With precise motions she swung the nose of the runabout around toward the center of the Cardassian flagship—a Galor-class warship, like the one destroyed a few hours ago—and accelerated.
She waited for a long, long few seconds. Seconds that seemed to stretch into a lifetime as the ship accelerated.
Then she waited another instant, just to be sure.
And in a quick motion she took the runabout out of phase.
The moment seemed almost a letdown. She couldn’t see anything, let alone if she had an effect on the Cardassian ships. For all she knew they were at this moment blowing DS9 out of space.
The runabout bumped and shook as if it was being used as a rattle by a giant baby. The environmental controls winked out and the impulse engine light showed extreme stress.
The interior immediately got very cold.
She reduced the thrust on the impulse engines, not taking them off-line because she was afraid to touch too much of the system. Then quickly she forced the environmental controls to start again.
The chill left the air. The hull creaked and the ship rocked. She could see nothing through the port at all.
All she could do was hang on.
As suddenly as it started, the rocking stopped.
She leveled out the runabout and took a deep breath. If only she could have seen the look on Gul Danar’s face when she disappeared. If only she—
But that thought evaporated.
Space somehow seemed to be flat and almost had a horizon. Bands of shifting colors rose and then dropped back all around her. One moment red, the next green, then back to reds and purples and then yellow. Over and over.
And every foot of space seemed to be filled with something, yet her sensors showed the space around her to be empty.
Except directly ahead.
What looked at one moment like a tunnel, the next a ball of rippling colors, was directly in her path. Colors on its surface followed the spectrum from red to blue and then back again, then winked like many stars jammed together. The beauty of it made her gasp.
And she knew instantly what it was.
An energy creature.
Espiritu.
And she was accelerating right at it.
She swung the runabout hard to port trying to avoid a collision.
A movement off her bow caught her eye. Five ships suddenly appeared out of the multicolored haze of the weird space. They all looked to be modified versions of renegade supply ships, all marked differently.
As a unit they swept in at the creature.
Ghost Riders!
The Espiritu moved away from them—directly into her path.
“No!” she shouted.
All five ships fired.
CHAPTER 28
SISKO PACED as he watched the main viewscreen. The Cardassian warships were in attack formation. Kira’s small runabout would be like an annoying fly to them.
O’Brien got off the turbolift and hurried to his station.
Kira turned the runabout toward the Galor-class warship in the middle of the formation and accelerated.
“Their shields are up, Benjamin,” Dax said. “Sensors indicate that they are preparing to fire. They think Kira is going to attack them.”
“They’re not entirely wrong,” Sisko said. “Keep our shields up and wait.” Come on, Kira. Come on.
O’Brien stared at the screen. “Hit the phase shifter now, Major,” he said, as if Kira could hear him. Sisko wished she could. If she didn’t time this right, the Cardassians would blow the runabout into tiny pieces.
The runabout disappeared.
“Hold on!” Dax shouted.
The floor tilted wildly, as if the entire station were going to simply tip over.
Sisko fell against the operations table. Its firm side hit the small of his back and knocked the wind out of him. He glanced up and saw Jake clinging to the door of the office, his face pale.
Then the lights went out.
Alarms wailed.
“Life support down all over the station,” Carter yelled over the sound. “We have structural problems in the docking arms and we’ve lost hull integrity in three places, all in cargo areas. No casualties reported so far.”
Sisko got to his feet. Damage lights shone all over the operations table. This time it was only the overhead lights that had gone out.
“Power core at 155 percent of normal and climbing.” O’Brien’s voice was too calm.
“Computers mostly down,” Dax said. “All communication gone. Most sensors gone.”
“Power core at 160 percent.”
“Do something, Mr. O’Brien!” Sisko said.
“Power core at 170 percent of normal,” O’Brien said. “I think we’re going to lose it, sir.”
“We’re not going to lose it,” Sisko snapped. “Take the damn thing off-line if you have to—”
“Coolant containment field!” O’Brien said. It took Sisko a moment to realize that O’Brien was speaking into the comm link. “Now!”
The station was shaking. No one spoke, but the tension was so thick it felt as if everyone were shouting.
“Containment field activated.” Mr. Teppo’s voice was soft through the comm link. “But it’s not going to last, sir.”
“It’ll have to last,” O’Brien said.
“Power core stabilized at 170 percent of normal,” Dax said. “Looks as if it will hold for the moment.”
“A moment is all we need,” Sisko said. “Let’s get life support and lights back up. Jake, you all right?”
The silence made Sisko’s heart leap. The image of his son’s unconscious face resting beside his dead mother on the Saratoga rose in Sisko’s mind.
“I’m okay, Dad.”
Sisko let out breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Stay put, son. Dax, get those sensors up. I need to know what’s going on out there.”
“Lights,” O’Brien said, about half a second before the lights flickered on. Sisko made a quick scan of Ops. Carter had a gash over her right eye. Blood dripped down the side of her face and onto her uniform, but she was at her station. O’Brien seemed fine. Jake was in the same position he had been in, braced against the door of the office. The fear on his face reflected Sisko’s of a moment before. “Sit tight, Jake. This will be over soon.”
