Twist of Faith

by S. D. Perry

  No. Oh, no.

  Just over nine hundred people on the Aldebaran, and Kira couldn’t allow herself the luxury of disbelief or sorrow. It didn’t matter that it shouldn’t have happened, that an outgunned trio of tiny fighters shouldn’t have had a chance; the ship was gone, and the second they finished dodging what was left of the Aldebaran, the Jem’Hadar would be back to run at the station. Their intent couldn’t be clearer, and her options were limited. Shar called out that the majority of the wreckage from the starship probably wouldn’t affect the station, but she barely heard him, her thoughts racing to get ahead of what was happening.

  Shields practically nonexistent, weapons arrays are out—if we could commandeer the docked ships— She rejected the idea immediately, remembering what was around. Four freighters and a couple of survey ships, maybe a dozen personal craft, and even with the runabouts and the evac pods, they wouldn’t get a tenth of the population out before the attack, think, think—

  Shar’s usually melodic voice was strained, rough. “Sir, we’re receiving a response to our priority distress call from the I.K.S.—”

  “How far away?” Kira interrupted, not caring who it was, hoping wildly.

  “Ah, 22 minutes.”

  In 22 minutes, it would be over. She’d seen the report that Nog had flashed, knew that the Defiant’s crew wouldn’t have made it to the ship yet, and it didn’t matter; they had no choice. She tapped her combadge.

  “Commander Jast,” she said, silently hating Starfleet and herself for letting this happen, cursing the false security that they’d all been lulled into. “The Aldebaran has been destroyed. The Defiant is the station’s best hope for defense; are you ready?”

  Jast didn’t hesitate. “We’re ready.”

  “Do what you can,” Kira said, and with a silent prayer, she turned to watch the screen, men and women calling out numbers and names behind her as they fought to keep the station safe, as pieces of the Aldebaran began to hammer at their shields.

  A few seconds later, the Jem’Hadar started their first run at DS9.

  Chapter Five

  After Ro’s not-so-gentle persuasion, Quark had produced a Class One isolinear rod that he’d been storing for Istani Reyla; he had immediately followed up with an invitation to dinner, ostensibly to ensure no hard feelings, which she had refused—but pleasantly, for the same reason. She saw no reason to make an enemy of the Ferengi…and, she had to admit, she had a soft spot for people who didn’t strictly abide by the rules.

  She had just gotten back to the security office when the red alert hit, and the computer instructed her to implement emergency shelter protocols due to an unnamed threat to the station; it wouldn’t or couldn’t elaborate any further. She had the computer display a checklist as she calmly locked the data rod away, hoping that her staff was better prepared. They had to be—though prepared for what, exactly, she didn’t know. Communications between ops and the security office were down, Shar wouldn’t answer his combadge, and she didn’t feel comfortable bothering anyone else during a crisis.

  Doesn’t matter anyway, the plan’s the same for me. Direct civilians to the reinforced areas, evacuate and secure prisoners if there were any. There weren’t, and a locator check for the security officers on duty informed her that she was the only one who wasn’t in position.

  Ro locked the office and stepped back out into the river of people rushing through the Promenade, finally unable to continue denying her own fear as she saw it all around her. A small child was sobbing somewhere in the crowd, a terrified sound of irrepressible angst, inspiring in Ro her own.

  Is it war, again? Is it ever going to be over?

  She was no stranger to battle. After the Dominion had effectively obliterated the Maquis, she’d led a small team of independent guerillas against the Cardassians and the Jem’Hadar, and later the Breen. Her group had held no allegiances other than to each other, earning no accolades for their efforts, nor needing any—as with the Maquis, the righteousness of the cause had been enough. She had been in as many conflicts as any Federation officer, if not more, and had done so with fewer people, less powerful weapons, and no outside support.

