CHAPTER
       1

"DIRECT HIT on the docking ring!"
    Jem'Hadar. The new scourge. Here they came
again.
    A venomous ship swung in on an almost head-on
course, weapons hacking at open space even before
they horned in on the command tower of the space
station, and they loved what they were doing.
    "They're punching right through the new
shields!" Major Kira Nerys felt her throat burn
with raw frustration. She was less announcing than
grinding out a damnation.
    Clinging to his console at Engineering as another
hit made the whole deck throb, Miles O'Brien bent
forward to keep his balance. "There's a hull breach
in sections twenty-three alpha through sixteen bak-
er. Heavy casualties."

               I




"Try boosting power to the interface. Maybe if
we can--"
    The Ops bulkhead exploded. Shrapnel whistled
across the area, slicing a half dozen crewmen down
like a twister through corn. Warning of hull breach
howled in their ears.
    "Transporters are out," O'Brien coughed. Forc-
ing himself to spare two sore fingers, he tapped the
nearest comm. "Medical team to Ops."
    Kira saw him in the corner of her eye, and almost
went for her own comm unit to call for medical
help, then suddenly realized he had just done that.
    Under usual conditions she would've been the
one to do that. But there wasn't anybody here to
give her orders. She was in charge of the disintegra-
tion of Station Deep Space Nine.
    At moments like this she wished she had some
nice long hair to tear out. She would've gladly left
auburn knots all over the deck.
    Just for a couple of seconds she wanted hair. Lots
of it.
    The station rocked again. Plasma residue cas-
caded past the observation portals, creating fire-
works almost celebratory. Their lights flashed on
the bodies of the fallen Ops crewmen.
    "Where the hell are the runabouts?" Kira
choked. "The Mekong's supposed to be defending
grid two-one-five!"
    "Mekong's lost her port nacelle, sir," O'Brien
said, his voice painfully calm. "The Rio Grande's
been destroyed... and the Orinoco is still engaged
with a Jem'Hadar ship near the wormholem"
               2

He was thrown to one side by another hit.
Incredible--these bolts that could shake the
entire station--virtually punching a city with one
fist. The lights wobbled. In the unsteady flickers of
struggling conduits Kira could barely see O'Brien's
face.
    In the background the turbolift burped halfway
open, then all the way. Julian Bashir and his
medical team stumbled onto the command deck,
were startled for a moment at the unrecognizable
area that moments ago had been the neat, clean
brain of DS9, then gathered their nerves and sepa-
rated to triage the wounded.
    Kira blinked, flashing back to the moment she
had watched Julian die on the holosuite. That had
only happened in one simulation and it still
plagued her to watch the doctor fall. He was the
most innocent of heart among them, one of those of
kind nature, and watching him die had made her
mad.
    But all her friends and countrymen would die if
Deep Space Nine failed to defend the only bridge to
the Gamma Quadrant. If they only possessed the
firepower, the wormhole was tactically ideal, but it
was like waiting for the monster to come in the
window.
    "All right," Kira called across to O'Brien, "con-
centrate our fire on the lead ship in each wave. Use
defense pattern echo-one-five with torpedoes set
to--"
    The whole station shifted a full ten feet to her
right, and she almost went down. Her hips cranked
               3




so hard beneath her that she bruised her own ribs,
and that was the only way she stayed on her feet.
Around her, almost everyone else went down.
Some skidded along the deck and struck torn pieces
of dislodged bulkhead and console facings.
    The lights flickered again, and this time went out.
Darkness swelled like a wound.
    "Main power's off-line," O'Brien shouted, his
voice weaker than the last time. "Shields are gone,
no power to the weapons--"
    Kira was about to shout back that she didn't
want any more reports. She had to think about
what she did have instead of what she didn't. Of
course, that was the basic idea behind those kinds
of damage reports--to know what to use--but
right now she didn't care. Reflex kicked in and she
started thinking like an underground fighter again.
    What could she use? Could she gather hand
phasers and tap their energy stores? Were there
welding torches on the station? Knives? Chemicals?
    She parted her lips to tell him what to do, though
she had no idea what was going to come out of
there. She trusted to her instincts to pop up with
something.
    But she would never know whether or not she
was up to that moment's demands.
    Three bands of transporter energy seared into
shape on the Operations deck. An instant later,
three gray-masked aliens with weapons drawn
opened fire on station personnel.
    Kira sucked a hard gasp as Julian Bashir and one
of his medical aides were ground to death under

Jem'Hadar energy beams. Another second, and the
rest of the medical team was dead too.
    Across the deck, O'Brien shook his head and
sighed.
    Kira rushed out from behind her station and
leveled a kick and a half dozen punches at the
nearest Jem'Hadar soldier, who took each blow
stoically. He barely felt her assault.
    Another soldier leveled his weapon at O'Brien
and fired. The beam passed through his body.
    Still kicking, Kira gritted her teeth then stumbled
back a pace or two.
    The computer voice had a slight echo. "Unable to
continue simulation. There is no data available on
Jem 'Hadar physical strength or endurance."
    The voice was so damned polite it might as well
have said, "Thank you for not spitting on the
deck."
"Oh, shut up," Kira sniffed. "End simulation."
The entire Ops center winked out, leaving a
velvet black holosuite. On the deck, Julian's body
and the forms of the other med staffers faded away.
    Eyes lingering on the places where they had lain
slaughtered, Kira shifted back and forth. The
damning reality of this thing plagued her. She could
train and train, but would she be able to act when
the real thing came along? She could experience the
horrors of war firsthand, but was that good? Would
she freeze when the real thing came along? Bravery
was often born of spontaneous inexperience. She
could be destroying that for herself.
  She certainly wasn't getting anything out of this.




 O'Brien sighed again and didn't say anything.
    "Chief," Kira muttered, "I'm getting tired of
losing."
    He wandered toward her. "Sorry, Major. l really
thought we had it this time."
    "Sorry's not good enough," she snapped. "The
Dominion could have an entire invasion fleet sit-
ting on the other side of the wormhole for all we
know. We need a way to fight off a Jem'Hadar
assault and we need it now."
    Fatigue blistered O'Brien's otherwise affable ex-
pression, but he nodded as though he knew she was
right. "Yes, sir. I'll begin working on some alterna-
tives."
    He didn't say the rest of what was lingering on
that sentence--that there weren't very many alter-
natives left, short of poison or witchcraft.
    For the thousandth time--today--she remem-
bered her time in the underground and how since
then she had thought those bad days were finally
over. Now these new changes... did she have the
fight left in her anymore?
    If the Dominion showed up and Starfleet backed
off... what if Starfleet didn't concentrate a fleet
here? What if they came up with excuses to avoid
defending her home planet, way out here by itself in
the middle of deep space, without much in the way
of value?
    What did the Federation value? Wheat? Iron?
Latinum?
    She wasn't sure. And it was possible she didn't
want to know.
  Starfleet could move, but Bajor couldn't. Her

home planet and its desperately poor people, claw-
ing their way back up from oppression, just didn't
have much left to fight with. If push came to shove,
Bajor would be back on its own again, and she
would be a rat in the dirt again with pretty slim
chances of survival if the Dominion took over this
sector.
    Because she knew... she would never give in to
them.
    And she knew other things, truths lurking in the
back of her attempts to defend the station. Occupa-
tion forces, concentration camps, mass murder, the
spare life of the underground, day-by-day sacrifice.
There were factions in the Federation who mea-
sured the galaxy by whole star systems and whole
sectors, not by one or two planets dotting a frontier.
    In her tacticJan's heart of hearts, Kira knew
where the planet Bajor stood on the roster of the
critical. Starfleet would be foolish to sacrifice a
whole fleet to defend a planet that just wasn't
important enough.
    If she were at Starfleet Command, given trust to
scope out a defense plan for a quarter of a galaxy,
what would she decide?
    Contempt for the distant hub was tempered as
she thought of how hesitant Bajor had been to join
the Federation, how resentful of encroachment,
how some Bajorans had treated Starfleet's libera-
tion forces with as much acrimony as they had
treated the Cardassians' occupation. The desire to
be completely independent had burrowed in too
far, and even when they needed help to stabilize
and rebuild, they had remained inhospitable and




isolationist. They wanted to be Bajoran with a
capital B, to strut for a while, to prove to them-
selves that they could stand alone and spit upon the
hand held out to them by the Federation.
  Just for a while, just a tease.
  Now this.
    She had to find a way to defend Bajor from the
station, or the station from Bajor. All she had to do
was tip the odds in favor of her own planet and this
station, and Starfleet might find it worthwhile to
defend Bajor.
    She led the way down the narrow stairs to
Quark's bar, noting with a resentful shiver that the
stairs were barely wide enough for two humanolds
to walk down together and that the width was
calculated to make those two humanoids bump
each other tenderly with every step. Bothered by
what the holosuites up there were most often used
for--not exactly battle simulation--she leaned
away from O'Brien, anticipating that a settled
family man might be embarrassed to bump once
too often.
    For her the whole technology of simulation was a
double-edged sword. Simulations so real that sol-
diers could train for battle, yes; but so often true
heroism was a product of naivet~, of not realizing
how much battle really hurt, and how much it
really hurt to watch friends die.
    The holodeck might make a training soldier too
cautious. What eighteen-year-old would go to war if
he had already experienced what war could be? So
much heroism came from hard, fast lessons in
danger's jaws ....

    "On the plus side," she said as they finally made
it down the long stairway to the crowded, murmur-
ing bar, "your new runabout deployment plan
seemed to at least slow them down before they
could get to the station."
    She stopped, seeing the snaggletoothed Ferengi
proprietor angling to intercept them, carrying a
bill.
    "Yes, sir," O'Brien said. "I think if we open up
the interval between the runabouts to five hundred
meters, it might buy us another thirty seconds."
    "Are you two finished up there?" Quark inter-
rupted. "I've been turning away customers--
customers who paid in advance, I might add--for
three hours."
    "Good idea," Kira said to O'Brien, ignoring the
twisted look Quark gave her when he thought she
was talking to him. Quark liked to think that all
women of all species were always talking to him.
    "Speaking of paying," the Ferengi went on,
"who's going to pick up this bill for three days of
holosuite activity?"
    O'Brien talked over Quark's head. Well, over his
ears. "There might also be a way to boost our
deflector field integrity if we run it through an
antimatter processor."
    "And I hope," Quark went on, "you're not going
to tell me to charge it to the Bajoran government."
    "Try it," Kira clipped. Annoyed, she tried to look
past him to O'Brien and concentrate on the analy-
sis of defense. They were all about to die and here
was Quark yammering about getting paid as if he
didn't comprehend. This wasn't casual conversa-




tion, and she wanted Quark out of it, even for his
own sake. The Ferengi would be shaken if he knew
what they had been planning, and what they antici-
pated.
    "Because getting money out of them is like trying
to get blood from a Tholian," Quark was saying.
    They'd managed to wander toward the door.
"Now, when Commander Sisko returns from
Starfleet Headquarters," Kira went on to O'Brien,
"I want you to give him a full briefing on all the
technical modifications that you and I w-
    "Major!" Nervous that they might get out into
the corridor without paying, Quark suddenly
planted himself squarely in their path. "I'm afraid I
have to insist on an answer. Now, what am I
supposed to do with this bill?"
  He held it up in front of her.
    Kira's elbow tingled with desire as she imagined
it about four inches down his throat. No, that
wouldn't do. She was in charge of the station.
Image to maintain and all that.  Blast it.
    She managed a completely fake, completely
sweet smile. "I'll tell you what you can do with that
bill, Quark," she said. The smile melted. "Or
would you like me to demonstrate it?"
    Quark's expression wobbled and he dropped
back a step.
    It wasn't that unique a trick, but something
about her was convincing. Kira leaned toward him
to clarify her point, but the chirp of her comm
badge interrupted her.

    The sophisticated voice of Jadzia Dax called,
"Dax to Major Kira."
  Kira touched the badge. "Kira."
  "Have you forgotten something, Major?"
  She glanced at O'Brien. "Forgotten what?"
    "You called a tactical briefing for sixteen hun-
dred. It's sixteen-twenty. We're all here waiting."
  "Ohwyes, I forgot! We'll be right there--sorry."
  "Noted. Dax out."
    "I don't believe it!" Her mind preoccupied with
the idea of invasion, Kira bumped O'Brien again as
the two of them dodged for the exit, but this wasn't
the kind of bump that made her self-conscious.
    As they ran full-out down the throbbing deck, she
heard Quark call after them.
 "I'11 put it on your tab!"

  "We're in trouble, people."
    Grim and somber, Kira Nerys scanned the re-
ports on the sensor padd on the table before her at
the operations station. She looked around at the
other officers, people she had begun to think could
do anything they put their minds to.
    Somehow she didn't have that feeling today.
Everyone looked vulnerable--was she imagining
it?
    They looked tired. She certainly wasn't imagin-
ing that part. She'd been driving them hard.
    "We've run seven simulations," she said, "and
they've all come up the same. The Jem'Hadar
overwhelm our defenses and board the station
within two hours."




    Dr. Julian Bashir stood on the periphery of the
command circle, his large eyes and tender expres-
sion pleated with concern. "Two hours doesn't even
give us time to get reinforcements from Bajor."
    "There must be something we've overlooked."
Trying to sound encouraging, Jadzia Dax gave him
a placating nod. Even she, the oasis of calm for all
of them, couldn't drum up a convincing possibility.
She stopped talking, as if she understood that
they'd be better off without statements like that.
Nonconstructive hope was for children.
    "Major," O'Brien said finally, after everybody
had looked at everybody else, "I'm the last one to
say it's hopeless, but given DS9's structural limita-
tions, our available power supply, and the difficulty
of defending a stationary target against a heavily
armed mobile force... I'd say two hours is opti-
mistic."
    Kira buried her frustration in a few passes of
pacing about the Ops deck. Ultimately she turned
to their head of security, the man responsible for
keeping peace on this boiling speck in space.
    Constable Odo looked at her, his incomplete face
smooth as plastic, his demeanor cautious.
    "All right," Kira began, "let's say we let them
board the station. That still doesn't mean we have
to surrender."
    "What are you suggesting?" Dax spoke up from
behind her.
    "We can hide in the conduits... set up booby
traps... prepare ambushes. Try to hold out until
we can get reinforcements."

