Carter blinked, obviously taken aback. "I've got a clean copy in isolated storage—"
"I've run a preliminary study," Dax said, "but there hasn't been time to do anything more with it."
"Would it work on Helios's systems?" Sisko asked.
Dax's eyes widened, and she reached for a datapadd. "As far as I can tell from our sensor readings, the way our systems interact with and interpret the systems on Helios, they're at least compatible."
"Pretty much anyone who can get them uses Federation computers," Carter said. "Or clones."
Odo said, grim-voiced, "The pirate will have had his pick of the looted ships."
"I agree," Sisko said. "Dax, Carter, I want you to pull that program, see if you can modify it so that we can use it against Helios. Odo—" He smiled in spite of himself, enjoying the irony. "—bring the smugglers to my office. I think I may have some work for them."
"Sir," the constable said, and turned to go.
"Commander," Bashir said.
Sisko looked at him in some surprise. He had almost forgotten that the younger man was there. "Yes, Doctor?"
"I'd like to go with you."
Sisko blinked. "Go with me—?"
"Yes, sir." Bashir fixed him with a firm stare. "Or whoever takes Carabas to the rendezvous."
Sisko swallowed his incredulous laughter, knowing it was born more of the tension of the moment than a legitimate response to the request. "You're needed here, Doctor, on the station. If this doesn't work—and I don't even have a definite plan yet—DS9 will be under attack, and it'll take every member of the medical staff just to perform first aid."
"If Helios attacks DS9," Bashir said, "there won't be enough survivors to need first aid. Sir." Sisko took a deep breath, readying a blistering reprimand, and the younger man plunged on. "On the other hand, one doctor on Carabas might make a great deal of difference, not just to individuals, but to the station's ultimate survival."
Sisko swallowed his retort, and admitted silently that Bashir was right about one thing. If Helios did attack the station, there probably wouldn't be many survivors, and those few would be too busy getting to the lifeboats to worry about medical treatment. "I suppose I follow your argument, Doctor, but that doesn't mean I agree with it." Bashir started to say something, and Sisko held up his hand. "I'll bear it in mind, Bashir. But no promises."
Bashir swallowed whatever else he would have said, protest or plea. "Thank you, Commander," he said, and left the office.
Odo returned to Ops in record time, the smugglers following docilely at his heels. He had taken no chances of their escaping, Sisko saw: a pair of security men had come with them, and despite Odo's misgivings about weapons, both men were visibly armed. "Bring them into my office," Sisko said, and returned to his desk while the group filed in. The two smugglers looked tired, but none the worse for their time in Odo's cells—which is probably more than I can say about my people on Helios, Sisko thought, and did his best to suppress his anger.
"Gentlemen," he said aloud. "You're in a position to do me a significant service."
The two exchanged wary glances, and Möhrlein said, in a voice that was far less confident than his words, "I'm glad to hear it. . . ."
Sisko ignored him. "Kolovzon wants your cargo very badly, to the point that he's kidnapped two of my officers in an attempt to get it. I'm impounding your ship, and its contents, to be used as I see fit to get my people back."
Again, the two smugglers exchanged a look, and Möhrlein said, "Commander, that ship is our livelihood."
"You're professional smugglers," Odo pointed out. "And you still have charges to face once this is over."
"We haven't been convicted," Tama said.
"Yet," Odo said.
"Gentlemen," Sisko said again. "Your guilt or innocence is for the courts to decide once this is over; right now, I'm more concerned about protecting this station."
Möhrlein said, "Am I right in thinking Kolovzon's set a rendezvous, for Helios and Carabas?"
Sisko nodded, wary again.
Möhrlein looked at Tama, who made a face, and nodded. Möhrlein looked back to Sisko, his handsome face setting into a determined mask. "If you're going to take Carabas out there, you're going to need our help. We've made a lot of modifications over the years; no one who isn't intimately familiar with them is going to be able to do more than keep the ship on course. And if you're going to get away after you've rescued your people—however you plan to do it, but you've got to be planning something—you're going to need to do some fancy flying."
