there about the screen, then
connector words, refinements, and corrections;
abruptly, having gotten the hang of the alien lan-
guage, the entire message flickered then disap-
peared, the complete translation replacing it.

We are the Liberated... Survival is the universal
right... You are overmatched and must surren-
der... You may ultimately keep the enclosed
environment but you must pay for your liberty as
we paid for ours... We require the Portable-Far-
Seeing-Anomaly as our price to restore your en-
closed environment... You must respond within
two hours fourteen minutes, thirty-eight point nine
one nine one seconds.

    Why such a bizarre deadline? thought Kira, mo-
mentarily puzzled; she rolled her eyes in exaspera-
tion at herself when she realized it was obviously
the computer's translation of some "round" num-
ber in the aliens' language, probably expressed as
vibrations of a helium nucleus or some equally
universal unit.
    "The Liberated," mused the Kai. "Liberated
from what, I wonder?"

    "They... came from the Gamma Quadrant,"
suggested Kira.
 "Liberated from the Dominion, child?"
    Kira shrugged. "They certainly have some Do-
minionlike technology, but they're significant for
what they don't have: they haven't beamed anyone
out through shields, and they're not using standard
Dominion disruptors." Kira winced, eyes dry and
painful from staring unblinking at the viewer; she
rubbed them. "If they are escaped Dominion sub-
jects who stole vessels, it makes sense that they
might not be as well equipped as the Jem'Hadar
warships... thank the Prophets!"
    "If they had come from one of the known
Dominion fleets," the Kai pointed out, "they
would have come past the Federation-Klingon
force in the Gamma Quadrant."
    "Which still fits the theory, my Kai: escaped
slaves would go out of their way to avoid the
Jem'Hadar fleets. So what," she asked, turning to
the practical, "what are they asking for? What is
this 'Portable-Far-Seeing-Anomaly'?"
    "I have somewhat of an idea, my child," said Kai
Winn softly, "but I dare not say anything until we
know what they know, and what they only suspect
from distant rumor." She fumbled for her com-
badge, then spoke sharply: "Computer! Begin re-
cording response to the... the Liberated.
    "Blessed are you and all others before the Proph-
ets," said Winn. "We are a peaceful people. We too
are recently liberated from captors. We must un-
derstand further what you mean by the Portable-
Far-Seeing-Anomaly. Please clarify. We thank you
for recognizing our right to survival, and we shall
recognize yours. You may depart in peace. We look
forward to better communications, understanding,
and trade." The Kai nodded, and the computer
responded that the message was recorded. "Trans-
late and send it to the ship," she ordered the
computer.
    "That was clever," said Kira grudgingly, "turn-
ing around their line about survival. The 'enclosed
environment' is obviously a reference to Deep--to
Emissary's Sanctuary."
    "So I deduced, child. And I think I know what
they want."
    The Portable-Far-Seeing-Anomaly? "You're wiser
than I," she admitted.
    "Of course," said Kai Winn offhandedly.
"Nami, while we parley, the Liberated are going to
try another assault on the station."
    "We shall be ready," said the captain of the
strike team running Ops; a Resistance cell! realized
Kira in amazement; the remnant of a cell that Kai
Winn had operated during the Occupation?
    "Perhaps," said Winn, so quietly that only Kira
may have heard her. She sat calmly, irritatingly, in
the chair that still cried for Captain Sisko; Winn
rested prim hands on proper knees and smiled
serenely at the forward viewer, waiting for the
reply from the Liberated. Kira felt like a fifth leg on
a filipis mount. "Nami, is the package ready?"
    "Not yet, my Kai," said the tall, grim-faced
gunner captain. "It will be brought to your quarters
when it's finished."
    Winn nodded, understanding the conversation
even if Kira hadn't a clue. "Major," said the Kai,
startling the executive officer from her reverie,
"shouldn't you take personal charge of the militia?
That seems a fit task for my second-in-command."
    Major Kira brightened; roaming the station un-
der arms would be a welcome distraction from the
gears within gears of the Kai's ambassadorial in-
trigues. At least it was clean, and Kira knew just
what to do! "At once, my Kai," she replied, and
mounted the turbolift before Winn could change
her mind.

    The village was a charnal house. Julian Bashir
wanted to throw himself to the ground screaming,
cover his eyes, and especially block out the stench
from several hundred dead bodies left unburied
under a hot, white sun... three hundred and forty-
four dead bodies, to be precise, he thought in gory
detail. The medical tricorder shook in his hands,
but he suppressed all other reactions; he was a
doctor, and this was a medical situation. Sort of.
    Jadzia had no such rock to cling to; she wrapped
her arms around herself and stared at mass homi-
cide, face pale and neck-spots bone white. Gone
was the easy banter; three hundred and forty-four
massacred innocents shocked even her ancient
memory. "They're all dead?" she asked, voice
trembling slightly.
    "By now, there are no survivors," he answered,
professionally reassuring without even thinking
about it.
    "By now? You mean ... there were survivors,
but they starved or bled to death?"
    Julian didn't answer. Having found no higher
life-forms, he searched for genetic scrapings of
Cardassians and Drek'la, finding them in abun-
dance.
    "Julian. Don't you see what this is? They're
slaughtering the Natives all over the planet, just
like the Tiffnaki village!" Her voice turned icy.
"You forget. I watched this once." She stared so
hard at Julian, he actually felt her eyes on his
flushed cheeks; he was drawn to look at her even
against his will. "'A time to kill,'" she quoted,
"'and a time to heal.' It's time to fight back, Julian.
For doctors as well as soldiers." He swallowed,
recognizing the chime of truth.
    Still, Julian Bashir, man of adventure, was still a
man of medicine, and it took much, much to turn
him into a man of war. "I have fought before," he
said guardedly.
    Jadzia stared at him with a cold gaze he recog-
nized with a shock as being more of Worf than
Dax; he bit his lip painfully, then recalled that she
was blood brother to several Klingon warriors of
the old school when "she" was a he, Curzon Dax.
Jadzia did not see that tie as dissolved, even a
death and another life later; there was good reason
that Commander Worf accepted her as his equal in
matters Klingon.
    She spoke almost too softly for him to hear; she
sounded reverent, as if she were in a temple instead
of an abattoir. "Think of it as triage, Julian. The
only way to stop the slaughter is to seize the
Cardassians's attention. And I know only one way
for sure to do that."
    The doctor closed his eyes, but the smell was
even more powerful than the sight: the corpses had
lain for some time in the sun with no stasis, no
refrigeration. Triage; letting some die that others
might live. It was always the most horrific part of
being a doctor, especially a frontier doctor; it was a
task he had flied many times, and he still had
nightmares about it.
    "All right, Jadzia; you win. You want to attack
the Cardassians and get them searching for sabo-
teurs instead of slaughtering Natives... you're
right. I'll do it." He swallowed, feeling a lump
where his gorge had risen.
    Dax smiled disturbingly and said something in
Klingon, which Julian's universal translator im-
plant rendered as, "We shall drink of his blood and
sup on his brains." It sounded like a typical Kling-
on aphorism. "There's a weapon storage on the
skimmer," she added. "I already checked. Four
fully powered disruptors. We'll head back toward
the Tiffnaki village, then track the away team's
scent using our tricorders. But the first Cardassian
encampment we find..." She looked to the bodies
at her feet, curling her lip in revulsion.
    "Aye, aye, sir," said Bashir coldly, leaving no
doubt on whose head the responsibility would lie.