     "We can try," Odo said, "but I don't think there
 would be much of a station left by the time they got
 here."
     Taking his pronouncement stoically, Kira paced
 again. Odo knew more about the innards of Deep
 Space Nine than any of them. He'd simply been
 here longer.
     Dax, as usual, absorbed the facts a little quicker
 than anyone else. "That leaves us with two options.
 Abandon the station and make a stand on Bajor, or
 collapse the entrance to the wormhole."
      Kira turned to her. "I want a third alternative. I
refuse to believe that we can't--"  Alarms broke over her words.
    At the science station, Dax's beautiful eyes were
fixed on her console. "Some kind of large subspace
surge just activated our security sensors."
    Glancing around at the other officers at their
stations, Kira assured herself that everything else
was stable and she could concentrate on Dax's
discovery. "Where is it?"
    "Bearing one four eight, mark two one five."
Dax's voice was damnably calm. How the hell
could she do that? "Distance, three hundred me-
ters."
    "Three hundred meters?" O'Brien blurted.
"That's almost inside our shield perimeter!"
    "From the intensity and the harmonic signa-
ture," Dax filled in, "it might be a cloaked ship, but
I've never seen an energy dispersal pattern like
this."
 Kira gritted her teeth. Muscles knotted and




throat tight, bullied by thoughts that had driven her
to the holosuites for a most unrelaxing practice, she
bolted, "Could it be the Jem'Hadar?"
    O'Brien almost--only almost--rolled his eyes,
except that he knew it wasn't a paranoid question.
"Nothing's come through the wormhole in the past
two days."
    "It's too close for comfort, whatever it is," Kira
said. "Raise shields. Energize phaser banks. Stand
by to 1ockJ"
    "The energy signature's fluctuating," Dax inter-
rupted. "It's decloaking."
    In near space before them on the main viewer, a
bulky, compact space vessel wobbled out of cloak,
shedding the parcel of night it had used as its
mirage of nothing. It was chunky, heavily muscled,
but obviously a Starfleet design and bearing
Starfleet and Federation insignia. More than just
familiar--it was starship design.
    But she also knew that ships could be stolen.
Who was aboard that thing?
    She knew what the crew was expecting, but she
refused to order shields down prematurely.
    Just for the sake of hearing it, Dax mentioned,
"It's definitely a Federation starship... but I've
never seen this design."
    "A Federation ship," O'Brien added, "with a
cloaking device?"
    Dax started to respond, then cut herself off with,
"They're hailing us."
  Kira nodded to her.
  The screen bawbled faintly, then shifted to a

crystal-clear image of the last person they expected
to see sitting in a command chair of a starship.
    "Hello, Major," Commander Benjamin Sisko
began, in that orchestra-pit bass-section voice.
"Sorry to startle you, but I wanted to test the
Defiant's cloaking device."
 Kira straightened. "The Defiant?"
     On the screen, Sisko was holding back a grin. His
dark brown face was rosy with satisfaction. But his eyes were grinning.
    "I've brought back a little surprise for the
Dominion."




CHAPTER
       2

BEN SISKO had waited all week for the looks on his
stationmates' faces when he flew in with that
compact gut-puncher of a starship. The U.S.S.
Defiant didn't exactly have the water-lily elegance
of starships that had come before her, but she
wasn't meant for a casual swim.
    He came into the observatory wardroom with a
little sigh of relief at being back. The dreary, harsh
room had undergone a renovation since he took
over the station, but the basic architecture was still
that of the original owners. The Cardassian struc-
ture was hard and chilly, barely offset by comfort-
able Federation lounge chairs, a couple of couches
and end tables, and the big table for formal meet-
ings. The only element that kept the room from
looking like a Starfleet Headquarters guest hall was
the big viewer and computer console at the far end.

    Most of his officers were here waiting for him, all
with their backs to the entrance, gazing down
through an observation port at the docked starship,
so preoccupied that none of them heard him come
in.
    There was Dax, standing as relaxed as a reed,
O'Brien at a version of parade rest, Kira at a
version of no rest at all, and Julian Bashir leaning
forward the way a little boy peeks over the safety
wall at the zoo's tiger den.
    And standing just a few inches more than neces-
sary away from the rest of them was Odo. Sisko
noted that his security chief's thin, rangy body was
a fraction thinner and tangier than the last time
he'd seen him. At first, Sisko had thought he was
imagining these subtle changes. Then he discov-
ered that Odo would occasionally experiment with
the human form, to see if he could get it a little
more "right" today than yesterday. It was a sad but
valiant effort to fit in with beings who had solid
form in their natural states. He couldn't get the face
right, daily dealing with children's stares at his
masklike facsimile, so he tended to put extra effort
into the things he could manage. To Odo, solidity
would always be a mystery.
    But even though he never admitted it, he was
always trying.
    Sisko grinned warmly and wished there were
some way he could help Odo without embarrassing
him.
    "It's an interesting design," Dax was saying,
somewhat dubiously, as they all gazed at the star-
ship, "but there's a certain... inelegance to it."




    Sisko almost announced himself, but when no
one turned, he kept quiet. He couldn't tell if Dax
was boning up to spare his feelings or not, and felt a
little insulted that she would worry about that.
After all, he wasn't bringing home a stray puppy
he'd fallen in love with.
 So why was he standing here, eavesdropping?
    "lnelegant's a polite way of putting it," O'Brien
said. "I'd call her ugly."
    "I don't know." The mellow offer of Dr. Bashir
from beside O'Brien, that wistful English this-
won't-hurt-a-bit tone, helped more than Sisko
wanted to admit. "I think there's a somewhat
romantic quality to her. Almost heroic."
    Smiling at that, Sisko moved up behind them.
"I'm afraid there's nothing romantic or heroic
about her, Doctor."
    They all turned at once, looking like children
who'd been caught getting into the Halloween
candy one day early. He came forward among
them, looked out the window, then fed a computer
cartridge into the nearest monitor and keyed it in.
    Silently a schematic of the ship from the top and
both sides popped onto a small screen. He didn't
have to tell his crew to take a look. They were
already crowded around him.
    "Officially she's classified as an escort vessel.
Unofficially, the Defiant's a warship. Nothing
more, nothing less."
    "I thought Starfleet didn't believe in warships,"
Kira baited, taking a little poke with her tone.
    "Desperate times breed desperate measures,"
Sisko admitted.

    It had never been his venue to protect the
Federation's long- or shortsightedness, and he
wasn't inclined to start now.
    "Five years ago, Starfleet began exploring the
possibility of building a new class of starship--a
Federation battle cruiser. This ship would have no
families, no science labs, no luxuries of any kind. It
would be designed for one purpose only--to fight
and defeat the Borg."
    He drew a breath and held it for a beat. Was he
keeping the lingering ache out of his voice? The
gut-gnawing images of his wife's body lying in the
crumpled rubble after the Borg attack, of his son's
racking sobs as he told the boy he couldn't see his
mommy anymore.
    "The Defiant," he pushed forward, "was the
prototype. The first ship in what might have been a
new Federation battle fleet."
    "But the threat from the Borg receded," Dax
took over, "so Starfleet never pursued the project."
    He nodded in confirmation, but also in gratitude.
He knew she'd caught the warble of emotion in his
voice and wanted to give him a chance to catch it
back.
    After clearing his throat just enough, he said,
"Exactly. That, combined with certain design flaws
discovered during the ship's initial testing period,
was enough to convince Starfleet to abandon the
project."
    "What sort of 'design' flaws?" O'Brien asked. For
the first time he took his eyes off the dense,
obsessive bruiser hanging there at the dock.
 "You'll have complete access to the ship evalua-




tion reports, Chief, but to put it simply, it's
overgunned and overpowered for a ship its size.
During battle drills, the ship almost tore itself apart
when the engines were tested at full capacity."
    Kira angled toward him. "And this is the ship
Starfleet sent us to fight the Dominion?"
    Suddenly Sisko felt defensive again, wanting to
throw ice on the underlying sentiment behind her
words--that the Bajorans, their planet, and the
station orbiting it had come in last again on
Starfleet's priority roster.
    He empathized with Kira. The one thing she did
believe in would be a warship. There was no one
faster to take up arms in the defense of freedom
than someone who had not always enjoyed it.
    "We're not going tofight the Dominion, Major,"
he said. "At least, not yet."
    He moved around the table. Like students tag-
ging behind a teacher, they followed him.
    "Our mission," he went on, "is to take the
Deftant into the Gamma Quadrant and try to find
the leaders of the Dominion--the Founders. We
have to convince them that the Federation repre-
sents no threat to them."
    He didn't add, and hoped they would all just
figure out for themselves, that the Federation could
do that anytime it wanted. The subliminal reason
for taking a power-packed starship was to commu-
nicate to the Dominion that, while the Federation
posed no threat, it was ready and able to threaten if
pushed to do so.
    He also understood the foolhardiness of what he
was planning, of going into space where they had

been attacked en masse, where a Galaxy-class star-
ship had been blown to glitters. As tactics went, the
next step in avoiding war had to be this show-no-
fear negotiation. Many an ambassador had never
returned from this kind of mission.
    All he could do was hedge his bet and take the
first step. He was going in as an ambassador with a
white flag in one hand and a whip in the other.
    "But sir," Bashir quietly asked, "what if they just
don't believe us?"
    Oh, well. So much for keeping everything
interiorized. Sisko turned to him. "That's why I
asked for the Defiant. She may have flaws, but she
has teeth. I want the Dominion to know that we can
and will defend ourselves if necessary."
    Kira didn't look convinced, but she didn't argue.
That meant she understood that he'd made his
decision and it would stand for now.
    "Computer," Sisko began, "show me a tactical
representation of the Gamma Quadrant, highlight-
ing the known areas of Dominion activity."
    The monitor brightened with a star chart, clearly
showing the mouth of the wormhole that connected
them to the far-distant Gamma Quadrant, but it
was the mouth on the other side from them. A
ten-minute ride... a seventy-thousand-light-year
leap. Sixty-seven years on the fastest Federation
starship.
    There were several areas on the chart labeled
"Dominion." Each carried a disturbing mystery.
Sisko pointed to the nearest one.
    "We'll begin here. With the Karemma. From
what we know, the Karemma evidently joined the




Dominion peacefully and of their own accord.
They've set up a trading agreement with the
Ferengi, so they're used to dealing with people from
the Alpha Quadrant."
    "And you think they'll lead us to the Founders?"
Dax anticipated.
    Unwilling to commit quite that much sureness,
Sisko said, "I think they're a good place to start."
    He started to explain more, probably more than
he should have, but that was moot when the
entrance door whispered open and a Starfleet secu-
rity man came in, along with a less likely
character--a female Romulan in officer's clothing.
    Around him, his crew instinctively stiflened up at
the presence of this habitual enemy. They weren't
making any aggressive moves, but they were ready
to take their cues from him. As such, he was careful
what movements he made.
    While the Romulan lingered back, the security
man came straight to Sisko. "I've posted two
security officers at the Defiant's docking port, sir.
No one'll get near the cloaking device without us
knowing about it."
    For the first time, now that the subject had
slipped into his parlor, Odo spoke up in that
gravelly tone just short of accusation. "I wasn't
informed about any special security needs."
    The Romulan woman tilted in. "The security
arrangements were made at my request. To protect
the cloaking device."
    Risking life, limb, future, and his ability to stand
upright without wincing, Sisko stepped between
them. "A few introductions are in order. This is

Subcommander T'Rul of the Romulan Empire. She
is here to operate the cloaking device which her
government has so kindly lent us for this mission."
    He was trying to be nice without being too nice.
There hadn't exactly been a peace agreement be-
tween the Federation and the Romulan Empire m
more like a tacit pauserebut the Romulans weren't
so puffed up with themselves that they couldn't see
the advantage in holding back the invasion of some
new force from the other side of the wormhole
before they'd gotten advantage on this side.
    At least Sisko hoped that was the logic. He wasn't
a diplomat and hadn't been in on those meetings,
so he just decided what was best for his station and
the planet he protected, and hoped he was right
about motivations of others.
    T'Rul's expression wasn't giving anything away.
"Romulan interests," she said, "will be served by
cooperation. And my role is to keep 'unauthorized
personnel' away from the cloaking device."
    Well, that was it. She'd managed to sweep every
one of the station people into one gaze and make
sure they knew she wasn't just referring to the odd
tourist's curiosity. She meant them, uniforms or
not.
    Sisko turned so that his shoulder was slightly
between her and his people. "May I present my
officers... this is Major Kira Nerys--"
    "Thank you, but I know their names," T'Rul
said. "And I'm not here to make friends."
    She spun on a heel and went out the exit. The
door as it shut seemed to breathe And she knows
how to make enemies.




  "Charming," Kira grumbled.
    The security man pushed toward her, with his
hand out. "Well, I am here to make friends. I'm
Lieutenant Commander Paul Eddington, Starfleet
Security."
    KJra took his hand and obviously battled for
civility. "Major Kira Nerys."
    "Lieutenant Jadzia Dax," Dax said as he turned
to her.
    O'Brien was still catching glimpses of that ship,
but stopped in time to add, "Chief Miles O'Brien."
    Bashir, though, was all hospitality as he caught
Eddington's hand and pumped it. "Dr. Julian
Bashir."
    Eddington smiled and nodded, then turned to
Odo and almost stuck his hand toward him, but
caught the chilly glare from that plastic face and
didn't insist.
    "Odo. Head of station security," Odo said, bris-
tling. "May I ask what your function is here,
Commander?"
    Eddington looked surprised. He glanced at Sisko,
realizing he had somehow compromised him.
    Watching Odo's displeasure deepen, Sisko
steeled to avoid what he least looked forward to
doing. Maybe he could put it off. "There's to be a
complete mission briefing at eighteen hundred
hours, but be prepared to depart the station at
oh-seven-hundred. Dismissed."
    Dax led the way out; Kira frowned, then fol-
lowed. O'Brien almost knocked the two women
down in his dive below to get at the guts of that

ship, and Bashir disappeared in the other direction
down the corridor with only one glance back, then
looked at Eddington, who was following him, also
glad to get out of there.
 The door closed with a breathy whup.
    Sisko looked wantingly after them, wishing he
could get out of this.
    Funny how much indignation could show
through that smooth, featureless face of Odo's.
Maybe it was all in the eyes.
    "You needn't brace yourself to give me unpleas-
ant news, Commander," Odo said. 'Tll save you
the trouble. I've been relieved as chief of security."
    He turned in studious unceremony and angled
out of the wardroom.
    That was Odo... no ceremony. Blunt. Yes, no,
up, down. No middle.
    Sisko hurried after him--and it was work to
catch up.
 "Odo--wait."
    Perhaps he accidentally slipped a tacit That's an
order into his voice, because Odo stopped.
    Sisko pulled up short. He'd been gearing for a
long run down the corridor.
    "You have not been relieved," he contradicted.
"You will continue to be in charge of internal
security aboard the station. On the Promenade,
your word is law. You answer to no one except me.
You're still in charge of all non-Starfleet security
matters aboard this station."
    "And what about off the Promenade? What
about matters that are Starfleet?"




