The first time he came here, he thought it looked exactly the same as the Bajoran station. And on the face of it, it was: the classic Cardassian design of a circle with pointed protrusions that looked like limbs trying to claw themselves out of dirt. One of Nog’s classmates at the Academy theorized that it was an architectural metaphor for how Cardassian culture managed to claw its way up from being a resource-poor planet to a major player in Alpha Quadrant politics.
Now he looked at it with a more professional eye, and he could see all the differences. Empok Nor had been abandoned for four years, after all, and hadn’t had the benefit of the Starfleet upgrades that had been going on on Deep Space 9 for the last seven-plus years. Empok Nor had none of the weapons or sensor upgrades, the improved structural supports, or any of the other dozens of improvements—some of which Nog had been involved in himself.
Of course, Empok Nor right now had one very critical thing that DS9 didn’t, and it presently sat enticingly in the lower portion of the station.
A working fusion core.
The core was still active, too, and the quick scan Nog did showed that life support and artificial gravity were still functioning, as they were last year when the Defiant rescued Colonel Kira from the Pah-wraith cultists. However, some of the readings, Nog noticed, didn’t jibe with the readings the Defiant took back then.
“ Rio Grande, this is the da Vinci,” said a voice that wasn’t Gold’s over the runabout speakers. “We’re ready to beam over.”
Nog settled the Rio Grande into a parking orbit—the pylons were too unstable to risk docking there, especially with nobody in ops to check on the station end—and then responded. “So’m I, sir,” he said, hoping that “sir” was the right thing to say, since whoever this person was didn’t identify himself. It was probably the Lt. Commander Duffy person Gold mentioned, assuming Duffy was also a male, as the voice was. He’d been so busy quadruple-checking his calculations, he hadn’t had the chance to familiarize himself with the names of any of the da Vinci crew.
Setting the runabout on standby, he programmed the transporter to beam him to the core access.
Within moments, he was present on the eerily familiar catwalk. An access panel was at his right, as were nine Starfleet personnel—all, Nog noticed, in gold-trimmed uniforms, with the exception of the Nasat, who simply wore a combadge. Nog assumed the four humans and one Bolian holding very large phaser rifles were security and the two humans, the Nasat, and the Bynar were the actual S.C.E. team. He was surprised to see a single Bynar—I thought they all came in pairs —and one of the human engineers looked familiar. He also noted that only two of those present were officers. Though an officer himself, his years studying under Chief O’Brien had made Nog appreciate the importance of enlisted personnel, especially in engineering.
The human female security officer started directing her people to take up positions at various parts of the catwalk. Nog caught the names of each of the guards: the dark-skinned human male was Hawkins, the pale human male was Drew, the olive-skinned human female was Lipinski, and the Bolian was called Frnats.
The other human engineer—the officer—walked up to Nog and offered his hand. “I’m Lieutenant Commander Duffy. I’m in charge here.”
Taking the hand, Nog said, “A pleasure, sir. If you don’t mind, I need to check something.”
Duffy shrugged. “Check whatever you want. We’ll get started now.”
Blinking, Nog said, “Excuse me?”
“Don’t worry,” Duffy said, putting a hand on Nog’s shoulder, “we’ll get your core for you before you can eat a tube grub.”
Sputtering, Nog said, “But—sir, with all due respect, I’ve already—”
“Don’t worry about it, kid.”
Kid? “Commander Duffy, I’m not a ‘kid,’ I’m the chief operations officer of—”
“Hey Duff, you’d better take a look at this. You too, Nog.”
Nog looked over to see that the other human engineer was at the console. Duffy moved to join them, as did Nog. Once he got a good look at his face, Nog finally recognized him. “Stevens, right?”
Fabian Stevens smiled down at Nog. “Yup. Good to see you again, Nog. And congrats.” Then he turned to Duffy. “Take a look.”
“All the reaction chambers are online,” Duffy said after a moment.
Nog said, “What!?” He looked at the console. Sure enough, all six of the fusion reaction chambers were active. “That’s incredible! We don’t—didn’t even keep all six active on DS9.”
