War Stories: Book Two

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  “Assuming they have time to,” Gold added quickly. “I know we’ve got that widget from Starbase 375 to look at, and that still needs to get done. But we’ve got another priority ahead of it.” The captain touched a control on the desk, and the viewscreen behind him lit up with a schematic from what looked to Fabian like a standard Federation communications relay station. Such stations were positioned throughout Federation space, boosting comm signals a thousand-fold and allowing near-instantaneous communication across most of the Federation. During the war, those relays were of even greater value. Fabian also noticed that the one showing on the screen had taken some rather severe damage.

  “This is a comm relay in the Phicus system. Some Cardassian ships carved a chunk out of it yesterday, and we need to fix it, pronto.”

  Corsi leaned forward. “Sir, the Phicus system is hardly what I’d call secure. We’ve been holding on to it by our fingernails.”

  “Calm down, Corsi,” Gold said, “we’re gonna have support. The Appalachia and the Sloane will meet us at the relay.”

  Fabian recognized both ships as Steamrunner-class vessels. Not bad for support, he thought, but a hair skimpy.

  Apparently, the security chief felt the same way. “Sir, that’s insane. The Cardassians have been dancing on the edge of that system for weeks. We can’t go in there with only two ships for backup. Starfleet has to—”

  Gold held up a hand. “Way ahead of you, Corsi. I already asked Starfleet what was in the Saurian brandy they were drinking when they cut those orders. Turns out that’s all they can spare for now.”

  “We can’t wait until more backup’s available?”

  “It won’t be for forty-eight hours, and the relay can’t wait that long to be fixed.”

  Security chiefs are all alike, Fabian thought as he watched Corsi fold her arms. She had the universal cranky look that all the security chiefs that Fabian had ever met had.

  “We’ll arrive at Phicus in twelve hours.” Gold then gave Salek a nod.

  The Vulcan, who had been sitting with his elbows on the table and fingers steepled together in front of his face, leaned back and unclasped his hands, leaving them to rest on the tabletop. “We will continue our examination of the Dominion device until we arrive at Phicus. At that point, Duffy, Blue, and I will commence with repairs on the communications relay. Stevens, 110, and 111 will continue their examination of the device, with the assistance of Okha and Abramowitz.”

  “Hey, maybe we’ll luck out and dope it out before we get there,” Duffy said with a smile.

  Salek turned to Duffy. “Luck is not something upon which we should depend.”

  Still smiling, Duffy said, “S’why I said ‘maybe.’”

  “Let’s get to it, people,” Gold said, rising from his chair. Everyone else did likewise.

  Corsi, Fabian noticed, still looked aggravated. Okha and Tydoan looked bored. The rest of the team, however, seemed eager to get at the problem, as everyone made a beeline for the lab.

  I think I’m gonna like it here, Fabian thought.

  * * *

  Twelve hours later, Fabian wasn’t liking it here so much.

  The Bynar pair had attempted to interface with the golf ball, but had found no way to access the systems. Sensors indicated some kind of mechanism, but if there was a computerized intelligence behind it, they couldn’t find it.

  At least, they couldn’t find it via sensors. Ideally, they would just open it up and take a peek, but they found no access ports either.

  “Geez, even a real golf ball has seams,” Fabian finally said in frustration as the latest attempt to gain ingress met with failure.

  “Not this one,” Duffy said with a sigh.

  Pattie made one of her tinkly noises. “Perhaps we should attempt to use a phaser on the golf ball.”

  “That is an unacceptable risk,” Salek said. “The device was found on the bridge. Logically, that means it might well be a weapon—or, at the very least, be booby-trapped.”

  “Yeah, the Jem’Hadar wouldn’t have it on the bridge,” said Duffy, “if it wasn’t important.”

  “Or if it wasn’t theirs.”

  Fabian turned to see that Abramowitz was speaking.

  “You’re all leaving out one possibility,” she continued. “What if the Jem’Hadar found it and they don’t know what it is either? Maybe it really is a golf ball with a pituitary problem.”

  “There is an indication—” 110 started.