 "In those areas, you'll have to coordinate your
 efforts with Lieutenant Commander Eddington."
    Only as he said it did Sisko realize the mistake
he'd made in flashing Eddington's full rank again
before Odo. It sounded so authoritarian--
    "'Coordinate' is another way of saying I'll report
to him," Odo interpreted coldly.
    Sisko lowered his voice. "I'm sorry, Odo. This
wasn't my idea."
    "I'm sure it wasn't. You're just... following
orders."
    Now Sisko raised his voice again, since lowering
it hadn't done a bit of good. "An idea I strongly
disagree with. I did everything I could to fight this. I
even took it to the chief of Starfleet Security
herselfi"
    "May I ask why so much effort was required to
keep me here?"
    Feeling like he'd been punched with that one--a
painfully good question--Sisko struggled, "There
was a concern... regarding several recent security
breaches."
    "If I had been given the authority I asked for,"
Odo bristled, "instead of being tied to Starfleet
regulations, there wouldn't have been any security
breaches."
    "Odo, your resistance to following Starfleet regu-
lations is part of the problem."
    "I think there might be a simpler explanation,
Commander. Starfleet decided to bring in someone
they could trust," Odo said bluntly. "Someone
besides 'the shapeshifter.'"

    "This isn't a racial issue, Odo," Sisko surfeited,
even though he knew his steady, dependable, long-
time and always alien officer had another good
point, like it or not. "I understand and I want you
to know--"
    "You needn't bother, Commander," Odo said.
No matter his stance or his expression, he couldn't
dispatch the insult or the regret from what he was
saying. "l don't require your understanding. My
resignation will be logged within the hour."

    "Constable! Constable, a moment of your time,
please! Odo, wait!"
    Quark had caught a glimpse of Odo skimming
past the bar entrance and almost tripped on a
spilled drink trying to get out there before the
constable reverted to his natural state and seeped
into a doorjamb or something.
    He called one more time, and Odo finally
stopped and turned, a bitter no-kidding look on
his--well, face.
    "What is it, Quark?" the shapeshifter drawled,
letting the Ferengi know that he was the last person
on Odo's list of guests for teatime right now.
    Quark pulled up quickly and kept a wide step
between himself and that expression.
"I just wanted to see if... it's true."
Brooding, Odo held himself stiff. "If that's your
way of asking if I've been relieved, then the answer
is yes. I'm sure that makes you very happy, so now
I'll stand here and patiently wait for you to finish
gloating."




     At Odo's "laugh if you want to" posture, Quark
 plowed through the shiver of guilt that would make
 Odo feel this way, admitting to himself that their
 relationship had gone beyond just that of a shady
 dealer and a beat cop.
     "I'm not here to gloat," he said. His lips weren't
 even twitching.
  "Then if you'll excuse me." Odo turned to go.
     Quark fell in step a little behind him. "What
 happened?" he persisted.
    "Starfleet has sent their own security officer. A
Lieutenant Commander Eddington. He'll be in
charge as of this afternoon."
    "A Starfleet officer?" Quark echoed. "But why?
How did this happen? What does Commander
Sisko say about this?"
    Odo stopped so sharply that Quark had to duck
the constable's shoulder as he spun around.
    "Why are you so concerned?" Odo said. "After
all, you'll have a brand-new security chief to deal
with. One that's not as familiar with you and your
venal ways. You should be celebrating, Quark.
Victory is yours."
    For a flash, Quark almost admitted that Odo was
right, but that for some reason he still didn't like
the idea of a change. He knew how much the job
meant to Odo, that it was everything to Odo--
purpose, anchorage, self-value--even the family
Odo had never found he had found here.
    Desperate that he might be found stumbling over
sentiment, and knowing Odo would recoil from
that, Quark forced a snarling grin and connived to
make Odo feel successful.

     "On the contrary," Quark attempted, "this up-
sets my entire operation." "How so?"
    "You were good," Quark offered, spinning the
yarn as he went. "You kept me on my lobes. You
made sure I didn't get lazy and careless. Beating
you made me better."
    He paused and waited. That wasn't bad. Hey--
maybe he could polish this and build it into a
technique. Adding a touch of underlying honesty
   not bad at all.
 He wished he could keep better control, though.
    Odo peered at him from inside the buffed mask
of human skin. "You never beat me," he said.
    The mood of banter the two could usually raise
wilted abruptly. Odo turned and strode off, cool as
open space.
    Quark gazed after him. Sadness washed the smug
light of success off his face.
 "If you say so," he murmured.

    Ben Sisko plunged into his own quarters with a
full cache of relief in both hands. Here was the only
place where he wasn't the commander of the sta-
tion, attendant of a planet, and guardian of a bridge
between quadrants.
 Here, he was just Dad.
 And custodian of an incredible mess.
    All around the quarters, suitcases were opened
and partially emptied, clothing that had been on its
way to drawers dumped over the arms of furniture
instead, and a shipping crate sitting untended in
the middle of the floor.




    And a boy, lanky as pampas grass, looking up at
him and guiltily cradling a bowl of spice pudding.
The spoon was still in his mouth.
Sisko frowned. "I thought you were unpacking."
Jake Sisko's eyes were big as the scoops of
pudding he'd been enjoying. "I am! I mean, I was.
But I just kept looking at the replicator and
thinking... and..."
    "And you just had to have some I'danian spice
pudding."
    "I still can't believe we couldn't find a decent
bowl of it back on Earth!"
    Glad to be dealing with something other than
that look of betrayal in Odo's eyes, Sisko smiled.
"That didn't stop you from ordering it from every
replicator you saw."
    He started unpacking, turning just enough to
give Jake the chance to heap another spoonful into
his mouth.
    The utilitarian duties of unpacking should've
been therapeutic, but instead they only reminded
him that he had never unpacked his own clothes
before his wife died. Jennifer had always done that.
She'd always liked it.
 He didn't like it so well.
 "So is it good to be home?" he asked his son.
    "Yeah," the teenager said quickly. "I can't wait
to sleep in my own bed again."
    Sisko stopped what he was doing, hovering there
with a handful of clothing. "I wonder when that
happened .... "
 Jake turned. "What?"

    Looking around the room in wonder and just a
touch of shock, Sisko flopped into a chair. "When
did it happen? When did I start thinking of this
Cardassian monstrosity as... home?"
    Jake smiled. "I think it happened last Thursday.
Around seventeen hundred hours." Pretending to
be suave and mysterious, the boy went to the big
crate and opened it. "When you took all this stuff
out of storage down on Earth."
    He reached inside and pulled out an intricately
carved wooden mask, and waggled it dramatically.
    Sisko bounded from his chair and caught the
mask. "Careful! That's a two-thousand-year-old
Yoruba mask. And that 'stuff' is one of the finest
collections of ancientre"
    "'--of ancient African art you'll ever see.' I
know," Jake said. "And I also know how much it
means to you. But to me, it was always the 'stuff' in
your library. At home. When you took it out of
storage so you could bring it here, it meant Earth
wasn't home anymore. This was."
    Sisko gazed at his son, and realized as if for the
first time that they were looking eye-to-eye at each
other. Jake was as tall as he was. Something deep
inside protested and wanted to rush into the other
room and invent a shrink-beam.
    But it wasn't just Jake's height that was grown-up
anymore. For a while, that had been all. Now there
was more.
    For one thing, the boy--the young man--didn't
look away or flinch at his father's direct glare.
  That was new too.




    Sisko broke the gaze and reached into the box.
His hand actually cooled as he reached in. The box
had sat a long time in storage.
    He pulled out a statue of a naked human form,
made of polished dark wood and elongated to
enhance the mythical. After some consideration, he
selected a spot in the room to display it... where
the soft lights would caress the hips and shoulders.
  "What do you think?" he asked.
    Jake stood back and surveyed the mask, charging
this item as the first confirmation of this floating
alien perch as their permanent lodging. Their
home.
 "Perfect," he said.

    The stars could be beautiful sometimes. To Kira,
they had always meant a measure of safety, or a
chance to escape, hide, or attack. She had only
come to see them as pretty in the past couple of
years, and only through the eyes of these humans
who came to help guard her planet from its age-old
enemies.
    The Earth people had poems about stars and the
night, songs about them, and they talked about
them to their lovers.
    It had taken some time to shake the underground
soldier out of herself enough to just look at the stars
for what they were, little winks of light set in a
distant matte, and not take them as a signal in the
deadly gloom.
    After peeking in the doors of two dozen possible
places to be alone on DS9, she found Odo at one of
the observation windows, staring out at those stars.

 What could they mean to him?
    She paused behind him for a few seconds, and
looked out there, then looked at the way he was
looking at them.
    There wasn't a clue in his posture--only the
stillness of it.
    "Odo, there you are," she said finally, pretending
to just walk up. And she knew he'd heard her
coming. "I've just finished talking to the provision-
al government. They want you to go with us to the
Gamma Quadrant tomorrow as an official Bajoran
representative."
    "I'm no diplomat," he snapped back, as though
closing a lid.
    She pulled up beside him and tried to relax her
shoulders, to act as if all this hadn't been so
contrived that it smelled of glue. "1 know. That's
why they want you to go. If we do find the Found-
ers, we'll need more than just diplomacy. We'll
need to size them up as a security risk... see what
kind of threat they really pose to Bajor. Analyze
their--"
    "You're the military expert, Major," he droned,
"not me. And I doubt that the provisional govern-
ment contacted you and asked for my presence in
any capacity on this mission." He paused. His tone
changed for the better, but not the less painful. "If
I'm not mistaken, this is simply a somewhat mis-
guided effort to... make me feel better."
    Feeling like either a bad liar or a miserable
actress, Kira dropped the pretense. "Maybe it is,"
she said. "Maybe I'm your friend. And maybe I
want you to see that you're still needed here,




regardless of what some idiot Starfleet admiral
might think. But I also want you on this mission
because I think we'll need you."
    His eyes moved inside that formless face, but he
didn't turn to her.
    Pushing the point, she went on. "Odo, we're
taking an untried ship into what may be a combat
situation. There's a Romulan officer aboard...
who knows what else is going to pop up in our
faces."
 He kept looking out the window. Said nothing.
    Kira waited, realizing that the ultimatum might
have been too much.
    He still wasn't talking. He hadn't jumped on the
idea of helping her, no matter how pathetic or
desperate she'd tried to sound. She hoped she
didn't sound too pathetic.
    But he wasn't saying he wouldn't go either, was
he?
    She backed away from him, moving just slightly
toward the exit, so he would know he wasn't going
to be pressured any more.
    "The Defiant leaves at seven hundred hours," she
said.
    When she left, he was still looking out the
window.

CHAPTER
       3

SISKO FOUND HIS OmCE a little too clean and a little
too cool after having been unoccupied for so long,
but was glad to be conducting business here and not
in some office at Starfleet Headquarters, where all
the advantages belonged to somebody else.
    Before him, twitching, puzzled, and nervous,
Quark was holding his hands down at the sides of
his chair and trying not to panic.
Sisko just waited it out and let his request sink it.
"I'm a little confused, Commander," Quark be-
gan, trying to frame his question cautiously. "You
want me to go with you to the Gamma Quadrant?
To help you find the Founders?"
    "See?" Sisko slapped his knee. "It's not so con-
fusing after all."
    Quark's brow ridge drooped and he stared at
Sisko as if wondering when the laughter was corn-




ing. "You... you're joking with me, aren't you?
Having a little fun with Quark?" He smiled and
tried to hedge the conversation with a nervous
laugh.
  "I'm quite serious."
    "You can't be!" The smile evaporated. "I'm not a
diplomat, or an explorer, or a tactical officer, or
whatever else you might need on this trip! Now, if
you need a caterer, I'll be happy to send a new
replicator that I just got from--"
    "Eight months ago, you helped the Nagus estab-
lish a trade agreement with the Karemma. Tula-
berry wine, I believe. The Karemma are part of the
Dominion."
  "A minor part--a very minor part."
    "They still may be able to help us contact the
Founders. Since you're experienced in dealing with
the Karemma, you seem like a logical person
to--"
    "Actually," Quark burped, "my brother Rom did
most of the talking. I think he would be better-
suited for this mission."
 "Not Rom," Sisko said evenly. "You."
    "But why? Rom only has a child to think about! I
have a business to run!"
    "You," Sisko repeated. He was determined to
hedge every bet he was making, no matter how
much whining he had to field.
    Quark stood up abruptly and edged toward the
door. "I'm sorry, Commander, but I must refuse.
My last experience with the Jem'Hadar was not a
pleasant one and I don't intend to repeat it. Now,
there's no way you can legally force me to--"

 A loud crack sounded through the office as force
met immutable objectma cane across Sisko's desk.
  It had the desired effect on Quark, who hit the
  office ceiling and the ceiling in the room above
  them. Shivering, he turned and saw that Sisko was
  cradling an ornate stick whose significance they
  both understood.
    "The scepter of the Grand Nagus!" Quark
gasped, still wincing from the sound.
    "I had a chance to discuss this mission with him
on my way back from Earth," Sisko calmly ex-
plained, with more than just a little bit of double
entendre slobbered into every key word. "He
seemed to agree with me that unless peaceful
contact is established with the Founders, business
opportunities in the Gamma Quadrant might sud-
denly dry up." He caressed the cane, but never took
his eyes off Quark. "He also agreed that you were
the perfect man to help me."
    "I don't believe it," Quark spat, his small body
quaking now.
    "Which... is why he sent this along," Sisko
continued. "He thought it might convince you of
the high value he places on the success of this
mission."
    He extended the cane, pointing the carved
Ferengi face on the pommel directly at Quark as if
the little nasty expression were looking fight at
him.
    "Now," he said, "are you going to defy the
wishes of the Grand Nagus himself?."
    Managing a pained excuse for a smile, Quark
stared into the batlike face on the end of the cane.




