0

PRELUDE

THIRTY YEARS AGO

"MY LORD, what may I bring you from our Proph-
ets?" Sister Winn asked, as Gul Ragat and his
Cardassian friends and colleagues roared with
laughter at her impishness.
    "From your Prophets?" echoed another young
Cardassian, a gul in the Cardassian land forces.
The boy--Akkat, Sister Winn remembered--wore
a sneer that he obviously practiced before a mirror.
His voice held a nasal quality found to a lesser
extent in most Cardassians--probably a species
trait--but grating to Bajoran ears nevertheless.
    "Yes, Lord Akkat," said the priestess, bowing
low to the boy who was only a little more than half
her age. "The Prophets offer peace and hope to all,
even Cardassians."
    The council room was dim and cool, with harsh
dark-wood chairs surrounding a severe table. Com-
munications equipment, viewers, touch pads
adorned the place settings, along with a chalice of
Kanar for each man.
    There were four other Cardassian lords and
overlords around the table, including Winn's own
master, Gul Ragat. They all laughed at her last
statement, and Gul Dukat, master of Terok Nor
and one of the governors of Bajor Province, proba-
bly in line to succeed Legate Migar as prefect of all
Bajor, nudged the young colonel. "Are you going to
allow a Bajoran priestess to speak to you that way?
Offering you leftover blessings from her gods--
after the Bajorans take what they want?"
    If Akkat was haughty before, he was positively
livid now. He leapt to his feet, knocking over the
heavy Cardassian-style chair. His facial ridges
stood out stark and white... an ominous omen.
    Sister Winn was used to such Cardassian out-
bursts, and she knew what she had to do. She had
survived most of her adult life under Cardassian
occupation, and she was no fool. Winn fell to her
knees, bowing until her face was pressed against
the floor. "Please, My Lord! I meant nothing by it.
I spoke in error, and I beg your indulgence."
    Akkat pushed his way around the table, teeth
clenched; he even shoved Gul Ragat out of his way
in his rage--a bad move, as the gul, though just as
young, outranked him by quite a margin of social
status. "Wretched beast! Get up off the floor and
accept your correction like a--like a Cardassian
child would!"
    But the priestess's own master rose, now an-
noyed at Akkat for pushing him. "Akkat!" he
shouted, deliberately ignoring the lesser soul's title
(a serious insult in Cardassia). "Don't touch my
servants! Take your hands away; if you want to
damage property, damage your own! I still have use
for mine."
    Ignoring the warning, Akkat swung his open
hand at Winn's face. She did not try to shield
herself from the blow; she was too canny from
years of experience. Instead, the priestess twisted
her head in time with the blow to minimize impact,
then allowed herself to fall in the same direction,
exaggerating the force. Then she covered her face
with her arm and again begged forbearance.
    Gul Akkat looked uncertainly at his colleagues,
aware he had just struck a woman--a Bajoran
woman, to be sure, but even so. When Gul Dukat
himself turned an angry gaze at the young gul and
said, "A Cardassian does not lose his temper
around Bajorans," Akkat slunk back to his seat, his
face flushed with embarassment.
    Still stretched out on the floor, Sister Winn felt
several moments of triumph that she had finally
goaded the weakest Cardassian into humiliating
himself. She had subtly taunted him for several
minutes: nothing overt enough to truly give him
cause to strike her (in which case, the others would
have ignored the incident), but sufficient needling
that he lost control at the most innocuous of
statements. Then Winn felt a twinge of her own
conscience; she tried to tell herself that it was a
"strategic" maneuver, trying to make the lords and
overlords lose confidence in one of their own. But
that was a lie: it was a petty, vindictive act and not
in keeping with the teaching of the Prophets.
    She rose to her knees, bowed again to Lord
Akkat, and said, "I humbly beseech your pardon
for the disrespect I have shown." But she was not
talking to the young pup ofa Cardassian; in Winn's
heart, the words were directed skyward, to those
who heard even the quietest heartfelt prayer.
    The rest of the meeting proceeded routinely.
There were no secrets discussed, and the lords took
no precautions against any of the servants, includ-
ing Sister Winn, listening in. The matters were run-
of-the~mill administrative reports and the issuance
of standing orders that were already available over
the subspace newsmitters anyway. It was more a
formal event, held so that four guls and the legate
could set themselves aside as the administrative
(and military) leaders of the subcontinent.
    In fact, it was quite an honor that Gul Ragat was
even allowed to attend, as he excitedly told Winn
during a break, walking alone in Legate Migar's
garden with only a "personal priestess" in attend-