  The difference is, I’m not in control here. I’m one of many, and the decisions aren’t mine to make. It wasn’t battle or even death that frightened her, it was feeling helpless. The station was under attack, and all she could do—all she was supposed to do—was try to limit casualties. And trust that someone else would make the right decisions, when trust was the one thing she’d never given lightly or easily.

  However she felt about it, it was happening. Ro spotted two of her deputies working to control the crowd and moved to join them, wondering if she would ever feel like she belonged on DS9…or anywhere else that required her to put her faith in others.

  Bashir hurried past lines of muttering, frightened people filing through the corridors of the habitat ring, his emergency kit slung, his heart pounding with fear. Ezri was on the Defiant.

  Where I should be. If they’d only called a moment earlier. He’d been seconds too late, and the first explosion had hit the station even as he’d turned away from the sealed airlock. He’d seen a half dozen Defiant crewmembers on his run back to the Promenade, all of them as unhappy as he was to have missed the ship’s hasty departure. Unhappy, and not a little anxious; the Defiant had disembarked, presumably to go into battle, with a crew of techs.

  Since he’d been unable to join the Defiant’s crew, his next priority was to coordinate with the other doctors on board, to help activate all of the contingency medical stations and prepare for trauma cases. He reached the Promenade and saw Ro Laren and her security team directing groups of civilians to the designated shelter areas mid-core.

  As he approached Ro, the station rocked again, the thunder of another blast resounding through the hull, drawing startled cries from the hurrying crowd. The air was charged with fear, the constant bleat of alarms promoting urgency rather than calm.

  “Lieutenant, do you know what’s happening?” All he’d gotten from ops was the order to report to the Defiant, and that the station was under attack.

  She seemed surprised by the question. “Don’t you?”

  There was no point in stating the obvious as the station trembled anew with power flux; they were being fired upon by someone, communications were down all over, and their defenses were negligible at best. And with what Ezri had been telling him about the Defiant…

  “We’re in trouble,” Bashir said, and Ro nodded grimly. There was nothing else that needed to be said.

  Ezri, be safe. The force of feeling behind the thought was so powerful that he felt short of breath, an intensity that startled him. They had slept together for the first time just before the last great battle of the war against the Dominion, and going to fight then had been difficult, fearing for her as well as himself—but things had still been so uncertain, and at least they had been together. In only a few months, so much had changed….

  “Ah, Doctor, I have to go make sure the shops have been evacuated—” Ro began.

  “Of course. I…good luck, Ro. Be careful,” Bashir said, and saw that he’d surprised her again, although he wasn’t sure how. He didn’t have time to consider it, either, or how his feelings for Ezri had complicated his life, or all of the things that could go wrong; he had his own duties to see to.

  With a nod to the others, Julian turned away and ran for the infirmary, thinking that he would give anything to be on the Defiant, anything at all.

  When Kira gave the command to engage the enemy, Nog tried to keep an open mind, to work the problems rather than consider how disastrous the situation was, but it wasn’t easy. He knew better than anyone just how pitiful their defenses were right now, how many systems were down, how many weapons off-line—and with the Aldebaran destroyed, their chances of coming away unscathed had dropped to a negligible percentage.

  Focus, stay focused, reassign pulse phasers two and four to manual, got to divert partial impulse t
o shields—

  Commander Jast took control the second she beamed aboard, assigning positions and prioritizing system checks, but she was making decisions in part based on what he told her. Nog stepped between the engineering station and tactical, trying desperately to direct power where it was needed most, while Ezri struggled with the partially disabled communications interface—the science station was mostly dismantled, sensor arrays routed through tactical—and Prynn Tenmei sat at the helm. With the exception of the commander, Ensign Tenmei was the only person aboard who was where she was supposed to be—not a reassuring thought in spite of her piloting skills, because that was it for the bridge crew. The other techs were below, grappling with the weapons systems. The standard operational crew was forty; they had fourteen.