0

CHAPTER
      14

CHIEF MILES EDWARD O'BRIEN shifted his attention
between two types of Cardassian sensors, both
tuned to detect power broadcasts across the entire
electromagnetic spectrum, as well as any subspace
transmissions below the communications spec-
trum. Neither sensor gave very accurate readings;
they had already overflown two false alarms, and
Worf was beginning to grumble about "incompe-
tence." O'Brien wasn't quite sure whether the
Klingon pilot meant Cardassian incompetence or
O'Brien's.
    "Are you certain this time that you have located
a power generator?" demanded the commander. "I
do not wish to see yet another relay station."
 "No, Worf, I'm not certain! I didn't design this
bloody planet, or these piles of rubbish the Cardas-
sians use for sensors."
    Worf spoke through clenched teeth, manifestly
refusing to look at the chief as he spoke. "Must I
remind you that the longer we stay aloft hunting for
the generators, the more chance we will be spotted
and shot down."
    "You don't have to remind me, sir. What do you
want me to do, rebuild the bloody things?"
    NOW he turns to look at me/"Yes," said the
Klingon, "that is an excellent idea."
    Sighing in exasperation, Chief O'Brien dropped
to hands and knees and pried open the circuit-
system cover. The design was a mess, as usual, no
better than the spaghetti wiring of Deep Space
Ninerebut no worse, either. Given time, O'Brien
decided he could probably rebuild the Cardassian
sensor into something closer to the Federation
standard.
    The question was mooted, however, when a deep
voice behind the cockpit pair exclaimed, "There it
is, gentlemen. I will stake my command that that is
a full power generator." O'Brien looked back over
his shoulder at the captain, then turned to see what
Sisko was looking at; the chief saw a huge, domed
structure lying low to the ground, flat blackmnot
the black of paint or natural stone but the luminous
abyss of a powerful force shield.
    O'Brien stared, open mouthed; the generator, if
that's what it was, was ten times the size of the
main Federation shipyards in Earth orbit! "We're
not cutting through that," he breathed, watching
the shield strength indicator slide off the scale.
    Then he brightened. "On the other hand, we may
not have to... there are two-score power relays
surrounding the central plant, and that means
there might be power conduits connecting them."
He pointed to a number of smaller structures, each
boasting a monstrous, black antenna, each a micro-
wave "hot point" beaming tight bursts of electro-
magnetic energy toward distant relays en route to
blanketing some portion of Sierra-Bravo.
    "Captain," said Worf preemptorally, "where
should we put down?"
    If Captain Sisko was about to answer, he never
got the chance. Every instrument on the control
panel lit up like a supernova, and before O'Brien
could shout a warning, the skimmer screamed like
a terrified child, the metal rending apart under
assault from some terror weapon that behaved
nothing like a clean disruptor or phaser!
    O'Brien felt the impact like a blow to the back of
his neck, and he fell from his chair, stunned and
dizzy. Everyone else was thrown to the deck, yet
somehow Worf managed to keep his seat. The
chief's arms still buzzed with the angry bees of
severe electrical shock, and he saw Worf's hands
shaking violently... but the Klingon drew upon
reserves deep within his case-hardened DNA to
fight through floccillation for control of the ship.
    Worf howled like a savage, as if he had forgotten
the use of speech--but not how to control a
Cardassian skimmer! The commander shook and
jerked spasmotically, and the ship rolled and
yawed, dipping in sudden, nauseating drops, but it
remained intact and crept ever closer to the
ground. Thank God for lousy Cardassian technolo-
gy! prayed the chiefi a so-sophisticated Federation
runabout would probably have splintered into a
hundred shards, the delicate electrocolloidal field
systems melted into slag by the focused electro-
magnetic beam that (O'Brien was convinced) had
just slugged the skimmer... must've just passed
through one of the damned microwave power relays,
he guessed--the analytic portion of his mind still
working through the terror at the impending crash.
    "Grabmsomethingmsolid!" Worf managed to
articulate; the chief tried to respond, but the words
would not come; he could only moan in frustration
and wrap his arms around a cargo net built into the
bulkhead. Sick to his stomach, head spinning, he
closed his eyes and just wished everything would be
over, one way as good as another. Death was
preferable to the way he felt at that moment!
    The shock of the "landing," if one could use the
term for a partially controlled crash, was nearly as
bad as the shock that had damaged their skimmer.
Worf ploughed a long furrow in the dirt, kicking up
twin rooster tails behind the vehicle as it skidded to
a long-delayed halt against one of the power relay
stations. Exhausted, Worf finally succumbed to the
electrocution; he half rose, then fell to the deck,
clutching his stomach.

    After an indeterminate time interval, someone
helped the semiconscious chief to a sitting posi-
tion, back against one bulkhead. It was Constable
Odo, who had pulled himself together quicker than
anyone else. O'Brien looked around the cabin,
blinking at the terrifically bright light that slowly
dimmed as his dilated pupils contracted to their
normal diameter. Quark was holding his ears and
complaining volubly to no one, since no one was
listening; Captain Sisko was sitting quietly, observ-
ing without speaking; and Worf was already climb-
ing painfully to unsteady feet. Chief O'Brien was
the last to recover speech, but thereafter he recov-
ered quickly.
    "Here would be fine for a landing, Worf," said
the captain dryly. The Klingon let out an exaspe-
rated sigh and shook his head. "Is anybody in-
jured?" asked Sisko.
    A small, terrified voice spoke up: "By thereby
the Great Accountant... I've lost the will to turn a
profit!" Quark's eyes were nearly as huge as his
lobes.
    "Well," said Odo, "it seems even the darkest
cloud has its latinum lining."
    "I'm serious? wailed the Ferengi; "I must have
received a head injury... I feel overwhelmed by
gratitude merely to be alive--I feel like giving away
all my possessions to the nearest beggar in grateful
thanksgiving!"
  "Feel his head," suggested Woff.
  "So our Ferengi felon has converted to a Bajoran
saint," said the constable in disgust. "Do you
expect us to believe that, Quark?"
    "I don't care what you believe," grumbled the
Ferengi, struggling to his feet and massaging his
lobes. "I'm seriously injured. I need medical atten-
tion,"
    O'Brien stood, shaking each limb in succession;
nothing felt broken. "I think I'm all right," he said.
Captain Sisko nodded in a distracted fashion,
which annoyed the chief. "If you don't mind," he
said stiffly, "I'll pop out and check the damage on
the skimmer." Sisko waved without looking round,
still intent upon the navigational panels, which
were sparking like a Bajoran fireworks show.
    O'Brien pressed the recessing door button, and
the door ground slowly open, shrieking horribly
but still working. He blinked in the brightness,
shielding his eyes from the glare off the power relay;
wishing he had polarizing lenses, he shaded his
eyes and did a fast walk-around. The skimmer was
in better shape than he had imagined; the hull
could take some repairs, but it looked like it would
hold together... though a microscan with a tri-
corder was in order to look for stress fractures
invisible to the naked eye. The nose array was
snapped off, but Chief O'Brien found it a few
meters away; it could be reattached. His biggest fret
was the starboard engine, which had a split turbine;
the turbine was not strictly necessary for operation,
but without it, the engine would overheat. We'll
have to be careful, not take too long a fiight; O'Brien
made a mental note to move some of the heat
sensors to the broken engine for constant moni-
toring.
    He returned to the cabin. "Overall, it's still
flyable on the outside, sir," the chief reported.
"Will you let me take a look at the forward panel, if
you're all through playing with it?"
    "Do you smell something sweet?" asked Quark,
sniffing and looking around the cabin.
"The panel is nonoperational," rumbled Worf.
"If you don't mind?" Not waiting for an answer,
the chief pushed past the Klingon and stuck his
head into the access port. He saw the problem
immediately: the control transports had shorted
against the fire wall on impact... it happened
often enough on Deep Space Nine after minor
shocks from weapons fire or even a hard docking.
    Gingerly, he pulled the metallic wires from the
metal wall. "You just have to get used to the
primitive circuitry," he explained, not sure wheth-
er anyone could even hear him. "The Cardassians
don't always use fiberoptics... sometimes they
use copper wiring. There, that should do it," he
said, climbing back out from the hood.
    Nothing happened; the board remained dark.
The stench of ozone filled O'Brien's nostrils.
Frowning, he kicked the front panel sharply, and
the navlights flickered once, then came back on.
"There."
    "Impressive," said Sisko, leaning close; Odo and
Worf stared at the operational control panel in
puzzlement and annoyance, respectively. The chief
looked around. "Say, where's Quark got to?"
    That woke up the constable, who swiveled his
head around like a bird, then darted out the open
door. "Miserable little miscreant always disa--!"
    "Leave the panel hot," said the captain. "Let's
follow Quark and his keeper and see how, exactly,
we can get inside this power plant."
    Outside, O'Brien squinted against the bright-
ness, turning until he saw the silhouette of Consta-
ble Odo. Approaching, the chief saw Odo squatting
down, yanking on some large object that appeared
bolted or otherwise stuck to the ground. Nearer, he
could hear the object bellowing with a Ferengi
voice he knew far too well.
    "I can smell it! I can smell it! Can't you?" Quark
had attached himself by hands and feet both to a
metal trap in the earth; try as he might, the
constable could not wrench him away.
    "Odo, Quark, please!" commanded Captain Sis-
ko; Odo stood and shifted away, looking surly,
though it could have been the glare in O'Brien's
eyes. "Now, Quark," continued Sisko, "what are
you doing down there?"
    Quark turned back to the rest of the team,
insane, staring eyes burning like the top of the
power relay tower. "There's LATINUM here!" he
shouted, like a Bajoran enthusiast praying to the
Prophets for deliverance from the world. "I can
feel it."