ance. "Winn, you have no idea how extraordinary
it is for a mere provincial subgovernor to be
invited to Legate Migar's for the monthly bulletin-
tea!"
    "I know it is a very great honor for your lord-
ship," said the priestess.
    "A great honor, indeed." The young gul turned
serious for a moment. "I'm afraid it's too great an
honor, Sister Winn."
 "Oh, surely not, My Lord!"
    "Relax, Winn. We're alone now." The boy
turned an astute face to the priestess, who felt the
most absurd impulse to comfort the lad. "I'm not
disparaging my family; my lineage is if anything
even grander than that of Legate Migar himself...
and the old man knows it. But since when does the
provincial subgovernor of Shakarri and Belshakar-
ri rate an invitation to the bulletin-tea?"
    Winn thought for a moment; the child had a
point, not that she particularly cared much about
Cardassian rules of protocol. "Perhaps they are
grooming M'Lord for a promotion?"
    Gul Ragat grinned and chuckled, shaking his
head. "It's called a grant of honors, not a promo-
tion! Silly girl. But I understood what you meant,
and I confess that I've been thinking the same
thought myself... and damning myself for being
an ambitious man even for thinking it."
    Sister Winn said nothing. The garden was too
tight, too martial, as were most Cardassian arti-
facts. The trees were planted too close together, like
soldiers in ranks, and the paths were straight as
Cardassian roads, intersecting with each other at
precisely defined angles that one could see for
many steps ahead. Sister Winn preferred either the
soothingly planned garden of the Kai, which she
had seen only once in person but had walked often
in her dreams, or the rambling, meandering foot-
paths of the woods outside her native village.
    Gul Ragat stopped and sat upon a stone bench,
watching the Fountain of Discipline: the spigots
fired in bursts like a weapon, launching a cylinder
of water into the air, arching over the hexagonal
plaza to land squarely in a small catch-basin on the
other side. Sister Winn did not, of course, sit
beside the gul; it would have surprised him and
made him uncomfortable... though he would
not have punished her for it.
    He might also have taken the wrong idea. One
night, he had somewhat drunkenly explored his
options with Sister Winn, but she made it clear (by
"failing to understand" his advances) that she may
be his servant, but she was not his toy. She much
preferred somewhat an air of formality, to ensure
the two did not get too close; Sister Winn had no
illusions about their relationship, the conquered to
the victor.
    "Winn, I'm..." The gul trailed off; Sister Winn
did not prompt him--it wasn't her place, and she
hoped he wouldn't decide to confide in her anyway.
"Winn," he said again, "I'm afraid." "Afraid, My Lord?"
    "Afraid of the added responsibility. Afraid of
what we're doingre" Gul Ragat froze in midsen-
tence, looking around himself in an almost comical
paranoia. "Sister Winn, do the Prophets truly
exist?"
    "I have spoken with them frequently, My Lord."
Ragat did not ask whether they answered her when
she spoke.
    "Winn, I'm--afraid for the soul of Cardassia,
what this occupation is doing to us. I know Akkat;
we go way back."
    He g going to tell me what a good person he is,
thought the priestess with amusement.
    "Winn, Akkat is such a good man! I know you
feel hurt and humiliated by what he did, striking
you like that for no reason. You're confused, and
you're angry--furious at us! No, don't deny it; I
know how you Bajorans feel about this occupation.
And to tell the truth, I even understand it. There's
no heavenly reason why Cardassians are any better
or superior to you people. I understand you com-
pletely."
    Sister Winn said nothing, not trusting her self-
control. She decided it was politic to bow her head;
she also put her sleeves together and savagely
gripped one hand in the other to prevent them
moving of their own accord where they wanted to
go. Oh, Prophets of Bajor, please forgive and take
from me my violent impulsest
    "But it's this damned military thing," continued
the young gul, little aware of the emotions he was
stirring in the normally placid Sister Winn. "It
warps us, makes us the sort who--who strike an
old woman because she reminds us of how uncom-
fortable we feel, trying to civilize the Bajorans by
force... trying to force our civilization upon the
Bajoran civilization, I should say."
    Winn seized upon the phrase "old woman,"
successfully translating her homicidal feelings into
mere indignation that a woman in her thirties
would be called "old" by this young aristocratic
snot. She thanked the Prophets for their gift from
the mouth of Gul Ragat.
    "Oh, I'm blathering. Let's return; Legate Migar
probably wants to start the meeting again, and I
don't want to be the last man back." He flashed her
a boyish grin. "Could give him second thoughts
about my promotion, what?"


