by Judith
version that did not deserve its name.
All she needed now was an opportunity to take action, and that opportunity came
the moment she and Worf set foot on their third metal staircase. The ship's
decks, doors, and intersections were labeled only by alphanumeric code, but
Jadzia knew they were now on a deck higher than the hangar deck, which suggested
they were moving closer to the bridge.
Worf and she—the tactical officer and the science officer—had been "invited" to
a meeting there. And that strongly suggested that Captain T'len and her own
science officer were now on the bridge, waiting for their "guests" to arrive.
Which means, Jadzia thought, they won't be expecting—
121
Two steps from the top of the staircase and the wait-tag Vulcan escort, she
drove her fist upward into the man's stomach, and as he doubled over she smashed
her other hand up against the visor he wore, seeking to damage it as much as its
wearer.
Reflexively, the Vulcan guard reached out for her shoulder, seeking the nerves
that would bring instant unconsciousness. But he was still off-balance, and
Jadzia swept bis outstretched hand aside and slammed his head against the metal
handrail.
That was the telling blow, and with a groan the guard fell to the metal deck.
Only then did Jadzia turn back to see how Worf had fared, confident that he
would have been looking for the same opportunity she had, and that he would have
made his move hi the same instant.
Sure enough, Worf was crouched at the bottom of the stairway, removing the
phaser-visor from the guard who lay sprawled there. A thin thread of green blood
trickled from the Vulcan's nose, which looked considerably flatter than it had
a few moments earlier.
Jadzia leaped up the last few steps and pulled the phaser-visor from the guard
she had felled. A thin black wire ran from the device into the collar of the
guard's uniform. She pushed him onto his side and traced the wire down his back
until it reached his waist. She pulled up on his jacket and discovered that the
wire disappeared into a belt that was studded with various components, and
which she concluded was the power supply and control mechanism for the weapon.
The belt had a twist lock that opened easily, and by the time Jadzia had donned
it over her own uniform and was adjusting the visor to her head, Worf had run
up the stairs with surprisingly little noise and had stopped beside her, his own
phaser-visor already in place.
"Looks good," Jadzia told him. But looking through her own visor was like
looking through transparent aluminum. She saw no holographic displays or any
other indication of how the visor should be operated.
"Mine does not work, either," Worf said.
Jadzia tried pulling her loose belt tighter. "Maybe they're keyed to each
individual user."
"Or they could require low-level Vulcan telepathy."
Jadzia realized there could be a dozen safeguards built into the visors, and
even if she and Worf could get past them, they'd still not know how to aim and
fire. "Okay, for now they're just fashion accessories."
Worf frowned. "This is not a time to joke."
Jadzia couldn't resist smiling at her mate. She knew that as far as Worf was
concerned there never was a good time for a joke. "Good work taking out your
guard. I knew you'd be thinking the same thing I was."
Something flashed through Worf's eyes that suddenly made Jadzia doubt he had
been thinking the same as she had.
"Weren't you?" she asked.
"There were two earlier opportunities to attack. When you missed them both, I
decided that you had not reached the same conclusion / had."
"So I took my time," she said. She most definitely intended to learn what the
missed opportunities had been, but this wasn't the time for a debriefing. "But
we're thinking the same thing now, right?"
"I hope so," Worf said seriously. "You are planning on locating the second
hangar deck where they un-
723
doubtedly keep the shuttlecraft that were missing from the hangar deck we were
beamed to."
"You want to hijack a shuttlecraft?" Jadzia asked incredulously.
"It is the best way to escape and find a source of information about this time
mat we can trust."
"I agree with the second part, but there's a much better way to escape than by
taking over a shuttle."
Worf gave Jadzia a look she knew all too well—the one that said he was the
warrior in the family and she was the scientist. "What better way?" he asked,
and his tone suggested that he knew whatever she was about to say was wrong.
"We take over the ship."
"The two of us?"
Jadzia grinned. "If you'd like to go back to our quarters and rest, I can take
care of it."
Worf grunted. "How?"
"First, we don't linger near the scene of the crime." She looked up and down the
corridor, then started to run forward. Unlike all other Starfleet vessels she
had been on, the Augustus had no maps or display boards in the corridors. And
since the identification labels did not progress in any logical sequence, she
decided to assume that the ship had been deliberately designed to make it
difficult for any hostile boarding party to know where they were and where they
should go.
But from what she recalled of the elongated shape of the vessel as she had seen
it on the Defiant's viewscreen, the odds were good that the bridge was ahead and
no more than one or two decks higher.
Within two or three running strides, Worf had caught up to her, and together
they ran to the next intersection.