Jake nodded, but his expression didn’t change. He was physically all right. Sisko would have to soothe the boy’s fractured nerves later.
“Lost containment,” Teppo said through the comm link.
“Power core levels dropping.” O’Brien frowned at his console for a moment. “Levels now down to 20 percent of normal.” He stood up straight and wiped a hand over his face. “I will get it back up to a more regular level shortly, but I’m not sure how much of this up and down it can take, Commander.”
Sisko nodded. He wasn’t sure how much more any of them could take.
Dax leaned over the console. Her hair had come out of its neat ponytail. “On screen, Benjamin.”
Sisko turned to the screen and stood there openmouthed. The five Cardassian warships floated out of formation like broken toys. There was no sign of Kira’s ship.
“Wow! Are they a mess!” O’Brien said.
Kira had done that? All of that? As she shifted out of phase? If the Romulans had realized what their new cloaking device could do, they would have had another weapon.
“Life support back up,” O’Brien said. “Teams headed for the hull breaches.”
“I hope Kira made it through all right,” Sisko said.
“She would have reached the other side before the repercussions hit,” Dax said.
The Cardassian ships floated listlessly out there.
“Do they have life support?” Sisko asked.
“Yes,” Dax said. “Barely. All five seem to be on some kind of emergency system.”
“Dax, how soon before we can get in contact with them and offer help?”
“I don’t know, Benjamin. Communications was badly dam
aged before this. Kira’s going out of phase has made it worse. It will take some time.”
“Imagine if she had been pointed at us,” O’Brien said. He was still staring at the screen. “We’re dealing with a lot and she was farther away from us than them.”
Sisko shuddered. He shot a glance at Jake. Sisko had already seen what the worst was like.
“Sir, I’m getting word from Captain Litna,” Dax put in.
“What does the good captain have to say?”
“She says—’I don’t know what the hell you’re doing, but I like it.’”
“How are her ships holding up?”
“Checking.” Dax’s hands flew over her board. “They’re a little shaken up, but functional. Solitrium waves aren’t as hard on Federation power cores.”
“Good. Tell her to hold her position, this will all be over soon.”
He hoped.
“How long until the Cardassian ships are repaired?” Sisko asked.
Dax shrugged. “I can’t get a sense of what systems they still have on-line.”
“Let’s hope it’s not communications,” Carter said. “We don’t need the rest of their fleet here.”
Sisko sighed. “They’ll come anyway, Ensign,” he said. “As soon as they realize that they’ve lost communications with their ships. Let’s just hope that Kira does her job before that.”
“What will happen when she comes back?” she asked.
O’Brien shrugged. “Might not be as bad. Might be worse.”
“And there’s not a thing we can do about it,” Dax said.
O’Brien looked thoughtful. “I’m not so sure about that,” he said.
CHAPTER 29
THE ENERGY CREATURE hit her ship at the same time as the shots from the Ghost Riders did.
The runabout flipped and rolled. Pieces of the interior flew with it, too fast for Kira to see. Something sharp hit her in the head. Her straps bit into her chest and waist. She leaned forward, fighting the ache in her skull as she tried to right the ship.
Alarms sounded, faint echoes of the ones on the station. She had heard alarms so much in the last few days they no longer worried her.
Everything was coated in deep reds. The light from the creature had invaded the ship. Kira finally righted the runabout, her hands shaking.
The red faded until before her she saw the white skin of the creature, leached of color and no longer pulsing. All that rippling beauty was gone.
The pain in her head intensified. She had finally seen an Espiritu and she had killed it.
She made herself look away.
Warning lights were on all over the control panel.
Life support still operated, as well as the environmental controls. But impulse was out and the warp drive looked barely functional. All weapons systems were down and her shields were damaged. A puff of white smoke floated from the console like the wraith of the dead power systems.
Fine, she thought. I show up to confront the Ghost Riders and I’m powerless.
There was nothing she could do.
Except bluff.
She was Bajoran; Bajorans knew how to act when the odds were against them.
The five Ghost Rider ships had fanned out around her. It took her a moment to realize that one of the lights on her control was not a problem, but a hail. She shut down the alarms, then acknowledged.
Her screen came on, showing a middle-aged human man with leathery skin and eyes so dark that they looked black. He had a scar embedded in one cheek. “Federation runabout. Identify yourself.”
“This is the Federation ship Ganges. I am Major Kira Nerys of the Bajoran Provisional Forces and first officer on space station Deep Space Nine.” Kira’s voice shook. She could still see the husk of the energy creature floating just beyond one of the ships.
“Lady, what are you doing? You just cost us a lot of money.” His voice had a sarcasm that needled her conscience.
Money? She almost snapped at him. That was a life she had accidentally taken. They should chastise her for that. But she remembered her promise to Sisko. “Killing the Espiritu was not my intention, let me assure you.”
“Then exactly what is your intention?” He was leaning in a large black chair. Beyond him, she could see a wall covered with charts and maps and rotating computer screens.
She allowed some of the passion she felt into her voice. “Your ‘hunt’ in this area is destroying ships and endangering our space station.”