  111 finished. “—of electronics within the golf ball.”

  “So?” Abramowitz shrugged, her short black hair bouncing slightly. “Maybe it’s a gyroscope to keep it on track after it’s been hit off the tee.”

  Laughing, Fabian said, “You play golf?”

  Abramowitz nodded.

  “Go fig’. I thought my grandfather was the only person left in the Federation who played.”

  “Nah,” Duffy said, “I had an aunt and uncle who played, too. My parents used to send me to stay with them whenever I was being too annoying.”

  Fabian found himself speaking without thinking, his frustration at twelve hours of dead ends lowering his resistance. “Spent a lot of time with them, did you?” He immediately regretted speaking up. True, Duffy had a relaxed manner, but he was an officer, and they didn’t usually take kindly to the enlisted folk making snide remarks.

  To Fabian’s relief, however, Duffy just laughed and said, “More than I would’ve liked to, yeah. Never took to the game, though. I was always about eight million over par.”

  “As diverting as this discussion of human gaming practices is,” Salek said, “we should return to the business at hand. While Abramowitz’s suggestion has merit, we must assume, for the nonce, that this belongs to the Dominion or one of its allies.”

  Blinking, Fabian looked at the golf ball again. One of its allies. Once again, he had that familiar feeling, and those words triggered it.

  Then, finally, it hit him. “That’s it!”

  “What is ‘it’?” Salek asked.

  “I knew I’d seen something like this before.” He turned to the others. “A few years back, I was serving on the Defiant. We went into the Gamma Quadrant to mediate a trade dispute involving the Federation, the Karemma, and the Ferengi. A couple Jem’Hadar ships attacked and we all wound up in the atmosphere of a gas giant.”

  “All?” Duffy asked, sounding serious for once.

  “It was us, two Jem’Hadar, and a Karemma ship. At one point, the Jem’Hadar fired on us, but the torpedo didn’t detonate on impact like it was supposed to.” He smiled. “Dumb luck, really, but it kept us alive long enough to get out of it in one piece. The funny thing is, the torpedo was designed by the Karemma.”

  “Aside from the obvious irony,” Pattie said, “how does that help us?”

  “The surface of this thing is made of the same material as that torpedo. It didn’t have any visible seams, either, but Quark managed to get it open.”

  110 and 111 exchanged glances. “You got it open—”

  “—with a subatomic particle?”

  “Uh, no,” Fabian said, trying to hold back a laugh. “Quark is a Ferengi bartender.”

  “The Defiant’s a warship that’s even smaller than this,” Pattie said. “How did you have room for a bartender?”

  Fabian felt himself losing control of the conversation. “He wasn’t the bartender on the ship, he—”

  Salek mercifully interrupted. “As fascinating as this discussion is, I’m afraid it will have to wait. We will be arriving at the Phicus system in ten minutes, thirty seconds. Duffy, Blue, you’re with me. The rest of you, carry on.”

  Fabian stared at Okha, Abramowitz, and the two Bynars. “‘Carry on,’ huh?” He shook his head. “So, should I finish the story?”

  “There was a story?” Abramowitz asked.

  “Sorial estarifo,” Okha said suddenly.

  Everyone looked at him.

  Okha shrugged. “That’s the closest I can come to ‘sis-boom-bah’ in Old
High Andorii.”

  The Bynars stared at the linguist for a moment, then turned as one toward Fabian. “How was this bartender—”

  “—able to get at the mechanism—”

  “—of the torpedo?”

  Fabian sighed. “He wouldn’t tell us. He said he used a regular tool kit, and made a comment about never revealing a trade secret.” He looked up. “Computer, compare sensor readings of the device to that of the Jem’Hadar torpedo confiscated aboard the U.S.S. Defiant on stardate 49265. Is there a design correlation?”

  “Material used to house specified Jem’Hadar torpedo is a ninety-nine-percent correlation to the material used for the surface of the device.”

  “Okay, so it’s almost definitely Karemma.”

  “Do they play golf?” Abramowitz asked.

  “Not to my knowledge,” Fabian said, finding himself unclear as to whether or not the cultural specialist was serious. “What I need is a standard emergency tool kit.”