    "Well," said Odo, "that heartfelt conversion
didn't last long."
    "Glad to see you're feeling better," said the
captain with a straight face. He turned to O'Brien.
"Chief, am I mistaken? Or does latinum make a
damned good insulator? I mean for am"
    "A power conduit," finished Chief O'Brien, grin-
ning. "Yes, sir. I mean, no sir, you're not wrong.
What say we pop the lid and see what our friend
has been smelling?"
    The lid was a metallic grating, oval, solid, and
very, very massive. None of the team could get a
grip on it except Constable Odo, who turned his
hands into suction cups; but even he couldn't lift it,
not even with Worf tugging on one arm and Sisko
and O'Brien on the other. They pondered the
dilemma; the damned thing must weigh a couple of
tonst calculated the chief.
    Then he rolled his eyes in exasperation at his
own stupidity. "Oh, for the love of... !" He dug
into his pocket and extracted the small handful of
toys that he had taken off the Terrors of Tiffnaki at
the captain's orders; sifting through, he found the
one he wanted and slid the rest back to their
pocket. "Allow me," he said, and with a flourish,
pointed the antigravity beam at the gigantic man-
hole. He raised it with ease, placing it gently onto
the ground nearby... a much more satisfactory
conclusion than the last time they had used anti-
gray to levitate Arrk the split-head.

    Quark was first to the pit, folding himself double
to stuff his head inside the tunnel. The Ferengi
started shouting so excitedly and waving his arms
that he toppled over the lip before anyone could
grab him. The captain tilted his head at the open
hole. "O'Brien," was all he said.
    The chief of operations sat on the hole, looked
down, and lightly dropped inside. Quark was on
his hands and knees, trembling like a young Irish
lad peeping through the bedroom window of the
colleen next door. The Ferengi spoke slowly and
huskily: "The walls--and floor--and ceiling are
lined--with pure latinurn." Quark turned to look
back at O'Brien, and his beady, Ferengi eyes were
glazed over. "Not gold-pressed latinum. Not
latinurn plated. Pure--latinum contained in vein-
like wires!" Then Quark giggled.
    Chief O'Brien unslung his tricorder and swept
the long, tubelike corridor. "The power potential is
off the scale," he called up to the captain. "If this
were an EM field instead of a Pauli potential field,
we'd both be fried to a crisp." He shut off the
tricorder, nervous that the probing sensor beam
might accidentally collapse a state vector and bring
the potential field into incinerating reality. "I'd say
we found what we were looking for, sir."

    Captain Sisko followed his two team members,
then Constable Odo (unhappy at Quark being out
of sight for even a moment), finally Worf bringing
up rear guard. Everyone but the Ferengi had to
crouch in the low conduit; Worf worked himself
around so he was facing backwards, away from the
main power plant, where the conduit extended an
additional fifty meters, for "kinetic-resonance ech-
oing," according to O'Brien--whatever the hell
THAT is! The Klingon would have to walk back-
ward to keep up with them, but it allowed him to
cover their exit.
    This whole thing is spooky, thought the captain
as they scrunched along the conduit toward the
heart of a reactor big enough, according to
O'Brien's tricorder, to power six stations the size of
Deep Space Nine... or Emissary's Sanctuary, as it
was now, and probably would remain being, called.
The cold echoes of boot steps on the latinum
flooring did indeed resonate up and down the
power conduit, rattling Sisko's skull and shaking
loose stray thoughts and random memories: he felt
a terrible pang of unexpected regret leaving the
station behind; if--when!--the Defiant returned
and the crew drove away the Cardassians from
Sierra-Bravo, Benjamin Sisko would be taken back
not to the station that had been his home for five
years, but to a new command, a new assignment.
Probably a ship tour, he thought, since the station
counts as an out-of sequence shore tour.
    But that was only speculation; for all the captain
knew, he could end up chief administrator of
another starbase, or teaching classes at the Acade-
my, or even serving four years in the hallowed halls
of Starfleet Command, trailing after some old
admiral, wiping the man's chin when he drooled.
In the grand scheme of Starfleet, a low-seniority
captain was not a very high rank at all. No one
except Sisko's detailer would even ask his prefer-
ence, and the "needs of the service" would take
precedence anyway. As they did five years ago, after
Jennifer died, he recalled; the only thing he had
wanted after that Borg attack was to resign and
spend the rest of his life in morbid self-pity.
    Trouble--Quark looked almost mesmerized by
all the pure latinum surrounding him... though
on Sierra-Bravo, latinurn was as commonplace as
iron on Earth. But the greedy, little Ferengi was
trembling like a fevered patient, plucking at the
bulkheads, the overhead, a man caught in a dream
that was rapidly turning nightmarish: there was
nothing Quark could do! He had to close his eyes to
profit like no Ferengi had ever seen and forget all
about Sierra-Bravo. Whatever he saw, whether raw
resources or prime technology, belonged to the
Natives... not to the Cardassians, the Federation,
or to Quark.
    But every membrane in his lobes must have been
screaming at him to plot, scheme, do anything to
get his hands on that profit! Quark could be near to
breaking; more than religion, the Ferengi pursuit of
profit was close to a biological compulsion. Quark
fought it with as much agony as Odo fighting to
remain solid day after day: sooner or later, realized
Sisko, he'll break again... as he had twice before
on the mission.
    And Odo isn't helping, thought the captain,
frowning; the constable was being particularly ob-
tuse, riding Quark harder, if anything, than he did
back on the station. Perhaps a candid talk was in
order, but Captain Sisko did not look forward to
that duty. The shapeshifter could be remarkably
touchy and adamant in his administration of "jus-
tice."
    Sisko banged his head, only then noticing that
the conduit was narrowing as they approached the
reactor. "Worf, duck lower," he called back over
his shoulder. The only light was the sharp, bluish
glow from Quark's chemical glowtubes and the
shaky beams from the hand torches carried by the
rest of the team. Sisko felt a sudden, horrible
sensation of claustrophobia; the walls were merely
narrowing, but his mind insisted they were squeez-
ing tight as he watched them! A clutching compul-
sion to turn around and claw madly back the way
he had come swept through the captain; only the
even stronger fear of humiliation and loss of com-
mand respect stopped him... that and the fact
that he probably couldn't turn around now even if
he wanted; the conduit was too narrow.
    The feeling subsided but didn't abate entirely.
Captain Sisko gave no outward sign; if command
had taught him one great lesson, it was that life
imitates artifice: pretend courage and confidence,
and soon you feel them for real. Past Quark and
O'Brien, Sisko saw a grating that incorporated both
latinum mesh and some sort of energy cobweb.
"It's behind that," said the chief, nodding at the
grate.
 "And if we opened a hole in that mesh?"
    "It would be like opening up a window into the
core of a star," was the crisp and very visual reply.