    Sisko held it as still as he could. He wanted those
little vicious wooden eyes boring right through
Quark's natural cowardice.
    "No," Quark said, shivering again. "No, of
course not... I'm... happy to serve the Nagus
... and you in any way I can."
    Withdrawing the cane but not putting it down,
Sisko said, "Thank you, Quark. I knew I could
count on you."
    Quark looked as if his legs had turned to putty as
he shuffled toward the exit.
    "Quark?" Sisko held the cane out again. "Aren't
you forgetting something?"
    Knowing Sisko was making the last twist, and
that he couldn't get out of his own nation's require-
ments, at least not in front of an audience, Quark
reluctantly moved back in and kissed the wooden
Ferengi head.

 "Benjamin, may I come in?"
    Sisko looked up from the Grand Nagus's cane.
How long had he been staring at it?
    "You didn't answer your door chime," Jadzia
Dax said as she willowed into his office and made
herself comfortable in the chair on the other side of
his desk, "so I just barged in."
    "I guess I wasn't paying attention," he said
sullenly.
    Her long lovely face and dark back-combed hair
pulled back and tied studiously were framed by the
mineral colors of the wall behind her. "You didn't
ask for my report in front of the others. I took that

as a signal that you didn't want anything spread
around yet."
    With a glance he thanked her and confirmed that
at the same time. "Complete evacuation is worked
out, then?" "Yes."
 "Who knows about it?"
    "No one, except the captain of the transport. I
made all the arrangements myselfi Even our shuttle
pilots don't know the purpose of their standbys.
The minute the Jem'Hadar poke their noses
through the wormhole, all children and nonessen-
tial station residents and personnel will be loaded
onto shuttles and runabouts and taken to a se-
cluded prearranged spot on the Bajoran arctic,
where there's a large warp-speed transport sitting
in readiness to remand them to Federation custody
on Camus II. It's all set up, but it's very unofficial at
the moment."
    "How did you do that without telling anybody?"
he asked.
    Lifting one shoulder in a docile shrug, she con-
densed, "I programmed computer recognition sig-
nals to process in a domino effect. The right people
will be notified step by step, but not ahead of time.
There's a certain risk--"
    "But I'll take it." Sisko dismissed the subject
with a shrug of his own, then found himself think-
ing about it anyway. "If the Jem'Hadar get a whiff
of an evacuation plan, they'll take it as a sign of
weakness and an invitation to attack."
    She nodded. "You might like to know that the
Defiant will be ready at oh-seven-hundred hours."




 "Did it pass the chief's inspection?"
    "Does anything? He has a maintenance list about
as long as this table, but he said it'll get us where
we're going."
 "And back, I hope."
 "He said that was up to you."
    Sisko smiled, and sat on the edge of the desk. The
smile faded.
    "I'd never have volunteered for this mission
unless I thought we had a chance of coming back,"
he thought aloud.
    "You volunteered," Dax harassed. "How many
times did Curzon tell you never to volunteer for
anything?"
 Sisko gazed at her, lost for a moment.
    God, she looked young! How old was the life-
force inside her--three hundred?
    Every time he turned around he still expected to
see the old man he'd been used to, the codger who'd
gone through Sisko's professional life with him.
The oldest friend he had.
    A three-hundred-year-old entity, there in the
body of a twenty-seven-year-old beauty.
    She had always said she was still Curzon Dax
inside, but he couldn't quite buy that. Something of
Curzon was gone and something of Jadzia was
here, and tolerance notwithstanding it just wasn't
normal for people to swap bodies.
    "As I recall," he said, "Curzon broke that rule a
few times himselfi"
 "And regretted it every time."
 "This is different. I'd end up regretting it more if

we just sat around here and waited for an inva-
sion."
    Dax moved around the desk. "If I know Starfleet,
they must've run about two hundred probability
studies on this mission of ours. What are the odds
we succeed?"
    "Slim. But better than the odds of fighting off a
Jem'Hadar assault on the station." He slid off the
desk and paced. "And if the station falls... Bajor
falls. And I will not let that happen."
    Dax watched him for several seconds, giving him
no hints about what she was thinking, or remem-
bering. She let him sweat for a long time, until he
was stirred with curiosity and ready to beg her to
say what she had in mind.
    "You know," she said, obviously anticipating
him, "after Jennifer died, I never thought I'd see
you so passionate about something."
    "Until two months ago, I would've agreed with
you. Then I went back to Earth and I spent all those
weeks being debriefed at Starfleet Head-
quarters... I used to get a thrill just walking into
that building. I used to look around at the ad-
mirals and think, One day that's going to be me.
One day I'm going to be the one making the big
decisions."
    "Curzon used to think that was very funny," she
said.
  He frowned at her. "Did he?"
    "What I mean is, he could never see a set of
admiral's stars on your shoulder. He thought that
just making decisions would never satisfy you. You




had to implement them. See the results. Face the
consequences. Curzon always thought you were the
kind of man who has to be in the thick of things...
not sitting behind a desk at headquarters."
    Sisko gave in to a reserved grin, baffled at the way
she talked about her previous "self" as if he were a
deceased uncle. They both knew it wasn't exactly
that way.
 "He was a very smart old man, wasn't he?"
 She tilted her head. "He liked to think so."
 "You'd better get some sleep," he said.
    "I was about to say the same thing to you. See
you in the morning, Benjamin."
    "Yes... I guess there's nothing more to do than
get one last good night's sleep before we take that
ship out," he said. "We'll be operating with a
skeleton crew. We won't get much rest."
    "That's all right. The Defiant certainly is encour-
aging to the crew," she offered, trying to pass the
encouragement along to him. "Kira and O'Brien
have been crawling around aboard her half the
night. It's giving fuel to the gossip."  Sisko looked up. "What gossip?"
    Her black eyelashes cast shadows on her cheeks
as she batted them with silly drama. "The two of
them have been spending a lot of time in Quark's
holosuites while you've been gone."
    "The two of them?" Sisko sputtered. "Kira and
O'Brien?"
  "Almost every day."
    "That's... outlandish! O'Brien's the most mar-
ried man I--"
  Halfway through the phrase he caught the sparkle

 in her eyes and knew he was being had. The
 holosuites.
  "Oh... Kira. Battle simulations. Right?"
    Dax grinned a nasty satisfaction that didn't go
with the Helen of Troy image. "Well, the gossip's
fun anyway."
    Uncomforted, Sisko dropped back into his chair
and let it rock.
  "Kira doesn't trust me," he sadly proclaimed.
    Dax shook her head and blasted him with a harsh
expression. "Benjamin!"
    "She doesn't think I'll put Bajor far enough
forward in my defense plans. She's my second-in-
command, but she sees herself as the first defender
of her home planet. She's looking for ways to
protect the planet herself if she has to. Let's face
it--that's why she's cooperating with Starfleet in
the first place."
  "I honestly don't think that's true at all."
    "I do," he said. "It's what I would do." When she
didn't say anything, he sighed and kept pulling the
same string. "How will everyone on Bajor react
when they find out about an evacuation plan?
They'll see Federation betrayal before their very
eyes. We'll be emptying Deep Space Nine, Federa-
tion personnel pouring out of the sector, and the
people on Bajor will be left behind. If it comes
down to that, I'll have to do that no matter how I
feel about it. Is that the kind of membership we've
been promising these people? We can't evacuate a
whole planet, can we?"
 Again Dax didn't say anything.
 "As of today," Sisko went on, "there's a good




chance that Jake will be evacuated to Bajor, then
moved to safety, and all the Bajoran children still
planetside will be sitting ducks."
    "Possibly," Dax warranted, "but how would
Jake's death on a bombed-out station help them?
You have to give yourself an inch, Benjamin."
    Sisko knew he sounded as if he were feeling sorry
for himself, and he would be forever grateful that
she didn't point that out.
    "What kind of father am I?" he said. "I wanted
to run away after Jennifer died, but I knew I had to
raise my son. So I ran halfway away... to Deep
Space Nine. And now look what I've given him."
    She didn't seem moved by that. "Pioneers have
been taking children with them for thousands of
years. Safety isn't the reason to live life. We take it
when we can get it, but we should never give up too
much for it. After all, if the Jem'Hadar are success-
ful, do you think he'll be that much safer on
Earth?"
    Sisko leered at her and allowed himself a
whipped smile. "I could always count on you for
the brutal truth. And why does that terrible image
make me feel better?"
    Dax nodded a silent and sarcastic you're-
welcome, teasing him with her underlying com-
plexity.
    "I hear you've asked Quark to come along on the
Defiant mission," she said, trying to crank the
conversation in another direction.
    A bitter chuckle jumped in his chest. "I didn't
'ask' him. I scared him." He tapped the cane
against his palm.

 Dax looked as if she just couldn't get the reaction
 she wanted today.
     "It couldn't have been that bad," she said.
 "Quark's not that hard to scare."
     "He really didn't want to go." Sisko leaned back
 and his chair reclined accommodatingly. "You
 know, I was this close to letting him off the hook. If
 he'd resisted another two seconds, I'd have let him
 off. If he'd known how close I was, he'd have
 pressed for his rights to stay." He shook the cane in
 the air between them. "I distracted him."
    She didn't exactly smile, but it was under there.
"Did you take a self-pity seminar while you were
gone?"
    "You know why. It's one thing to ask Starfleet
personnel to put their lives on the line. It's some-
thing else to ask a civilian resident of the station.
Quark didn't want to go. He can't be forced by law.
He doesn't have to go. I made him go. You
should've seen it--it was plain coercion. If this
works out, I swear I'll stand on the Grand Nagus if I
have to, to get Quark what he wants from the
Gamma Quadrant."
    He fell to uneasy silence, still swiveling in his
chair as though he were blowing in the wind.
    Dax kept looking at him with that little pucker of
a smile.
    He sighed and picked at a fingernail. "I feel like a
puppy who just missed the boat."
    Dax's smile broke as she laughed at him. "No
mixing metaphors on duty. So far this mission is
successful. You brought us a starship, you got
Starfleet Security to assign us a team--"




    "That wasn't what I wanted!" He flared his
hands in frustration. "Not the way they gave it to
me. What am I going to do about Odo? ! don't want
him to quit. He understands this station--"
    "But he doesn't understand that you understated
your confrontation with Starfleet, I'll bet," Dax
said.
    Again, she had him. He glowered at her. "What is
it with those people? I think I was speaking English
ú.. the more I asked for additional security, the
more they interpreted it as if the security that's
already here isn't good enough. They didn't seem to
be hearing the ends of any of my sentences. Those
pointy-headed desk jockeys have no idea how much
trouble can occur on a station this far out, or how
well Odo has managed to deflect most of it. And I
can't even tell him how hard I fought for him."
     "No, you can't," she confirmedú "It would only
 substantiate what he already thinks... that
 Starfleet would rather he weren't around."
     "Yes, well," he grumbled, "after some of the
 language I used, they're going to take back the
 'gentleman' part of my 'officer and a gentleman'
 title."
     Stiffly, he pulled the chair around and got up,
 gnashing his way about the office to burn off some
 of this aggravation.
     Dax sat solemn as a nun and watched him go
 back and forth.
     Finally she said, "Benjamin, will you tell me
 what happened at Starfleet Headquarters or am I
 going to have to hire a psychic?"
  "I just told you."

    "You told me about Quark and Odo and Jake
and Bajor. That's not what's really at the bottom of
this mood."
    She shifted her shoulders against the chair,
crossed her ankles, and settled back as if she
intended not to leave until she pried this rock off
him.
    Sisko swashed back and forth before the office
viewing monitors, each of which showed a different
part of the station--the Promenade, the airlock
corridors, the habitat ring--and people moving
about casually on each, occasionally somebody
running to meet a schedule.
    "What went on at headquarters," he echoed.
"Arguments, that's what. Some people wanted to
commit half the Fleet to guarding the wormhole.
That's what 1 wanted. The Jem'Hadar might pack a
punch, but there's only one bridge to come across.
The massed power of Starfleet is hard to bet against
when they can concentrate on one spot and not a
whole frontier."
    "I completely agree," she said. "How can anyone
disagree?"
    "Oh!" He shook his head and choked out a bitter
noise. "There are plenty of head-in-the-sand types
ú.. don't build up, don't provoke, don't interfere,
keep to ourselves and the Jem'Hadar will go
away.. "
    Dax clasped her hands and settled deeper into
the chair. "The Jem'Hadar aren't going to go
away."
    "I know that. One of the Bajoran delegates even
suggested blowing up the wormhole."