Sisko looked at Odo. "You know these people, and their ship. Is this true?"
Odo nodded, mouth pursed as though he'd bitten into something sour. "Carabas is heavily modified. The Cardassians used to complain about it."
Sisko looked back at Möhrlein. "Even granting your point, why should I trust you, Mr. Möhrlein? Particularly when you were working with Kolovzon from the beginning."
"I didn't have a lot of choice," Möhrlein said. "I owed Kolovzon the ship, my ship—he had us dead to rights, with nowhere to run but back into Cardassian space, and the Cardassians aren't exactly fond of us. Demaree never forgets a favor owed him, and I want to be out from under the obligation. Besides, he'll kill us anyway: from his point of view, we lost him his cargo." He slanted another glance at Tama, seemed to receive some unspoken signal. "And we'd also hope that our cooperation now would be taken into consideration at our trial."
That made a great deal of sense, Sisko thought, at least if you looked at it from a professional's point of view. Cooperate now, and hope to bargain for a reduced or suspended sentence—and if half of what Odo said about their work for the Resistance was true, they might well get off with a minor sentence. He wasn't sure how he felt about the possibility. But it hardly matters, he thought. Not if they can help us get O'Brien and Kira back safely. It might not be fully justice, but at least it might save both his officers and his station. "You said you knew Kolovzon," he said. "What do you know about his ship?"
"We've been aboard it," Möhrlein said, cautiously. "Done some work on its systems, brought in parts and all."
Sisko bit back an exclamation of triumph. "Do you know where Kolovzon would hold prisoners?"
Tama gave a snort of laughter, and Möhrlein said. "Intimately."
"Could you indicate it on a plan?" Odo asked.
Möhrlein nodded. "The ship's a standard Klingon betaclass hull. The outer hull fittings have been extensively modified, but the interior has stayed pretty much as built—all the pressure bulkheads are in their original positions."
Sisko touched keys to access the library computer, called up the plans for the beta-class hull, and projected them onto a secondary screen. "Show me."
Möhrlein reached for a stylus, and, leaning forward, began to draw lines. Tama bent close, occasionally murmuring a correction, and finally took the stylus out of the taller man's hand and sketched a final series of curves along the main corridor. "That's pretty much it," he said, and set the stylus down. "Like Vilis said, they left the pressure bulkheads where they were."
Sisko nodded, studying the screen. If the smugglers were right—and there was little reason for them to lie, not facing either a good chance of death with the rest of the station, or at best trial on Bajor—then the cells lay along the starboard side, close against the hull. Which should mean, he thought, that we should be able to lock onto Kira and O'Brien without too much difficulty, with only a few levels of the hull to block our sensors. He touched the intercom. "Dax, would you come in here, please?"
The Trill appeared in the doorway almost at once, her beautiful face grave. "I'm afraid we haven't gotten any further on the Trojan horse, Benjamin. It's intact, and will function, but everything depends on whether or not it will run in Helios's computers."
"We'll get to that in a minute," Sisko said. "For now, look at this." He pointed to the plan on his upfolded screen, and Dax leaned close to look at it. For a fleeting instant, Sisko was very aw
are of the faint, pleasant scent she wore—not at all like Curzon Dax, who had smelled more of a musky tea he had liked, and, at the end, of old age—and then she had leaned back again.
"This is Helios?" It was hardly a question, and she didn't wait for an answer. "If those are the cells—and if they're being held there—we could pick them out of there. Assuming, of course, we can persuade Helios's computers to lower their shields."
"Nice to have it confirmed," Sisko murmured. "All right, Mr. Möhrlein, what can you tell me about Helios's computer systems?"
Möhrlein opened his mouth to reply, then closed it, looked at Tama. "You tell them, Kerel."
Tama shrugged. "I've written software for them, and patched programs they took off of other ships. The basic hardware is Ferengi, but it runs Federation software—it's an older version of your operating system, maybe a couple versions back, I'm not sure."