CHAPTER
      15

SISKO STARED for a long moment. One by one,
though no command was given, the teammates
turned off their lights, leaving only the cobalt blue
of Quark's chemical light and the yellow glow of
the latinurn energy mesh. Bizarre, curved lines of
bright light played across the faces of the away team
as Sisko looked at each one in turn: ionized plasma
trails from subatomic particles fleeing the horrific
maelstrom of creation-destruction within the pow-
er generator, Shiva and Krishna waltzing to quan-
tum pipes. "If we blew a sudden hole," he mused,
"I wonder whether they'd see the flare all the way
to the Cardassian camp?"
  "I'd say," responded O'Brien, "it would light up
the sky, for certain. A disruptor set to overload, do
you think?"
    Sisko stared at the grating, visualizing what it
held back on the other side. "Doubtful. A disruptor
overload would be a drop in the proverbial
bucket."
    "You're probably right, sir." O'Brien closed his
eyes, thinking out loud. "The grating must convert
actual energy to quantum potential; no physical
cable or energy field could transport that much
energy without melting. Then the relays convert it
back to broadcast power, stepping it down enough
that all those pretty toys can use it."
  "And were does all this analysis get us, Chief?"
  O'Brien shrugged, still at a loss.
    Quark softly cleared his throat; when the captain
and operations chief fell silent to look at the green-
tinted Ferengi, he looked almost embarrassed. "I,
ah, notice there's an access hatch in the center of
the latinurn grating."
    "It can't be opened while the reactor is hot,"
explained O'Brien. "It was used when the reactor
was designed--probably seven million years ago,
assuming the planet was powered up when the
buildings were built, if Commander Dax got it
right."
"Why can't we open it?" Quark persisted.
"Because it's designed that way!" snapped the
chief. "There's no reason to open it then... unless
you're planning to blow it up." He looked at
Captain Sisko.
    "That is a problem," admitted Sisko. "Ideally,
we don't want to destroy it, just shut it down for a
while."
    "Well, if we blow this reactor the power surge
will trip the equivalent of circuit breakers through-
out the planetary grid. We'd have to turn the power
back on manually, but that's simple enough. Even
the Natives could do it."
    "If you two are through interrupting," said
Quark, "I do have an idea."
    Behind them, Odo snorted. "If Quark wants to
contribute an idea, I'd recommend the rest of us sit
on him until the feeling passes."
    "I'll ignore the comments from the small-head
seats. Are you interested in blowing this reactor or
not?"
    Sisko considered. "Well, let's hear your idea at
least," he reluctantly decreed.
    Quark grinned, as if closing a deal to bankrupt
an enemy, and rubbed his hands gleefully; he
appeared to be enjoying his new role as saboteur.
His face looked almost demonic in the hellish,
green glow from his chemical light. "They designed
this panel to resist all the force and pressure on the
other side. So it seems to me," he drawled, "that
exerting a tremendous force on this side might
blow the hatch inward."
    "We've already thought about a disruptor on
overload, Quark," said the captain, wondering
what the Ferengi was driving at. "It wouldn't be
enough force."
    "No, probably not." Quark showed his needle-
sharp, uneven, snaggly teeth. "But how about the
force beam projector? It was powerful enough to
flatten a kilometer of swamp. If we braced it at the
back of the tunnel there, pointing toward the
hatch--"
    O'Brien interrupted derisively. "And are you
volunteering to stay here and operate it while the
reactor blows?"
    "Captain Sisko, I'm sure the chief here can rig up
a remote control to operate the thumbslide."
    Odo weighed in: "I hate to admit it, but this is
basically an exercise in safecracking. Our felonious
team member is in his element; he might have
something here."
    Sisko thought for a long moment; he couldn't
delude himself about the enormity of what he
contemplated. But he had time; it would take
O'Brien an hour or more to rig the remote control,
even with Quark's help. Especially with Quark's
interfering help, thought the captain gratefully.
"Chief, begin to construct the trigger; Quark, it's
your idea... be the chiefs assistant."
    "But Captain!" protested both simultaneously;
each paused and glared suspiciously at the other.
    "Go, both of you. I must meditate for a while.
Odo, Commander, come with me." Sisko began to
back away from the pair up front; looking back
over his shoulder, he saw that Odo had contrived to
turn aroundmeasier when one is a shapeshifter!m
leaving the captain as the only person creeping
backward toward the shaft leading up. There, the
mouth widened, and Sisko was able to squirm
around in the cramped, tomb-smelling tunnel. In
the light from the open hole above them, they once
again turned off their hand torches.
    The sun was sinking, and the giddy, copper glow
painted all three an unpleasant, sickly yellow. Odo
and Worf waited patiently for the captain to begin.
"What we contemplate," commenced Sisko, "is
nothing short of a complete abandonment of the
Prime Directive."
    "Fighting the Cardassians is perfectly proper,"
countered Worf. "They don't belong here either."
    "But now we're talking about taking down the
main power reactors for the entire planet? Odo
said.
    Sisko held up his hand, and both men fell silent,
recognizing that the captain would make the deci-
sion. There would be no vote; Benjamin Sisko
wanted to hear both arguments framed, but he was
the only judge. He, alone, would bear responsibili-
ty before a general court-martial, if it came to that;
in a survival situation such as this, Starfleet would
agree that the only course for his subordinates was
to obey orders without demur.
    A survival situation... A tiny candle flame of an
idea flickered in Sisko's mind; he closed his eyes,
tried to think of nothing, allowing it to catch and
burn bright enough to be seen and felt. When there
is no moral option, he thought, then there is no truly
immoral choice. The spirit of the Prime Directire
would be violated just as surely by doing nothing
and allowing the Cardassians to take over; may as
well be hanged for a cow as a sheep, thought the
captain with a sardonic smile. And James Kirk had
faced this choice many times in his career, and had
done what was necessary.
    "We will continue and destroy the reactor," said
Sisko. Odo said nothing; he looked as though he
had expected the decision would go against his
position.
    "I will stand and fight with you before the
admiralty," pledged Worf without a hint of amuse-
ment.
    "I'm sure they'll be duly impressed, Command-
er." The captain allowed no trace of sarcasm to
taint his own words. "But perhaps it will be better,
when it comes to that, if you let me do my own
talking."