“So?” the spacer said.
“So?! So I am here to ask you to stop or to move your hunt elsewhere.” Idiot. Life meant nothing to him.
“We go where the energy creatures go,” he said. “And right now they are all over this area. The wormhole radiation attracts them.”
“Your actions may have already caused a war between the Federation and the Cardassians.”
The man on the screen shrugged. The motion was fluid and unconscious. His response was obviously not calculated. “We don’t spend much time in your space. What happens there is of no concern to us.”
“But it is your concern,” Kira said. “The Federation will—”
“The Federation has been after us for years and yet here we are. Do we look worried?” He leaned toward the screen. “Tell your people to wait. We will leave the area when the Espiritu do.”
He laughed, a deep, throaty sound. Other voices from the other ships belonging to people Kira could not see laughed with him. He ended the communication.
Kira pounded her fist on the console. Sisko’s communication idea did not work. And she had even been cordial—as cordial as she could be, under the circumstances.
Almost in unison the five ships turned and moved away in a tight formation. Beyond them, Kira could see the faint ripple of blue light. Another Espiritu, luring them toward it.
Kira almost followed them, then stopped. She could do nothing. She needed to report back to the station and find a solution there. Maybe Sisko would know how to get rid of these Riders without communication.
She sighed and looked down at the blinking console. At least she still had the warp drive. With the flick of a finger, she prepared the runabout to head back. Then she reached for the phase shifter. Her hand froze above it. The area around it was stained black. The puff of smoke she had seen had come from it.
Kira pressed the phase shifter, but nothing happened. She opened the panel. A small fire had burned in there. Everything was fused together.
There was no going back.
CHAPTER 30
“HE WHAT?” Quark asked. He was standing near the Dabo table. The players were on a five-minute stretch break, and after serving the food, Rom had pulled Quark out of the room.
Rom moved closer to the Dabo girl as if she could provide him protection. She probably could. She was twice his height. “Nog was spying—”
“I know what Nog was doing. I’m more interested in the Nagus.”
Rom ducked and put his hands near his ears to protect them. “He is using our system to cheat.”
“Not so loud, you fool.” Quark made two fists. “Well, I hope it has brought him as much luck as it has brought me.”
Rom completely hid behind the Dabo girl. She was moving away from the table, obviously not wanting to get caught between the two brothers.
Quark ignored them. They didn’t interest him. What did was that greedy overgrown set of ears who was using his own system to cheat him. Quark leaned against the door and looked into the room. About twenty-six players were left, one of whom was his ringer. He was barely holding on since the systems were crashing so much. But the Nagus seemed to be doing well. Maybe the systems were crashing because the Nagus had piggybacked.
A hand tapped him on the shoulder. Quark turned. Odo stood behind him, his expression grim. Quark rubbed his hands on his pants legs to keep them from wringing. He hoped Odo hadn’t overheard.
“I just spoke with Commander Sisko,” Odo said. “I have to shut you down.”
As if he hadn’t
been playing. As if he hadn’t been reaping benefits from the game. Quark stuck a finger in his ear to clean it out. Perhaps he had heard wrong. “You have to what?”
“Shut you down.”
Quark grabbed Odo’s arm and pulled him into the bar. Rom saw them and scuttled away. The Dabo girl went to the far side of the table. “Why?” Quark asked. “The trouble is all over. You caught your killer. The game is going on as it should.”
“I am not talking about the game,” Odo said. “I’m talking about your cheating system.”
“Shusshhhh!!!” Quark said, glancing at the door to the back room. No one had been close enough to hear. “How did you know?”
“You forget, Quark. Nothing happens in this station without my knowledge.”
Quark frowned. “If you knew about it before, how come you told the commander now?”
“The problems in the station have grown worse,” Odo said. “Your equipment is drawing needed energy.”
“Nonsense!” Quark spit as he spoke. He had to think. He needed an answer quickly. “It’s not doing any harm.”
“Ah, but it is,” Odo said. “Chief O’Brien believes that your wonderful sophisticated system is adding to the power core fluctuations.”
“Well, he’s wrong!” Quark said.
“Is he?”
“Yes! We tested them weeks ago. The systems would have interfered then.”
Odo shrugged. “I know very little about the engineering aspects of this station. I do know, however, that tests are often different from the real thing. Those little devices of yours have been running for some time now and are making our problems worse. I want the system shut down.”
Quark paced around the Dabo table. Murders, blackouts, and now this. His system gone. Not that it was doing him much good. Only the Nagus seemed to benefit. Quark thought as quickly as he could.
He grinned to himself, then turned to face Odo with a stern look on his face. “All right,” he said. “I’ll shut it down.”
“Good.” Odo pulled a Ferengi sensor from his pocket. “Because I will be checking.”
How did Odo get hold of that? Quark stared at the sensor for a moment. Behind him the Dabo girl let out a small chuckle. She clapped her hand over her mouth. Quark suppressed the urge to chuckle too. He didn’t want the others to know that he didn’t mind shutting down. Shutting down would improve Odo’s chances of walking away with the whole ball.
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