PRESENT DAY


Kai Winn awoke in her bed, thirty years after the
dream that had seemed so strong, so real. Am I that
old, she asked herself, that I live in ancient memory
instead of the present? Tomorrow is an important
day, and I must rest.
    The Kai rolled over, and was, thank the Proph-
ets, dreamless for the rest of the night.

0

CHAPTER
        1

CAPTAIN BENJAMIN SISKO stood in room 77A of the
All Prophets Council chambers on Bajor, facing
Kai Winn and surrounded by sixty-six vedeks and
conciliators and priests and rotaries and even an
audience circumnavigating the viewing stage above
the council floor. The crowd mobbed in from the
left, circled the viewing stage, and exited on the
opposite side, where their prayer tokens were col-
lected. Major Kira Nerys stood next to the captain.
As they had arranged, Kira spoke first.
    "Most Gracious Kai," said Kira, "the Federa-
tion offers an... assignment of Deep Space Nine
on a temporary basis, to Bajoran command."
    Kai Winn frowned in the virtual council cham-
bers, smoothing her plain frock. She pulled at one
finger, carefully framing her reply in the most
diplomatic terms possible. Although it was Kira
who had spoken, she addressed her reply to Cap-
tain Sisko. "If the station remains under Federa-
tion control, Emissary, yet Shakar or some other
member of the council becomes its governor,
doesn't that mean we have accepted the authority
of the Federation over Bajor?"
    Damn her. Sisko--the "Emissary of the
Prophets"---was careful to keep his poker face, but
the Kai had a point. Tricky diplomacy was re.-
quired not to offend the Bajorans. "The United
Federation of Planets most certainly does not claim
hegemony over Bajor, the councit~ or any vedek or
political leader who might assume temporary con-
trol of the stafford."
    Kai Wi~m shook her head; "more in sorrow than
anger," quoted Sisko silently to himsetfi "Emis-
sary," she sa~d, "if we control the station only
subject to approval of our actions by the Federa-
tion Council, then we are nothing but puppets of
the Federation." She put her hand over her mouth
as if she had accidentally let slip an indiscretion.
Good acting job, thought Sisko glumly. Kai Winn
never did artything by accident. "I beg your par~
don .... Perhaps it would be better to say we
would be nothing but--political subsidiaries of the
Federation. Rather like a colony or a protectorate."
    Sisko took a deep breath. Winn had negotiated
his back right up against a wall: he was authorized
by the Federation Council to offer one further
step... then that was it; if Kai Winn and the other
vedeks didn't accept that offer, negotiations were at
an end.
    "The Federation is prepared to forgo the normal
review process for turnovers of this sort in lieu of
an explicit timeline of events, culminating with a
final evaluation."
    "You won't be looking over our shoulders? Emis-
saw, how kind of you to make such an offer."
    "No reviews until the final evaluation, Kai,"
added IGra, bobbing her head rapidly~
    "But does the Emissary have the diplomatic
authority to make such an offer?"
    "I do," Sisko said. "And the Federation feels that
with tensions between us and the Cardassians in
abeyance for the mortlent, this would be an excel-
lent time for such an experimenW'
    "How pleasant to carry on such productive nego-
tiations." Kai Winn smiled broadly. She~ going to
take it, thought Sisko. And he was right: "I, too, am
authorized by a vote of the leading vedeks of each
party in the council to agree to the Federation
offer~on a temporary basis, of course, subject to
our own evaluation of the ongoing process."
    Fancy footwork on first base to confuse the pitch-
er, thought Sisko with a simile. But the extra escape
clause allowing Bajor to terminate the agreement
early would not substantially alter the final propo-
sal; the captain was certain the Federation Council
would approve. "Then we have agreement, Kai
Winn, Members of the Council. In nine days, you
will send up a governor to assume control of Deep
Space Nine for a period of sixty days... which
may be extended indefinitely, provided both par-
ties agree."
    The Kai's eyes flickered toward First Minister
Shakar when Sisko mentioned "governor." An ex-
cellent choice, thought the captain. Major Kira's
only fear had been that Winn would try to take the
position herself. For obvious reasons having little
to do with the future of Bajor, Kira was quite
pleased with the prospect of once again working
under her old Resistance commander... and cur-
rent romantic interest.
    Before the final ceremony could begin, they were
interrupted by the a chime of a cornbadge. Sisko
tapped his combadge as discreetly as possible.
    "Captain," Worf said, "My apologies for inter-
rupting. But there is an urgent message for you
from Starfleet. You are needed on Deep Space Nine
at once."
    "This had better be good," Sisko said to Worf
under his breath. He was not looking forward to
the explanations and apologies he'd have to give
the council.