“I thought this place was dead,” the female security officer said to Nog. “The reports from your first trip here said that it was just running on emergency battery power.”
“Well, one of the chambers was brought online by the Pah-wraith cultists who squatted here,” Nog said. “But all six—it doesn’t make sense.”
“Someone’s been here,” the security woman said, hefting her rifle. “We need to bring more people over.”
Duffy shook his head. “Corsi, that isn’t necessary.”
The Corsi woman moved almost eye to eye with Duffy. “Commander, there’s a very good chance that we’re not alone on this station.”
“Actually, there’s no chance that we aren’t. We checked—there’re no life signs here.”
“Excuse me,” Nog said.
“Right now, maybe,” Corsi said, ignoring him, “but somebody had to bring those reactors online, and I doubt it was Pah-wraith cultists.”
“Excuse me,” Nog repeated.
Also ignoring him, Duffy said, “Keep your people on alert, and I’ll let Captain Gold know, but we don’t need more security down here.” He smiled. “There’s too many people on this catwalk as it is.”
“Excuse me,” Nog almost shouted.
“What is it, Lieutenant?” Duffy asked.
“Sir, I have already laid out a plan for the extraction of the core and the transporting of it to DS9. If you’ll just—”
Again, Duffy put his hand on Nog’s shoulder. Nog was sorely tempted to brush it off. “Look, Lieutenant, I appreciate you wanting to look good to your superiors, but don’t worry about it. We’re pros. We do this sort of thing every day. We’ll have your core out before you know it. Just sit back and watch us go at it, okay?”
He then turned his back on Nog and went to talk to the Bynar.
I don’t believe this. I spent days on this, and they’re just blowing it off. Who do they think they are?
Before Nog could say anything, though, he heard a strange noise. It was fairly high-pitched, and seemed to be coming from behind him. “What’s that noise?”
Duffy frowned. “I don’t hear anything.”
Nog closed his eyes and focused in on the sound. “It’s over—there!”
He pointed right where Frnats was pacing on the catwalk. She walked a step closer to the edge of the catwalk—
—and then the noise grew louder, energy crackled around her, and suddenly what appeared to be a giant brown mesh appeared in the air.
The Bolian went flying across the catwalk toward Hawkins.
Nog peered at the mesh. It seemed to be covering the entire fusion core. The strands of the mesh were about twenty centimeters wide with small square holes. It was brown, and Nog noticed that it seemed to be—well, flowing. Almost as if it were a running body of water.
What was most fascinating was that the mesh didn’t project out from a source, the way, say, a Starfleet force field could be seen to emanate from emitters in bulkheads. It was simply there, as if it had always been.
“The Androssi.” Corsi, Duffy, and Stevens all said it simultaneously—the security chief with a tone of anger, the engineers with more of an “ohnonot-again” attitude.
Although Nog had heard of the Androssi, he couldn’t recall much at the moment. There wasn’t time to try to dredge the memory in any case, as another high-pitched sound came from the middle of the catwalk, and another form materialized there.
It was the same shade of brown,
and shaped like a ball about a meter in diameter. Its surface also seemed to be flowing.
“Androssi Protocol 1, now,” Corsi said, and fired her own phaser. It fired at, of all things, level 2, which was a light stun setting. Nog stared incredulously at the security chief.
However, the other three standing guards followed suit and fired.
Amazingly enough, the ball seemed to disrupt for a moment, fading in and out. Then it came back into existence and arcs of electricity shot out at each of the guards.
Corsi, Drew, and Lipinski managed to duck out of the way, but Hawkins was still standing near Frnats’s prone form, and so was unable to avoid the attack.
“They’ve upgraded,” Drew said grimly.
“Protocol 2,” Corsi said, without missing a beat. Nog ran over to where Hawkins and Frnats were now lying on the catwalk, the former twitching. He hadn’t come armed, but the Bolian wasn’t using her phaser rifle anymore, and Nog hadn’t spent the Dominion War fighting—and losing his leg—in order to stand and watch a fight now.