    When Chief O'Brien had done with the remote
switchmand a fine job it is, too, he thought to
himself--he backed up until he reached the shaft
of light, turned around, and squeezed past the
captain to the opposite end of the tunnel. There,
O'Brien wedged the force beam projector into a
shallow groove that would hold it steady. He
turned it on, to the lowest setting. "Quark!" he
called, "get back down the tunnel and plant your-
self directly in front of the hatch."
 "What? Why?" The Ferengi sounded ner-
vous... as well he might, considering what mael-
strom was behind the mesh wall.
    "Just do it! I need to align this thing, or we won't
get anything but a dented wall."
    "But why do I have to..." Quark's voice trailed
off as light suddenly dawned in his devious, Ferengi
brain. "You want to align it on me? You're insane! I
won't do it!"
    "It's perfectly safe, Quark; it's on the lowest
setting. It's not going to blow the door prema-
turely."
    "I'm not standing next to that hatch while you
point that thing at it!"
    O'Brien made the obvious point. "You really
think you'd be any less dead if you stay where you
are, and the hatch blows?"
    Quark scowled, considering the violence of the
expected explosion. "I think I'll take a stroll top-
side, stretch my legs a bit."
    Odo had his own observation: "You might have a
hard time getting past me, Quark, and if you did,
you'd only have to get past Commander Worf, as
well. Now why don't you do what you're told, for
once in your life?"
    Sullenly, Quark hunched low and began to wrig-
gle down the tunnel, grumbling every step of the
way. The Ferengi reached the hatch; he turned and
sat gingerly. He looked pale and greenish, but it
might have been from the chemical glowtube he
still carried, which was starting to dim as the
reaction died down.
    "Tell me when you feel a force right on your
chest," said the chief, turning the force beam
projector agonizingly slowly. It took a solid ten
minutes to get it set exactly where Chief O'Brien
wanted it: directly over the keyhole latch, the
weakest spot on the hatch. "I'm giving us fifteen
minutes," said O'Brien dearly.
    He set the timer to nine hundred seconds and
pressed the arm switch, then the activate-
countdown thumb pad. He watched it count down
to 899, 898, and 897, then rose and suggested,
"Let's get the hell out of here, if you don't mind."
    Worf was nearest the ladder, and he climbed
swiftly but without apparent haste. Odo went next,
then Quark.
    Captain Sisko had stepped to the ladder to shout
at Worf, so O'Brien pushed up behind him; the
chief had won the honor of being last man out.
Sisko scurried up the ladder, still too slow for the
frantic Chief O'Brien. Fifteen minutes! Why not a
half hour, or two hours?
    Odo spun his head around backward disconcert~
ingly. "Why did you set the timer for only fifteen
minutes?" demanded the constable, eerily echoing
O'Brien's own thoughts.
    They bolted to the skimmer, where Worf yanked
the door open so hard that O'Brien was momentar-
ily worried the commander would rip it off its
hinges. They piled in like a slapstick holoplay. The
chief tried to push to the front to fire up the
engines, but first Quark, then Odo, then Sisko
himself got in the way. By the time O'Brien
reached the front panel, he was swearing like a
drunken Academy scrub on first liberty.
    The navigation and engine-start panel, which
they had left hot, was off again. His running
commentary of oaths dissolving into half-
formulated slurs against Cardassians, O'Brien
kicked it again; this time, there was no effect. A
second, harder kick also failed to shake loose
whatever short circuit had killed the power.
    "Perhaps I should try," said Worf with barely
concealed animosity.
    "No, no!" shouted O'Brien, holding up his
hands; the Klingon was still brooding about getting
stuck and almost killing everyone. He'd probably
kick a ragged hole right through the forward hul#
    A tiny shape pushed up beside the chief, ducking
under O'Brien's groping arms like an annoying
child. "Allow me, Chief," said Quark. He was
probably trying to be soothing, but his Ferengi
sarcasm dribbled through, and O'Brien felt a mo-
mentary urge to give Quark's gigantic, pink, hair-
less skull a left hook that would send the Ferengi
reeling into an already furious Worf. The chief
mastered his impulse.
    "Quark! Get out of there! What the hell do you
know about Cardassian engineering or--"
    The navigation lights lit up all at once, the
power-start switch blinking temptingly. Chief
O'Brien fell silent, feeling his face flush with humil-
iation.
    "Nothing," said Quark, "but I do know some-
what about Cardassian security systems. They
must have unscrambled the computer back at the
depot and sent a general recall order to all the
skimmers we stole." The Ferengi pulled a piece of
equipment from under the hood of the console,
where he'd been fiddling, and dropped it into
O'Brien's outstretched hand; it was a logic circuit
with a receiver attached... the chief himself made
use of the same devices on the station to manipu-
late control systems directly on the numerous
occasions when the station's Cardassian autonom-
ic computer would go off-line. "Since we had the
parking brake set, the skimmer shut off instead."
    "Can we get started now, Chief O'Brien?" snapped
Worf; he sounded somewhat mollified, now that
Quark had taken the focus off of the Klingon. Irked
and chagrined, O'Brien tapped rapidly on the
console, initiating the electron flow and the pos-
itronic counterflow, adjusting the contour map,
and finally starting the engines. The repairs they
needed could certainly wait until they got away
from Ground Zero.
    "It's all yours, sir," he said to Worf. Without a
word, the Klingon boosted the power to maximum
and lifted the shaky, hard-to-control skimmer a
few meters off the ground and started it moving--
slowly at first, so that O'Brien writhed in his chair,
looking back over his shoulder as if his eyes could
bore through the rear hull and watch the power
plant (though it would be a terrible idea even if it
were possible; anybody watching the plant with
naked eyes from nearby when it exploded would be
blinded, perhaps permanently).
    Now Odo crowded the nose of the skimmer,
leaving only the captain back in the troop seats.
"Commander, can't you get this thing any higher?"
demanded the constable.
    "It is better to stay low," said Worf. "The blast
will be directed primarily upward. Now please
return to your seats, both of you! I am tired of
having to compensate for your unbalanced weights
in the hand controls." Reluctantly, they slithered
away back to rejoin Captain Sisko.
    "Better strap yourselves in," warned O'Brien,
glancing at his chronometer; we've got about twen-
ty seconds before all hell busts loose." He reached
across and buckled in the Klingon pilot, who
needed both hands on the stick and collective;
Worf did not object. O'Brien barely had time to
slip into his own harness when every electronic
instrument on the console flashed red, then
dropped to zero.
    At the same time, the landscape forward of the
skimmer flared bright white, a searchlight on hard-
packed snow. The chief shut his eyes tight, and still
the light hurt; as he blinked them open painfully,
he saw the afterimage of the veins in his own
eyelids as ghostly, pulsating lines, rivers of phan-
tom blood. Tears leaked down his cheeks, and he
tried to blink his vision back.
    The shock wave struck almost twelve seconds
later; O'Brien estimated that they had managed to
make about four kilometers from Ground Zero.
Judging from the force of the wave at that distance,
if they had been any closer, they would have made
a smoking crater in the dirt.
    The skimmer skewed fiercely, the stern yawing to
the left nearly ninety degrees and sinking. Worfhad
been right; the majority of the shock wave was
propelled upward, missing the skimmer entirely. A
second later, just as Worf got the ship back under
control, they were struck from below by another
invisible fist as the wave reflected off the ground;
this one was not so severe. The sealed airlocks kept
some of the noise out, but the low vibrations shook
right through the hull and broadcast a low rum-
bling inside that was loud enough to make O'Brien
shout in pain and clap his hands over his ears.
    Then the main shock was over; the electronics
rebooted after the electromagnetic pulse, and the
rear viewer showed an enormous mushroom cloud
rising above the reactor explosion, as, of course,
happened in every high-temperature detonation--
chemical, thermonuclear, or matter-antimatter.
    The ringing in O'Brien's ears quieted, and he
thought he heard his name called. Unbuckling
shakily, he returned to the central cabin. Quark
was unconscious, curled in a fetal position with his
arms wrapped around his lobes; Odo was caught
unguarded, staring with concern at the man he
would never in a thousand years call his friend...
but who was doubtless his closest companion on
the station.
    The captain sat unperturbed on one of the seats,
his legs crossed, the portrait of composure. "Chief
O'Brien," he began. "Sir?"
    "Next time, let's give ourselves a good thirty
minutes--relax a little."
    "Aye, aye, sir," said the chief, not entirely dis-
pleased. All in all, it had been a pretty full day, as
such things went.