    Back on the station, Kira was in no way pleased
with the interruption from Starfleet. "Captain,
couldn't whatever this message is have waited until
we finished the negotiations or at least--"
    "Let's see what Starfleet wants, Major. If it
wasn't worth it, we'll soon know," Sisko said. As he
spoke, he read down the text of the message on the
padd that had been handed to him the moment he
stepped into Ops.
    "Sir, Kai Winn and the vedeks are going to be
very upset. We walked right out on a meeting of the
Council of All Prophets .... That's likere"
    "Apparently a group of renegade Cardassians
have invaded a star system on the edge of the
Federation," Sisko said bluntly. "I think even Kai
Winn and the vedeks will understand the urgency
of the situation."
    Kira froze in midsentence as the implication
sank through her annoyance and humiliation and
crash-landed on her comprehension circuits. If the
Cardassians, any Cardassians, were starting a ma-
jor offensive, the Federation was in grave danger,
indeed--as was Bajor, needless to say. The Cardas-
sians had never forgotten the embarrassment of
Shakar and his compatriots forcing them off the
only planet they never quite managed to subdue.
  "How close?" she asked.
    "Not very close, Major," said Worf, hovering
nearby--as usual when the subject is war, thought
Kira. "The Cardassians have invaded the system
around Sierra-Bravo 112, the active half of the
binary star system that includes the neutron star
Stirnis."
    The captain shook his head. "I was afraid of
something like this; that's why I fought like the
devil against this turnover of DS9 ....At least
right at this moment."
    "Oh? And why is that?" She didn't mean it to
sound quite so frosty; it was almost an autonomic
reaction.
  "I mean no slur against Bajor, Kira."
    "I'm only concerned," he continued, "about the
timing. While Starfleet is claiming that these Car-
dassians are renegades, disavowed by their central
command, there could well be more to this. At the
moment, I think it's a terrible idea to remove the
Federation presence here."
    "Radiation readings," said Dax, stepping for-
ward from her science station, "in the vicinity of
Sierra-Bravo 112 indicate a technological civiliza-
tion on the second planet from the star, but the
Federation long-range survey ship didn't pick up
any subspace transmissions or warp signatures."
  "Prime Directive, Old Man?" asked Sisko.
    "Yes, Benjamin, I'm sure the Prime Directive
would apply."
    "Benjamin," continued Dax, "There are no ene-
my ships anywhere near here and a quarter of the
Klingon fleet is on standby in case anything nasty
comes out of the wormhole. Now is as good a time
as any for the turnover--much as I hate to leave."
    "Perhaps you're right," allowed Captain Sisko.
"But in any case it's not an option: gentlemen, we
have been ordered by Admiral Baang to at least
investigate SB- 112 .... Investigate, not necessarily
to act upon what we see. That, at least, Starfleet
leaves to my discretion."
 KJra's blood leapt in response to the simple
announcement--stop! It's just another mission, it's
nothing! But her pulse raced regardless. The admir-
al had downplayed the potential for fighting, but
Kira somehow knew the rumor would turn out to
be true, and they would have no choice but to
intervene. And by the Prophets, I want to be on that
job. She tr/ed to tell herself it was only to avoid
tedious duty during the turnover... or even (a
dark thought) to avoid the inevitable deep, mean-
ingful discussion with Shakar about where they
were headed--they, as in They.
    But she was too honest to deny what she knew:
she had killed Cardassians for so long--her whole
adult life and much of her youth--that she had
become accustomed to blood. She fought the
dreams every waking moment and gave in to them
at night... slinking once again through the black
dark with disruptor rifle in arms, approaching the
Cardassian sentry as quiet as a meurik, and "taking
him out" (such euphemisms for perverse joy) with
a k-bar knife.
    Kira smiled, remembering grim and glorious
days in the Shakaar resistance cell. "I can see where
you're going to need someone like me, Captain."
To go to battle again--against Cardassian aggres-
sion-was surely enough to overcome her con-
flicted desire to be with Shakar during his moment
of triumph. Besides, she thought, putting a pious
spin, he'll be proud of my role in a mission like this.
It would mark the first time she went to war with
Cardassian slavers on her own, without Shakar.
    Sisko stopped, turning to gaze in seeming sereni-
ty upon the assembled senior crew, Kira in particu-
lar. "And that is why I am disappointed to have to
leave you behind, Major."
  "What?" She blinked, not understanding.
    "You are of course a very good choice for this
type of job, but you are the only person who can
smooth the inevitably choppy waters of the turn-
over of Deep Space Nine to the Bajoran govern-
ment."
  "But I--"
    "Major Kira, when First Minister Shakar ar-
rives-or whoever is sent by the council--I cannot
give him an executive officer who is a member of
Starfleet; Kai Winn would never allow it. She's
already as nervous as a cat that this is a conspir-
acy to take away Bajor's independence. There are
only two people on the station she almost
trusts... and one of us, Major, has to command
the Defiant."
    Captain Sisko turned and ascended to his imper-
ial roost, leaving behind a Bajoran major with her
mouth opening and closing wordlessly. But... I
shouM be in charge of the Cardassian operation!
Who else could Alas, when Kira turned for moral
support to the rest of the Ops crew, they had all
returned to their ongoing task to ready the station
for the turnover.
    Kira blew a breath through her clenched teeth.
"Aye, sir," she said belatedly and angrily sat at her
station. Don't be such a whiner, she berated herself;
perhaps it's a hidden blessing from the Prophets.
Leaving Kira as executive officer of the station not
only provided stability, it would mean sixty days of
face-to-face contact in a relationship that already
appeared to be drifting toward the shoals of ne-
glect. She smiled, wondering what it would be like
to once again take orders from the most brilliant
leader she had ever known.




