"Fifteen scientists, ten ship's crew, and twelve passengers," Worf said before the science officer could reply.
"If they were on emergency life support, the captain couldn't have taken more than four of the crew with him when he tried leading the Klingons away," O'Brien added.
"Then we'll need to have room to evacuate at least thirty-two." Sisko scrubbed a hand across his face, mentally counting out the crew he could spare. "Dr. Bashir will still have to take a full medical team, which means we cut down ship's crew to fifteen. Agreed?"
Dax gave him a somber look. "I don't think we need to be that conservative. You're assuming all the survivors we rescue are going to be healthy. If the medical bay is filled, we'll end up with five empty bunks that could have held ship's crew."
"All right, twenty. Staff all sectors accordingly and assemble in docking bay five in fifteen minutes." Sisko vaulted out of the central hub of Ops and headed for the turbolift that would take him to his ship, reining in his impatience just long enough to let his five senior officers board the lift with him. "Promenade," he told the computer, confident he would find Bashir and his team already waiting to join them. "O'Brien, will you brief the doctor on what injuries he can expect to find in the crash survivors?"
His chief engineer shot him a startled look across the crowded turbolift platform. "Why me?"
Sisko lifted an eyebrow at him. "I assumed you'd know what kind of space-drive the planetary sampling shuttle had, so Dr. Bashir could know whether he needs to deal with radiation damage or plasma burns."
O'Brien grunted. "Crash damage is probably the least of the survivors' worries, Captain."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, nobody told that giant comet out there to stop disintegrating just because the Klingons fired on our research vessel. The survivors from the Victoria Adams are taking shelter on a planet where fire is raining out of the sky and the days are as dark as the nights --"
"And tsunami shock waves are coming in from any impacts that happen to hit the ocean." Dax sounded more wistful than worried. "It must be like --"
"Hell," Worf suggested.
"Not hell, sylshessa." Kira saw their questioning looks and shook her head until her earring tinkled, obviously at a loss to translate the Bajoran word into English. "It's an old legend from Tal Province, about a future time when the sky burns and the earth explodes and the waters of the sea crash together --"
"Armageddon," Sisko said softly. "That's the Human version of the prophesy."
Odo grunted. "And in your version, is Armageddon the utter end of everything?"
"No," Sisko said grimly. "It's the beginning of war."
CHAPTER 2
AT FIRST GLANCE, it didn't look much different from any other planetary system. A saffron yellow star spit out a normal amount of heat, light, and solar wind; three gas giants circled in far-flung orbits. But where the inner rocky planets should have spun in the star's golden glow, an ominous parabola of dust and ice enshrouded half the system. Dax's long-range scanners detected two small, airless planets orbiting outside that haze, one swung out beyond its perigee and the other caught between the curving arms of debris. Magnification of their sun-baked surfaces revealed a crazy quilt of craters and impact scars from past orbital swings through the comet track.
Dax stored the surface images for later analysis, then ran a quick check on the extrapolated orbital parameters for both inner and outer planets. As she'd suspected, all of them showed perturbations from a third, rocky inner planet, whose orbital diameter should have put it midway between the other two. It must be somewhere inside the remnants of the disintegrated giant comet. She turned her attention to the difficult task of filtering interference out of the sensor beams as they refracted through the debris.
"Major Kira, any sign of Klingon ship activity?" Sisko watched the main screen with a frown. Devoid of sensor enhancements, all that could be seen of their destination was the central twinkle of its star and a frosty trail of debris. That crescent of scattered gauze didn't look anywhere near as threatening in real life as it did on her sensor scans. Unfortunately, Dax knew her computer-enhanced version was closer to the truth.
The Bajoran shook her head without looking away from her output screens. "I've jacked up the sensitivity of our ion detectors as high as they can go, but they're showing no trace of any cloaked vessels in the vicinity." She pursed her lips as though considering, then added, "No sign of uncloaked activity, either." Meaning the Victoria Adams.
"That's a good sign. It means Captain Marsters got away and took the Klingons with him."
Sisko frowned at the Defiant's main viewscreen. "I'd like to know what's on the surface of those planets. There's a chance the planetary shuttle might have landed there. Dax, can you enhance the display?"
"I can, but sensor scans show no sign of a recent landing on either planet." She transferred her two stored images up to the main screen, assigning them to their proper locations around Armageddon's golden sun. "Computer analysis of their orbital parameters, however, indicates there's a third inner system planet inside the cometary debris cloud. I haven't been able to image it yet." She glanced across at Sisko, reading his impatience in his drumming fingers. "But it's the most likely location for the shuttle to land, since it's the planet the Victoria Adams went to study. Unfortunately, it's also the one that's being most heavily bombarded by cometary impacts -- at least once every two or three days."
O'Brien frowned over his shoulder at her. "Just what is going on in this system, Commander? Why did the Victoria Adams come here to begin with?"
