Star Trek - Gateways - 4 - Demons Of Air And Darkness

by Demons Of Air

  Besides, she didn't want to know. She didn't care. She'd done her job. / can't wait to tell Ella about this, she thought with a smile. Her ten-year-old daughter always loved to hear stories about her mother's trips. Marssi predicted that this one-where she defeated one of the most brutal foes imaginable and also made an astounding new discovery-would quickly become Ella's favorite.

  2

  THE GAMMA QUADRANT

  "the communications array is now online, sir."

  Commander Elias Vaughn didn't smile at Nog's re-port, but the lieutenant hadn't really expected him to. In the month since Vaughn had been assigned as the first officer of Deep Space 9 and commanding officer of the U.S.S. Defiant, Nog had seldom seen the human smile while on duty.

  But when the young Ferengi turned to look at Vaughn in the Defiant's command chair, he did notice a slight curling of Vaughn's lips under his gray-and-silver beard.

  Vaughn turned toward the bridge's port side. "Ex-cellent work, gentlemen," he said to Nog and the An-dorian sitting at the console to Nog's right.

  Ensign Thirishar ch'Thane didn't smile, either, but

  Nog had learned to read the young science officer's facial features well enough to see that he, too, was pleased with himself. Nog and Shar had spent the last week going over every square millimeter of the com-munications array, and they were quite proud of the work they'd done.

  Now, at last, everything appeared to be ready to go.

  "Address intership, please, Lieutenant," Vaughn said to Nog.

  Nog couldn't resist smiling as he complied. "Yes, sir. Intership open."

  "Attention all hands, this is Commander Vaughn. Starfleet's primary mission has always been one of exploration. Over seven years ago, Benjamin Sisko and Jadzia Dax discovered a stable wormhole in the Denorios Belt, one which opened the door to an entire quadrant of new worlds for us to seek out. Five years ago, Starfleet, Bajoran, and Cardassian personnel worked together to install a subspace array on the Gamma Quadrant side of the wormhole to provide communication between the quadrants. Unfortunately, that array did not survive the hostilities of the Domin-ion War-a war that, sadly, also closed the door that Benjamin Sisko opened.

  "But the war's over now. And thanks to efforts by the crew of the Defiant and Deep Space 9, a new com-munications array has been successfully deployed and is now online. As of this moment... we're back in the Gamma Quadrant."

  Nog's smile broadened, and he drummed his hands against the edge of his console hi applause. At conn, Ensign Prynn Tenmei clapped, and Lieutenant Sam Bowers at tactical let out a celebratory whoop. Over

  the com system, Nog could hear other expressions of jubilation from all over the ship.

  Looks like we're finally putting the war behind us, Nog thought with satisfaction. The repairs and up-grades to the station and the Defiant had been com-pleted, and now the communications array was up and running-the prelude to the Defiant's upcoming mis-sion of exploration to the Gamma Quadrant. Things were finally starting to get back to normal.

  Shar, meanwhile, had turned back to his console. "All systems are functional, and the silithium recep-tors are aligned. We're ready to send our first message to DS9, Commander."

  "Very well," Vaughn said, standing and walking to-ward the viewscreen. "Open a channel and transmit the following: 'Watson, I need you.' "

  Shar's antennae lowered slightly. "Sir?"

  Vaughn's lips curled again. "Old joke. A human one, so Colonel Kira won't get it, either. Send the message please, Ensign."

  Shar nodded. "Yes, sir."

  After a moment, Colonel Kira Nerys's sharp voice sounded crisply through the speakers. "Who the hell is Watson?"

  "Excellent," Shar said, letting out a breath. Then he muttered some kind of supplication to the Andorian deity.

  / guess he wasn't sure it was going to work, Nog thought with a smile. Nog, on the other hand, had known in his lobes that the array would function just fine.

  "Old joke," Vaughn repeated. "Just a little test, Colonel. The new array seems to have passed it."

  "Glad to hear it. Your timing is perfect. Get back over here right away, Commander. We have a meeting with Admiral Ross in half an hour."

  Nog's lobes pricked up at that, and he felt a phan-tom twinge in the biosynthetic that had replaced his left leg, lost in the war. Ross had been the commander of Starfleet's forces against the Dominion. They'd al-ready had one near-miss with renegade Jem'Hadar trying to start hostilities again.

  The war's supposed to be behind us, dammit.

  "Starfleet's declared a state of emergency," Kira went on to say, "we've received a distress call from Europa Nova, and both the Tcha'voth and the Mak-luan have been recalled."

  Nog frowned at that. Those two ships had been posted to Deep Space 9 by the Klingons and Romu-lans, respectively, to bolster the station's defense, along with the Defiant.

  "I want you to go to yellow alert. We're doing the same on the station."

  "Acknowledged," Vaughn said, calmly sitting back down in the command chair. "We'll be back at the sta-tion in ten minutes. Defiant out." He turned to tactical. "Signal yellow alert please, Lieutenant Bowers. All hands to general quarters." Looking forward, he said, "Ensign Tenmei, set course for the wormhole, full im-pulse."