The Nasat and the Bynar did likewise, the former grabbing Hawkins’s phaser, the latter checking the two guards with his tricorder.
Protocol 2, based on what the Nasat did with Hawkins’s phaser, involved putting the phaser on random mode. All phasers created after Starfleet’s first encounter with the Borg a decade earlier were able to randomly change settings and frequencies.
Okay, so obviously these guys have faced this Androssi security device before, Nog deduced as he changed the settings on his phaser.
As Nog joined the others in firing at random settings on the device and ducking to avoid the bolts of electrical energy that shot around the catwalk, Duffy tapped his combadge.
“Duffy to da Vinci. We’ve got an Androssi security device here. Two guards are down, and the trick we used on Maeglin isn’t working this time.”
“Dammit,” Gold said. “So much for an uninhabited station.”
Nog ducked as another arc of electricity shot at him, then he fired two more shots, one at level 1, one at level 9, each at a different EM frequency. The ball seemed unimpressed.
“Duffy to transporter. Diego, please tell me you can punch through the interference this time.”
“Sorry, Commander, but I lost the lock on you guys about a minute ago.”
Gold said, “Find a way this time, Feliciano.”
“Trying, sir.”
One of Lipinski’s shots disrupted the ball—its surface stopped flowing and it disappeared from view for a second. Unfortunately, when it came back into view it immediately zapped her, and she also fell to the catwalk.
Nog fired again, cursing the thing for its effectiveness—Lipinski hadn’t had a chance to call out what setting she’d used, and there was no way anyone could risk moving over to her.
Or so he thought. The Nasat suddenly curled up into a ball—making her look like a chitinous counterpart to the security device—and rolled over to Lipinski. Two electrical bursts hit her, but they didn’t seem to slow her down. She uncurled when she reached Lipinski and checked the setting.
“Level 4, low-frequency!” she said in a tinkly voice.
Nog quickly adjusted his phaser accordingly and fired.
So did the others.
The brown ball fizzled, and then disappeared. As soon as it did, the shots being fired continued through past where the ball had been. Drew, who had been standing opposite where Nog was crouched, barely ducked Nog’s shot in time.
Letting out a very long breath, Nog tried to ignore the latest phantom itch on his leg. The war’s been over for months, and it seems like I’m fighting just as much since it ended as I did during it.
“Good work, Pattie,” Duffy said. “Soloman?”
The Bynar looked up at that. “All three guards are alive. But they will require immediate medical attention.”
Duffy tapped his combadge. “Diego, any luck?”
“Sort of. The interference is still there, but I can actually get a lock on Lieutenant Nog’s signal.”
Stevens was looking at his tricorder. “I think I know why, Duff. Look at this.” He showed his tricorder’s display to the other human.
Corsi said, “Let’s see if we can take out the mesh the same way.”
Nog was about to take a look at Stevens’s readings—it was odd that his combadge would penetrate the interference when no one else’s would—when he heard Corsi’s words. “No!” Nog cried. “If you disrupt it, the phaser shots will go through to the core!”
Nodding, Corsi said, “Fine, we’ll try something else.” Then she regarded Nog’s phaser rifle. “Nice work with that, by the way.”
“Experience,” Nog said quickly, not wanting to dwell on it.
Again, Corsi nodded. “Right, DS9 was pretty much the front line for most of the war, wasn’t it? Well, thanks for the assist.”
“I don’t believe this,” Duffy said before Nog could reply.
“What is it, Duffy?” Gold asked. “Captain, apparently these security devices are broadcasting a huge number of specific interference patterns—including ones keyed to our specific combadges. In fact, one of them is 111’s combadge.”
Nog noticed the Bynar wincing at that statement. Sounds like 111 isn’t around anymore. Is that the other Bynar? Is that why this one’s alone and has such a weird name? It’d certainly explain why he speaks so hesitantly.
He didn’t ask, though, but simply said, “I don’t get it.”
“What it probably means,” Gold said with a deep sigh, “is that we’re dealing with Overseer Biron again.”
