by Неизвестный
Sisko smiled at Jadzia. "Old Man, you've been
spending too much time in the holosuites with Worf. You were the reason we even found the Cardassians' bodies. Right after your talk with him, Odo sent a team down to the lower levels to look for energy anomalies. They found one where a power conduit entered the lower module. And Rom's team found that the cause of the anomaly was that the Cardassians had been transporter-fused into the inner hull plates, weak-ening the shielding."
Jadzia made a face at Sisko. After so many years of friendship, she was allowed more freedom with Starfleet protocol. "I knew that, Benjamin. I was standing by with the tractor beam when Rom found the bodies. I was just wondering if an anomalous energy event that resulted in microwave radiation could also be tied to an anomalous temporal event."
"An anomalous temporal event?" Aria said. "Those are incredibly rare."
"Not on DS9," Sisko said. "Unexpected time shifts are quite common in this region of space."
Jadzia confirmed it. "Actually, the odd temporal events we've experienced in the past almost all arise in some way out of our proximity to the wormhole. The structure of subspace is extremely twisted in this region. What's really surprising is that we don't expe-rience even more jumps in time than we do. But on the Day of Withdrawal, the station was still in orbit of Bajor. And the planet's gravity well would have pro-vided a great deal of shielding against almost any wormhole-related phenomena."
Sisko sat down on the corner of his desk, reached back, and picked up his baseball. "Okay, so we can rule that possibility out, too. But I still want this looked into.
"Major Kira," he said, rolling the ball back and forth in his fingers, feeling its comforting contours relax him as they always did, freeing him to think more clearly. "The constable seemed reluctant to discuss the Day of Withdrawal in the Infirmary. Perhaps he won't be as reluctant speaking with you. See if you can get him to talk about what he remembers from that day."
Kira seemed surprised by the request. "Captain, I'm not sure I feel comfortable doing that."
Sisko understood her reluctance. Everyone on the station knew about the love affair that had blossomed between Kira and Odo in the last month. And as their friend and colleague, Sisko was happy for both of them. "I'm not asking you to betray a trust, Major. Let Odo know that you're asking on my behalf. Let him know that I understand his reluctance to discuss what he remembers in front of Garak, but that I would appreciate a more forthright account that will remain confidential."
Kira nodded, accepting his argument.
Sisko tossed his baseball up a few centimeters, then caught it again. "Commander Aria, since I'm assuming you've had few if any dealings with Cardassians, I'm assigning you to question Garak."
Aria's eyes widened. "Question him about what, sir?"
"What Dax wants to know. I want a timeline of everything that happened to Odo and Garak and Quark on the Day of Withdrawal." Then he smiled winningly at Jadzia.
"Don't tell me," she said, pouting. "I get to talk to Quark."
Sisko's grin grew. "I can't imagine anyone else he'd rather open up to."
"Captain," Kira broke in briskly, "can I ask why something that happened six years ago is important enough for us to drop our other duties and-"
"No one's dropping their other duties," Sisko said. "There's a war on."
"Exactly," Kira agreed. "And I don't see the point of expending extra effort just to solve the deaths of two Cardassians, especially one who was in a death squad."
Sisko replaced his ball on his desk, then stood up to address Kira and the others, not as their coworker and friend but as their commanding officer and captain of Deep Space 9. "Major, those two dead Cardassians represent a mystery. And I will not have mysteries on my station. Because until we find out how those Car-dassians died, and why Quark and perhaps two other people on this station had their memories interfered with, I can't be certain if any of it might happen again. And believe me, if an attack wing of Jem'Hadar fight-ers is bearing down at us, I want to know that my offi-cers are not suddenly going to develop a case of amnesia and end up fused into the hull plates. Is that clear?"
Kira, Aria, and even Jadzia stood at attention. "Yes, sir." Kira said.
"Right away, sir," Aria added.
"Ben, I'll speak to Quark as soon as Odo's finished with him," Jadzia confirmed.
Sisko could see that there was more that Jadzia wanted to say. "Something else?" he asked.
"What about the Andorian?"
"Quark's many things," Sisko said reluctantly, "but he's no murderer. Though I do think Odo's enjoying this chance to make him sweat. And at the same time, I
think that by appearing to be convinced that Quark is guilty, Odo's making the real murderer feel overconfi-dent."
Aria seemed shocked by Sisko's statement. "Sir, do you honestly believe that the constable has the wrong man, and that the real killer is still free on the station?"
"That's exactly what I think, Commander."
"But..." Aria said, obviously disturbed by the thought, "isn't knowingly permitting the continued custody of an innocent man a violation of Starfleet directives concerning the application of local laws? And aren't you risking the real murderer escaping? Not to mention putting the other personnel on this sta-tion at risk of being killed?"