0

CHAPTER
      16

FOUR UOURS INTO Major Kira Nerys's tour as com-
mander of the militia, the doors of Hell opened
wide, and the False Prophet of Hateful Lies burst
through. The enemy had not been idle; while Kira
and Kai Winn waited, watched, slept, the escaped
captives (if that's what they truly were!) slithered
across the abyss between their ships and the sta-
tion. They used no boarding craft or shuttles or
rockets; they jumped across, by ones and twos,
softly touching the skin of Emissary's Sanctuary
and sticking fast with some adhesive or suction
tool. Their ships went undetected, their cloaking
devices far advanced over the Federation's. The
individual invaders were each too small to trigger
the station's sensors. Before the first alarm
sounded, there were more than a hundred and fifty
soldiers crawling across the outer hull!
    Steering well clear of the airlock doors, the
unsuspected assassins used handheld cutting
torches to burn holes through the skin large enough
for them to wiggle through in full battle array. The
first inkling Kira had was a hastily shouted warning
over the com-link, severed before the militiaman
could even shout his location.
    "Computer!" demanded Kira. "Where did that
last transmission come from?"
    "Level nineteen, sector thirty-eight," responded
the cheerful, dumb-as-dirt contralto.
    "Damn it, we're scattered on those lower levels."
Closing her eyes to think better, the major tapped
her cornbadge again and summoned three compa-
nies to the breakthrough, but before they could
reach the right level, beetle-armored invaders were
bursting through the hull all over the station.
    She ran to her own nearest break and found
herself in an instant gun battle with black, feature-
less aliens shooting a rapid-fire energy pulse weap-
on that carved through bulkheads like a hot knife
through frozen yogurt. She lost Willi and Fienda in
the first volley and nearly lost the left side of her
face as a bolt cut through the corner of the Klingon
restaurant when she peeked around.
    "Fall back! Fall back!" The command wasn't
quick enough, and her friend Gerti, who was a
Dabo girl before Kai Winn took control, took a
shot to her stomach; the gift crumbled into a still,
white form, clearly dead before her face struck the
deck.
    The militia retreated, firing back over their
shoulders; a lucky shot from Kira took one of the
invaders in his leg, bringing him down, but there
were no other casualties on the aggressor's side.
Their armor was good enough to require a direct
and sustained phaser blast to do any damage.
    Four hours and twenty-three minutes into Kira's
tour, she was a commander without a command,
her militia army wracked and scattered, casualties
high, walls and shielding chewed like a dog bone.
The major was shell-shocked, ordering her steadily
diminishing forces in a leaden voice, trying to turn
a tide that relentlessly filled the station: the invad-
ers were still swarming across the gap between their
undetectable ships and the ruptured Emissary's
Sanctuary. Ten more minutes of retreat, and Kira
was desperate enough to call Winn and beg the Kai
to get reinforcements from Bajor.
    "What could they do, child?" asked Kai Winn,
serene as always. In Kira's present state of mind,
the major wanted to reach through the com-link
and throttle the old... the venerable, middle-aged
Kai. Instead, she sagged against the corridor wall
outside the hydroponics lab and breathed deeply.
    "They could distract the invaders while we--
while were"
    "While we launch more futile attacks that stand
no greater chance of success than we've had so
far?"

    Kira closed her eyes, exhaustion wrapping her
like a burial shroud. "My Kai, we must do some-
thing. We stand to lose the station if we don't!"
    "Nerys, what makes you think sitting quietly is
doing nothing?" While Kira pondered the seem-
ingly nonsensical reply, Kai Winn added a peremp-
tory order disbanding the militia and recalling the
major to Ops, relieving her of an impossible com-
mand. Kira felt the burning shame of failure,
despite knowing there was nothing anybody could
have done. Sometimes the battle is over before it
begins, sighed Shakar once, during the Resistance,
when the cell had to abandon a perfect cave to the
superior intel and lightning strike of the Cardassi-
ans. It made no difference: loss and failure burned
her cheeks as they had back when she was a young
girl testing herself for the first time.
    Wisdom; I pray for the wisdom to see that loss is
as inevitable as gain, if you fight long enough. The
last weren't the words of Shakar or any other
Resistance leader; the quotation came from the
first services Kai Winn led as Kai. The Emissary
knows, Kira thought; Captain Sisko had gleefully
told her once of a baseball pitcher who held the all-
time record for strike outs... and at the very
same time, the all-time record for walks, for games
won, and for games lost! Not surprisingly, she also
held the record for most number of games pitched,
the real pillar that underlaid all Katsio Bando's
other baseball records.
  "I am on my way," said Kira, striving to sound
as calm and contained as her new commander; she
achieved only the sound of weariness and regret.
Sharply, Kira ordered her few remaining militia
members to disperse and hide their weapons, a
drill every Bajoran above a certain age knew all too
well. The station was already lost; no sense losing
all their lives into the bargain. The only hope now
for Bajor was that the invaders would make good
their offer to allow the station personnel to live.
    Kira had her own, private hope, however. Much
as it would horrify the Kai, Major Kira still held
out hopes that the mighty Federation would indul-
gently liberate the station, even if it meant another
ten years before Bajor could again petition for
sovereignty. The wormhole, where the Prophets
dwelt, was far more important than the pride of
Bajor--or so Kira told herself convincingly.
    She kept her own phaser rifle, for her uniform
already identified her as military, and ran with her
two personal bodygnards back to the turbolift. The
shaft was billowing smoke, and the lift was no-
where to be seen; they would have to climb many
levels on the ladderways, a prospect Kira viewed
with resignation.
    As her last task, the erstwhile commander of the
militia forces decided to speak with the four bom-
bardment shelters scattered on the Quark's Place
side of the Promenade; her lieutenant, Maranu
Vann, would be doing the same on the other side.
    She climbed up to the ninth level, rifle slung over
her shoulder. Kira and her guards crept around the
rim of the Promenade, scanning for invaders. They
were swarming all over the station, their biological
peculiarities easy to track, but they had largely
abandoned the shattered Promenade with its bro-
ken shops and deserted walkway and catwalks.
Kira slipped around the perimeter until she came
to the first sealed vault.
    Then the major, slight as a will o'-the-wisp, slung
the rifle back over her shoulder and strode through
a security door toward the next shelter on her list.
"At least, thank the Prophets, the captain and away
team are safe and away from here." Nobody heard
her grumble; nobody was meant to.

    The demolition squad had got it down to a
science. Chief O'Brien had buried most of his
qualms; so long as he had a great chain of commis-
sioned officers up top, he didn't have to worry
about covering the bottom. But he couldn't quite
extinguish the moral reservations: after all, we're
basically throwing these Natives back into the Stone
Age.t
    All in a "good cause," as Quark kept saying. The
Ferengi was the only team member who seemed
completely at ease with what they were doing,
nuking every power plant on the planet. When
O'Brien planted the third modified force beam
projector and watched the third generator detonate
with an earth-shattering convulsion, he realized his
hands were shaking so hard he almost couldn't
operate the navigational controls.
    He felt nauseated. No, it's not nausea... it's a
physical PAIN in my gut, like a big fist punched me
in the solar plexus. Worf was tense at the stick;
years on the Enterprise with the Klingon gave
O'Brien a read. And Sisko had said nothing for
several hours, just absently stroked his beard and
stared at the horizon.
    "Do you need me for anything?" asked Odo.
Without waiting longer than two seconds for an
answer, he liquified and poured himself up and
over the lip of a luggage rack.
    "Well, Chief," said the ever smarmy Quark,
"looks like it's just you and me. Have I ever told
you about the time I played Tongo with Dax?"
O'Brien tuned out the Ferengi as he droned on.
    At least, thank God, Keiko's warm and safe back
on Bajor, he thought; they're not living through this
hell/
    Thirty minutes later, Captain Sisko abruptly
spoke, causing O'Brien to jump in his chair. "Com-
mander Worf, set a course for the Tiffnaki village. I
think it's about time we see how our commandos
and their comrades are taking the sudden change in
lifestyle."