Jadzia stopped in the middle of it, glancing port and starboard.
"How can you be sure we will not run into other guards?" Worf asked.
"Look at the ship's condition. It's filthy, poorly maintained. I bet they're
running with less than half the crew they're supposed to have. That means double
shifts, so everyone's either at their station or sleeping."
Worf adjusted the visor he wore—his prominent brow kept it from fitting securely
across his face. "It is still dangerous to run without—"
Jadzia cut him off by pointing to a nearby door. "That one!" She ran to it, and
as she looked for a control panel the door obligingly slid open before her.
"An unlocked compartment is not likely to contain critical components," Worf
complained. But he dutifully followed her inside.
As the door slipped shut behind them, three small lighting fixtures flickered to
life. Another sign that the Augustus wasn't operating at peak efficiency. The
energy used to light the interior of a Starship was usually negligible compared
to what was required to run the warp engines or the replicators. But this ship
was obviously set up to conserve even that insignificant amount of power.
"Why are we here?" Worf asked as he surveyed the room. It was almost the same
size as the cabin they'd been given, but there was no furniture, and its walls
were lined with conduits and cables.
"There!" Jadzia pointed to her quarry—a computer screen and control surface.
"That wo
n't have restricted access."
She went to the screen, and in only seconds she had called up a schematic of the
ship. It was Tiberius-class,
and seemed to have evolved from the Defiant. Almost three-quarters of its volume
was devoted to warp engines and weapons systems. Only the central core of the
ship contained significant life-support areas.
"This is good," Jadzia said as she made calculations based on the size of the
habitable volume of the ship. "I'd say the regular crew complement wouldn't be
more than fifty. So we're probably facing no more than thirty. That's just about
two to one, and you're good for at least ten, so..." She looked back at Worf,
but he wasn't paying attention to her. He was looking down at the deck. "Am I
boring you?"
Worf was looking at the far bulkhead, and a sudden shaft of silver energy lanced
from his visor to crackle against a bare spot between two conduits. "I have
found the 'on' switch," Worf announced as he reached over to show her where her
visor's activation controls were located, on the upper edge of her belt.
Suddenly a rainbow collection of virtual squares appeared before her eyes, each
about a centimeter across, and appearing to hover in mid-air a meter in front of
her.
Then Worf touched another control on her belt and the squares seemed to float
closer, until she could read then* labels. Some corresponded to phaser controls.
Others to tricorder functions.
"A combination phaser and tricorder?" she asked.
"Extremely efficient," Worf confirmed with approval. "It leaves both hands free
to use a bat'leth."
Jadzia looked past the holographic controls to give Worf a wry smile. "Exactly
what I was thinking." She refocused on the controls, noticing that whichever one
she looked at brightened. "How do you actually get it to fire?" she asked.
Worf quickly briefed her on the visor operating system, explaining that it
appeared to be similar to the helmets worn by Starfleet warp-fighter pilots hi
their own time. After enabling the phaser functions, firing, it seemed, was as
simple as looking at a target and blinking the right eye.
"This is better than I had hoped," Jadzia said.
Worf sighed. "Do you really think we have a chance at taking over their bridge?
Even armed with these?"
Jadzia patted Worf's expansive chest. "We're not going to take over the bridge.
Chances are it has defenses we can't even imagine. I had something different in
mind."
This time Worf's sigh was even louder. "It is obvious we do not think alike,
because I have no idea what you mean."
Jadzia was about to wink at Worf, then thought better of it, considering her
visor's capabilities. Instead, she pointed to a spot on the ship's schematic
that indicated a large cabin just down the corridor from the bridge. "What's
more important than the bridge of a Starship? Or should I say, who is more
important?"
At last Worf smiled. Trill and Klingon, bound by love and duty, they were
finally both sharing the same thought
They waited in darkness—and they did not have to wait long. The door to the
captain's stateroom slid open only minutes after Jadzia and Worf had easily
bypassed the lock. For all the advanced firepower the Augustus carried, her
designers had left out a considerable number of security amenities, including a
weapons-suppression system, computer control of all interior locks, and a
personnel-locator network. The only reason for the omissions Jadzia could
imagine was that their absence
made the ship simpler and faster to build. But what did the concepts of simpler
and faster have to do with a construction project undertaken by robotic
assemblers? All the mysteries in this time period were making her uncomfortable.
With the door opening and the lights coming on, Jadzia trusted that several of
those mysteries might soon end.
As planned, the instant the door had slid shut again, Worf leaned out from his
position sprawled behind the bunk and stunned Captain T'len with a blast from
his triphaser.