  Okha snorted. “Good luck.” At Fabian’s questioning look, the linguist continued. “This is an S.C.E. ship. There’s nothing ‘standard’ on here. Everything is top of-the-line and refurbished and toyed with and tinkered with.”

  Fabian sighed and started putting together a mental list. Quark managed to get the torpedo open with nothing but the equipment found in a standard emergency tool kit, and Fabian was damned if he was going to let that Ferengi troll outdo him….

  * * *

  Salek fit the ODN conduit into the communications relay with a gloved hand. That meant that he was now done with seventy-six percent of the work he had assigned to himself to do, and should have his tasks completed within the hour. He reached into the supply case that he had magnetically attached to the side of the relay in order to retrieve another new ODN conduit. Several dozen of them had been vaporized by the Cardassian attack, and several more damaged, as were many isolinear optical chips. Salek had appointed himself the task of replacing them. Even as he did so to one of the outer sections of the relay—remaining tethered to it via his magnetic boots—Duffy was reattaching the relay’s hull plating in another section. Both of them wore EVA suits. Blue, meanwhile, had gone to work on the transmitter array.

  As he pulled out the latest conduit, he activated the communicator in his EVA suit.

  “Away team, report.”

  “Aft hull plating’s almost welded on,” Duffy reported. “Then I can get to the fore. Pity I don’t have the golf ball, then I could play through.”

  Blue’s voice then came over the comm line. “Transmitter array should be online in about twenty minutes.”

  “Excellent. I have replaced half of the ODN conduits and all of the isolinear chips. Carry on.”

  Salek, of course, did not bother to rein in Lt. Commander Duffy’s humorous excesses, having long since realized that they were part and parcel of his personality, and they never interfered with his ability to perform his duty. Salek, therefore, had no reason to complain.

  His sister had cautioned him against signing on with the S.C.E. She had encouraged him to take a post on the T’Kumbra, with its all-Vulcan crew, but Salek did not see the logic in that. Besides, there were no positions available for a lieutenant commander on that vessel, and he saw even less logic in taking an inferior position.

  “The humans are so—emotional,” his sister had said, as if this were some great revelation.

  “Of course they are,” he had told her. “And Betazoids are telepathic, Tellarites are aggressive, and Andorians are blue. These are well-documented facts. I see no reason for any of them to interfere with my choice of posting. Unless you think so little of me that you expect me to succumb to emotionalism simply by being around them.”

  “No,” his sister had replied. “I simply do not wish you to suffer needlessly.”

  “I fail to see how I will suffer.”

  His sister had dropped the subject after that, for which Salek was grateful. He had found his assignment as first officer of the da Vinci to be most satisfactory. They performed an important service for the Federation, and the crew under him was exemplary.

  Salek was especially pleased with the arrival of the Nasat engineer. P8 Blue could survive without an EVA suit in a vacuum for as long as she could hold her breath—a figure measured in hours—and that, combined with her multiple, more flexible limbs, allowed her access to places a suited humanoid couldn’t get at. Her presence cut their repair time by a factor of ten—a not inconsiderable amount, especially given the precariousness of this system. Lt. Commander Corsi’s fears regarding the Cardassians were well founded.

  Looking out into space, Salek saw the hulls of the Sloane and the Appalachia—illuminated by running lights—in a defensive position proximate to the relay. At present, he could not see the da Vinci, as its orbit had taken it to the other side of the relay relative to Salek’s own position.

  “Uh oh.”

  Frowning, Salek activated his comm link to Duffy. “Report.” He commenced with replacing the next ODN conduit.

  “I just found something that I think is—oh, crap. Duffy to da Vinci. ”

  “Go ahead,” said Gold’s voice.

  “There’s a beacon of some kind in the comm relay—it looks like Cardassian tech. As far as I can tell, it’s relaying sensor data via a subspace comm link.”

  “Deactivate it immediately,” Salek said.

  “I’m not sure I can yet, but even if I do, I don’t think it’ll make a difference. I’m picking up a Cardassian transporter trace on the thing.”