CHAPTER
      17

TIlE STATELY Cardassian-Drek'la convoy crawled
across the desert. Cardassians move swi~ly from
Point A to Point B, thought Commander Jadzia
Dax; they don't dawdle without a reason. In this
case, she decided, they were out hunting... not
hunting Natives; they wouldn't consider the de-
fenseless, dazed Natives worth being pursued as
game. More likely, she decided, the Cardassian
column was out hunting the local cross between a
horse and an ocant, which Julian had dubbed
"cleft-heads" for the deep groove running down
their faces from crown to nose.
    Observing the captured cleft-heads, Dax real-
ized, to her shock, that they were semiintelligent; it
was an open question whether they could talk, but
it seemed likely. Evidently, the Cardassians had
figured out that much as well: they had recently
gone on several hunts in as many days, observed by
herself and Julian Bashir. But so far, there had
been no good opportunity for an ambush.
    "Julian," she asked, speaking softly even though
the column was more than a kilometer away, down
in the desert valley below the hills where the
Federation scouts crouched, "how many species on
this planet do you suppose are intelligent?"
    "Define intelligent," countered the good doctor.
"What about the blue, six-legged lizards?"
    Dax shuddered at the memory: a dozen of the
reptilian beasts, almost a meter long each, were
arrayed in a semicircle around a larger version,
who was making a number of faint squeaks by
expanding his throat and expelling air through gill-
like slits on the back of his throat. It was too far
away for the universal translators to make out any
words--if there were any words--but the lizard
audience dipped their heads in unison, as if re-
sponding to a lecture, or worse, an aria.
    "Jadzia," said Bashir, "we may have stumbled
onto a planet where intelligence evolved early on,
and virtually every creature advanced enough to be
mobile developed some."
    "Alternatively," she ventured, "whoever put the
Natives and the tech here also liked to play grue-
some games with genetic engineering." Julian
grunted, acknowledging the possibility. "In any
case, changing the subject, I believe we've finally
got a winner in the Target Lottery. All the signs are
good: no two-headed snakes or fiery clouds on the
horizon."
    "Aye, aye, ma'am." Somehow, the tragic figure
managed to convey his deep regret and sorrowful
acceptance of the cruel necessities in a mere three
words. Bashir raised his disruptor rifle; Dax sited
along hers, picking out the lead skimmer full of
soldiers.
    "I've got the front; you take the second vehicle.
The first shot has to be simultaneous, Julian, or
they'll dive into cover; ready?" "In my sites."
    "Three, two, one, fire." She depressed the trigger
button, and nothing happened. "Damn it!" she
snarled, clicking off the safety and fingering the
button again. Julian's disruptor shot first, of
course, but Dax followed on quickly enough that
the lead Cardassians weren't even aware yet that
their comrades had been attacked.
    Bashir and Dax were too far away to hear any
immediate screams or explosions as the beams
ignited power cells on the skimmers. About three
seconds later, when the sound waves traversed the
thousand meters from target to attacker, the Feder-
ation snipers heard the first, faint noise from the
assault: a loud boom, followed by faint cries of
agony from those singed but not killed outright by
the beams.
    They returned fire, of course; their shots swept
across the rock escarpment, but it was no difficulty
for Dax and Bashir to duck back. The invaders had
no chance: they couldn't even see where the am-
bush came from, and with every shot, the Federa-
tion insurgents whittled away at the Cardassian
numbers.
    Dax heard a steady beep. "We're being
scanned," she said offhandedly.
    Finally, a few soldiers got smart and tried to take
cover behind the skimmers, but it was too little,
and far too late: Dax and Bashit picked all but one
of them off before they made cover, and the last
lost his composure and stood in plain view for a
last-chance shot... like he's committing suicide,
thought Dax; or better, perhaps, hara-kiri.
    The smoke from the burning skimmers drifted
skyward, bending to the right in the close breeze.
The titanium frames finally caught fire, which
meant there would be nothing left of the vehicles
by the time the flames burned out, for virtually
nothing could stop the incredibly exothermic burn-
ing of titanium.
    As Julian Bashit and Jadzia Dax approached,
scanning the horizon with Dax's tricorder to watch
for the enemy (who surely would come to investi-
gate the battle), the commander thought she saw
something moving. Squinting, she caught sight of a
lone figure crawling away from the wreckage, be-
hind which he had been hiding.
    It took the two away team members twenty-five
minutes to reach the carnage, but in that time, the
lone survivor hadn't gotten very far. He lay
sprawled on the sandy, desert floor, his mouth
stuffed with a gul's ransom of rare minerals, cough-
ing up smoke and blood.
    Dax stood over the man, who was dressed as a
high-ranking officer, though she couldn't see his
rank so long as he lay face down. She slowly raised
her disruptor, her thumb on the trigger button. The
Cardassian stiffened, evidently feeling her behind
him, feeling the finger of death brush his heart.
    Instinctively, Dax pulled her scarf up to cover
her mouth and nose and saw Julian do the same.
Their hoods already obscured the rest of their
faces, except for their eyes, and they were dressed
in clothing that could well be Native styles. They
held disruptors obviously taken from other Cardas-
sians... there was nothing to tell the man--a gul,
Dax noted--that they were anything but local
resistance fighters.
    "Don'tmkillwme," he said, wheezing, his lungs
bruised by breathing the smoke from the burning
skimmers. "Worth money... worthwtrade."
    Dax said nothing in response, and Bashit fol-
lowed her lead; there was no telling what the
Cardassian equivalent of the universal-translator
implant would tell him about the language it was
translating; if it alerted him they were speaking
Federation standard, they would lose the advan-
tage that their presence was still unsuspected.
 But he knew what they waited for; beaten and
sick, he offered what little he had left: his name.
"Gul," he coughed; "Gul... Ragat. Ragat, them
the Banished."
    The name meant nothing to Jadzia Dax, and she
could think of no reason why it should.

    Kira climbed through the emergency trap into
Ops, followed by her two lieutenants... now little
more than personal bodyguards. Captain Virgat
Maav and second Lieutenant Amo--Kira never
knew the woman's given name--took station on
either side of the turbolift shaft. The Kai's defense
cell had already sealed the shaft by phaser-welding
hull-material grillwork across it; the barrier would
probably last two seconds after the beetle aliens
turned their concentrated fire upon it, Kira de-
cided. But it was a nice gesture.
    "All right, I'm here, my Kai," she said. Kai Winn
stood in front of the Ops consoles staring at the
forward viewer, which showed only the shadowy
outlines of invader ships when they passed between
the station and some known constellation. Even the
ships look like armored insects, thought Kira mor-
bidly; she decided she had developed a morbid
coleopterophobia lately.
    Kai Winn said nothing; she gazed at the viewer,
and not coincidentally, at the wormhole...
though nothing was to be seen unless a ship would
come through. Kira shifted uncomfortably from
one to the other foot, wishing she were anywhere
but where she was, not for fear, but for embarrass-
ment; the major couldn't decide whether she was
shamed by the Kai, humiliated by the situation, or
condemned by her own conscience. She had failed,
the station fallen, her command obliterated, the
dream of Bajoran independence torn away like the
wings off a sparkle fly.
    No one couM have done better, she tried to tell
herself. Her guilt answered, but none couM do any
worse.
 "Kai Winn, what do we do now?"
    Kira jumped; for a moment, she thought she,
herself, had asked the unaskable. But it was Cap-
tain Maav, a middle-aged middle manager who
looked like what he had been before the turnover:
an architect designing shrines and temples, the
occasional secular public building. Before that, she
recalled, he was a captain in the Freedom Brigade
Reserves--hence the rank. And before that, Kira
vaguely recalled meeting him at an all-cells gather-
ing during the Resistance, a face partially obscured
in the crowd who was introduced (no names, of
course) as something-or-other critical to some cell
she'd never heard of before.
    Captain Maav was not the man to sit stolidly
doing his job and awaiting orders. He ran his own
firm. He was used to giving orders and couldn't
quite break the habit of bluntness even when
speaking to the Kai.
    She turned and smiled sweetly at his question;
Kira felt a twinge ofmProphets, could it be jeal-
ousy?--that the Kai had responded instantly to
Virgat Maav but not at all to Kira Nerys. "Do? Is
there anything else to do?" Kai Winn squared her
shoulders and cleared her throat. "Computer,
please broadcast this message station-wide."
    At first, Kira's eyes widened. Please? She's asking
the computer g pardon? Then an inkling of what the
Kai must be about to say penetrated, and Major
Kira felt tiny insects tumble inside her stomach.
She shivered, feeling her knees weaken. I know
what she's going to say.t screamed Kira's intuition.
A moment of crystal precognition, premonitory
trembling at what was to come momentarily.
    "Children of the Prophets," began the Kai rea-
sonably enough, "followers of the Word, free citi-
zens of Bajor"--
    Maybe she's going to exort us to fight to the last