0

CHAPTER  2

Two DAYS flickered past in the wink of an eye, but
not without terrible yet vague foreshadowings of
doom in Odo's imagination. The thought that he
would probably be kept on by the Bajorans for a
week or two, to facilitate in the turnover, before
ultimately being let go, didn't calm him; just the
reverse: if he couldn't stay on Deep Space Nine with
Major Kira--and Kai Winn would never agree to
any but a security officer who was Bajoran in
descent as well as in name--Odo would much
rather leave with Captain Sisko and these other
people he had come to care for; far better a strange
posting with my friends.
    Odo would not admit it to himself except in the
darkest moments of contemplation in his bucket,
but he was frightened. Despite the physical appear-
ance of a fully grown man, Odo was, in the long
and short, less than fifteen years old; insecurity
seized him, just as it had eight years earlier, when
the Cardassians left and handed the station over to
the unknown quantity of "The Federation." Odo
felt as if he were learning the basic shapes all over
again: cube, tetrahedron, pyramid, cylinder.
    There was terribly much to do... so many
things that could only be taken care of by Odo
himself--and others requiring the personal atten-
tion of the captain or Dax or Worf--that departure
on the Defiant to investigate the reports of Cardas-
sian boojums was delayed for two days.
    When at last everyone who was anyone (except
for Kira) boarded the ship and prepared to cast off,
leaving the rest of the packing-up and shipping-off
to enlisted crew and sundry ensigns and "jaygees,"
Odo found himself staring out the window of the
Defiant at the cold, silent station outside, as if it
might be the last time he would ever see it again. As
well it might, he told himself. Now stop dithering
and pull yourself together. They would probably be
returning, not to Deep Space Nine, but to another
starbase and a detailing officer for new assign-
ments... unless, against all odds, the Bajorans
decided they didn't want the station after all, and
they gave it back in sixty days. (If the Federation
took it back, over Bajoran wishes, Odo decided
glumly, it would cause a quadrantwide diplomatic
incident.)
    In the four years Odo had known the captain, he
had learned to read the man, and Sisko was, if
anything, even more agitated than the constable.
Captain Sisko paced on the bridge, something he
never did, and he snarled at Dax when the lieuten-
ant commander tried to tell him what a great job
he'd done as CO on the station. "You're already
writing my obituary," said the captain quietlyre
not quietly enough. He sat in his command chair
with a loud thump.
    Dax took the drastic events with more equanimi-
ty, which didn't surprise Odo in the least; in all her
lifetimes, she must have been uprooted and sent to
Outer Nowhere more times than she could count.
She probably no longer even felt nervous or lonely
in new places. Or perhaps she~ just better at hiding
her feelings, he thought. But Dr. Bashir sat white-
faced and white-knuckled in the supernumerary
jump seat; Deep Space Nine, Odo knew, had been
Bashir's very first posting after leaving Starfleet
Academy--his first and only Starfleet home. He
was as nervous as a Ferengi on trial about what
