by Diane Carey
"All this hand-to-hand combat is really quite distasteful," he panted, secretly enjoying Dukat's struggle with the bat'leth as one of the Klingons tried to take it away.
"I suppose," Dukat gulped, "you prefer the simplicity of an interrogation chamber."
A second Klingon was on Dukat now, leaving one for Garak.
But he was ready, and he fired directly into the Klingon's face just before he himself might have been cut in half by another advancing bat'leth.
"You have to admit, it's much more civilized," Garak heaved out. His chest felt as if someone were standing on it.
"All right," Dukat hurled back as he threw off one of the Klingons and swung to deal with the other. "I can arrange one for you!"
Enraged by what he saw, Sisko gripped the arm of his enemy around his throat and managed to use the big alien's weight against him. Pivoting, he threw the Klingon to the deck. As he straightened, he saw another Klingon nail O'Brien with a brutal kick. As the chief went down, the Klingon's victory was cut off by one of those Klingon weapons—in the hands of Worf.
Worf cut into the Klingon with a combination of blows that left the invader pulp-faced and on the deck.
Worf's face was wild with fury as he swung around and looked for another opponent. It was terrible and wonderful to see.
Blinking at a dribble of sweat running into his eye—or was it blood?—Sisko found an angle that put him and Worf back to back, though there was more than twelve feet between them.
Around them, only Starfleet people were conscious—not healthy, but awake. For a moment, Sisko didn't believe it.
Worf immediately dropped back into his seat at the weapons-control panel, and Dax took Kira's place.
Sisko snapped his fingers at two of the security guards who were still on their feet and gestured for them to secure the unconscious Klingons. Maybe they were dead Klingons. Didn't matter. He wanted them out of the way.
He stepped over one of them to get to O'Brien and pull the dazed engineer to his feet. "Mr. O'Brien, get those shields back on-line."
The chief shook off the punch he'd taken and staggered to his station with a muttered affirmative.
Sisko didn't wait to see if he made it, but stepped to Kira, who now lay on the deck with a knife wound in her side.
"Major?" he began as he knelt there. His stomach twisted as he saw the blood seeping between her fingers.
"I'll be okay," she said quickly. "It's not as bad as it looks."
Maybe, maybe not. Sisko didn't have time to do anything more than take her at her word.
He struck his comm badge. "Sisko to Odo!"
"Odo here."
"Status report."
"We have Klingon troops on the Promenade, the habitat ring, and lower pylon three. We seem to have them contained for the moment, but I can't guarantee they'll stay that way."
"Keep me informed."
There wasn't anything else to say. The guards down there would just have to do their best on their own.
Worf twisted toward him without taking his hands off his controls. "There's another wave of Klingon ships coming in."
"I've got the shields back up," O'Brien gasped, "but I don't know how long they'll stay up."
Dax fought to steady her breath as she gazed into her own monitors, and a single crease of worry damaged her perfect brow.
She turned to Sisko, her eyes tight.
"I'm reading a cluster of warp signatures approaching," she said with unproclaimed foreboding, "bearing one-eight-seven mark zero-two-five."
And she continued to look at him.
His body heavy and his mind frayed, Sisko came up behind her. Together they looked at the empty main viewer, which in seconds would no longer be empty.
In the center of the screen, faint white dots of approaching ships began to appear.
CHAPTER 22
BEN SISKO WATCHED the tiny dots on the main screen, and his chest began to feel empty. With additional ships coming in, the Klingons would have the advantage. At some point in every contest, nobility no longer served, and stamina began to slacken.
This was that moment. It had come before in his career, and he recognized the snag in his throat and the hollow under his ribs. The last time he had possessed no recourse, nothing to deprive the enemy of victory if he could not have it himself. This time he did.
He had fusion reactors.
When the Klingon ships moved in as close as he believed they would, flexing their pecs and showing their triceps, he would lure as many near as he could, and then—
Blow up the station. He made himself say it in his mind. Blow up the station, blow up the station.
He calculated how many people were left on the station now, how many had been evacuated, where his son was and what Jake would think when, from the planet's surface, he saw the unnatural fireball bloom in the Bajoran sky. Later there would be the grieving, and all Sisko could hope was that Jake was old enough to overcome resentment and realize that his dad had sacrificed himself and the station, and in fact most of their best friends, to take out a large portion of the Klingon fleet, but also to send that critical message to the Klingons—Starfleet's not kidding.
Think, Gowron. How can I make you think? What can I do to make you perceive the whole fabric of what's coming? How can I break through your fears? There's got to be something in Klingon legend that involves backing off!
Martok might be a factor. He was just plain insulted that the Cardassian council had been snatched out from under him. For him, the future was the half hour and the goal was to ravage and take DS9 and humiliate Sisko.
Surely, though, there was more to Gowron. It was he who would bear the brunt of the next hour's actions, and the thunder that came after. Perhaps there was still a way to pit them against each other.
Sisko looked across Ops at Worf. He saw the conflict there and the fact that reason was winning out. It could happen.
