“They’re concentrating their weapons on the northwest quadrant,” Blackmer said. Again, it seemed odd not to physically experience the effects of the attack.
“Two torpedo hits on the Tholian ship,” Slaine said. “Their forward shield is showing signs of stress. They’re pursuing an irregular course, but they’re still headed toward Deep Space Nine.”
“Keep firing,” Ro instructed, peering across the Hub toward the tactical station. “Seed a wide field of torpedoes in their path.”
“Yes, Captain,” Slaine said, operating her panel to translate Ro’s words into action.
The captain looked toward the security console. “Ready the thoron shield,” she said.
“Thoron shield generators are already online and standing by,” Blackmer said. A new innovation theorized by Starfleet Research and Development and brought to fruition by Tactical Operations, the thoron shield represented a next step in defensive capabilities—not exactly a step forward, but more like a significant lateral move. The generators provided a seamless energy casing around the starbase, on the inner sides of the rings, with a separate shell around the Hub. The thoron-based screen interfered with DS9’s long-range communications and sensors, but functioned as a protective envelope far stronger than typical shields, defending against not only energy weapons and transporter beams, but also actual material objects. While it would not render Deep Space 9 impregnable, it could allow the starbase to withstand some attacks better and longer than traditional shields. Starfleet hoped to eventually install it on its starships, but had yet to find a means of erecting a stable such field around any space that contained a warp core.
“If the Tholians violate our established perimeter, raise the thoron shield,” Ro said.
“Yes, sir,” Blackmer said. Normally, the captain would have ordered Defiant—the bantam starship assigned as a support vessel to the starbase—away from the station and onto the field of battle, but the security chief knew that the current situation would not permit that. He checked his console and monitored the juggernaut’s proximity to DS9.
“The Tholian vessel is having to alter course to avoid our torpedoes,” Slaine said.
“They’re still firing phasers, though,” Blackmer said. “Two more hits on the northwest quadrant. Shields at seventy-two percent there.”
A vibrant flash momentarily lighted the Hub, followed by another. “Two more quantum torpedo strikes,” Slaine said. “Their forward shield is dangerously close to collapse, and one of their phaser emitters appears damaged.”
“Continue planting torpedoes along their path,” Ro said. “I want—”
“Captain,” Lieutenant Viss spoke up from where she sat in her antigrav chair at the communications console. “We’re being hailed by the Tholians . . . they say they’ve shut down their weapons, and they’ll agree to lower their shields if we stop firing.”
“Confirmed,” Slaine said. “The juggernaut has powered down its phaser banks.”
Ro stood up from the command chair and gazed at the viewscreen. “Cease fire,” she said.
“Yes, Captain,” Slaine said, and the sounds of Deep Space 9’s weapons faded.
“Maintain sensor contact,” Ro said. “If their phasers come back online, resume firing at once.”
“Acknowledged,” Slaine said.
“What’s the course and speed of the juggernaut?” asked Colonel Cenn, standing from his own chair.
“They’ve come to a stop and are holding their position,” Slaine said.
For a moment, silence fell across the Hub. Blackmer studied his console, once more confirming the lack of security breaches on the station. He checked the sensor readings of the Tholian vessel and saw that the ship remained motionless, with its phaser banks off-line.
Finally, from his position at the sciences station, beside Viss at communications, Lieutenant Commander John Candlewood broke the quiet. “I guess they don’t want to be destroyed this time,” he said.
Ro looked to the communications console. “Kalanent,” she said, “see if they’re offering up their surrender.”
“Right away, Captain,” Viss said. Blackmer didn’t know if she smiled, but he thought he heard a lilt in the comm officer’s voice—noteworthy because of the level of computerized translation involved in interpreting her speech.
“If I know Lieutenant Commander Stinson, he doesn’t much like to lose,” O’Brien said. “Even in war games.”
“Even in war games, Chief, it’s better to surrender than be destroyed,” Ro offered.
“Our attackers have surrendered,” Viss confirmed.