  "Yes, sir," Tenmei said, and Nog noticed, not for the first time, the change to the ensign's voice that oc-curred every time she had to address Vaughn. It was subtle-a slight alteration in timbre that only a Fer-engi would notice, but it happened only with the com-mander.

  Although it had become common knowledge among the crew that Prynn was Vaughn's (apparently) estranged daughter-Uncle Quark had hardly been been able to contain the information once he'd found out-Nog wondered what the source of that estrange-ment was. Generally, Tenmei was friendly and outgo-ing off duty-Nog had even talked her into trying a tube grub in the mess hall yesterday. (Like most hu-mans, she didn't have the stomach for it and spat it back out.) On duty she was an exceptional pilot and a consummate professional, and apart from that slight shift in her voice that no one else seemed to notice, there was no obvious indication that she had any is-sues with Vaughn at all. And yet... Nog was certain there was something there, something that made him wonder if the Defiant bridge didn't have a serious problem on the horizon.

  As the Defiant came about, Nog's thoughts changed course as well and he turned to Shar. "I told you we could do it."

  Shar was hunched over his console, making sure that the automatic settings on the array were running properly so that it would continue to function after the Defiant was out of range. "I never doubted it."

  "Oh really? Who was the one who thought the alignment of the subspace antenna was wrong?"

  "That was me," Shar admitted.

  "Who was the one who said that we'd need twice as many flux capacitors as we actually did need?"

  "That was me, too."

  "Who was the one-"

  Shar finally looked up, brushing a lock of his coarse white hair off his face. "Nog, just because I

  was critical of some details doesn't mean I doubted that we'd get the array online."

  "Hah. You say that now."

  "Yes, and I would've said it then if someone had asked."

  The young Ferengi chuckled and relaxed for the first time in a week. While no words to the effect had been spoken, Nog knew that no one was entirely sure about whether or not he and Shar could get the job done. After all, from the time the station was turned over to Bajoran and Starfleet control by the Cardas-sians, over seven years earlier, the responsibilities of science officer and chief of operations had belonged, respectively, to Jadzia Dax-a Trill scientist with three centuries' and eight lifetimes' worth of experi-ence-and Miles O'Brien-a Starfleet veteran of over twenty years. They'd now been replaced by a recent- albeit brilliant-graduate of Starfleet Academy and a junior-grade lieutenant who owed his rank to battle-field commissions rather than full Academy experi-ence. Nobody had forgotten mat, when Chief O'Brien first took over, Nog was
a child being arrested by Odo for stealing from the assay office.

  From the conn position, Tenmei said, "Entering the wormhole."

  Nog looked down and made sure that all the ship's systems were within expected parameters for a trip through the wormhole. Most of the time, they were, but more than one such trip had been fraught with danger, from Kira and Dr. Bashir's unexpected jaunt to a parallel universe to the aliens who resided in the wormhole causing an entire Jem'Hadar fleet to van-ish. Nog didn't want something like that to happen to

  them now because he was too busy ribbing Shar to notice an anomalous reading.

  However, everything seemed to be fine. Nog set the viewscreen on his console to show the wormhole as they passed through it.

  For a long time, Nog had thought of the wormhole solely as the thing that brought Uncle Quark all the new business. Then it was something they talked about in school occasionally. But he'd never really looked at it until Jake Sisko dragged him to the cat-walk over the Promenade to watch the wormhole open and close one afternoon. It was then that he truly started to appreciate it. He hadn't admitted it to Jake-nor to anyone else-at the time, but it was the most glorious sight he'd ever seen, and he wanted to know more about it Nog often suspected that that moment, when he found his mind flooded with ques-tions about the wormhole, was probably the first step on his journey to the Academy and Starfleet.

  Studying the wormhole in school didn't prepare him for seeing it, and seeing it didn't remotely pre-pare him for what it was like to go through it.

  His studies told him that the streams of white and silver light were verteron particles and silithium streams and various other bits of particulate matter, but that only mattered to Nog when duty required it of him. Times like this, he liked to just sit back and watch the dance of lights as the ship shot through seventy thou-sand light-years in a matter of minutes.

  As they emerged from the Alpha Quadrant mouth of the wormhole into Bajoran space, Shar spoke up, apparently not willing to let the subject die just yet. "It's actually quite intriguing the way you keep doing

  things that don't match the specifications. Especially since you're always right."

  Nog chuckled. "Well, not always. But when I'm wrong, I've gotten very good at making it seem like it was what I meant to do all along. I met Captain Montgomery Scott recently, and he said something great." Shar didn't seem impressed by the name-dropping, so Nog added, "You've heard of him, right?"

  "Oh, sure, I know Scotty," Shar said.

  Nog felt his jaw drop open. "You call him 'Scotty'? I don't think I'd ever have the lobes to do that."

  "My zhavey introduced us, and he insisted I use the nickname."

  Nog shook his head. He kept forgetting that the unassuming young Andorian had a parent on the Fed-eration Council. "Anyway, he said, 'The established norms are just guidelines, and your job as an engineer is to find a better way around them.' "

  "That certainly sounds like Scotty."

