The Long Night

by Dean Wesley Smith

  That solved one of her problems. She could continue the station lockdown. "We are on red alert here, Captain," she said. "And we are prepared to take any steps necessary to protect the station."

  "A prudent move," he said, steepling his long, thin fingers, "despite the fact that the Jibetians are allies and the Cardassians have signed a peace treaty with us."

  If they were monitoring, they would hear his warning.

  "Sometimes contracts don't mean much to the Cardassians," Kira said, allowing some bitterness into her voice.

  "Let's hope it means more to them than you believe it will," Higginbotham said. "I suspect the Cardassians know, as we do, that there is little worth risking a fragile peace over."

  "Ever the optimist, Captain." Kira said with a smile.

  "I prefer to think of myself as a realist, Major. We'll see you shortly." His image winked off the screen.

  Kira relaxed her stance. She wasn't as tense as she had been a moment before. She had forgotten how much she liked Captain Higginbotham. At the dinner he had attended on DS9 several years ago, he had regaled them all with stories about Sisko when the two of them served on Utopia Planetia years before. At that time, she had only known Sisko a few months and couldn't imagine the mischievous man that Higginbotham described. Now sometimes she saw that imp peeking out of Sisko's eyes, and she always knew she was going to enjoy the joke.

  Right now she missed him. He was much better at subtlety than she was. She felt as if she had been about as subtle as a phaser when talking with Captain Higginbotham. Any Cardassians or Jibetians listening in would have known most of that interchange was for them.

  Kira took a deep breath. "Ensign Moesta, put a schematic on the big screen. I want to see the location of all the ships heading toward the station at this moment."

  "Yes, sir," the ensign said. Within a moment the screen showed a targeting diagram of the station and nearby space. The station was a white dot in the center. The starships were small gold dots heading toward it, two close, with a third lagging behind. The five Cardassian ships appeared in red, and the ten Jibetian ships appeared in blue. The Madison would definitely arrive first, followed shortly by the Idaho. Then the Cardassians would appear. The Jibetians and the Bosewell would arrive at the same time.

  At the far edge of the screen, a green dot streaked toward the station.

  "What's that other ship?" Kira asked.

  "I can't identify it," Moesta said.

  "It's still too far away," Jones clarified. "But at its current speed, it should be here in three hours."

  The thought of one more problem was too much for Kira. "Let's keep an eye on it," she said, "and see if you can get it to identify itself. But three hours is a long way away."

  And in three hours, the identity of the new ship might not matter. By that point, nothing might matter at all.

  * * *

  The small room had grown uncomfortably hot. Jake no longer sat in the chair. He stood and watched the screens, mostly Ops, as the situation in the station grew worse. Nog was sitting—resting, he claimed—but Jake could feel the fear coming off his friend in waves.

  They hadn't located the panel that governed the steel doors yet, but they had discovered the sound switch. They used it to turn up the volume in Ops, and Jake wished that they hadn't. He didn't want to know that two military fleets were descending on the station, that his father had taken the Defiant on some undisclosed mission, that Starfleet was so concerned about the events at Deep Space Nine, they had sent three starships to protect it.

  To make matters worse, the long search of the tunnels had left him thirsty, and the supplies box they had found was mostly empty. Nog wanted to eat the dried rations immediately, but Jake figured they could only use them in an emergency, which he defined, quite loudly, as not being found within a day or so.

  That thought had depressed Nog completely and sent him into the chair where he stared at Ops and occasionally wondered aloud if he would handle the situation with as much aplomb as Major Kira.

  Jake knew that his father would use more finesse, but his father was gone. Chief O'Brien was also nowhere to be seen in any of their scans. Rom and Quark had been busy arguing in the bar until they disappeared from the screen. Jake's greatest fear—and the one he couldn't admit to Nog—was that no one would notice they were missing until it was too late.

  He had been wrong about this section of the station being the safest. It was clearly the most secure, but there was nothing safe about it. The lack of dust and the low rations made him uncomfortable. Perhaps someone else knew about these tunnels. Someone dangerous. Someone who would be very unhappy to learn that Jake and Nog had invaded this little room.

  "Who swore?" Nog asked, suddenly sitting up. "I thought it was against Starfleet protocol to swear during a crisis."

  "I didn't hear anyone swear," Jake said.

  Nog held up his small hand. "There it is again. Hear it?"

  Jake did, a voice reciting a whole string of curses, first in Cardassian, then in Ferengi, then Klingon, and ending with a Romulan epithet that was commonly considered to be the crudest and most descriptive in the galaxy.

  Nog stood up, his head cocked and his huge ears focused. Then he crossed to the wall and reached into the sound panel, turning down all the sound.

  The curses were louder. They continued in English, then followed with Caxtonian, and ended in premodern Vulcan, an arcane language that Mrs. O'Brien had insisted Jake and Nog learn to read along with Latin as one of the building blocks of interspecies linguistics.

  "I don't like this," Nog said. He glanced around the room, looking for a place to hide.

  "If that person knew we were here," Jake whispered, "they wouldn't be making so much noise."

  "They'll know we're here when they see those doors slammed shut," Nog whispered back.