Ro looked toward the security console. “Jeff, you can release the simulation routines.”
“Yes, sir,” Blackmer said, and he worked his controls to terminate the program that Candlewood and his staff had engineered for the latest test of the starbase’s defenses. The code read Defiant’s transponder signal and randomly assigned the starship a different identity, then sent corresponding readings and images to the consoles and displays in the Hub. Although the DS9 crew had sent real phasers and quantum torpedoes at the masquerading Defiant, the former had been set to one one-hundredth power, while the latter had been equipped with a similarly reduced yield. Because of the presence aboard the starbase of two heads of state—the Bajoran first minister and the Cardassian castellan—Captain Ro had not wanted even diminished weaponry leveled at DS9. Candlewood and his staff had therefore modified their software to read particular transmissions from Defiant as weapons fire, and then to detail on the readouts the severity of the damage that would have been done by such attacks. The red alert klaxon did not call out across the entire starbase, but only through active and relevant crew spaces: the Hub, the reactor ring and engineering complex, and weapons control.
Blackmer finished tapping out commands on his panel. “I’ve shut down the simulator routines,” he said. In the center of the Hub, above the situation table, the imposing image of the Tholian juggernaut blinked once more, but it neither cloaked nor decloaked; instead, it transformed into the smaller but still formidable Defiant.
“Open a channel,” Ro said.
“I’ve got Commander Stinson for you,” Viss said immediately, as though she’d simply been waiting for Ro’s order. Deep Space 9’s second officer appeared on the screens hanging above the sit table. He’d recently cut short his dark, wavy hair, which had the effect of extending his already long face. A capable, serious officer who did not hide his ambition to rise to starship command, he wore a natural frown, though at the moment he appeared even more dour than usual. He sat in the command chair on the bridge of Defiant, which he captained in Ro’s absence. In front of him, at the combined conn and ops console, sat Lieutenant Tenmei.
“I believe you’re infringing on my starbase, Commander,” Ro said with a wry half smile.
“Not for long, apparently,” replied Stinson, his words and tone light despite his stern visage.
“No complaints, Wheeler,” Ro said. “Remember, you live here most of the time, so it’s good to know that we’re capable of defending ourselves.”
“Agreed,” Stinson said, but Blackmer thought there had been at least a nugget of truth to O’Brien’s observation: the second officer didn’t seem especially pleased that his counterfeit attack on the starbase had been so quickly thwarted.
“Disarm and retrieve the undetonated torpedoes we fired,” Ro told Stinson, “then bring the Defiant back home.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Once you’re back aboard, report to the conference room for a full analysis of your attack,” Ro said. “After that, we’ll have our regular status meeting at eleven hundred hours.” The command staff—and all the crew, both on DS9 and back at Bajoran Space Central—had been attending weekly and sometimes daily meetings as they prepared to bring the station fully online.
“Understood, sir,” Stinson said.
“Ro out.” Viss touched a control, and the second officer disappeared from the viewscreens, replaced by a
view of Defiant. Ro then looked toward the security station. “Jeff, are you ready for our meeting?”
“I am,” Blackmer said. For the previous two months, he and the captain had met numerous times to discuss security procedures for the starbase in general and for the upcoming dedication in particular. Not everything had gone smoothly—some of the emergency bulkheads around the reactor ring failed their closure tests; the force fields in the stockade overloaded at maximum power; and the energy-weapon inhibitors throughout the station worked too well, preventing even authorized security personnel from firing their phasers—but they had successfully performed all needed repairs in the days leading up to the arrival of the first dignitaries in advance of the dedication ceremony. Ro and Blackmer had spent the past few weeks reviewing the procedures that the security chief had put in place, and he in turn had drilled his staff.
“My office, then,” the captain said. Then, to her first officer: “Desca, you have the Hub.”
“Yes, Captain,” Cenn said, sitting back down. He took the command chair rather than the one reserved for the second-in-command.