"Would this Trojan horse, the program Diaadul used to disable our shields, would it function in Helios's computers?" Dax asked.
There was an odd expression on Möhrlein's face, and again it was Tama who answered. "You'd have to rewrite it, but, yeah, with modifications, sure."
"Could you rewrite it?" Sisko asked.
Tama looked at Möhrlein, who shrugged. "Might as well tell him, mate."
"I wrote it," Tama said. "I can rewrite it."
Dax said, "I don't know, Commander. It would be quicker to let him do it, certainly, but I couldn't guarantee that the program would do what he promised. And I'm not sure that risk is worth taking."
Tama said, "Look, we're in no better shape than you are, stuck on this station waiting for Demaree Kolovzon—or the Cardassians—to blast us out of space—"
"And you're hoping to accumulate points for good behavior," Odo murmured.
"I don't deny it," Tama said. "But I wrote that program, I know it inside and out—and you know it works, better than anything you could brew up in the same amount of time. I can rework it so that it'll run in Helios's systems, I guarantee it. After that, it's up to you to figure out how to get it into the loop."
There was a note in the smuggler's voice, a sort of professional pride, that made Sisko nod. He looked at Dax, and saw the same agreement in her face.
"If he can do it," she said, "I know how to trick Helios's computers into taking it in."
"Right, then," Sisko said. This was the best, maybe the only chance he was going to get to save both his officers and the station, and he intended to seize it with both hands. "How much time will it take to reach the rendezvous coordinates?"
"Fifty-six minutes at medium impulse power," Dax answered.
"Which leaves us little less than three hours," Sisko said. "Tama, you'll work with Lieutenant Dax. I want that program rewritten as quickly as possible. If we can insert that into the pirate's computers, there's a good chance that, even if Kolovzon doesn't keep his word, either you, Dax, or one of us on Carabas will be able to locate and rescue Kira and O'Brien."
"One of us, Commander?" Dax asked.
"That's right," Sisko said, and glared at her, daring her to say anything more. The Trill tilted her head to one side.
"Are you sure that's advisable, sir? One of us—"
"I want you to stay on DS9," Sisko said. "You're my science officer, you have the most experience with the sensor system here, and I will need your help to find our people." He smiled, and knew it went slightly awry. "Besides, who else could I send? Bashir?"
Dax smiled back in spite of herself. "All right, Benjamin, I—" She looked over her shoulder at the smugglers. "—we will get to work. But this is not going to be easy." She pushed herself to her feet, and beckoned to Tama. The smugglers, and Odo and the security men, followed her reluctantly out of the little office.
Sisko watched them go, the wry smile still twisting his face. It was a gamble, all right, and one of the biggest of his career, with the most at stake. If everything went right, he would save both his people and his station; if everything went wrong—He tried to shake the thought away, and failed. If everything went wrong, then the station would almost certainly be destroyed, and with it, his son, his fellow officers and friends, and hundreds of civilians whom he didn't even know. So we can't fail, he told himself sternly. Or if we fail, it has to be Carabas that pays the price.
CHAPTER 11
O'BRIEN LEANED AGAINST the wall that separated him from the cell that held Kira, and leaned forward so that he could feel the forcefield buzzing a centimeter from his skin, peering toward the entrance to the cell block. The blue-skinned guard was just visible through the armor-glass door, but there were no other guards in the block. Of course, O'Brien thought sourly, that doesn't mean there isn't surveillance. He looked around, scanning the junction of bulkheads and ceiling, and picked out at least two odd protrusions that probably contained cameras and recording equipment, but there were bound to be other devices hidden elsewhere. Not, he added silently, that there was much he could do about it if he found them.
Underfoot, the floorplates trembled, and a sound just at the edge of hearing rumbled through the compartment, a low groan like metal shifting against metal. O'Brien held his breath, listening for alarms, and in the next cell, Kira said, "What the hell was that?"