  Jake shook his head. "We don't know if that's a normal response to a red alert. If it is, we have the benefit of surprise."

  "Yeah, right," Nog whispered. "And what will it gain us?"

  "If we play it right, we might be able to escape." Jake's heart pounded with the thought.

  "You think so?" Nog asked.

  "Yeah," Jake whispered.

  The cursing had stopped. Jake thought he heard the rumble of another voice. He held up his hand.

  "What are we going to do?" Nog mouthed.

  Jake put a finger to his lips. He gestured Nog to stand near the door. Jake grabbed the chair and stood behind it.

  The cursing started again. This time Jake didn't recognize any of the languages. He used the words as a cover for his own.

  "Stand there when the door opens," he whispered. "Whatever you do, don't look at me. Just smile."

  "Smile?" Nog's voice rose as the metal plate pulled back. He glanced at Jake, a wide, fear-filled look, and then plastered an unconvincing grin on his face.

  Jake lifted the chair and got into position. The only advantage they would have was surprise. He doubted the spy who used this tunnel expected to find anyone in the room. They would attack him and run, yelling as they went and hoping that they found an exit before the spy found them.

  The door opened part way, and a body came in, going sideways.

  Jake brought the chair down on the movement, his fear giving him strength, just as the intruder said, "Nog? What are you—?"

  The rest of the sentence was lost in the crash.

  "Hey!" Nog yelled, and another voice joined him.

  Jake stood over the chair. The body below it belonged to Quark.

  Rom came in, wringing his hands.

  "You've killed him," Rom said. "Oh, dear. What are we going to do now?"

  "We'll get help," Jake said. He started for the door, stepping over Quark. But as he did, he realized the door was closing.

  Quickly.

  He reached for it, but it was too late. His fingers brushed the edge as it slammed into the wall.

  "What's going on here?" Rom asked.

  "We're trapped, Fat
her," Nog said. "And now we'll never get out."

  CHAPTER

  13

  DAX'S KNEES ACHED. She'd been kneeling on them since Julian arrived a half an hour before. Her hands were cold, and her nose even colder. She could see her breath.

  But she didn't want to move for fear that she would miss something. She felt it her duty to keep both men in line. They didn't know what was at risk here. Oh, perhaps they did on a superficial level. But not to the degree she did. Not to a level of concern that went deeper than the cold.

  She kept the tricorder focused on Julian. He was intent in his work, using all sorts of equipment she didn't even recognize to get the exact condition of the Supreme Ruler's tissue, to read his blood chemistry levels, and even to see if his eyeballs had shrunken into his head.

  Some of the tests were inconclusive. And most were showing what his initial scan had: that the Supreme Ruler was technically alive but would never really regain consciousness. Julian would impart this information in a dry terse voice, as if he were speaking into his medical log on the station. After the initial tussle over speaking aloud, he didn't even seem to notice that the others were near him. He was completely absorbed by the task before him.

  Dax had seen this level of concentration in Julian before. It both worried and heartened her. She had seen Julian perform miracles—keeping Vedek Bareil alive during Bajor's negotiations with the Cardassians had been one of them—but she also knew that no man could do everything. And this task might just be too big for him.

  Not to mention what it would do to his career.

  If he succeeded, he would be the man who saved the Jibetians' Supreme Ruler. And if he failed, he would be the man who let the religious leader of eighty worlds die. The protections Dax had set up—the tricorder, the redundant record keeping—would only fuel the debate. They wouldn't change the overall facts of what would happen here.

  And only she and Sisko understood the implications.

  O'Brien had worked his way around the platform and around the room. Occasionally, he, too, would speak to Dax's tricorder, explaining his actions. Essentially, he was checking the systems to see if there was a way to safely beam the Supreme Leader to the ship.

  She could have helped them, she supposed, but she felt as if her presence were needed here, beside Julian, protecting her friends and the Supreme Ruler from a threat she wasn't even sure existed. Something felt wrong on this ship. Very, very wrong. And once Julian was done, she would try to find out what that was.

  Finally, Julian sighed and straightened. He put a hand on his back and winced at the obvious stiffness in his muscles. He had been in the same position for a long time and had cramped up in the cold. It wasn't like Julian to ignore his own body's needs. He was fanatical about health—his own, the crew's, and his patients'.

  He looked at her. His cheeks were ruddy with the chill. The lines showed beside his mouth. "Here's the official word, Lieutenant," he said. "Make sure your device is working."

  Dax glanced at the tricoder. It was working. O'Brien came up to the side of the platform and stopped beside Julian. The tricorder would pick up both of them.

  "The cold-sleep chamber is keeping this man alive, if that is what you want to call his condition. He has been in this state for eight hundred years. The decay I've found is normal for this kind of machine working at this level of efficiency for this long. I might be able to reverse some of the decay, but I cannot do so here. It would be better for all concerned to wait until we have better facilities before we attempt to revive this man." Julian's eyes looked hollow. Sometimes his enthusiasm and naïveté made Dax forget how truly brilliant he was. He did know the importance of saving the Supreme Ruler and of doing it properly.