The captain circled her chair and headed for the doors to her office. Blackmer reached forward and secured his console, then started around the disc of the Hub to follow. Crewwoman Jan Collins, a junior member of his staff, strode from where she’d been working at a secondary station to take over at the security panel.
As Blackmer trailed the captain into her office, he recalled what she’d said to Stinson: “Bring the Defiant back home.” The last word sounded a false note to him—not on the captain’s lips but in his ears. Blackmer had been among a segment of the crew who had resided on the partially completed starbase for close to a year, and so he’d certainly become accustomed to living there. He realized, though, that he had yet to come to think of Deep Space 9 in the way Ro had characterized it: as home.
It must be because the station’s been under construction until just recently, he thought. The bulk of the crew had begun relocating to DS9 only within the previous month, and a few more civilian residents just in the prior two weeks. The Plaza and the park had been open for a matter of days.
But that’s not all of it, Blackmer thought as he entered the captain’s office. Something nagged at him, though he couldn’t quite determine what.
The captain crossed the length of her office, passing her desk, which stood to the left in the center of a long bulkhead. A wide, rounded rectangular port filled the far section of hull, offering a view out into space. A door in the far right corner led to a private refresher, Blackmer knew, while another beside it, in the right-side bulkhead, led out into a corridor. Behind the desk hung a large metal-frame sculpture, a stylish, essentially two-dimensional representation of the new Deep Space 9. The piece of art made Blackmer think of the painting that had adorned Ro’s office on the old station, a gold-framed starscape showing Bajor and its five moons suspended in the firmament. The canvas, like so many other things—like so many people—had been lost.
“Would you like something to drink?” the captain asked from where she stood in the corner opposite the ’fresher, in front of a replicator alcove.
“No, thank you,” Blackmer said. As Ro ordered something for herself, he looked to his right, across from the captain’s desk, to where a large viewscreen dominated the bulkhead, set above a long sofa. A detailed grid showed on the display, crosshatching dates and departments in intersections of responsibility. Most of the listed tasks glowed in green characters, with just a few in yellow, and only one—the assignment of permanent quarters to arriving civilian residents—in red. Blackmer followed the column that identified his security staff and saw all of its entries in green, except for the last one, in the row corresponding to the next day; it read ADDITIONAL VIP SECURITY in yellow letters.
As Blackmer waited for the captain, his mind drifted from the tasks before him that day, back to the notion of DS9 as home. He’d served for a full year aboard the old station before its destruction, and although he felt its loss keenly, he had never grown completely comfortable there. He ascribed that to his difficult working relationship with Captain Ro, who for a long time had disliked and distrusted him. They had eventually overcome that, but just two months later, the station had been destroyed, allowing him little time to adjust to the improved situation.
It’s more than just that, Blackmer admitted, seeking out what he sensed might be a hard truth about himself. He thought about the other positions to which he’d been assigned during his Starfleet career—not about the starships, where he’d never felt at ease, but about the space stations. Fresh out of Starfleet Academy, he’d spent five years on Starbase 189, and after that, he’d served another five-year tour on Helaspont Station.
And what did I feel in those places? he asked himself. He always thought that his awkwardness aboard Starbase 189 stemmed from his youth and inexperience, while he believed that nobody serving on Helaspont Station, located so close to the Tzenkethi border, truly settled in to life on the edge of a hostile power.
It was more than that, Blackmer realized. It’s still more than that.
Captain Ro joined him in front of the viewscreen, a tall glass of a reddish-orange beverage in one hand. “It seems like we’ll get there,” she said, gesturing up toward the display and the information it contained. She tapped at the square labeled ADDITIONAL VIP SECURITY, and it expanded to fill the screen with a comprehensive register of security crew assignments over the coming days. Blackmer saw that his own name featured prominently on the list, in several locations. “It’s hard to believe we’re finally on the verge of opening for business,” Ro said. Her phrasing struck the security chief as odd, but then so did her relationship with Quark, from whom she had no doubt learned the expression.