The stun intensity was at the lowest setting, and T'len's hand fluttered toward
her communicator as she slumped on the deck, semiconscious. But before the
captain could report, Jadzia was at her side and removed her communicator
badge. Then Worf tied the captain's hands and feet with lengths of fabric he
ripped from the sheets on the bunk and carried her to the room's lone chair.
As T'len slowly regained awareness of what had happened to her, Jadzia studied
the stateroom to see if she could build up a picture of what sort of person the
captain was. But almost everything in it was Starfleet issue, not a hint of
individuality anywhere. No paintings or framed holos. No books. Not even a
Vulcan IDIC placed as a meditation aid.
Jadzia's examination ended with T'len's blunt statement "You will not survive
this attempt to take control of my ship."
"We've survived this long," Jadzia said easily. "We'll make it through a few
more minutes."
Worf stood so that he was midway between the closed door and the captain, and he
kept his gaze firmly
on the door to challenge anyone who might come through it. "Captain T'len, what
is our estimated arrival time at Starbase 53?"
"Eighteen hours, fourteen minutes."
"What will happen to us when we arrive?"
"To you? Nothing. Because you will be dead. To your fellow refugees, I cannot
say. It was anticipated that they would be given a chance to demonstrate their
suitability for continuing their service with Starfleet. However, if your
actions are typical of what we can expect from them, they will be imprisoned."
"You knew we were coming, didn't you?" Jadzia said. It was the only explanation
for how quickly the briefing program had been made available. It had been
created for the crew of the Defiant, the Bolian admiral had said.
T'len nodded. "Several years after your disappearance, Starfleet researchers
went back to the sensor logs recorded at the time of your disappearance and
discovered clues suggesting the Defiant might have been pulled along the
equivalent of a temporal-slingshot trajectory around the mouth of the second
wormhole. The trajectory was calculated and the time of your reemer-gence into
the timeline plotted."
"Why did we reemerge hi interstellar space?" Worf asked.
Jadzia expanded the question. "Shouldn't we have reappeared around the
wormhole?"
"You did not travel into the wormhole. You traveled through a region of
space-time that was significantly distorted by the wormhole. The Bajoran system
has moved on hi the past twenty-five years, through a combination of its own
relative motion and the rotation of
the galaxy. Since the space-time distortion caused by the wormhole is not
constant—as would be the case with the gravity well of a star—the absolute
region of space you passed through was unbound, and moved at a different rate."
Jadzia felt vindicated. "Given your knowledge of the second wormhole, I'd say
Starfleet has done considerable research into it."
"These are desperate
times," T'len said, looking down at the torn sheets that
bound her hands and feet together.
"A Vulcan admitting to desperation?" Jadzia asked.
"You saw the briefing that was prepared for you," the captain replied. "Logic is
in short supply at this time."
"Exactly what I was thinking," Jadzia agreed. "Now tell me—what wasn't on the
briefing?"
"That question is too broad."
"I don't believe the Federation would enter into a war against any system just
to wipe out a religion."
"Perhaps not in your time."
"Are you serious?" Jadzia asked, hating the implications of T'len's answer.
"This War of the Prophets is what the briefing described?"
T'len looked up at the ceiling, an odd gesture for a Vulcan to make.
"Starfleet's objective in this war, undeclared or not, is to gain entry into
the Bajoran system and destroy the red wormhole and any and all artifacts of
importance to the subset of Bajoran faith known as Ascendant."
Jadzia could see that even Worf looked shocked by T'len's words. "What about the
Prime Directive?"
"It is no longer operative."
Jadzia stared at T'len. "I can't believe I heard a Starfleet officer say that."
"Commander Dax, this is a war of survival. Either we destroy the Ascendants, or
they will destroy us."
"Because of their religious beliefs?"
"Precisely."
Worf shared Jadzia's incomprehension. "You will have to explain to us how a
belief based in personal faith can pose a danger to the Federation."
"Not just the Federation," T'len said grimly.
"Captain," Jadzia asked in sudden apprehension, "what exactly do the Ascendants
believe?"
The captain's explanation did nothing to make Jadzia more comfortable.
CHAPTER 10
on six swift legs, the Cardassian vole scurried along the overhead power conduit
mounted near the top of the bulkhead just outside the Boreth's main engineering
station. Visually indistinguishable in color from the stained Klingon
structural panels that lined the ship's corridor, the diminutive orange creature
froze hi the shadows near the ceiling, almost as if to avoid being heard by the
sensitive ears of the two Romulans passing by below.
But when the two stopped, and each reached out in turn for the engineering
security panel, the vole's tiny head jutted forward, its spine nobs pulsing in