Having Worf at his side somehow boosted his spirits, even now. Reason…not muscle. That was it. The chance of fighting the Klingons down was over—they'd have to be talked down, and cut off the battle of their own volition.
Sisko parted his lips to ask Dax for a tie-in to Gowron, but the chance was stolen when Dax suddenly straightened and looked up at the dots on the main screen.
"They're Starfleet, Benjamin!" she said brightly. "Six starships, led by the Venture! They'll be here in fifteen minutes!"
A second chance! Sisko felt his eyes go wide, then fought to control his reaction. He still had a certain image to maintain, for the sake of those who would no doubt fight at his side again someday.
"Try to contact the Negh'Var again," he said with much more vigor than he would've said it a moment ago. "Maybe now Gowron will be in the mood to talk."
Because now I've got something to hold at his throat.
"I've got him." Dax was apparently ready before he'd said anything. Good crew.
The screen dropped the incoming ships and picked up a stony-faced Gowron and Martok.
"Captain," Gowron attempted, "your shields have been weakened, your station boarded, and more Klingon ships are on the way. Surrender while you can."
Strange the way he said it—as though in their acquaintance he might have picked up the idea that Sisko wouldn't surrender to him.
Gowron looked dashed, but not surprised, when Sisko puffed up before him.
"I don't think so. My shields are holding, your boarding parties have been contained, and my reinforcements are closer than yours. Gowron…you're facing a war on two fronts. Is that what you really want?"
Without looking away from the screen, he raised his hand to Worf and made a silent gesture.
Worf turned fully to the screen and added, "The Klingon Empire isn't strong enough to fight the Federation and the Cardassians. End this now …before you lead the Empire to its worst defeat in history."
That was it—the key to Gowron. Sisko realized that he and Worf had discovered it at the same instant. The Empire—the Founder
s—the very core of Klingon fear and the reason they were launching this conflict.
As if sensing what was happening, Martok leaned forward on the screen and bellowed, "We will not surrender!"
This idiot would blow everything yet, if Sisko let him get the upper hand. Upper wind.
"I'm sure the Founders will be very happy to hear that," Sisko said evenly, but with a certain force. "That is exactly what the Founders want. Klingon against Cardassian, Federation against Klingon…The more we fight, the weaker we'll get, and the less chance we'll have against the Dominion."
With his manner he indicated that he would indeed go on fighting, until Deep Space Nine was left a scattered cloud of metallic dust, and then no one, not even the Klingons, would have any way of guarding the wormhole. The Dominion could come through unstayed. Then what?
"Consider what you do here, Gowron," Worf went on, pointedly ignoring Martok as if his opinion were no voice at all. "Kahless himself said, 'Destroying an Empire to win a war is no victory.'"
Gowron's cheeks flushed magenta to have his own legends tossed back in his face. Clearly things weren't working out as he had planned, or as he had been led to believe they could.
"And ending a battle to save an Empire is no defeat," he finished.
Sisko couldn't tell if that was the rest of the quotation, or something new Gowron was just realizing, but he liked the sound of it.
Martok put the last nail in the coffin of his own hopes by shouting to Gowron, "But we can still win!"
He sounded childish, foolish, desperate, and all but stomped his foot in a tantrum.
"Not before those starships get here," Sisko reminded them coolly. "Now …what do I tell them? To stand down? Or come in firing?"
He liked the sound of that, and he enjoyed saying it.
He also enjoyed watching reality crawl across Gowron's face. No one, not even an enraged and frightened Klingon, took lightly the prospect of taking on a handful of Starfleet's heavy cruisers.
"No," Gowron said with nearly physical effort. "It is we who will stand down."
On the screen, Martok shouted something in Klingon, sounding as if he were sneezing real hard.
Gowron snapped to his side. "Enough! Cease fire! Order your ships in Cardassian territory to halt their advance! I do not intend to hand victory to the Dominion!" Still enflamed, he swung back to Sisko. "But let your people know—the Klingon Empire will remember what has happened here. You have sided against us in battle." For the last, he pointed across open space at Worf. "And this we cannot forgive…or forget."
The transmission ended, like a light snapping off.
A few seconds of tension plied the station's operational center as all the crew held their breath, to see if the Klingons were enacting some deception and would turn on them anyway while they had paused to talk.
But a few moments later Dax said, "The Klingons are powering down their weapons."
Weak with relief, O'Brien uttered, "It's over. . . ."
Over. And they were still alive.
Then Worf turned to them, and there was scant comfort in his expression.
"For now," he said.
CHAPTER 23
Captain's Log, Stardate 49011.4. Damage-control teams have completed repairs to the station, and life is beginning to return to normal. Most of the civilian citizens have been brought back from the planet's surface, the Promenade and habitat ring have received security clearance and are open again, the Cardassian council has been remanded to Starfleet Command for protection until Cardassia Prime's section of space can be further stabilized, and Quark has reopened his bar. As far as Deep Space Nine is concerned, the latter is as good an indication of normality as any, and better than some. I am left with only one final piece of unfinished business.
"MR. WORF, I brought you your discharge papers."