"Because it's one of the few planetary systems in this quadrant whose Oort cloud agglomerated into a single body, too fluffy to be a planet but much too big to be a comet. It got kicked into an inner-system orbit fifteen thousand years or so ago when another star grazed past this one. The stresses of that new orbit kept tearing it apart, scattering debris along its path, until it finally disintegrated completely on its last solar swing, just last year. What you're seeing are its final remains." She shot a vexed look across the bridge at Worf. "It's a perfect re-creation of the kind of event that we think caused a mass extinction on the Trill home-world. Observing it would have been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, even for a Trill."
"Had you gone with the Victoria Adams, you might have found it the last-in-a-lifetime opportunity," the Klingon tactical officer reminded her. He looked up from the pilot's console he'd taken over while Dax concentrated on her sensor scans. "Can you obtain a rough fix on the planet's position using the curvature of its gravity well? I need to plot a course."
"And I'd like a visual image," Sisko added.
"I can fix the third planet's position, but I can't image it through all the interference. This is the best I can do." Dax sent the blotched gray image she had captured to the main viewscreen. It looked even worse when it was magnified, so vaguely outlined that it could have been the veiled halo of a comet as easily as a planet. "Chief, can you give me any more resolution on my sensor beam?"
O'Brien tapped a scan into his control panel and grunted. "I can give you a sixty-five percent increase in beam confinement, Commander, but only for a few minutes. On your mark."
Dax carefully delimited her scanning range to the exact coordinates of the planet to avoid wasting sensor power. "Mark."
The image on the screen slowly swam into focus as the tightened beam scanned across it. Its blurred outer edge became the hazy smudge of an atmospheric layer, as oxide-browned as a heavily industrialized planet's. But its nightside showed no signs of urban lights, and the isolated sprawl of island archipelagos dotting its blue-green oceans seemed too small to support any kind of machine-based civilization. There was only one larger landmass in view, haft-hidden by the planet's terminus. Dax thought she saw the hint of a massive impact crater in that shadowed twilight edge, but the resolution faded back to fuzzy gray before she could confirm it. She hoped it had been a comet that made that scar.
"Sorry, Commander," O'B
rien sighed. "That was all the power I could jack in without burning out the sensor array."
"That's all right. I can't confirm impact structures, but that brown color means there's been a lot of dust and ash kicked into the stratosphere recently. We'll have to get a lot closer before I can tell you if there's a crash site."
Worf glanced back across his shoulder at Sisko. "Shall I lay in an orbit, Captain?"
Sisko rubbed his chin. "Can we navigate safely through all that cometary debris?"
"Our shields should take care of the smaller debris," Kira pointed out. "And we can program short-range sensors to alert us to any imminent collisions with larger fragments."
Worf frowned at her. "Given the political situation, I strongly recommend that we remain under cloak at all times on this mission. If we were to fire at an oncoming comet fragment, we would give away our presence to the Klingons."
"Assuming there are any Klingons here to give it away to," Kira retorted. "I'm still getting no trace of ion trails anywhere in the system."
"But that doesn't mean we can assume they aren't here. The Klingons might have already come back from chasing the Victoria Adams, and dropped into a Lagrangian orbit around the planet to conserve power." Sisko drummed his fingers on the arm of his command chair, looking intensely thoughtful. "O'Brien, can we recalibrate our shields to an angle that will deflect any oncoming debris fragments without disturbing our cloaking effect?"
"We can try." The chief engineer hunched over his panel as he ran the calculations. "But we're not going to have full power as long as we're under cloak. It looks like we should be able to deflect about ninety percent of the debris we encounter without any significant change in vector. The rest will hit at such a direct angle that we'll feel the impact, even through shields. It shouldn't cause any real damage, but if someone was watching us closely, they might notice the fragment bouncing off." He glanced up unhappily. "It also means I can't promise we'll maintain shield integrity under a disruptor hit."
"That's a chance we'll have to take." Sisko turned back to the pilot's console. "Mr. Worf, as soon as the shields are recalibrated, take us into a circumpolar orbit at minimum impulse power. That should give us an opportunity to scan the whole planet without having our signals or our ion trail picked up by anyone who might be watching."
"Aye-aye, sir."
Sisko swung his command chair back in the other direction. "Major Kira, as we come in, I want you to concentrate your ion detection scans on the planet's Lagrange points. If there are Klingon vessels present, we may be able to pick up some minor leakage from their warp cores. Dax, I want full scans of the planet's surface, calibrated for humanoid life signs, as soon as we hit orbit."
"It may take longer than usual with all that atmospheric pollution," she warned. It didn't seem worth adding that the racial diversity of Victoria Adams's crew would also add unique convolutions to the readings.
"Understood." Sisko stood and paced down to the front of the Defiant's bridge, as if physical proximity to the fuzzy planet displayed there would show him something he hadn't already seen. "I wonder why the Klingons would risk attacking a civilian ship all the way out here? What's in this system that they don't want us interfering with?"
"Besides generic Klingon aggression?" Kira asked. "You don't think that's reason enough for them to sweep their borders clean?"