man.t wished Kira, but she could not wish away
what she already knew.
    --"and visitors from beyond the realm of the
Prophets, what you must call the wormhole. I bid
you peace, welcome, and the blessings of the
Prophets."
    Bile erupted up Kira's throat, singeing her
esophagus. Her forehead began to drip. She felt a
flicker of dizziness.
    "I sorrow that we have met in such inauspicious
and unpleasant circumstances. But the meeting
need not be disastrous, nor catastrophic. There
need be no more shedding of blood or loss of life."
Decades of Resistance... . only to sink to this!
  "We take you at your word that you have no
designs upon the inhabitants of Emissary's Sanctu-
ary. We grieve for your captive status, so recently
alleviated. We share that bond; we, too, have
recently purchased our own freedom from oppres-
sion with our blood, our sweat, and our faith."
    Kira could no longer stand. She fell heavily into
the seat usually occupied by the sensor-intercept
officer, a position the Kai had decided she didn't
need. Not that it would have made any difference
with these invaders, thought Kira; their cloaking
devices were too good. The major slumped in her
seat, feeling faint. None of the other warriors of the
Kai's inner circle could look at their leader. Even
the Kai's personal defense cell studied their con-
soles as if they would find the secret of the Final
Prophecies written there, plain for all to see.
    "We have no wish," continued the Kai, unper-
turbed, "to prolong this mistaken struggle. Clearly,
we have both of us failed to communicate with
each other. We have no enemies in this quadrant,
and we are sure you want only to open diplomatic
contact with us. And--" The Kai paused dramati-
cally; Kira held her breath. "And, perhaps to
consult, however briefly, with what you call the
Portable-Far-Seeing-Anomaly... what we Bajor-
ans call the Orb."
    Kira closed her eyes, surprised to feel tears on
her cheeks. She leaned back. The Orb. Of course.
What else? Sure, just hand it over; give them our
heart, my Kai.t
 "We wish no more conflict," said Kai Winn
softly, chillingly. Each word was a pinprick in the
back of Kira's tongue, where it joined with the
throat. "We offer no more resistance. We will stand
and fight no more."
    The Kai paused; Kira felt the woman's eyes upon
her, and the major opened hers to confront Kai
Winn, despair confronting acceptance. "On behalf
of the united government of the system of Bajor, I,
Kai Winn, hereby surrender this station, Emis-
sary's Sanctuary. Unconditionally, and without
secret reservation. Treat us kindly, even as you
would be treated yourselves, when you come to the
Prophets in the fullness of time."
    Kai Winn touched a console, and the computer
ceased transmitting. "Lower all shields," she said.
"Power down all weapons. Transporter room...
lock onto all of us here in Ops and transport us to
the Promenade. We will meet our fate with heads
unbowed. Kira?"
    Kai Winn reached out and took her reluctant
first officer's hand as they dematerialized.

    Lieutenant Commmander Worf stood on a small
rise, what Captain Sisko had called a "pitcher's
mound," evidently a reference to the ancient hu-
man game of baseball that obsessed the man. Worf
tried not to allow his amazement to show as he
surveyed the Terrors of Tiffnaki--the commando
squad still commanded by "Mayor-General" Asta-
ha.
  For a moment, Worf thought he was looking at a
subbrigade of Klingon warriors that had somehow
snuck onto the planet. Their faces were cold and
hard, with a faint snarl as they anticipated the
coming battle with the Cardassians. They stood in
a somewhat ragged line, but they stood proudly...
both true of typical Klingon warrior groups, who
were never known for discipline but rather for
ferocity.
    "I am proud to serve as your commanding
officer," said Worf. He had planned to say it
anyway, even if they had turned out to be a ragtag
batch of knee-quaking farmers; the Klingon was
prepared to swallow his bile and put on "the face."
But he was startled to realize that it came out
entirely sincere. Worf's own battle lust began to
tickle his stomach, and he clenched his fists in
anticipation of the first clash, the brittle flicker of
battle lines meeting in the red dance.
    "We are honored to serve under your com-
mand," said Tivva-ma, the young daughter of Asta-
ha, who had been selected as the Mouth of Tiff-
naki. Every soldier--there were now four hundred,
and the mayor-general was away recruiting still
more troops--carried a hunk of metal, a wooden
club, a sharp stick... all the weapons that they
had, now that the power grid was off-line across the
entire hemisphere. But Worf beamed with pride
that they had taken up the weapons themselves
when their toys abruptly ceased working.
    "We thought it was the enemy coming," said
Tivva-ma in her charming, brave-little-girl voice.
"When all the stuff stopped working, it was just
like when they came before, and the village was
attacked, and all those people died, like my daddy.
But this time we were gonna use sticks'n'stuff and
hurt the bad Cardassians. And we all got the sticks
and other stuff. And the Cardassians didn't come,
so we came here, and Mommand Mayor-General
Asta-ha started gathering all the other people,
and... and..." She trailed off, as children w'fil
when they run out of thoughts.
    She saluted, and Worf returned the salute. It was
the Klingon salute he had taught them in the initial
stages of training, but now the Tiffnakis had earned
the privilege of using it. Though we shall have to
adjust Asta-ha's rank downward, he appended.
    "It was not the enemy who turned off all the
devices. We did that ourselves--so no more of
your fellow defenders will be taken unaware by the
Cardassian sabotage."
    "We thank you for your, um, new tech of turning
off all the tech. But you said there was, urn, some
other kinds of things we can use to fight the
Cardassians. Where are they?"
    Where had Jadzia and the Defiant gone? Now
wouM be a good time for her to return, thought
Worf; they could beam down a few thousand repli-
cated disruptors with internal power supplies. For
the moment, however, Chief O'Brien and the cap-
tain were trying to manufacture small cannon out
of scrap metal, melting the materials with hand
phasers that would not last long at the rate they
were using them. "For now, we shall learn the art of
fighting with sword and bat'telh and the manufac-
ture of bows and the retching of arrows. We will
learn to make spears and javelins." Worf looked
over the heads of his audience, seeing not a small
subbrigade but a vast army of the future that would
defend the planet against any invasion and, ulti-
mately, bring the Natives back to the course of
their own natural development. Would Worf of the
House of Mogh be hailed as the father of their
entire civilization?
    Worf foresaw a stockpile of preindustrial weap-
ons for the immediate future, followed by repli-
cated weapons or even manufactured guns, if need
be; surely O'Brien could set up a machine shop.
After all, in the mists of antiquity, pretechnological
Klingon guerrilla warriors from mud hut villages
had gunsmithed cheap knockoffs of the machine
guns used by their more advanced neighbors dur-
ing the Wars of First Expansion.
    The memory sparked another thought for Com-
mander Worf. "We must begin designing and con-
structing spring traps and death pits against the
invaders. Owena-da will work with O'Brien. You
have already learned to forage food in the forests, is
that correct?"
    "Yes, Commander Worf." Tivva-ma made a
strange gesture that Worf thought must be a Sierra-
Bravo version of a reverence or curtsy.
    "Then you must learn now how to hunt, how to
take fish from the rivers, how to grow grain in the
fields. You must look not just to winning a battle or
two but to winning the war." Remembering a line
he had used before, he added, "You must feed the
army and also the civilians... our battle is to
plant crops, and the enemy is time."
    Worf began to tremble; whether it was in antici-
pation of glorious victory or the heady awareness
of his own growing political importance, he could
not say. But Captain Sisko had silently joined the
group and stood now gazing cryptically at the
commander from a tree shadow on Worf's right
flank. Worf made a mental note: O'Brien will have
to develop a method of extracting the poisons from
the planetary food; our own enemy is time as well,
time until the Defiant returns to orbit and can beam
down more supplies.
    "We fight for victory," said Worf, his voice
growing naturally quieter. Though a Klingon, he
knew his men needed to hear quiet confidence
now, not loud boasts. "We fight for honor. We
fight--for survival. We cannot go back to the old
way of life. There will be no more tech, new or old,
but what we make ourselves. There will be no
attack or defense but what comes from our own
sweat and takes from us our own blood.
    "But we shall survive... and not as children,
but as men and women, warriors and growers,
builders, not merely finders and players. We will
make our lives. We will slaughter our enemies and
pile their skulls to the sky for a memorial, but we
will build upon that pyramid a world of civilization
and progress. And we will touch the stars, my
warriors. We will join with the stars."
    The silence beat at Worfs ears like a drum. Chief
O'Brien, Quark, and Constable Odo had joined
Captain Sisko in the shadows. Only Worf stood in
the sunlight near the camouflaged Cardassian
skimmer, addressing his troops with as much sense
of history, he believed, as ever did the first Kahless.
    Feeling an unexpected shiver of premonition and
hubris, Worf stepped down from the pitcher's
mound and joined his comrades under the spread-
ing, blue tree...