  And then she corrected herself. He knew, of course, and didn't care. This was Julian Bashir, a man who prided himself on his commitment to life. He would give any patient from his greatest enemy to his closest friend the same kind of treatment.

  "Well, Chief," Dax said, "that puts all of this on you."

  O'Brien shook his head. "It actually will take all of our resourcefulness," he said. "I've double-checked everything. We could beam the entire room onto a ship if that ship were big enough to hold it, but I doubt we have anything in the Federation that could carry such an unusually sized load."

  "We'd have to check," Dax said. "What about beaming the platform onto the Defiant?"

  "I've looked at that option as well," O'Brien said. "If we move the platform, we disconnect the cold-sleep chamber. If we disconnect the chamber, its own fail-safe system comes on. The reawakening process will start. If it doesn't start, then we'll lose the Supreme Ruler."

  "You're certain?" Dax asked.

  "Believe me, if there was another way to do this, I would have found it by now." O'Brien ran a hand through his curls. "I'd be happiest if we had an entire fleet of specialists helping me on this project."

  "I agree," Julian said.

  Dax sighed. "I doubt that we'll ever get that chance." Unless the Jibetians wanted to do it. She could imagine the scenario: a Jibetian team loses the Supreme Ruler because reviving him is simply impossible, and then eighty worlds at the edge of Federation space are involved in a massive civil war. She shook her head. The image was too much. Jadzia Dax wished they had never found the Nibix, no matter how excited Curzon would have been.

  "All right, gentlemen," Dax said. "I'm going to leave the tricorder running at all times facing the Supreme Ruler's chamber. I think we should examine the rest of the ship."

  She stood and led the way out of the ruler's room. As she passed a pile of supplies, she picked up the nearest box and carried it into the corridor. She couldn't sleep near all those bodies. She doubted the others could either.

  "If you're thinking we might find more working chambers, I can guarantee we won't," O'Brien said. He picked up a box as did Julian. "I've looked at the other sleep chambers. None are as elaborate as this one."

  "Although there must be a place for the rest of the royal family to lie in state," Julian said. "I'm sure that they would have equally sophisticated systems."

  The door closed behind them as they stepped into the corridor.

  Dax shook her head. "Everyone in that period of the Jibetian dynasty was considered expendable. The Supreme Rulership was a patriarchal system, and the Jibetians believed that a man could always father children. The only person of any consequence at all was the ruler himself."

  "Although it wouldn't hurt to check," O'Brien said.

  "If we're here long enough," Dax said.

  Bashir set down his box and pulled from it Starfleet's regulation portable heater. An older version of one of these had kept Curzon Dax and Sisko alive for two days in an ice cave. They'd had to evacuate the cave when it became clear that the heater was cracking the ice.

  "Let's get that thing running," O'Brien said. "I've been cold long enough." He bent over and started the heater, then warmed his hands over its early heat as if it were a campfire. "The thing I've never been able to understand about cold sleep is how the survivors ever felt warm again. Just knowing that my metabolism had been slowed by the cold for eighty years would give me a permanent chill."

  "It wouldn't work that way, Chief," Julian said. "Your system would warm gradually …"

  Dax dug in the other two boxes as Julian explained the psychology of cold sleep. She found blankets and pillows. She went back into the main room for the rest of the supplies, moving box after box. Both men offered to help, but she turned them down. She had watched them work. Now they could watch her.

  "… rather like a long night's sleep. Some veterans of cold sleep even claimed that they had dreams," Julian said, his voice rising with excitement. Once he started on a topic he loved, there was no stopping him.

  Fortunately O'Brien seemed to be interested in it as well. "I'm simply glad for the development of warp technology. Cold sleep had too many hazards, not the least of which this ship met with."

  "You mean crashes?" Julian asked
. "All ships run that hazard."

  "No, they don't." Dax had finished carrying the boxes. She took out a pillow and sat on it. This part of the corridor had warmed up considerably. In another half an hour, she would be able to remove her deepcold jacket. "Most ships have living pilots in addition to their computerized navigational systems. This one didn't."

  "Cold-sleep ships were usually designed so that someone would wake up at the first sign of trouble," Julian said. "I wonder if someone woke up here."

  "I doubt it," Dax said. "They'd been traveling a long time when they reached this asteroid belt."

  "You're right about that, Lieutenant," O'Brien said. "But Julian's also right. The system should have attempted to revive one, maybe two pilots. And everything should have been working well enough to at least make the attempt. But I see no signs that type of system kicked in at all." He rubbed his chin. "How long do you think we have until the commander returns?"

  Dax grabbed a blanket from one of the boxes and spread it around the floor to ease the chill of the metal. She didn't want O'Brien to see her face. While they'd been working on the Supreme Ruler, she had forced all thought of the Cardassians from her mind. But she couldn't ignore that threat forever. The Cardassians hadn't massed on the border at that time for some other undetermined threat. They had arrived because they knew that the Defiant had found the Nibix.

  The Cardassians were wily. They would take what advantage they could. With proper use of the Nibix, they could destroy the heart of the Federation.

  She hoped that relations between the Federation and the Cardassians had improved beyond that point, but she didn't know. She was afraid they hadn't.