"I don't know," O'Brien said. "This ship's under a lot of strain, it could've been interior plates shifting." Or a structural member bending out of true, or—There was no point in imagining the worst, and he refused to think about the overworked reactor.
"It didn't sound good," Kira muttered.
O'Brien grunted his agreement, still listening to the faint sound of aftershocks crackling through the ship. Probably a structural member, he decided, after a moment. And as long as it doesn't bend more than a couple of degrees, Helios could still stand warp drive without coming apart at the seams.
"The repairs are probably starting to break down," he said aloud, as much for the comfort of hearing his own voice as to tell the Bajoran anything she didn't know. "Their engineer's good, but the ship's a mess."
"Does that mean Sisko might be able to take them?" Kira asked. "Damn, how long have we been here?"
O'Brien shrugged. Without his communicator, he had no access to the ship's chronometer, and there was no time display in the cell block. "Maybe three hours, maybe a little more."
"Which means the deadline is coming up," Kira said. "Damn it, Chief, we have to do something."
"Such as?" O'Brien asked. "I'm with you all the way, Major, but I don't see any way of getting out of these cells."
He heard footsteps, Kira moving restlessly around the perimeter of her prison, and then the dull thud as she kicked the shared wall. "All right," Kira said. "But we can't just sit here and wait to be rescued."
"I think we'd better do just that," O'Brien said. "Look, Major, I know this type of ship. The cell block is just inside the hull, there's only a thin skin between us and space."
"How reassuring," Kira said.
"The point is," O'Brien said, "there's only a meter or so for the sensors to penetrate at this point. If they can figure out some way to get through the cloaking device—and the shape this ship is in, it wouldn't take much to overload the systems—they shouldn't have any trouble finding us to transport."
"We didn't have any luck breaking through the cloaking device before," Kira said.
She had put her finger with depressing accuracy on the weakest point of his plan, and O'Brien sighed. "I know. But I'm damned if I see any way to break through these forcefields." He turned as he spoke, running his eyes over the seamless bulkheads. The Klingons had built their cells to hold fellow Klingons, whose average body mass and strength was significantly greater than the average human being's. The walls were made of spun-and-fused carbon fiber; there was no sign of a check port, or anything that might give him even limited access to the control systems that must lie behind the dull grey surface.
"Do you think Sisko will agree to the trade?" Kira asked, after a moment.
"I don't see how he
can," O'Brien answered. "He'll do something, I'm sure of that, but give up those parts in a straight exchange—I don't see how he can."
There was a little silence then, and then the sound of Kira's footsteps moving moodily around the edges of her cell. O'Brien leaned against the shared bulkhead, staring into the purple lattice of the forcefield until it left a green network across his vision. No, there was no way Sisko could agree to the trade. All he and Kira could do was wait, have faith, and be ready for anything.
* * *
Sisko stood at the head of the lock that led into docking port five, Dax at his side. Behind him, in the short tunnel that was the extended lock, the two smugglers completed their preflight preparations under the watchful eye of Odo and a pair of his deputies. Sisko made a final note on the padd, then scrawled his name across the gleaming screen.
"I'm leaving you in command, Dax," he said, though they both knew that was the only possibility. "Your highest priority is the protection of the station—and if that means abandoning, or even sacrificing, Carabas, I expect you to do just that."
"If it comes to that, Benjamin," Dax said, her beautiful face absolutely serious, "you know I will. But I trust it won't."
"I hope not, too," Sisko said, with a sudden grin. "In fact, I'm betting on it."
"Commander!" That was Odo's voice, and Sisko turned, to see the constable standing in the open hatch. "Möhrlein reports that everything's ready for launch."
"All right," Sisko said and turned back to Dax. "This is it, then, old friend. Take care of the station for me."
"You know I will, Benjamin," Dax said softly.
Sisko nodded, and held out the datapadd. Dax took it, glanced at the words that filled the screen, and held out her hand.
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