 "Sacrificing Bajor's economic future?"
    "Better than no future at all," Sisko chafed. "I
couldn't blame him. They acted as if both he and I
were crazy... overreacting."
    He turned toward her with an entreating hand
extended, and got another one of those little
shocks. For an instant he had been talking to
Curzon--the same vocal inflections, the same log-
ic, the same manner of egging him on through his
thoughts.
    And there was Jadzia Dax looking back at him,
gorgeous, settled, placid--what was a normal,
healthy human male supposed to do when his
oldest pal suddenly changed into an incredibly
beautiful female?
    She saw the look and her mouth turned up into
the Cupid's bow again. "I'd tell you if I thought you
were overreacting, Benjamin."
    He looked away from her. He didn't feel like
being patronized, or even tolerated.
    Evidently she saw that. He could tell, because her
tone changed and so did her method.
     "Benjamin," she said assuringly, "in my experi-
 ence, you're the one who's right. The Founders
 know how this game will be played. Even as far
 away as the Gamma Quadrant, some basic tactics
 will always serve. The Federation is expected to
 send its best fighting machine and its best people.
 The Jem'Hadar can either back down and be
 impressed, talk, or not. If not, then--"
     "Then the ship must stand up to them." Sisko
 knotted his palms and butted the knuckles togeth-
 er. "We dare not lose. This can't be a repeat of the

incident with the Starship Odyssey. Two minutes,
and whoosh. Gone. If they come in and wipe the
floor with us again, it's an open invitation to
invade. We'll be saying, 'Here's our best, come on
in, the rest is yours for the taking.'"
    She nodded, then tipped her head thoughtfully.
"If the strength of the Federation remains a mys-
tery, they may not invade."
    "But this will end the mystery," he said. "Our
best ship. If we fail, the chance of invasion goes way
up. Damned if we do and damned if we don't. Key
word... damned."
    Dax watched him, but this time said nothing.
Sisko realized she was walking the fine line between
confidant and officer, and anything she said might
be misinterpreted as strategical advice.
    She was doing him the favor of sitting and
listening while he talked himself into what he had
to do.
    "l have to go along with the Starfleet plan," he
continued, "but it's not enough. It's all they would
let me do. In an explosive situation, I'm being
allowed to throw a match and see what happens.
One ship was all they would give me, so I took it."
  She didn't say anything.
    He might as well have been talking to himself.
She wasn't about to argue with him, and he knew
she would if there was a reason to.
 Sometimes it was rotten to be right.
    A terrible guilt plied him suddenly. He turned his
back on the wall and dropped against it, staring at
the carpet.
 "I should be thinking about Bajor, but I keep




thinking of Earth. The seat of the Federation, the
place where I was born and raised, a wonderful
placemwonderful!... What would Earth be like if
the Jem'Hadar get through? And the colonies? The
Rigel system? And all the populated Federation
planets that have enjoyed freedom for so long--
gone? You don't think they'll stop with Bajor, do
you?"
  "No, I don't," she agreed. "No one does."
    "No one, but I still failed to convince the Federa-
tion how dangerous this is, and now I'm going to
take one ship and make sure it's really dangerous.
But... I don't know what else to do." He settled
back in his chair again, not as relaxed as his posture
implied. "What if we're simply overmatched this
time, Dax?"
    She paused at the blunt possibility. "I don't
know," she said. "Can we even imagine the whole
Federation turned into an occupation?"
    "Why don't you say it straight out?" he incited,
glaring at her. "A slave camp! Life never the same
again. Never the same. Freedom over with. All
because Ben Sisko failed to convince Starfleet to
defend one little hole in space. Life would never be
the same for anyone, and my son will have to live
with knowing that it was his father's fault."
  "Benjamin, you're carrying this too far."
    "No, I'm not. Earth enslaved," he simmered.
"You're right--I can't imagine it... but the
Bajorans can. They're sitting on the line of scrim-
mage and I'm preoccupied with my own roots. I
thought I was better than that."
  "Benjamin, that's enough." She glowered expert-

ly at him, and when he started to speak again she
put out one hand, sharply, without a flinch. "No--
enough. If you keep up this kind of talk, I'm not
going to let you go on any more outings. I'll make
you stay in your room and write a hundred times
on the mirror, 'I will never again talk to Starfleet on
an empty stomach.'"
    Cut off in the middle of a thought, Sisko tried to
keep up the self-scolding, but all at once felt a smile
coming on. He tried to beat it down, but couldn't,
not with her gazing at him down her nose and
waiting with that hand still between them.
    She'd done it. She'd broken his quarrel with
himself.
    His eyelids sagged dramatically as he peered at
her sideways. "I'd like to see you try, skinny."
    Dax marked the end of this solemn session by
standing up and wandering pliantly around his
office, running her finger along the edge of his desk,
and finally facing him when she was within a few
steps of the door.
    "I think you're doing the best thing," she said
amenably. "At least you have the nerve to put your
hand in the fire. Since humans came out into space,
you've always preached the wisdom of freedom and
free association and it's always worked. No one has
ever conquered the Federation and the Federation
has continually expanded for over two centuries
without ever having to conquer anyone else. It's
unheard of in the neighboring empires. The Federa-
tion has never had to raise a weapon to force a
member to join. You've just held out your hand and
said, 'Join if you like.' That's what you feel you


have to defend. That's what's working inside you,
not whether you've said the right things to Odo or
Quark or Kira or Starfleet, so don't worry about us.
And the Jem'Hadar, and even the Founders, will
find out in their own time what the rest of us
already know."

CHAPTER
       4

THE BRIDGE OF THE Defiant was a typical stripped-
down battle bridge, like any on modem starships,
but with a roughness about it. Sisko strolled around
it in the early hours of momingamoming in
space... only a relative idea. But everything,
everywhere, had to run on a schedule, and even if
they called the parts of the day "red," "blue," and
"yellow," they would still be morning, noon, and
night. Slang could come and go, but natural con-
cepts were usually just plain sensible.
    The chairs here weren't very comfortable. He got
the feeling they'd been designed that way--so
nobody would ever fall asleep on the job. It wasn't
that kind of starship. There was no decoration at
all, other than painted colors to designate access
panels.
 Some panels were missing altogether, showing




bare conduits. That's how fast the project had been
abandoned.
    I wouldn't have abandoned it, Sisko thought.
Where one Borg came, others couM come.
    The Borg had cost him worse than his life. They
had cost him his wife. And if he lived on, he
demanded a purpose to that life. To make sure that
other cultures, other peoples' wives and families,
weren't overwhelmed the way his had been.
Starfleet had made a mistake dropping its plans for
heavy defense just because the surface of a threat
had been smoothed.
     Now the halfheartedly tossed ball was here, in his
 hands. He wouldn't drop it.
     There was no doubt that the ship's primary
 mission was armed, active, strong defense. There
 was nothing here devoted to anything else, and the
 bridge replicator offered only water, hot or cold.
 Dual consoles for Tactical and Weapons were
 manned at the moment by O'Brien and Kira, each
 quietly feeling their way across the unfamiliar
 panels.
     T'Rul was fine-tuning the aft engineering station,
 from time to time bumping into O'Brien and
 uneasily moving away. A couple other workers and
 officers puttered around, making last-minute
 checks. Julian Bashir entered from the turbolift,
 nodded and smiled at Sisko, then enjoyed a long
 look around.
     Sisko felt comfortable other than for T'Rul, the
 only stranger, and not exactly a passive stranger.
 He wanted to be left alone, but felt better than he

 expected to when Bashir dropped to his side on the
 command deck.
    "The medical database is practically nonexis-
tent," the doctor told him. "I'm downloading as
many of my files from the station as I can, but this
ship simply wasn't designed to handle many casual-
ties."
    They both knew what that meant--the ship
wasn't meant to deal with the survival of its own
crew. It expected them either to live or die. Nothing
in the middle.
    "Do the best you can," Sisko told him. "And let's
hope your new database won't be put to the test."
    Bashit didn't seem encouraged, but offered a
stout nod and left Sisko alone before either was
driven to say anything more in that same tone of
voice.
    On the upper deck, Dax entered from the corri-
dor through the rather cranky door.
    "Quark is settling into his quarters," she re-
ported. "He asked me to relay his 'profound disap-
pointment in the accommodations aboard this
vessel' and to inform you that he could put you in
touch with several reputable interior decorators for
a very modest fee."
    Mustering a grin for Bashir's sake, because he
knew the doctor was trying to ease the moment,
Sisko tried not to sound blunt. "I'11 take his offer
under advisement." He raised his voice to every-
one. "Stand by to get under way."
    The tenor of the bridge changed--subtly, but it
did change.




    O'Brien twisted around without taking his hands
off the console he was tuning up. "Tactical and
Communications ready."
    "Navigation and Operations ready, sir," Dax
said.
"Weapons ready," Kira sharply added.
"Impulse engines on-line," the Romulan woman
said from aft. "Warp power available at your com-
mand."
    Sisko nodded. "Very well," he said. "Seal the
airlock. Release docking clamps. Aft thrusters
atw"
    "Just a moment, sir!" O'Brien called. "There's
someone at the airlock."
    "Visual," Sisko ordered, angry that something
had shattered the near-perfect exit he'd been plan-
ning and hoping for. He wanted everything to go
just right. He wanted people to talk for days, maybe
months, about the beautiful and flawless launch of
the daring Defiant and how the ship ventured
through the wormhole, testimonial to the Federa-
tion's honor.
  Already something had fouled.
     The main monitor swarmed to life, a little slug-
 gishly.
     There was Odo, standing outside the airlock,
 carrying the bucket he used as a resting place when
 he wasn't inwwell, any form at all. It looked
 pitiful, him standing there with his sad idea of
 luggage, and Sisko's anger evaporated.
   "Odo... is there a problem?"
  Uneasily, standing within embarrassing proximi-

ty to the two Starfleet guards Commander Edding-
ton had placed at the airlock, Odo plunged in with,
"No, Commander. I would like permission to come
aboard." He paused, then said, "I'm here at the
request of the Bajoran government."
    Touched and pleased, Sisko looked up at Kira
warmly. "Permission granted. And welcome
aboard."
  "Thank you, sir."
    The screen dissolved, and Sisko anticipated the
next hours, during which Odo would have to live on
an unfamiliar ship, broaching the gazes of almost
everybody he worked with and a few he didn't.
    Sisko tipped his head toward the helm. "Dax,
can you arrange quarters for the constable?"
    "I'll do it, sir." Typically, Julian Bashir charged
forward to mend the moment, burying the difficul-
ty of that duty in a merry tone. "I need to go down
to what is laughingly called sickbay. We're a little
tight on space, sir, but I'm sure I can find some-
thing."
 "Thank you, Doctor."
    "Odo's on board, sir," O'Brien said. "The
airlock's been cleared."
    Sisko nodded at Dax. "Release docking clamps.
Aft thrusters one quarter. Port and starboard at
station keeping." "Aye, sir."
    The little ox of a starship hummed to life, braced
for speed, and pulled away from the station dock-
ing pylon with its chin butted out and its sturdy
shoulders leaning into the yoke.




    Sisko couldn't help having a sad affection for the
ship. Built for a purpose, then abandoned before it
had a chance to do its part. Maybe he was empa-
thizing too much with a hunk of tempered metal,
but he understood too well what it was like to lose
direction in life and have to stumble for a while.
Could it be that the two of them had found
direction together?
    He had begged, harassed, demanded that
Starfleet send ships of the line to come out here and
defend his station, the wormhole, and that planet
of refugees as they put their lives back together
after throwing off the Cardassian grip. He'd
pounded every desk and door from San Francisco
to deep space, insisting that they couldn't afford to
have a power vacuum here.
    Nothing. They'd adopted too much of a no-blow-
until-blows-are-struck attitude. They'd forgotten
that attitudes themselves could be punitive. Com-
bustion could go on below the surface. When the
explosion came, it could be too late.
    That's what had happened with the Borg. The
Federation had stared like a deer in a bright light
for far too long. His wife's life and thousands of
others had been the price.
    He shook his head, thinking inwardly of what a
terrible person he was. That idea of thousands of
lives--many of whom he had known... he hadn't
been able to digest that back then. His mind had
been on the few lives in his immediate perimeter.
He had left Jennifer lying there dead. Other lives
were at stake. His son, the people aboard the escape

 craft who were holding their launch for him... his
 own.
     Since then, even raising his son had been bitter-
 sweet. Taking command of Deep Space Nine--he'd
 almost had to be forced to do it. He didn't want to
 go anywhere, do anything. Suddenly he'd found
 himself proprietor of a really big hotel and its
 lobby.
     When had the turning point come? When had
 been the moment when he realized he had another
 million lives on his hands? Command of a critical
 point in space, control of a bridge to forever, and
 attendant of a section of the galaxy.  Not exactly a hotel.
    And whether the Federation liked it or not, they
were going to pay attention to what he thought was
best out here.
    He moved his hands on the arms of the com-
mand chair, felt the staunch fighting ship under
him.
    There had been other Defiants in history, just as
there were long lines of Enterprises and Hoods and
Constitutions. There had been other power-packed
ships--the frigates of a hundred years ago, when
the Klingons were a blooming threat and the
Romulans a sorcery in the darkness.
    Now this one stout, unfinished ship would go out
under his hand and be stalwart as best it could.
    He'd never commanded a ship before. This ship
had never been under command before. So it was
just the two of them, finding things out together.
  At the helm, Dax turned to look at him for no




reason. Was he being too silent, too long? Or was
she just sensing what he was thinking? Some people
could do that.
    She was scolding him with those flameproof eyes.
She knew he was preoccupied.
    Almost immediately she had to turn back to the
helm to complete leaving station perimeters, but
Sisko knew she'd seen the unsureness in his face.
Oh, well, if his oldest friends couldn't be let in on
his feelings, who could be?
    "We've cleared the station," Dax said, keeping
her tone level, even though it had a tinge of "wake
up" in it.
     "Lay in a course to the wormhole," Sisko said,
 letting her know with his inflections that he got the
 message and she was right. He turned to T'Rul and
 said, "I want to cloak as soon as we reach the
 Gamma Quadrant."
     The Romulan woman had more expression in
 her face than he was used to from somebody who
 looked so much like a Vulcan. "Understood" was
 all she said.
  "Course laid in, sir," Dax informed.
  Sisko turned forward again. "Engage."
     The Defiant sailed placidly toward the clear plot
 in space where the wormhole was hiding--and as
 the ship approached, the wormhole sensed it and
 bloomed to life, a great twisting golden vortex of
 energy, constantly beckoning, Come to me and see
 if you live.
     That was always the excitement, Sisko realized as
 his gut tightened. Every time he sent somebody
 through that thing, he suppressed the underlying

awe of it. Why had its inhabitants chosen to make
this wormhole stable? Would they change their
minds in a few years? Would some ship be going
through it when someday they decided to shut it
down? Nature wasn't this cooperative. Tornadoes
and cyclones and wormholes weren't meant to be
"stable." Every time they went through the worm-
hole they were making a bet that they'd make it
through, then another bet that it wouldn't take
sixty-seven years to get home again.
    Energy crackled and spun on the main screen as
though they were going down a gigantic throat. A
few minutes later, and they flew out into open
space--impossibly far from DS9 or Federation
territory. The miracle of the wormhole made the
miracle of warp speed negligible.
    A wave of dizziness made Sisko realize he was
holding his breath. He forced himself to inhale
deeply and the dizziness went away, but left his
chest aching.
    He parted his lips to give an order, but never got
to it. The bridge lighting dropped away. Everything
white or yellow disappeared. A curtain of eerie
bloodred washed over every panel, every face,
giving the bridge a mood of the submarine.
    "The cloaking device is operating within normal
parameters," T'Rul reported.
    Sisko glanced around. So this was what a cloaked
ship looked like from the inside. "Set course for the
Karemma system, warp seven. Engage."
    At her console near O'Brien, Kira felt the first
real surge of enthusiasm she'd felt in months. A real
weapon, finally--a real signal that Starfleet would




stick its neck out and strike in favor of the Bajorans
they had promised to protect and assist.
    The Bajorans needed all the help they could get,
but they needed powerful help. So far, since throw-
ing off the Cardassian oppression, they'd been
collecting enemies faster than they'd been gather-
ing friends. Starfleet regarded them as an after-
thought, trying a little too hard to "respect" their
sovereignty and independence, and along with
Starfleet came the allied Klingons, the greedy
Ferengi, the dubious Romulans... and now, on
the other side of the wormhole, which was tra-
versed like a street crossing by Starfleet's shuttles
and runabouts--the Jem'Hadar. And the whole
Dominion--and now maybe these "Founders,"
too.
    "Triple-redundant interlocking phaser arrays,"
she murmured to the engineer, "multiphasic shield
generators... quantum torpedoes... there's a lot
of firepower crammed into this little bucket."
    "Too much, if you ask me," O'Brien murmured
back.
    "It's my experience that there's no such thing as
too much firepower, Chief."
    "But all the power is reserved for the defense
systems," he said. "The long-range sensors are a
joke, the transporter's barely functioning, the com-
munications system doesn't deserve the name--"
    "She's fast, she's maneuverable, and she packs a
hell of a punch." Kira ran her hand along the rough
panel. "That's all I ask from a fighting ship."
     O'Brien shrugged. "I think I prefer a little more
 flexibility in my ships, that's all."