"Commander. Starfleet regulations are written by bureaucrats in comfortable offices back on Earth. As captain of this station, I do have the authority to... be flexible in how I choose to follow those regulations, whenever I feel a given situation is outside the param-eters Starfleet considered when the regulations were written. Believe me, Commander, this entire station falls outside those parameters."
Jadzia smiled at Sisko, and then took the confused commander's arm. "Odo won't be through questioning Quark for a while. Why don't we get some raktajino and... we'll talk."
Sisko could see that Aria was flattered by Jadzia's request; she left the office with her, Major Kira follow-ing a moment later.
As Sisko stood in the doorway to his office watch-ing the three officers head for the turbolift, he was pleased to unexpectedly see his son, Jake, just emerg-ing from the lift on the main deck below. The love he felt for his boy, this anchor for him in the storm of
events that regularly engulfed this station, filled Sisko with a transcendent joy.
But his sudden smile was undercut as he saw who stepped out of the lift behind Jake: Jake's best friend, Nog, and Chief O'Brien.
Jake looked up to wave at him, and Sisko returned the gesture, growing even more concerned as he noted Jake's half-hearted smile, Nog's nervous expression, and O'Brien's flushed cheeks.
"Hi, Dad," Jake called out as he took the stairs to the upper level, two at a time.
"Sir," Nog added crisply, just behind Jake.
Sisko frowned, and the three visitors froze where they stood. "You know, if this were six years ago and I saw you three coming up here like this, I'd think Chief O'Brien had caught you boys playing in the Jefferies rubes again. But you two young men are too old for that now, aren't you?"
O'Brien was wheezing slightly as he resumed climbing the stairs. "Funny you should say that, sir."
Sisko sighed. "Should we step inside?"
"Yes, sir," Jake said glumly.
Sisko followed the three into his office, suspecting hie wasn't going to like what they had to tell him.
He was right.
CHAPTER 9
for the second time in two days, Jake Sisko opened the small egress panel and slid it to the side of the cramped Jefferies tube.
"It's open," he said. Then he heard Nog's communi-cator badge chirp as his friend passed on the report to Chief O'Brien.
The chief's voice came back, echoing along the metal-walled tube. "According to your position on the station plans, you two lads should be facing another fifteen meters of unobstructed passageway."
Jake sighed. He and Nog had finally done what they should have done years ago, and told DS9's chief engi-neer about th
e hidden section of the station. Then, with an agitated O'Brien at their side, they had told Jake's father. And then-Jake was sure it was just to com-pound the humiliation he and Nog felt-Sisko and the chief had insisted they repeat their story to the forbid-
ding, and strongly disapproving, Lieutenant Comman-der Worf.
But even though it was plainly evident through all the reporting that his father was keenly disappointed in him for having kept something like this a secret for so long, Jake could also see that neither his father nor the chief nor Commander Worf actually believed the story when they first heard it. So why were they upset? Not that they shouldn't be, because the story was true. It was just... Jake didn't know. He only hoped that in a million years or so, when he was his father's age, he would have a better grasp of a teenager's way of thinking.
Jake lifted his head to look back down the narrow Jefferies tube at Nog. "I don't get it. Do they still think we're making this up?"
Apparently, Nog's comm channel was still open because O'Brien answered. "No, I don't think you're making it up. I'm just telling you what's on the screen."
"Sorry, Chief," Jake said with a grimace. "I'm going to climb through the opening now."
Jake pushed himself up through the open access way just as he had before, then again swung his body around to free his legs so he could drop down into the dark section of corridor. Nog followed a moment later, much more quickly and smoothly than the last time. Once again, his palm torch was the only source of light.
-Tell them," Jake said.
Nog tapped his communicator. "We are in the corri-dor." Nog made it sound as if they were commandos who had just beamed in behind enemy lines.
A few seconds later, the short section of corridor lit
up with the golden energy of the transporter effect, and three sparkling columns of quantum mist resolved into Jake's father, O'Brien, and Worf. Each of them carried their own palm torch. Jake wasn't quite sure why Worf had his hand on the phaser he wore. But then, Worf was like that.
Benjamin Sisko's expression was unreadable. "Chief?" was all he said. Jake had noticed that his father had a shorthand way of dealing with his com-mand staff, almost as if they shared some low-level telepathic link.
Chief O'Brien's attention jumped back and forth between the corridor and the large engineering padd he carried. The padd was similar to the kind Jake had seen artists sometimes use for sketching. "This makes absolutely no sense," the chief said. "Look at the deck plan for this section."
As Sisko and Worf stood on one side of O'Brien to study the engineering display, Jake stood with Nog on the other.
On the padd, Jake could see four yellow dots repre-senting the team's active communicators tightly grouped together, blinking in the middle of what a label identified as a storage room.
"This is clearly not a storage room," Worf stated in his deep, somber voice.