  Salek’s eyebrow raised. “In all likelihood, the Cardassians who attempted to take this system beamed it into the relay.”

  “Damn,” Gold said. “Duffy, hold off on deactivating it for a minute. What kind of data is it sending?”

  “Not sure yet. Give me a minute.”

  “Sir, we cannot allow the beacon to remain active,” Salek said. He continued his work on the ODN conduit, as he was easily capable of splitting his focus. “It represents a security risk.”

  “So does deactivating it. It means they know we found it and they may come back to try to take another shot at the comm relay. It might be more useful to us as a decoy. If it’s there to eavesdrop on our comm channels, we might be able to turn it to our advantage. Deliberately feed false intel through the relay.”

  Not for the first time, Salek was reminded as to why Starfleet did not assign engineers to captain the S.C.E. vessels. Sometimes a more galactic perspective was needed on their missions. It was a most logical setup, as Salek had not thought of the possible tactical uses of the beacon.

  “It’s a nice idea, sir,” Duffy said, “but I don’t think it’s gonna work. I just tapped into what, exactly, this thing is sending. If my tricorder’s reading its Cardassian right, it just sent an SOS out. It knows we found it.”

  Salek heard a sigh from Gold. “That tears it, then. Yellow alert. McAllan, alert the Sloane and the Appalachia that we may be having company soon, then see if Starfleet can deign to send us some backup. Duffy, kill that thing before it sends over full technical specs of all three ships. Salek, how much time do you have left?”

  “Approximately forty-four minutes, twenty-nine seconds.”

  Gold snorted a laugh. “The proper definition of the word ‘approximately’ you should someday learn, Salek. All right, get a move on. Can you get the work done faster with more people?”

  Just as he finished replacing the latest ODN conduit, he replied, “Negative. There are only two areas that need repair work of the type that can be accomplished by humanoids in EVA suits. Additional personnel would simply be in the way. The remaining tasks can only be performed by Blue.”

  “Gee,” Blue said, “only on board a few hours and already indispensable. It’s good to be me.” She made a noise that corresponded in the Nasat lexicon to laughter.

  “So why are you wasting time jabbering at me? Gold out.”

  Salek, of course, had been working while talking to the captain, but there was li
ttle to be gained by reacquiring the comm signal and pointing that out.

  “Got it!” Duffy said. “Okay, this puppy won’t bark no more.”

  Salek interpreted this comment to mean that he had successfully deactivated the beacon.

  The second officer continued. “If the Cardassians want to know what’s coming through this relay, they’ll have to come here themselves.” A pause. “Not that I, y’know, want that or anything, but—never mind. Duffy to Feliciano. Diego, lock onto the piece of equipment half a meter in front of me and beam it to the lab. Tell the new guy not to touch it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As Salek began removing a damaged ODN conduit, he wondered how Stevens, 110, and 111 were proceeding with the attempt to ascertain the function of the Dominion device.

  * * *

  A sonic driver. A lousy, rotten, stinking sonic driver.

  Fabian had managed to cobble together the actual components of a standard emergency tool kit from the assorted tool kits on the da Vinci—all of which were far better equipped than any tool kit he’d worked with on the Defiant or on Deep Space 9. While he did so, a small device that—to Fabian’s experienced eye after serving on a Cardassian-built space station for two years—looked to be of Cardassian design was beamed into the lab. Chief Feliciano said that Duffy had told “the new guy” not to touch it. Fabian plotted several types of revenge on Duffy for the crack while he started trying each of the tools on the golf ball.

  For whatever reason, the emissions of the sonic driver had two effects—they made 110 and 111 wince and they removed a panel of the golf ball. Said panel had no visible seams until after it came off.

  “How’d you do that?” Okha asked.

  “Don’t know, don’t care,” Fabian said, taking out his tricorder. Then his eyes widened at what the display told him. “Wow.” He looked over at the Bynars. “Are you two reading what I’m reading?”

  “If you are reading—”

  “—several dozen weapons systems—”

  “—a propulsion system—”

  “—and a sophisticated computer core—”