  At least they weren’t relying on the cloaking device, although that was small comfort. After the war, the Romulan government had agreed to let the Defiant keep it. As the Alpha Quadrant’s first line of defense against anything that came through the wormhole, it only made sense—even to the characteristically skeptical Romulan Senate—to provide DS9 and the Defiant with every possible advantage. Unfortunately, like virtually everything else on board, the cloak wasn’t even functional at the moment.

  —try to transfer the transporter EPS tap to the navigational deflector, I can do this, I know this ship. Another thought that wasn’t particularly reassuring, considering the state of the Defiant, but he was too busy to come up with anything better.

  The Jem’Hadar scored their first hits against the station even as Kira gave the word. Nog had had nightmares worse than what was happening, but not by much.

  “Ensign, take us out,” Jast said. “The armor over the warp nacelles is still temp, so try to keep the targets below and in front of us. Nog, what can we do about the lag time on beam launch?”

  Nog stumbled over to tactical as Tenmei disengaged the docking clamps and tapped thrusters, the ship’s AG lurching with the power flux. “Ah, not much, sir. Point six-five seconds, minimum.”

  Jast took it in stride. “We’ll just have to fire early, then. Shields up. Stay with tactical, Lieutenant.”

  She spoke casually, as if the Jem’Hadar ships would hold still, waiting for the Defiant’s phasers to catch up. Nog had been intimidated by Jast’s generally cool disposition since she arrived, but considering the situation, her calm was a definite asset.

  The main screen showed a blank expanse of space until the Defiant swung around, just in time for them to see the station take another series of hits. Nog struggled to quash feelings of panic; all three of the attackers were apparently concentrating on the fusion reactors, at the base of the lower core. He could see dark streaks of polaron damage all across the section’s hull, visually warped by the disrupted shields.

  They’ll hold, they can take a lot more than that. They could…except with the upgrades, a heavy percentage of the station’s power was tied up in bypass circuiting, and nothing was certain; the short-range shield emitters were essentially down, running with no backup. If the strike fighters continued to hit any one area, they could inflict serious damage.

  “Could,” they already have. Taking out a Nebula-class starship hadn’t proved much of a problem.

  “Positions, Lieutenant. And run course probabilities. Without targeting, it may be the best we can do.”

  Most of the directional sensors were working. Nog read the numbers aloud, tapping in trajectory calculations as he spoke. The Jem’Hadar had turned back toward the station, wheeling into a loose formation, point high.

  “Dax, how’s the station doing?” Jast asked.

  “Unable to establish a full interface,” Ezri said. “Their shields are down at least forty percent.”

  Jast seemed unfazed. “Let’s see if we can tempt them away, people. Ensign, get us as close as you can to point at full impulse, bearing two-two-seven mark nine, and be prepared to run evasive pattern Theta Sixteen at my word. Lieutenant Nog, when we’re twenty kilometers out to range, lay down a calculated phaser spread in front of the lead ship, firing at will. Better they think we’re a bad shot than underpowered.” Nog could hear the grim humor in her voice. “Who knows, enough runs and we may get lucky.”

  It was a clever scheme. The Jem’Hadar could be fanatic about following point, and although the computer predictions had a minimal chance of scoring a hit, the phasers would come close enough to be threatening. The evasive pattern would turn the Defiant back to run a two-degree parallel to its “strafing” course, keeping the well-shielded front of the ship facing the attackers.

  The Defiant sped away from the station, angling into the path of the point ship. The instant they went to full impulse, Nog could see they were in serious trouble. At the unmanned engineering station, a bank of lights started to flash. All across the bridge, lights brightened—and abruptly dimmed, filling the tool-strewn deck with shadows.

  “Sir, the mid-hull RCS thrusters are bleeding power from the electrical system!” Nog shouted. He knew the danger would be obvious to Jast; an electrical crash would shut everything down.

  With a full crew, it would have been noticed immediately. Or if I’d bothered to look closer. I should have checked that, I should have—

  “Compensate! Cut impulse to half and run a tap,” Jast snapped.

  “Sir, if we boost it from here without checking the source—” Nog began.