    "Like the Odyssey?" she reminded. "That was a
Galaxy-class starship, Chief. One of the most versa-
tile ships ever built. And the Jem'Hadar made short
work of it. No, I'd take this ship over a more well
rounded starship any day. If the Jem'Hadar want to
tangle with us again, I want them to know we have
teeth this time."

    Quark sat on the lower bunk of a small, cramped,
impolite berthing arrangement that was too tight
even for him, and he wasn't very big. With the
crack of the Grand Nagus's cane and Sisko's under-
lying ferocity still drumming in his ears, he was
content to sit here alone and not wander this...
vehicle.
    They'd probably put him to work or something if
he showed his face.
    Over there was a tiny desk, a replicator--which
didn't work. The walls were dark and depressing.
The berth was claustrophobic. Probably on
purpose... these fighting types weren't concerned
about crew comforts. The whole idea was for the
crew to want to get out of their quarters and stand
their posts.
    No problem there. Who'd want to sit in here
without a good reason?
    Voices--someone was coming! Kira? Was she
coming to give him some kind of work to do?
    Scrubbing the decks, probably. He didn't have
any technical knowledge, not on a ship like this.
Galley duty. If the replicatops didn't workI
    "Is this the best you can do?" a muffled voice
asked. Not Kira.




 "I'm afraid so, Constable. Space is--"
    "I'11 thank you not to use that term when ad-
dressing me anymore, Doctor. It no longer ap-
plies."
    The hastily hung door rattled, then slid open.
Quark held still. Odo and Bashir were standing
there, Odo holding his bucket and Bashir looking
apologetic.
    "Yes, well," the doctor was saying. "I'm sorry,
Odo. Most of the crew quarters don't even have life
support. Besides, I think we'd all feel better with
someone here to watch over Quark."
    Odo frowned and peered into the dim room, and
inevitably saw Quark sitting there on the mistake of
a bunk.
  "Odo!" Quark exclaimed.
    He pushed himself off the bunk and moved
toward the two of them.
  That was enough to make Bashir back off.
    "I'11 leave you two bunkmates to get comfort-
able," Bashir said.
    As Odo glared after him, the doctor made a quick
exit down the corridor.
     "Am I glad to see you!" Quark said, running his
 words together. "I've been stuck down here in this
 miserable hole since I came aboard! Bunk beds, no
 view, and I won't even tell you what came out of
 that replicator when I asked for synthehol!"
     He followed Odo back into the berth, where Odo
 put his bucket down in a corner and tried to get
 comfortable on the one pitiful little chair.
  Quark thought about making a crack that Odo

shouldn't be so miserable--after all, he could
become a chair if he wanted to--but that comment
probably wasn't a wise idea. Scrambling for a better
idea, or even a mediocre idea, Quark realized that
Odo was sitting with his back turned, completely
ignoring him.
    "So," Quark attempted, "what's your role in this
little adventure? Providing security, no doubt ....
Well, of course you are. I mean, why else would you
be here? You're here to watch over us. Protect us
from the Jem'Hadar. I can tell you I feel much safer
now, just knowing that you're along, because I
know you can be trusted tom"
    "I've held this shape," Odo burst in flatly, "for
sixteen hours. I have to revert to my liquid state,
but I don't want you to watch... and gawk at
me."
    "I completely understand!" Quark held both
hands out in a complacent offer. "This is a very
private moment, and I won't interfere." He turned
around, doing everything he could in these tight
quarters to avoid moving his head. He didn't really
believe that Odo was stripped of his rank or fired or
quit or whatever had gone on back home, but
pampering Odo at a bad time certainly couldn't do
any harm. And something told him that there
wasn't yet an end to Odo's influence over the bar
and every little transaction within it.
    "This won't be so bad," he went on, careful not
to turn. "Sharing quarters, that is. We might even
find that we--"
 "I have no interest in speaking to you, or in




listening to your witless prattle. So shut your
mouth and stay out of my way, or you'll regret the
day you ever met me."
    Too late. Chills racked Quark's spine at the
gravelly words and he winced as though someone
had slapped him across the face.
    It was an effort to remember not to turn. Silence
sank around them.
    He ticked off a few long seconds, sighed a few
times, ticked a few more seconds, then cautiously
crawled back to his bunk.
    One guarded glance at the bucket caught the last
bit of Odo in his mercury-like liquid state slurping
over the rim.
  What else could go wrong?

    "Commander, long-range scanners are picking
up two Jem'Hadar warships directly ahead."
    O'Brien was keeping control of his voice, but a
quiver of excitement came through the steady
report.
    Sisko looked up, first at the engineer and then at
the forward screens.
     The engineer was still peering into his readouts.
"They're heading this way at... warp five."
  "How close will they pass us?"
  "Three hundred thousand kilometers."
    Kira turned, and she wasn't making any pre-
tenses about whether she was excited or not.
"That's well within range of their weapons, Com-
mander."
    Dax fingered the helm control. "Should I alter
course?"

    Sisko knew what she was thinking, what they
were all thinking. Should they pounce before they
were pounced upon? Make a show of power as well
as stealth?
    "No," he decided. "We need to know if they can
see through the cloaking device and this is as good a
time as any. Maintain course and speed. Red
Alert."
    He glanced at Kira, then looked forward again at
the jewel-studded velvet of space before them, no
longer empty.
 "Stand by weapons and shields .... "




CHAPTER
       5

JEM'HADAR. The new swearword. Aliens who had
declared themselves enemies of the Federation they
had barely met, enjoyed being so, fired without
being fired upon, shot to kill at first sight, and had
no intention of changing their minds.
    Might as well try to negotiate with a cobra. Sisko
drew a measured breath.
      "Here they come. They'll pass in five seconds,"
O'Brien said quietly, also measuring.
  "Onscreen."
    The ships moved toward them, drifting in an
illusion of passive slowness that was in reality high
speed, in some kind of formation that changed
every few seconds.
    Sisko didn't bother to analyze the ships' relation
to each other. He didn't care.
  If the Jem'Hadar knew about cloaking devices,

or understood lateral lines held by what appeared
to be natural anomalies--then it was all over. The
fight would happen here and now.
    If the cloak was working, that was its own kind of
mandate. If the Jem'Hadar couldn't detect them
under cloak, then the message was a simple one--
how could the Dominion fight an invisible foe? A
starship could disappear in the middle of a pursuit,
or waltz through the enemy lines right up to their
back door and demand negotiations.
    Puffed up with possibilities, Sisko gripped the
command chair and willed the cloak to work. He
looked at T'Rul. She was fixed on her instruments,
not moving a muscle, appearing against the syrupy
Red Alert haze more like a painting of a Romulan
than a living one, an image caught in the mind of
one of those artists who paint exciting scenes of key
points in history.
    What was she thinking? Was she aware that the
Romulans and the Jem'Hadar together, with the
cloaking device in their hands, might defeat the
Federation? If this succeeded, T'Rul would know
that Romulan stock would go up in the galaxy. And
the Romulans knew the Federation would never
band with them to conquer anybody.
    Oh, hell, where did that line of thought come
from?
    He gripped the chair tighter and banished the
creeping suspicion.
 Worry later. Succeed now.
    The bridge throbbed with the heartbeats of all
present. No one moved, not a flinch.




    "Are they altering course?" Sisko cracked the
silence.
    "No, sir," O'Brien said. "They're continuing on
their way. I don't think they saw us."
    The relief in the chief's voice was restrained, but
it was there.
    Sisko let out his own breath, partly for himself
and partly as a signal for his crew to start their own
respiratory systems going again. If he was stupid
enough to relax with Jem'Hadar ships just over his
shoulder, then they might as well be too.
  "Track them."
    "They're continuing along their original head-
ing," O'Brien said, complying. "No indication that
they saw us or... Wait a minute! Heading back
this way--"
 "They must've seen us," Dax said.
    Kira read off her console, "They're powering
their weapon systems."
    "Prepare to decloak," Sisko ordered. "Lock
phasers on the lead ship and--"
    "No!" T'Rul interrupted. "We may not have
been detected."
 Sisko turned to look at her. "Explain."
    "A cloaked ship radiates a slight subspace vari-
ance at warp speeds--"
    "A subspace variance?" O'Brien gawked at her as
if she'd grown a second set of pointed ears. "I've
never heard of it."
    "It's not something we've been eager to reveal,"
the Romulan woman inflected back to him on a
platter. She looked at Sisko, as though determined
not to hand O'Brien any bones. "I suggest dropping

out of warp. That will eliminate the variance.
When they reach our position, they'll find noth-
ing."
 "Do it," he snapped to Dax.
 Dax worked her helm. "All stop."
    The two ships swung into view. After a beat they
split up and began prowling the area of space,
searching for something they thought they had
seen.
    "They're sweeping the area with some kind of
antiproton scan," O'Brien said. "And they're being
very thorough about it."
    Sisko watched the ships on the screen, coming
nearer by the heartbeat.
 "Will an antiproton scan penetrate the cloak?"
     No one answered him. There was only the sweat
on his brow and the whistle of bridge noise. He turned to look at T'Rul.
"I'm... not sure," she finally admitted.
Tension clicked up another notch.
"They're getting close," Kira murmured.
"Commander," O'Brien said, "the Defiant's
power signature is unusually high for a ship this
size. The cloaking device might not be masking
everything."
 "Cut main power."
    Almost instantly the bridge fell to darkness, lit
only by two panels still operating and the glow of
the main screen.
    Feeling the Jem'Hadar ships gloss over the skin
of his cheeks and forehead, Sisko stared at the
screen.
 One Jem'Hadar ship passed close enough to




touch, showing off its heavy structure down to the
bolts on the hull plates.
    In a moment there would be only the other ship
in view. They were flanked by Jem'Hadar.
    Norathe nearest ship was stopping. It was right
on top of them. They could put on survival suits
and practically crawl to it.
    With a vise around his waist, Sisko held his
hands tight against his knees and watched that ship
as it turned in space before them like a giant
Christmas-tree ornament. There was barely a sliver
of black open space left on their screen.
    Sisko almost cracked when Kira's voice broke
into the silence.
    "The other one has broken off its search... it's
coming this way..."
    His own words roared inside Sisko's skull.
"Stand by weapons and shields .... "
    The Jem'Hadar vessel before them moved off
slowly. The second ship came back into their
screen, joining the first ship in some kind of
formation.
 Attack formation?
    He could see their firing ports. A glow of
warm-up...
    Turning their aft quarters to the Defiant, the two
ships powered up suddenly, and swam off together,
back the way they had come. A flash on the screen--
    "They've gone into warp," Kira said, containing
herself, "and resumed their original course."
    Sisko didn't want to relax, to let out this breath
he'd been holding, but he also knew his crew were

taking his lead and if he didn't relax, they'd all die
of asphyxiation.
    "That's the first thing to go right in the Gamma
Quadrant in a long time," he sighed.
 Behind him, Kira said, "I hope it's not the last."

    Karemma was a world of bureaucrats. Impolite
bureaucrats. People to whom government meant
the place where all decisions short of personal
defecation were made, and even those were under
consideration. There was an obsession with order,
to a point where there was nothing but order, no
freshness, no comfort, no freedom. Wildflowers
were discouraged.
    They were mercantilists, but not in the sense that
they went their own ways and did their best for
themselves and their families. This was strictly
controlled mercantilism, where the individual was
nothing.
    As such, everything had been reduced to its most
efficient level, no matter the lack of quality.
    Such was the manner of Ornithar, an official
whose actual level of power had never been clear to
Ben Sisko.
    Sisko stood beside his command chair, feeling as
though he were here to be statuesque and impres-
sive. He wondered if he was pulling it off, whether
Ornithar was falling for it.
    Around the bridge, as though guarding their
stations, his crew stood watching. Under a dark-
ened shadow off to one side, Odo was making a
presence, but deep in his own thoughts or observa-
tions.




    Ornithar was busy scoping them out, inspecting
their clothing, and hovering about them like a
vulture, and touching parts of the bridge while
Quark did most of the talking.
    "The Grand Nagus himself has sent me as an
emissary on his behalf. If you will aid us in our
mission, I am authorized to decrease our price on
tulaberry wine by... three percent."
    Quark was waiting for a flamboyant reaction, but
Ornithar ignored him completely and bent toward
one of Defiant's bulkhead strutsú
    "Looks like a polyduranium alloy blend. Inter-
esting, but the metal has no real value." He
straightened up and turned to Quark. "A three-
percent cost reduction is negligible."
    Sisko held back a sneerú No value, unless it was
packed together with a whole lot of other metals
and some mighty big phaser banks. No value, give
or take a few people with the courage to use it.
    "I have considerable leeway to bargain in this
circumstance," Quark insisted. "Name your
terms."
    For an irrational flash, Sisko got the feeling he
was being sold, lock, stock, and comm badge.
    But by now Ornithar was moving on to Dax and
analyzing her helm controls.
    Buttons and whistles. Negotiations might be in
the offing for a relationship between galactic quad-
rants, and this freak was looking at panel faces.
    "Nothing... nothing... nothing," Ornithar
grumbled. "The terms are not the issue. I cannot
help you locate the Founders, because I do not
know who they are. Or if they even exist."