O'Brien nodded, pointing to various bulkheads that surrounded the blinking lights on the padd display. "I think I can see what's happened here. The Cardas-sians' own official plans have been altered to show that these two storage rooms, here and here-" O'Brien's finger touched the surface of the padd, "-have back walls that extend an extra three meters or so. Notice this relay room extends two more meters. And this
heat-exchange conduit is... maybe a half-meter wider than it has to be. And the two corridor sections running to either side are the same. So I'm betting the conduits that are supposed to be running right above us have been rerouted to either side, too, probably passing through the deck plates instead of running through that Jefferies tube that just isn't there."
Jake was surprised by how seriously the three men were reacting to the unmarked corridor's existence. His father, especially, looked grim. "Why weren't these deviations noticed when the first retrofit team went through the station to confirm the Cardassian plans?"
O'Brien looked apologetic. "I'm betting they were noticed. But there are lots of discrepancies between me Cardassians' plans for the station and how they were executed. A project this big, there would have to be. I've noticed little things over the years myself- pipes in the wrong order, a junction box on the left wall instead of the right... it gets so you come to expect it. But they're usually not major enough to bother altering the plans to fit."
"Yet this stretch of corridor is..." Sisko swung the beam of his palm torch from one end of the section to the other. "... at least ten meters long, Chief. That's a lot of station to go missing."
"No argument from me, sir. All I can say is that this is a noncritical section of the station, so with the war changing our priorities, we just haven't had a full refit team down here yet. For what it's worth, we would save found this... missing space... eventually."
Sisko levelled his gaze at Jake. "For what it's worth, we should have been informed about this missing space six years ago."
Jake was about to remind his father how many times he had apologized already, when Nog nudged him in the side. Jake understood. Nog had gone to great lengths to explain to Jake that their best defense was to behave like Starfleet cadets-limiting their responses to Yes, sir; No, sir; and most importantly, No excuse, sir. "It's a good way to avoid arguments," Nog had emphasized.
So Jake remained silent until his father said, "All right then, where's this... hidden holosuite?"
Nog hurried ahead. "Right down here, Captain. It's the only door in that bulkhead."
The team followed Nog until they were gathered together by the closed door. Worf and O'Brien imme-diately scanned the door and the area beyond it with their tricorders-one set for engineering readings, the other for security.
Jake shifted his weight from one leg to the other, impatient with the delay. He wanted this over with. "Dad, there's nothing dangerous in there. We've been inside a lot of-"
Sisko cut him off with an icy glare. "And maybe you've been lucky. Before they left, the Cardassians booby-trapped all sorts of equipment and facilities in this station, especially anything with a military func-tion. And the only reason I can think of for putting a holosuite down here is for training purposes."
"Yes, sir," Jake said dispiritedly.
"I detect no explosives or triggering devices behind the door," Worf announced as he lowered his tricorder.
"Captain," O'Brien added, "I'm not even picking up any evidence of power flow. The tricorder's telling me there's a room beyond the door, about five meters by six. But I don't think anything inside is even connected
to the station's power grid." The chief made an adjust-ment on his tricorder. "In fact, I'm not even picking up any evidence of holo equipment. Either projectors or microforcefield emitters."
Nervously, Jake looked up and down the corridor to see if there was any chance they could somehow be at the wrong door. But just as every time before, there was only the one.
"You're certain it was a holosuite?" his father asked him.
"Dad, it could run our fishing hole program per-fectly. Water and everything."
His father looked back to O'Brien. 'Then it has to be a holosuite, and for it to run a program from my own data library it has to have some type of interface with the station's main computer network."
O'Brien made more adjustments, then frowned. "If there is, sir, I'm going to have to make a more detailed -can. From inside."
Sisko nodded at Worf. Worf tapped the door control and the door opened.
Jake almost smiled as he heard Nog take a deep breath. His best friend was preparing himself for the embarrassment of having everyone see his adolescent modification of the fishing-hole program, complete with Ferengi bathing beauties.
But as the light from the palm torches stabbed into the room, it revealed... only a room.
Jake and Nog both tried to push ahead, but were held back by Worf.
"I've never seen that before," Jake said to his father.
"Sir, this holosuite has always been in operation," Nog added.
Sisko looked at O'Brien. "Any chance the holosuite
ran on batteries and yesterday's visit finally exhausted them?"
O'Brien was skeptical. "No battery powerful enough for a holosuite goes completely dead that fast. I'd still be able to pick up some residual charge somewhere. And even taking a direct reading from the far wall, there are no holoprojector on it or in it."
Sisko nodded at Worf again and he and the Klingon stepped into the room together. Jake watched as his father and Worf reached the middle, then turned slowly, playing their palm torches around in a circle like all-seeing scanners.
"It appears to be a lab of some sort," Worf said slowly.