  From behind him, Nog heard Vaughn's rock-steady voice say, "Deep Space 9, this is the Defiant request-ing permission to dock."

  "Granted," came the reply from Selzner in ops.

  Something caught Shar's attention on his console. "Commander, we're getting a message from the array. It's relaying something on a Federation civilian fre-quency from the Kar-telos system, just a few light-years into the Gamma Quadrant."

  "Put it on screen, please."

  "It's audio only, sir," Shar said quickly.

  Vaughn looked over at Shar and fixed him with an intense, calm gaze that was as scary as anything Nog

  had ever seen. "Then put it on speakers, Ensign ch'Thane."

  "Yes, sir."

  "This is Captain Monaghan of the Mars freighter Halloran. / need some help here. I was doing the Jov-ian run, and now-well, I think I'm in the Gamma Quadrant. I haven't the first clue as to how 7 got here. Someone please help me!"

  "You said it was a civilian frequency, Ensign?" Vaughn asked Shar.

  Shar nodded.

  "That explains it, then. Open a channel."

  Manipulating his console, Shar said, "Channel open."

  "Freighter Halloran, this is Commander Elias Vaughn, first officer of Deep Space 9. You are, in fact, hi the Gamma Quadrant."

  "How the hell did I wind up here?"

  "That's a very fair question, Captain. I wish I had an answer for that. What I can tell you is that we will dispatch a runabout to your position right away and lead you back to DS9 through the Bajoran wormhole. Is that acceptable?"

  Captain Monaghan started to sound panicky Nog's sensitive ears noticed the change hi the timbre of her voice, even over the communications system. "I guess so. Isn't this where the Dominion came from?"

  "Yes, ma'am, it is."

  "Should I be worried about the Jem'Hadar? "

  "No," Vaughn said with calm confidence that Nog-remembering the recent attack on the station- didn't share. "You're quite safe, I can assure you. Nonetheless, we'll dispatch the runabout immedi-ately."

  "Thanks, Commander." Nog noticed that the timbre of her voice had changed again. Vaughn's words had obviously reassured her. "Halloran out."

  Vaughn turned to Bowers. "Lieutenant, when we dock, prepare the Sungari for departure and take it to the Kar-telos system."

  Bowers nodded.

  Shar was staring at his panel. "How is it possible that a ship in the Terran system suddenly found itself in the Gamma Quadrant?"

  "Let's hope, Ensign, that it relates to why we're at yellow alert right now."

  Nog frowned. "Why would we hope that, Com-mander?"

  This time, Vaughn's hard stare was turned on Nog. "Because, Lieutenant, I've been through more Starfleet states of emergency than I care to count. And the last thing you want to have to do during one is split your focus."

  3

  DEEP SPACE 9

  elias vaughn hated meetings.

  Oh, he understood the need for them. There were times when such things were vital, and it was good for groups of people who worked together to gather regularly and keep each other abreast of their duties, lives, or anything else of import.

  But the ideal meeting was short and to the point. Vaughn's long years of experience had shown him that most meetings were neither, and were primarily an impediment to actually getting anything accom-plished. One of the many-although lesser-reasons Vaughn had declined so many promotions over the years was the surety that a higher rank would result in more meetings.

  As he and Kira approached Quark's bar, Ensign ch'Thane's voice sounded through Kira's combadge. "Ops to Colonel Kira."

  Tapping her combadge, Kira said, "Go ahead, Shar."

  "Colonel, we're receiving detailed information from Europa Nova. It isn't good, sir."

  They entered the bar, occupied solely by a few civilians-including Morn in his usual seat toward one end of the bar. With the station at yellow alert, the Starfleet and Bajoran Militia personnel were either at their duty stations or on standby, and most of the rest of the station's population probably felt safer on their ships or in their quarters.

  "Anything new I should know?" Kira asked as she walked up the tightly winding staircase to the second level.

  "They are primarily confirming the original dis-tress call-theta radiation is appearing in orbit from an unknown point of origin and will reach lethal lev-els within fifty-two hours. The only new data is that the source of the radiation appears to be some kind of antimatter industrial waste."

  Kira frowned. "That's odd."

  Vaughn searched his memory for anyone hi the quad-rant who still generated waste from their matter-anti-matter power sources, and couldn't find any. Every warp-capable species he knew of that used such reactors had conquered the waste problem in fairly short order.

  "Lieutenant Bowers has rendezvoused with the Halloran. He reports no problems, and should be back within the hour. We've also received several odd re-ports in the usual dispatches."

  "Odd in what way?" Kira asked.

&nbs
p; "Apparently, Orions have been sighted on Ferengi-nar, near the Grand Nagus's home, the Deltans and Carreon have mutually broken their treaty in a man-ner that defies logic, there's a medical crisis on Armus IX thanks to an unauthorized alien presence- the list is quite extensive, and has a common element of people not being where they should be."

  "Keep a log of the odd reports, Shar," Kira said. She and Vaughn arrived at the door to one of Quark's holosuites on the bar's third level. Nog was already there, making some adjustments to an outer panel. "We're about to go into the meeting-maybe we'll find out what this is all about. Kira out." She looked at Nog and said, "Report."