Sisko made an impatient gesture with his hands. "Maybe. But I can't see any tactical advantage to this. Something about it just doesn't feel right."
"That is because it is not honorable to wage war on a weakened enemy," Worf said stiffly. "And all Klingons know that scientists are the weakest warriors of all."
"Oh, are they?" O'Brien raised his eyebrows toward Dax, and she rewarded him with an amused smile.
"That's a prejudice that's cost them a lot of battles in the past," she assured him.
The bridge doors hissed apart before Worf could do more than glower at her joke. Bashir and Odo came through them together, the doctor glancing curiously up at the viewscreen while the security officer went to join Kira at the weapons station. "Any sign of Klingons yet?" Odo asked.
"Not an ion's worth." Kira yielded the panel to him, stretching as she turned to look up at the main screen.
"What about survivors?" Bashir followed Kira's gaze, drifting almost unconsciously toward Dax. The gauzy veil of debris had resolved into hazy streaks and glowing gas streamers while they approached it, a tangled braid of cometary fragments trapped and melting in the heat of Armageddon's saffron sun.
"We're still working on that," Dax assured the doctor. "Worf's taking us in for a closer look."
A worried frown settled over his lean face, but Sisko silenced any protest he might have voiced with a single raised finger and a calmly spoken, "Patience, doctor." He nodded down at Dax in a clear gesture of redirection. "Dax, how can this much ice exist in such close proximity to the star?"
"It can't," Dax admitted. "That's why the whole debris belt looks so fuzzy with vapor. But there's enough debris from the ice giant to last for quite a while."
"So comet fragments will continue to bombard the inner planets for years." Kira shook her head, looking somber. "I wouldn't wish that fate on any inhabited world."
"At least they don't have to suffer it all year round," O'Brien pointed out. "They have an 'impact season' while they're inside the debris field, but then they can recover during the time they spend outside it."
"That doesn't seem to have helped the two smallest planets in the system," Dax said. "They've suffered such intense bombardment in the past that they don't have an atmosphere or hydrosphere left. It's all been blasted into space."
"Let's hope the escape shuttle actually made it to the Class-M, then." Bashir folded his arms as though to hide the nervous clenching and unclenching of his hands. "What was it called again? KPZ-E20-SOMETHING?"
"KDZ-E25From," Odo said precisely. "Not exactly a memorable designation."
"No," Dax agreed. "In my science notes, I've started calling it Armageddon."
"You would," Bashir said, more in resignation than disgust.
"Why not sylshessa?" Kira demanded.
"Because there already is a planet called Sylshessa. It's a Tellarite colony near Vulcan." Dax threw a cautious look at the captain, knowing her odd Trill sense of humor didn't always sit well with him at times of tension. The glint in his dark eyes encouraged her to add, "At least Armageddon is a better name than Splat. That's what the crew of the Victoria Adams was calling the Class-M planet."
"Let's hope neither of those names becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, old man," Sisko retorted. "For us or for the survivors."
"We are entering the cometary debris field now, Captain." The deep tone of Worf's voice never varied under pressure, but Dax knew him well enough now to read the strain in his carefully clipped syllables. She felt the Defiant lurch a little as a large ice fragment impacted its newly angled shields. "Our shields appear to be deflecting most of the debris, but we are losing some directional control to friction."
"Lower speed to warp one and compensate for course deviations." Sisko resumed his command seat, staring up at the viewscreen with the fierce attention he usually reserved for opponents in battle. The image of the Class-M planet slowly resolved as they drew closer, condensing back into the dust-stained, blue-green sphere they'd caught a glimpse of before. The terminator had crept slightly westward, exposing more of the long, oblong gouge scarring the one large landmass.
"Is that the crash site?" Bashir asked.
"No." The increased magnification of her science panel showed Dax the scatter of smaller craters trailing away from the main one, each surrounded by a starburst of exploded rock and soil. "It's a cometary strike -- looks like a large bolide shattered just before impact. There's almost no erosion on the debris fans. I'm guessing it happened within the last few weeks."
"We are entering circumpolar orbit now, Captain."
"Very good. Dax, begin scanning for life-signs."
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"Yes, sir." She punched in extra sensitivity filters for humanoid vital signs, then paused to read the flickering output from her sensors. "I'm showing a standard oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, with traces of methane, carbon dioxide, and argon."
"Also methyl iodide at a level indicative of marine-dominant photosynthesis." Bashir leaned over her shoulder to point at the telltale spike on her spectro-graphic display. "The ocean's still full of life, despite getting blasted by rocks from outer space. Are you picking up any life-signs on land?"
"Yes. A surprising amount, actually." Dax read through her scanner output again, to make sure she hadn't misinterpreted the unusual readings it gave her. "According to this, the main continent is pretty much desolate in the interior, but swarming with native life around its edges. Thick vegetative cover of some kind is showing up on IR, both on the coast and on the islands. I suspect there are several types of higher vertebrates still inhabiting the surface, many of them exhibiting herding or pack behavior."
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