Corsi fixed Stevens with an incredulous look. “Wait a minute. You mean to tell me that, when we were on Maeglin, the Androssi scanned and recorded the combadge frequencies of the entire complement of the da Vinci and programmed it into their security on the off chance that they’d meet up with us again?”
Duffy smiled grimly. “That’s exactly what we’re telling you, Corsi.”
“Hey, Feliciano,” Stevens said. “I got an idea. Can you use the signal you’re getting from Nog as a booster on the overall signal?”
“If that doesn’t work,” Duffy said, “we might be able to just take turns beaming people back and forth with his combadge.”
“We can make it work,” Stevens said. “Just modulate the pattern enhancer to the upper ranges and increase the confinement beam’s range.”
Nog looked at them like they were insane. All they had to do was beam Nog himself up to the da Vinci, then beam him back with a pattern enhancer.
“Or,” Feliciano said before Nog had a chance to voice this thought, “I can just beam the lieutenant up, hand him a pattern enhancer, then beam him down.”
There was a dead silence.
Duffy and Stevens looked at each other.
“Yeah, okay,” Stevens said.
“I mean,” Duffy added, “if you want to actually do it the sensible way, sure.”
Rolling his eyes, Nog thought, These are the people I’m supposed to trust with extracting the core?
“Can the comedy, you two,” Gold said. “Let’s get the lieutenant up so we can get the wounded out of there. Once that’s done, we’re going to yellow alert—if I know Biron, he’ll be back, and I want to be ready. Hell, if DS9 didn’t need this core so badly, I’d call the whole damn thing off. I want reports every fifteen minutes, Duffy, clear?”
“As a bell, sir,” Duffy said.
Corsi said, “Sir, I recommend that new combadges be replicated for the entire crew as well, and I’ll need three more security guards to replace Frnats, Lipinski, and Hawkins.”
“Way ahead of you on the combadges, Corsi. Barnak’s already on that. Nog, get ready to be beamed up.”
“Yes, sir.”
As the transporter effect started to form around Nog, he heard Duffy say, “We’ll get to work on the—”
Then Nog found himself on a small transporter platform, only slightly larger than the one on the Defiant.
“—field surrou
nding the core in the meantime.” That was the rest of Duffy’s sentence, heard over the comm.
A human with olive skin and black hair stood behind the console. His eyes went wide, and he said, “You’re a Ferengi.”
“And you’re a human,” Nog snapped. He wasn’t in the mood for the usual shock at seeing a Ferengi in a Starfleet uniform. He’d gotten more of it at the Academy than since he returned to Deep Space 9, but it still grated. “Can we get a move on, please?”
“Right. Sorry, just didn’t realize.” He grabbed something off the floor and then walked around to the platform. “I’m Chief Feliciano. These are the pattern enhancers.” He set them down on the platform.
“Great,” Nog said. “Let’s get going.”
“Hang on,” Feliciano said, walking back to the console. “I’m supposed to wait on security.” He hesitated. “Look, I’m sorry about that Ferengi comment. You probably get a lot of that. I just wasn’t expecting it, is all.”
Nog let out a breath. “It’s okay. I’m sorry I snapped. Things have been a bit hectic.”
The doors opened and three security guards walked in, all human females. One of them tossed a combadge to Feliciano. “New jewelry, Chief.”
Feliciano caught it with a smile and looked at it. “I’m not into brooches.”
The guard snorted, then looked at Nog. “I’m Robins. This is Eddy and Friesner. You must be Nog.”
Nog just nodded. He wanted to get back to the station—for one thing, he wanted someone to tell him precisely what they were up against with the Androssi; for another, he still hadn’t had a chance to check out that anomalous reading he’d gotten on the Rio Grande.
“Energize, Chief,” Nog ordered as soon as the three guards were assembled on the platform.
CHAPTER
5
The chime alerted Overseer Biron to the fact that his shift was to begin shortly. He awakened instantaneously and immediately noticed that something was wrong with the engines. The vibration of the deck that he felt under his bare feet as he got down off his hammock deviated from the norm.
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