But it’s not business, Blackmer thought. It’s life. Even as the thought flew through his mind, though, another joined it. In life, people found homes, places where they felt they belonged, refuges to which they could retreat in times of trouble, sanctums where they could celebrate successes. Blackmer wondered if he would ever find that—not just on Deep Space 9, but anywhere in the universe.
• • •
Castellan Rakena Garan paced anxiously in front of the ports that lined the meeting room on the Federation starbase, her fist rapping against the backs of the chairs along the conference table as she passed them. She did not look out into the everlasting night of space, but down at the deck—and even that she did not see. Vaguely, as though from a distance, the clocklike cadence of her heels reached her ears.
Energy coursed through Garan’s diminutive body, filling her up—filling the entire room up, it seemed, even though she had no company in the large compartment. Her security detail waited outside in the corridor, along with one of her aides. She had informed her coterie of her change in plans, but she wanted privacy for what she needed to do next.
While she waited, the castellan felt as though she might explode. She moved in an attempt to alleviate the force she felt within her, to calm her rising tide of discontent. Really, she wanted not to stride forward and back, but to take to her heels and run.
But I am running, she thought, taking herself to task for the decision she’d made—for the decision she’d been forced to make. She should have been enjoying a series of high-profile political successes, attending the Deep Space 9 dedication ceremony and meeting not only with allied leaders—the Federation president, the Klingon chancellor, and the Ferengi grand nagus—but also with leaders of rival powers—the Romulan praetor and the Gorn imperator. Garan’s scheduled trip to Bajor, marking the first visit to that world by a sitting Cardassian head of state, would have brought her the approbation of both her supporters back home and her peers in the Khitomer Accords; ideally, it also would have impressed her detractors, and even helped convince some of her own people to reconsider their petty prejudices and juvenile jingoism.
At the end of the conference table, the castellan stopped and brought her hand down on the back of the la
st chair, tightly squeezing its headrest. She drew her other hand, fingers tightened into a fist, up behind the small of her back. She stood that way for several moments, trying to will the tension from her body.
Finally, Garan turned and peered through the ports, out into space. One of the great rings that encircled the Federation starbase climbed past the conference room off to the right. She followed its curve upward, then let her gaze drift to the backdrop of stars beyond it. She thought to find Cardassia among them, but she quickly lost sight of all the distant suns, seeing instead the remembered face, the penetrating glare, of the Union’s longtime ambassador to the Federation: Elim Garak.
Moments earlier, the castellan had been sitting at a secure companel in her quarters aboard Trager, a protected channel open to the Tarlak Sector in Cardassia City. For the second time since she’d departed on her trip to the Bajoran system, she had spoken with Garak. Their first conversation, shortly after the ambassador had returned home from Earth, had allowed him to update her about the negotiations with the Federation, confirming that the castellan’s agenda proceeded apace ahead of her upcoming bid for reelection. Their second and most recent discussion, though, had provided her with information that threatened to undermine all of that.
He can’t be right, the castellan tried to persuade herself, still picturing Garak’s face as she stood before the ports in the conference room. It shouldn’t have surprised her that the text of the withdrawal agreement had been leaked, much less so that her political enemies attempted to use the content of the document against her. It did come as a shock, though, to learn the identities of some of those whom Garak considered possible sources of the leak.
The castellan drew in a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. The voices of Cardassia First, led by Evek Temet in the Assembly, had grown louder than they’d ever been, all the more so because they hadn’t had to contend with the countervailing first-person viewpoint of the castellan. Garak believed that her administration could ably defend their record—her record—in the media, but she understood that would not suffice when Temet debated the withdrawal agreement on a newscast the following morning—even with Garak going up against him. Cardassia First claimed that the castellan had become more concerned about her alliance with the Federation and the Klingons and the Ferengi, about her own standing within the greater interstellar community, than about her own people. They pointed to her trip to Deep Space 9 and branded it as appeasement and poor judgment, conveniently neglecting that the Union no longer counted the UFP as an enemy, but as an ally; they maintained that Garan should have been at home, dealing with the clashes in the city of Cemet between the nationalists and the radical progressives.
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