  “I know,” Jast said. “We risk an overload, but we don’t have a choice.”

  Nog stepped away from tactical, but the commander was already out of her chair and headed for the engineering station. “Stay at your post, Lieutenant, I’m on it. Ensign, report.”

  “One hundred ten kilometers and closing,” Tenmei said tensely. “Intercept projected course in eleven seconds.”

  As Nog knew from experience, experience he’d hoped never to revisit, those seconds seemed to stretch into eternity, time slowing, his senses recording it all. The trio of Jem’Hadar ships streaked toward the station, their flat, insectile shapes shimmering like water mirages beneath heavy shields. The low hum of the bridge systems increased, the lights strengthening as Jast manipulated the power flow. Ezri called out the stats from DS9, confirming the loss of shield efficiency to thirty-seven percent and severe energy surges in every major system. Nog laid in the phaser directionals, intensely conscious of the sweat trickling down the back of his neck, the hot, acrid smell of scorched optical cable—and the crawl of numbers on the console that told him the Defiant was being targeted.

  Forty…thirty…now.

  Nog fired, a series of layered shots that responded with agonizing slowness to his command—and as the bright pulse bolts shot out into space, he could feel that they were lucky, the triumph blossoming in his gut, visual proof following an instant later.

  Yes!

  The right flank ship took a massive hit to its port side and fell away, spinning out of control as hull plates tore and atmosphere escaped. A veil of light and mist trailed behind the dying ship like a comet’s tail, a pale streak lost in the brilliance of the final explosion a second later.

  Everything sped up then, as if making up for the eternity of waiting, happening too fast for Nog to absorb all at once. He started to call out the information to Jast, who was still at engineering; Tenmei was shouting at the same time that the lead ship was shifting position; and, from the pulse phaser mains below, Turo Ane was trying to tell him something about the hull, her voice filtering through the com in a haze of sudden, violent static—

  —because the Jem’Hadar point ship was firing, scoring a jagged hit across the Defiant’s bow. A terrible light filled the screen. Nog hugged his console as the gravity net pitched, as the ship bounced and jerked, and Jast let out a short, sharp scream.

  The commander flew back from the engineering station in a shower of sparks and fell heavily to the deck. Nog stared at her for a half second before snapping his attention back to his screens, tapping up damage reports and checking their shields—but that half second was e
nough, the image of her face clear in his mind.

  Commander Jast was dead.

  Chapter Six

  The two remaining Jem’Hadar ships continued toward the station, apparently uninterested in the faltering Defiant as it rapidly angled away from them. The commander wasn’t moving, and for a second, in spite of a thousand small indicator alarms, it seemed strangely quiet on the bridge.

  Because someone should be giving orders.

  Ezri was on her feet before she considered what she was doing, her heart pounding, a number of powerful memories strong in her mind—mostly from Jadzia, confident and in control, moving about the Defiant’s bridge, speaking as firmly as she was now.

  “Nog, report.”

  Nog was obviously flustered, practically shouting the information. “Single intensity polaron, shields down to eighty percent! There was an electrical surge straight through the ship’s structural body, warp plasma injectors are down, and we’ve lost communications with the station!”

  Electrical surge. Ezri had crouched next to Jast and touched the woman’s brow, running her finger along the central vertical ridge. A Bolian’s pulse could be detected there, something she hadn’t known she knew; the memory was Curzon’s, vague, holding a Bolian baby at a political dinner, feeling the flutter of life through the ridge of flesh and bone. Tiris Jast had no pulse. Her eyes were wide and fixed, and there was a settling of her features that Dax had seen often enough to recognize—life had left them, transforming the strong and delicate face into a waxy likeness of Jast’s, into a mask.

  Even if there was still a chance… No doctor aboard, they couldn’t transport her, and no one on the Defiant could be spared for the shuttle. As quickly as that, the decision was made; she could doubt it later. Maybe. If they were very lucky.