    He bent over Kira, who had the presence of being
to hold still while this creature waved around
beside her and considered her control panels before
noticing her earring. "Here's something interest-
ing. Appears to be diamide-laced beritium. I'll give
you fifty-two diracks for it."
    "Done!" Quark glanced at Sisko, and sooner
than instantly got the message that he was off
course. "I mean--one deal at a time, Ornithar.
We're talking about the Founders."
    Deprived of what he wanted, Omithat folded his
hands in front of him.
    "There is nothing further to say. If the Founders
exist, they clearly do not wish to be contacted. That
is good enough for me."
    Sisko was half a thought from snatching this
crackpot by the collar and doing a little extra
cracking.
    "Who's your contact in the Dominion regarding
administration?" he asked. "Trade? Defense?"
    "Our only contact with the Dominion has been
through the Vorta. I have no idea who they report
to. All I know is that the Vorta say to do something
ú.. and you do it."
 "Why?" Sisko persisted.
    Ornithar smiled as if he were talking to a child.
"Because if you do not, they will send in the
Jem'Hadar. And then you die."
    Brutal. The flatness of Ornithar's statement
made Sisko think again about being lost to a
repressive government. Everything the Federa-
tion's many worlds had worked for could be gone in
very little time.




    Beside him, Kira tightened up too. He noticed
her hands turn white and ball into fists. Her
thoughts were probably less philosophical than his.
After all, she'd lived through what he feared most,
what most humans regarded as history.
    The message was clear enough and blunt enough,
but somehow still held the vague non-answers
clinging to this quadrant and its hostile denizens.
No one wanted to say anything precise. Everything
was a warning carved on a rock. No clues of who
had cut it there.
    "Can you describe the Vorta?" Dax began,
changing the tack of questioning.
    Sisko found his intestines settling a little at the
sound of her rational question. She must have
sensed that he was about to gut-punch an answer
out of this maggot.
    Ornithar pondered the question--which was idi-
otic, since he obviously knew what he was going to
say. "Physically," he said eventually, "they're
humanoid... with limited telekinetic abilities."
    "Telekinetic," Dax repeated with unmasked sur-
prise.
    Sisko looked at her and she looked back, and they
both knew the conclusion.
    Sisko couldn't tell if this galactic flea-market
dealer was guarding his reaction or if he was really
annoyed by a possible customer's knowing what he
was thinking.
    He felt his eyes burn with intensity. "Will you
put us in contact with the Vorta? They may help us
locate the Founders."
  "Commander," Ornithar said, laden with pas-

sive disinterest, "we do what we're told, nothing
more. And so far, we have not been told to help you
in any way."
"But you have not been told to hinder us either."
"No, but I prefer to err on the side of caution."
Quark came to life again--did he see a way in?
"In this case," he interrupted, "being cautious
will cost you the Ferengi trade in tulaberry wine.
The Nagus will stop all shipments immediately."
    Sisko almost shrugged and shook his head with
frustration that Quarkmthat anybody--would
think such a threat carried any weight in galactic
matters, but the maggot actually looked concerned.
    So Sisko pushed. "If you lost such a valuable
contract, it might displease the Vorta. They might
even send the Jem'Hadar here to find out what
happened."
    To his complete amazement, the turkey across
the bridge twitched a couple times and started to
gobble.
    "I will need to access one of our computers on
the surface."
    After Sisko motioned him toward a panel,
Ornithar went to it, worked it briefly--with little
effort too. Evidently this chicken was brighter than
he let on, to be able to work alien controls after a
cursory study.
    A star chart flooded into place on the main
viewer.
    "This is the Callinon system," Ornithar said.
"The Dominion maintains an unmanned subspace
relay station on the seventh planet. We have been
told by the Vorta to direct all communications




there. Where the messages are sent after that is not
our concern."
    Wondering if this wasn't all a little too simple,
Sisko looked at Dax.
    "It's a start," she said. She seemed pleased, and
that was a good change.
    "But what you do from that point is your affair,"
Ornithar hastily pointed out. "And remember--all
I've done is point you in a direction! I've told you
nothing else!"
    "We understand," Sisko told him, just barely
managing to keep the patronization out of his
voice.
    Ornithar looked at each of them as if they were
about to hold up score signs on his performance
and he'd forgotten to bribe the judges.
    Nobody held up any cards, but just held still and
waited for him to do what he was just committed to
do, good or bad.
  "What is that?"
    Odo's sudden ejection into movement startled
everybody. Sisko barely managed to stifle a flinch
--he'd almost forgotten Odo was back there.
    They all turned to see him pointing at a symbol
on the opposite side of the star map from where
Ornithar was indicating.
    Ornithar blinked in confusion, then said, "It is
the Omarion Nebula."
    Odo seemed transfixed by the symbol--more.
Captured. Drawn.
  He moved toward the screen.
    "The Omarion Nebula," he croaked, tasting the
sounds.

    His eyes fell away from the star map and he
turned from the rest of them, going back into his
own thoughts. With him he took the branded-in
memory of that star map.
    Sisko could see the weight of this new thing
straining Odo as the shapeshifter wandered to the
far side of the bridge and remained turned away
from them.
    "If there's nothing else," Ornithar suffered, "I
would like to leave now."
    "Of course." Sisko grabbed at the opportunity to
get his crew to stop gaping at poor Odo.
    As he herded them toward the door, Quark
pulled his arm. "Commander, I believe I have
fulfilled my role on this mission, so if you don't
minda"
  "You'd like to stay behind."
 "That was our agreement .... "
    Sisko glanced at Ornithar, then angled Quark
aside. "How can you be sure he won't turn you over
to the Dominion as soon as we leave?"
    Quark got a hurt expression, trying to imply that
he was an expert judge of character. "He may serve
the Dominion, but I'm the one lining his pockets
with latinurn. I'll get passage on the next freighter
back through the wormhole. And I'll make a profit
in the process."
    Encouraged by their one bit of luck and clinging
to it with both hands, Sisko couldn't help a brief
smile at Quark's relentlessness. One thing he had to
give the Ferengi, however much a pest, however
much a leech: Quark had a sense of what he wanted
in life and his grip on that purpose seldom wavered.




Not everybody had that, never mind the approval
of others.
    And Quark had done his job, despite his obvious
fear and unwillingness to come here at all. Sisko
couldn't help admiring him for that.
    When he looked into Quark's expressive, if
somewhat clownish, eyes right now, he didn't see
an annoyance or a pest. He saw another man, of
surprising intelligence, who had a different row to
plow than his own.
    With this part over, Quark would no longer be in
the sphere of immediate danger. Sisko would no
longer be forcing an unwilling participant into the
boiling pot.
    "All right," he offered warmly. "Good luck,
Quark."
 "Same to you, Commander."
    As Ornithar exited without a glance, Sisko
turned to Dax. "Lay in a course for the Callinon
system."
    He took her acknowledging glance without reac-
tion, and as he turned back to the forward screen,
Quark was still beside him, now leaning closer.
"There is one other thing... something is very
wrong with Odo."
    Sisko nodded. "I'm aware of his frustration
about being relieved--"
    "It's more than that. He's... different some-
how. I've known him a long time and I've never
seen him like this before." He grew quieter still,
and leaned still closer. "I know this sounds strange
ú.. but I'm worried about him."

    Suddenly wondering how many bizarre altera-
tions he was going to have to deal with in his usual
measurement of those around him, Sisko regarded
Quark with still more simmering respectú
"I'll try to keep an eye on him," he promisedú
Quark seemed satisfied for now, and left with the
others. Sisko felt the extra measure of responsibili-
ty shift onto him with that promise, not only to
watch over their lives, but their spirits as well.
    Even Odo, who always had been so solitary--but
not solitary enough to keep from eliciting devotion
from an unlikely source.
    Validating his expanded duty, he paused at the
threshold. "Odo?"
    For a moment he thought he might have to call
again.
    Then Odo broke from his reverie and came
toward him, passed thim, and went out, without
ever once meeting his eyes.

    Sisko tried to relax in his quarters, and in fact
found it easier to do in these bare bunks than he
had for the first three months in his homelike
quarters on the stationú Somehow this soldier-bare
pup-tent living was comforting. Probably because
it reminded him of a time when he wasn't the one
making any decisionsú When he was quartered in
bunks like these, there had always been a com-
mander or a captain to do the worrying.
    Of course, he had always participated in the
usual rumors and second-guessing, but the com-
manders had all the fretting and deciding to do.




    Ah, those were the days. Deckhand days. Every
deckhand dreams of being a captain. Every captain
dreams of being a deckhand. Oh, well...
    The fog began to close in and he was almost
asleep. Almost--the door chime blasted like an
alert klaxon.
    He forced himself up and swung his legs off the
bed.
  "Come in."
  It was Kira. "Did I wake you?"
    "Not quite," he said. "What can I do for you,
Major?"
    She started pacing. Or maybe she just had that
set about her, because there wasn't anywhere in
here to pace to.
 "It's about Odo .... "
     He peered at her in the dimness. The lights
weren't very good, and at the moment he was glad.
  "You're worried about him," he supposed.
  She paused. "Is it that obvious?"
    "No. It's just that everyone seems worried about
Odo right now. So am I, for that matter. But at the
moment, I'm not sure what to do about it."
    Kira came into the room and sat down in the
excuse for a chair. "May I speak freely?"
    He was careful to nod, only that and only once.
Kira could go off like a firecracker, but almost
always flaring in a direction he couldn't ignore.
    "What the hell is wrong with Starfleet?" she
chafed. "How could they do this to him?"
    "This has been a long time coming. Starfleet has
never been happy with the constable. They've been

quietly but firmly pressing me to replace him for
two years."
    Her bright eyes blazed in the dimness. "Because
he used to work for the Cardassians."
     "No," he cut off quickly. "It goes deeper than
that. In their view... he's not a 'team player.'"
  "Well, neither was I!--at first."
    "They weren't too crazy about you either, Major.
But you've changed... lost that chip on your
shoulder and stopped suspecting us all of trying to
subvert Bajor." He offered a tempering smile. "I
could probably even get you a Starfleet commission
at this point."
     "Let's not go too far." She might have been
smiling, but in the bad light he couldn't tell. If she wasn't, he didn't want to know.
    "You know Odo," he said. "He enjoys thumbing
his nose at authority. He files reports only when he
feels like it. His respect for the chain of command is
minimal--"
 "So what? He gets the job done."
    "I know, but Starfleet likes team players, Major.
They like the chain of command. And when you get
right down to it... so do I."
 "So you agree with their decision?"
 "No. But I understand it."
    "So when this mission's over," she concluded,
"you're just going to let him leave?"
    "I want him to stay as much as you do," he told
her. "But he has to want to stay."
    Kira thought about that for a long time. Sisko
could almost hear her mind clicking, adding up
what they all knew about Odo, and how much they





didn't, all the times he had demanded more of
himself than he would ever have asked of anyone
else.
    "I've known him for a long time," she said, "and
I have to tell you, with all due respect... I think
you're wrong. I think what's really bothering him
now isn't the loss of his position or that his pride
has been wounded. I don't think he wants to leave
us. He doesn't have a family, he doesn't have other
friends, he doesn't even know where he came
from." She was forward almost far enough for her
elbows to rest on her knees, her body tense and
knotted with emotion, her eyes shining the way
they did when she believed something enough to
push the issue. Her fingers spread across the front
of her uniform, barely touching the fabric. "We're
all he has," she surged. "He is a team player,
Commander. He just doesn't go by the same rules."
    Frustration galled her features when the corem
rang and T'Rul's voice interrupted them.
    "Bridge to Commander Sisko. We've reached the
Callinon system."
    Sisko apologized to Kira with his glance, but it
wasn't good enough. He felt as though he was
somehow letting down not just her, but Odo too,
because right now he had to shunt both of them
aside because something else was up. How could he say that to her?
    He got up and gestured her toward the door. "On
my way."

    "Ship's log, stardate 48213. I. We have arrived at
Callinon VII under cloak and assumed a standard

orbit. The relay station on this planet should not
only help us in our search for the Founders, but
should also provide us a first glimpse at the technol-
ogy of the Dominion."
    Atmospheric gases swirled in patterns almost
purposeful, carrying clouds and storms along large
oceans. In fact, everything about this planet was
large, muscular, massive. Yet its forests and moun-
tain ranges recalled Earth, and Ben Sisko suddenly
wished he'd stalled his "vacation" just a week or
two longer.
    Even though it had been good to get back to DS9,
he still wanted Jake to have a memory of Earth. His
emotions ricocheted again. That sense of place, of
pastmhe was thinking of Odo.
    He squeezed out those thoughts and concen-
trated on the planet below.
    A graphic of the Callinon relay station flickered
on one of the monitors while he and the whole
bridge crew waited for Kira's report.
    "From our sensor sweeps," she finally said, "it
looks like Ornithar was telling the truth when he
claimed the relay station was unmanned. There
also appear to be very few security measures in
place."
    Sisko took that as good enough. He turned to
Dax and O'Brien, who stood on the aft bridge,
armed and equipped with phasers and tricorders.
     "Nothing fancy," he told them. "Get in, find out
what we need, and get out."
  "Understood," Dax said.
  "On your way."




    As they hurried out the bridge exit, he spun to
T'Rul.
    "The transporter will need three seconds to
beam them down. I want to decloak for exactly
three seconds."
    With just enough reaction to remind him she
wasn't Vulcan, she nodded and put her hand on her
controls. He couldn't tell from that whether or not
she was sure she could do it, or she was determined
to try.
    Either way, nothing he could say could change
her abilities. If the Romulan Empire thought
Starfleet needed a baby-sitter for their trickery,
then let her baby-sit. The mechanics of being
cloaked were her problem. He had others.
 "Dax to bridge. We're ready, Benjamin."
    "All right. T'Rul, disengage cloak." He turned to
Kira. "Energize."
    T'Rul worked her instruments furiously as Kira
worked her own. The bridge lights flushed, then
came up as the cloak was turned off.
 "They're on the surface," Kira said.
    Sisko glanced at T'Rul, but she was already
working. Again darkness flooded around them as
the cloak was brought back on-line.
Clear relief shone on the Romulan woman's face.
There was something about that change in her
that bothered him. Yes, Romulans were hostile and
emotional, but dangerously similar to their fore-
bears in appearance and manner. That severe dark,
glossy hair cut like a helmet, those demonic eyes
and angled ears. They could be stoic, mysterious,

hedge every question... and their greatest advan-
tage was that they were so like Vulcans on the
surface that people of the Federation could be
tempted to take them at their word.
Sisko determined not to. Not quite yet, anyway.
"Were we scanned during transport?" he asked.
"I don't think so," Kira said. "It looks like the
array is strictly an automated relay station. Very
few security measures."
    "All the same, keep a transporter lock on Dax
and O'Brien in case we have to pull them out of
there fast."
    Kira glanced at him. Sisko realized he'd just
given away his tension by telling her what he had
just told Dax.
  "Aye, sir" was all she said.
  "Dax to Defiant."
  "Go ahead, Dax," he said.
    "We're in what seems to be the central computer
room. The user interface is a little unusual, but I
think we can access it."  "Keep us posted."
      In the background down them, O'Brien said,
"I'm into the main directory."  "That was fast," Dax said.
  "Yes, it was. A little too fast, if you ask me."
    "Any sign that we've tripped some kind of securi-
ty protocol?" Dax rightly inquired.
    Sisko almost interrupted, but held back. In a few
seconds, O'Brien's voice filtered through the open
line. "No. I still have access to everything."
    "Then let's get the information and get out of
here."