Worf's quarters had an aura of the temporary as Sisko strolled in. These were simple guest quarters, but reserved for Starfleet personnel or Bajoran officials, and therefore were Spartan and unadorned. There was neither a sense of welcome or farewell here.
In civilian clothing and therefore somewhat incongruous with his nature, Worf stood at the bed, packing his bags. Inadvertently Sisko had caught him just putting away his Starfleet uniform, and if instincts were worth anything, Sisko thought the Klingon officer had been staring a few seconds too long at the uniform.
Could be imagination. Or hope.
Sisko held out the padd with the images of Worf's discharge orders. "I thought you might want to look at them before I send them off to Starfleet."
Sometimes that worked.
"I understand you're headed for the Nyberrite Alliance," he added slowly.
Worf nodded. "I leave this afternoon."
Nothing in his manner suggested that he was looking forward to leaving, or that he was satisfied with his decision. Was this how it must be for those with each foot in a different culture?
Sisko sighed. "For me, it was a job on Earth, directing the construction of orbital habitats."
Worf looked up, almost hopeful. "Why did you change your mind?"
Pacing away to give his words room to mill, Sisko ran his hand along the edge of the dresser. "I finally realized it wasn't Starfleet I wanted to get away from. I was trying to escape from my wife's death. I thought I could just wrap the uniform around the pain…and toss them both away."
He chose his words with great care, yet felt as if he had said them before, over and over again in his inner mind.
"But it doesn't work like that. Running may help for a little while, but sooner or later the pain catches up to you. The only way to get rid of it is to stand your ground and face it."
Not exactly a lesson in deep philosophy, he realized as he heard his own words. In fact, these were the first thoughts to come to his mind. None of this, he knew, was anything Worf didn't realize or hadn't thought of before, but sometimes there was help in just hearing somebody else voice the plague of thoughts that were hurtful in their commonality. It helped to have someone say that he'd been there before and survived.
Survive…so many colors to that word. They had survived what might have been the end of peace in the quadrant, yet now they had to endure the lasting tension that had sprung up. Survive death, or survive someone else's death…or a ship's death, or a career's…to survive with one's spirit intact was itself a victory.
"But wearing the uniform," Worf slowly broke into Sisko's thoughts, "only reminds you of what you have lost."
"Sometimes," Sisko admitted. "But it also reminds me of what I've gained and who I am. I'm a Starfleet officer. I could throw away my uniform, resign my commission, and run all the way to the Nyberrite Alliance, and it wouldn't make any difference. That's what I am, and that's what I'll always be."
And my wife will always be dead and the Enterprise will always be gone. Get over it.
Worf narrowed his eyes, clinging to what he was being forced to hear, as if he had avoided what he damned well knew.
"And you think that is true of me as well."
Realizing he might have overstepped, Sisko said, "What's important, Mr. Worf, is what you think."
Worf gazed down at the uniform he hadn't quite been able to stuff away. "I think Starfleet has been my home for many years. And perhaps it still is."
He wasn't surprised. None of this was a revelation. He seemed merely to be accepting what he already knew, now that he heard someone else admit to knowing it. A broken heart was a strange but simple thing.
"There are starships out there," Sisko ventured, "that need good officers. In fact, the captain of the Venture is a friend of mine. If you'd like, I could talk to him…see if he has an opening for a lieutenant commander."
Pulling the uniform out of the duffel bag and holding it in both hands in front of him, Worf turned to face Sisko.
"Perhaps that will not be necessary," he said.
Boreth Monastery. Well-named, for Worf was barely inside the sixteen-foot courtyard doors before he was al
ready bored and glad he had no intention of staying.
It was good that this place was out in the middle of nothing instead of on the homeworld, for he would not go there now.
He was only barely welcome here, for word was spreading that he had stayed with Starfleet when the Klingon cause had summoned him, then aided Starfleet in its "betrayal" of Klingon intents, though he had never made any secret of where his allegiance would go as long as he wore the uniform.
And he still wore it today. He felt proud, glad to be wearing it as he strode in here today, for by doing so he was openly defying all the threats and posturing against him.
The clerics stared as he strode through in his forbidden livery, still wearing over his Starfleet uniform the bandoleer of his Klingon heritage.
Without a glance he walked past all the places where he had sought comfort before and not found it.
He went straight to the inner abbey, and there he found the one face he sought across a quarter of the quadrant and across two guarded borders. Some things were worth a border run.
"Lourn."
"Brother Worf! I heard rumors you were coming, but I didn't believe it. I'm surprised you've come so deep into your home space, considering what is being said about you."
"What is being said about me is true. When my moment of choice came, I chose against the Empire. And this is not my home space, and I am not your brother. I have come here to comfort myself by telling you what I have learned, so you will no longer plague my thoughts as I do my job.
"I am here to tell you that you are wrong. You should stop teaching our warriors to never question what they do. Everything you have been teaching here is what has nearly destroyed us. Don't think—just do."
"Worf…you surely must be confused."
"Not any longer. I have a post again, and I have a new commanding officer. No one is lost who has that. And I saw something happen which made me come here today. I watched as Captain Sisko discovered that the Klingon decision to attack the Cardassians was based not upon boldness, but on fear."