  "Fine with me."
    The team fell to silence, and here on the bridge,
everyone else sat on the edge of their work.
    Bashir appeared at Sisko's side with a cup of
coffee, a tiny pool of civilization in the unending
mist. A cup of history, every bit as much part of
human heritage as those artifacts Sisko and Jake
had unpacked.
    Ah, coffee. The triumphant bean. From Constan-
tinople to Camus II, from Paris to New Paris
Colony, coffeehouses had bred poems and plots,
service and subterfuge. The Earthborn substance
was still more popular in the settled galaxy than
anything else Quark could wrangle. Women had
petitioned against it, races had forbidden it, politi-
cal strife had been provoked by it, corruption had
followed it, and games had been invented to play
around it.
    And here he was, carrying it seventy thousand
miles. He found himself thinking back on all the
myriad items and customs and even diseases that
had come across oceans and space on ships like
this, so common that nobody gave them a second
look when there was a bigger goal at stake.
    At the Federation's Thomas Jefferson Memorial
Rose Garden, somebody had shown him a yellow
and pink rose whose ancestry could be traced back
to a packet of seeds smuggled out of France on the
last transport before Nazi occupation.
    And he was pretty sure that under those condi-
tions, nobody was thinking about the seeds.
 The flower was called "Peace."

    Maybe I should've brought the rose instead of
coffee.
    Sisko gazed down into the steaming cup. With
just one dot of kahlua...
 Oh, well--here's to small things.
    He pressed his lip to the brim of the cup and took
a sip, and almost threw up.
    His lips curdled as he looked around for a place
to spit this out.
    How would that look? So he swallowed it and
was thrust into the lovely land of aftertaste.
    "I should've taken Quark up on his offer for a
new replicator .... "
  Bashir looked around at him again. "Sir?"
  "Nothing."
    He handed the cup of future back to Bashir and
moved to the command area near Kira.
    "Let's make good use of this time, Major," he
said. "Begin running a level-three diagnostic on--"
    "Dax to Defiant. I think we have something,
Benjamin. We've found a communications log of
recent outgoing transmissions."
    Before any response could be made, O'Brien
added, "From the way I read this, sir, it looks like
eighty percent of the outgoing traffic is sent to one
location. It's my guess that's either another relay
station, or some kind of command center."
    "Do you have the coordinates of that location?"
Sisko asked.
    The chirp of Dax's tricorder came over the
comm lines. "I'm sending them to you now."
  Kira moved to another console. "Receiving the




 coordinates. Wait a minute--I've lost contact with
 the away team! I'm picking up some kind of power
 surge on the surface!"
    Through the open frequencies blasted alarms
that were impulsively ringing through from down
on the planet.
  "Get them out of there!" Sisko shouted.
    "I can't." Kira worked and reworked her console.
"Some kind of shield just appeared around the
outpost. I can't get through it!"
    New warning whistles suddenly went off at the
tactical console. Bashir dived for them, and looked
abruptly horrified.
    "We're picking up three Jem'Hadar ships, Com-
mander! They're heading for the outpost!"
    Kira jumped to confirm, and evidently saw what
Bashir did. "Dax and O'Brien must're triggered
some kind of alarm."
    Sisko jumped to help her with the controls. "Can
we punch through that security shield with our
phasers before those ships get here?"
    "I'm not sure--I've never seen a field like this
before."
    T'Rul urgently said, "In order to use the phasers,
we will have to decloak. That means we will be seen
by the Jem'Hadar."
    Bashir turned to Sisko. "We have to do some-
thing! We can't just leave them down there!"
    "That's exactly what we should do, Doctor,"
T'Rul said. "Leave them. We came here to find the
Founders, not to fight the Jem'Hadar over two
expendable crew members."

    Unusual fury erupted in Bashir's eyes. "No one is
expendable."
    "The Jem'Hadar ships have entered the system,"
Kira said. "They'll be in orbit in thirty seconds."
    Everyone watched Sisko. His midsection was
tight as a corset, his face stiff and his neck so
knotted he wondered if he could speak at all.
    "Prepare to leave orbit," he said. "Lay in a
course to the coordinates Dax sent us."
    He saw the way KJra and Bashir were looking at
him, and deliberately didn't look back.
    Finally Kira dropped to the helm and laid the
course in.
 "Commander," Bashir began.
 "As you were, Doctor."
 Kira didn't glance up. "Course laid in."
 "Warp seven," Sisko said. "Engage."




CHAPTER
       6

"WE'VE LEFr the Jem'Hadar sensor range...
there's no sign of pursuit, Commander."
    There was no satisfaction in Kira's report. In
fact, there was a hint of bald disappointment.
    "Very well." Sisko knew Kira was hoping the
Jem'Hadar would follow the ship instead of inves-
tigating the planet.
    A small part of him had been hoping they would
do that too, and there was mixed pleasure, ragged
relief in finding out that the Jem'Hadar had failed
to see the wobble of space that would give away the
presence of a cloaked ship. They'd just left their
crewmates behind on that planet.
    He could simply turn and order T'Rul to decloak
the ship, and he could turn and fight. Dax and
O'Brien surely knew by now that they had been
abandoned--what would Dax think?

    Drop cloak, turn, and really test this ship in
battle... he hungered for one shred of logic that
would let him do that at this stage.
    Two people's lives up against the millions on
Bajor, the billions in the Federation--Sisko shook
away the damnation he felt about leaving those two
behind, and demanded of himself that this mission
wouldn't start a war if he could help it. If he could help it.
    Bashir stood back there at the Ops station and
simmered. "Commander, you were captured by the
Jem'Hadar... what do you think will happen to
Dax and O'Brien?"
    "They'll probably be held for interrogation. If I
know Dax, she'll continue with the mission and try
to use this opportunity to contact the Founders. I
intend to do the same." He steadied himself and
tapped the comm. "Sisko to Odo. Please report to
the bridge, Constable. I want to discuss the security
arrangements for our arrival."
    There wasn't any response for several seconds.
He wondered if Odo could hear him while in that
liquid state. He'd never really thought about the
physics of Odo's natural condition. Did Odo need
humanoid ears to hear the comm? Of course, he
needed a humanoid mouth to respond--
    "I'm presently... indisposed, Commander.
Please find someone else for the job."
    Sisko glanced at his officers, then took his hand
off the comm and let it click off.
 "That doesn't sound like Odo," Bashir observed.
    "No, it doesn't," Sisko agreed. "I think I'd better
have a talk with him."





    Aware of the cold compassion in his voice, he
suddenly didn't want to talk to Odo. He didn't
want to subject himself or Odo to the critical
facts--that this mission was too important for
self-pity. Odo's behavior could reduce their effi-
ciency. Odo was going to have to put away his
feeling, just as Sisko was having to put away what
he felt about never seeing Dax and O'Brien again,
and about what they were thinking of him when
they understood that he had thrown them to the
wolves.
    He started to get out of his command chair, but
Kira was at his side now--and she was stopping
him.
    "Let me, sir," she offered. "I think I can talk to
him."
    He felt somehow that he should be doing this,
not shunting it off on a volunteer, but with
Jem'Hadar on his tail, a Romulan on his bridge,
and two officers missing, he was glad to give her the
nod and let her take one of these weights off his
shoulder.
    And was it significant of something else? Had he
let Odo down in the past months? Shouldn't he be
the one who thought he could get through?
    Kira was already gone. To catch her back and
take her place belowdecks would be a mistake now.
     "Three Jem'Hadar ships have just entered sensor
range, bearing zero three seven, mark two one five."
  He turned his attention to the screen.
  "Any sign they detected us?"
  "Negative," T'Rul said bluntly.

    "Bring us out of warp, then cut main power.
We'll wait here until they pass."

    As she approached the quarters that Odo had
shared with Quark and now occupied alone, Kira
girded herself with a dozen anecdotes and incidents
that had helped her live through her difficult past.
She didn't even buzz the door chime. If he was
compromised, too bad.
    She had to pause at the open door to adjust her
eyes to the dimness. For a few moments all that
showed in the darkness was the small computer
monitor screen at the desk. It threw a waxy glow on
Odo's face, until both it and he appeared inani-
mate.
    His attention was fixed on the glowing screen. It
showed the star chart they had all seen in
Ornithar's office. Odo gazed, as if drugged, at the
chart.
"Odo," Kira began, "it's time we had a talk."
"I'm not going to the bridge, so don't waste your
breath. And I would appreciate being left alone
right now."
    "All I've done is leave you alone." She moved
into the tiny quarters. "And it hasn't done any
good. So maybe it's time you stopped brooding and
started talking."
    Stop, talk... she'd said that as though she had
the foggiest clue what he had to talk about. She
hoped he wouldn't notice she was trying to jump
over the puddle of her own ignorance between
them.




    He turned and gave her a bitter look. "Are you
the ship's counselor now?"
    She came around and leaned against the bunk,
looking down at him. "No. I'm your friend. You
know--the person that usually comes to you when
she needs help. I'm just trying to return the favor."
    "You can return the favor by giving me a
shuttlecraft and letting me go."
    The request--blunt though it wasretook her
completely off guard. A shuttlecraft? Out here?
    "Go?" she reacted. "Go where? We're in the
heart of the Dominion. Where the hell do you think
you're going to go?"
    He pointed at the small screen. "The Omarion
Nebula."
  She frowned at it. "Why?"
    "I'm not sure why. But I have to go. That's all 1
know."
    Almost grinning, she folded her arms. "You're
going to have to do a lot better than that."
    He turned away from her, rejected her, whatever
help or comfort she would try to give. Was he
practicing for a more permanent disruption of all
these relationships he had built even against his
own will?
 Funny how loyalties could sneak up from behind.
 His voice was rough.
    "Ever since we've come into this Gamma Quad-
rant, I've had this feeling that I'm being drawn
somewhere... pulled by some instinct to a specif-
ic place. I think it might be... the Omarion
Nebula."
 Within the plastic mask of an unfinished human

face, Odo's clear and piercing eyes were fogged
with disturbance, displaying not a passion or a
hunger to go where he was bidden, but an unbidden
magnetism to go there.
 "Why there?" she asked.
 "I don't know."
 "Based on what?"
    "A feeling... an overpowering feeling that if I
go there I will find the answers to what I've been
searching for all my life." Vague, vague.
    Kira's brow wrinkled. She'd come with easy talk
about friendship, hoping to segue into clarity, and
had ended up with an armful of troubling gray
areas. What could she do? Ask him to be specific
before she went to bat for him? He obviously didn't
have the answers to give.
    Odo had never put stock in the mystic, she knew.
He barely tolerated the religion of Bajor intruding
on his jurisdiction. He believed in the tangible and
the noncontradictory. That was what made him
good at his job.
 His former job.
    "All right," she said, resigned. "Once we've
contacted the Founders, I'm sure Commander
Sisko will--"
    "No! Not after we've contacted the Founders.
Now--I have to leave now."
    "Look," she bargained, "I know how much this
means to you, but we have a mission to complete."
    He turned to her, anger pleating his eyes and a
fury in his posture that she had never seen--not
this way.




    She backed away from his desperation, giving
room to his surging pain and letting him know she
didn't mean to press him away from his needs.
    The room--the whole ship--rocked sharply to
one side. Kira staggered and nearly fell, her mind
spinning with conclusions about what was
happening--had they hit something? Had the en-
gines shut down? What would they do about the
engines without O'Brien on board?
    A foot from her, Odo stumbled into the desk, his
lanky arms waving for balance.
    Without giving them time for a second breath, a
force of wind and power blew the bulkhead in.
Metal that had been part of the ship became torn
scrap, and flushed across the little room as light
from the corridor flooded in. Kira stole a second to
turn her face upward, trying to see what was
happening, but all she saw was the torn structural
members of the wall coming down on top of them
both.

    "Direct hit on the port nacelle," T'Rul reported,
raising her voice over the boom that tumbled
through the Defiant under enemy fire.
    Three Jem'Hadar ships had approached off the
port bow. Were these the same three they had
avoided only minutes ago, or was it a tactical habit
that they traveled in threes?
    Sisko raked his mind for answers. He'd held
course when the three ships showed no sign of
having detected them.
 Now things were suddenly different.

"How did they see through the cloaking device?"
Bashit typically blurted.
    Glaring at the screen, Sisko scoured his experi-
ence for the wild answers. "Is it possible they could
always see through it? They were just waiting for
the right moment?"
The doctor gaped at him. "You mean it's a trap?"
Sisko turned a steamy glance on T'Rul, and got
what he expected. It was possible that the
Jem'Hadar were laughing at their cloak, thinking of
the Defiant as a child who covers his own eyes and
says, "You can't see me."
    Suddenly the Romulan woman looked anything
but arrogant. That meant he might be right.
    "They might have analyzed the sensor informa-
tion," she said, "from their antiproton scan and
found a way to penetrate the cloak."
    Grimly Sisko regained attention and reminded
them to concentrate by saying, "We'll have to save
speculation for later. Disengage cloak, raise shields,
and prepare to fire on my command."
    Lighting on the bridge changed as power was
rerouted and the power-packed starship showed
herself in the wide arena of space.
    Unfaltering, the U.S.S. Defiant got her first
chance to spread her claws and do what she was
designed to do. She sighted down her enemies, and
prepared to face three evil-eyed cockerels of the
Jem'Hadar.
    "T'Rul, take engineering," Sisko ordered, turn-
ing to each of them. "Doctor, you're at the helm