might lie ahead--not on Sierra-Bravo, not for
Deep Space Nine, but in his own life and career.
Worf and Chief O'Brien were stoical; but then, they
had only recently arrived from some Starfleet ship,
and Worf would never show his nervousness any-
way. The chief will at least bring his family along,
the constable realized.
    Curiously enough, Odo decided he would even
miss Quark. Well... perhaps a little; I'll miss the
relentless games and contests--games I always
won. But Odo sighed, realizing he was only fooling
himself; over many years and too many near-death
experiences to count, he had come to hold a
grudging respect for that one particular Ferengi.
And he suspected that Quark, who would be even
more reluctant to admit it to himself, would miss
Odo every bit as much.
    Commander Dax ran through the departure
checklist: "Check balast .... Nay systems on-line
and operational .... Weapons and shields within
operational capacities .... Level-three diagnostics
nominal .... Doctor? Doctor Bashir? Defiant
bridge to Doctor Bashir." The doctor jumped up
with a strangled noise and darted to the nearest
console. "Infirmary--I mean, sickbay diagnostics
nominal; no problems detected."
    Odo listened to the pulse of departure, all the
routine tasks that junior officers struggled over, but
which the senior crew now aboard could do in their
sleep. The sounds were familiar, not quite as com-
forting as reading the daily incident reports in his
security office, but better than standing and staring
out the porthole.
    "Dax," began the captain, "what have you found
out about Sierra-Bravo 112 from the planetary
database?"
    "Hm? Oh, it's a six-planet system, but only 112-
II is of any real interest. The inner planet is a
burned-out hulk of nickle-iron; the outer four are
gas giants.
    "112-II has a technological civilization at least
capable of broad-spectrum EM transmission ....
No warp signatures detected in the three sweeps on
ultra-long-range scanners, but that was eighty years
ago. Spectroscopic analysis indicates it's extraordi-
narily rich in latinum, selenium, and trilithium-
disulphite."
    Odo interrupted. "Which cannot be easily sepa-
rated into dilithium, as I recall."
    "On the nose, Constable." Dax continued.
"There are atmospheric traces of cyanide, so
there's probably some cyanide compound in the
local life-forms."
    "Doctor Bashir," queried the captain, "should
we have to beam down, can you protect the away
team from the level of cyanide in the atmosphere?
And can we eat the local food?"
    Odo watched the doctor poke at his console,
transferring Dax's data entry to his own station.
"Well, yes and no, sir: yes, a simple hypospray can
counter the level of poison residue on the atmos-
pheric dust, but no, we surely cannot eat the local
food."
    "Then it's com-rations all the way," said Sisko
with a smile.
    There was a sudden and urgent pounding on the
airlock door; everybody on the bridge jumped and
stared except for the captain. Sisko closed his eyes
and let his head fall back on his command chair.
"Who is that rapping at my chamber door?" He
did not sound pleased that his final departure from
the station had been marred by such an unseemly
occurrence.
    Worf looked back and forth, twice, between
Sisko and the door; the infernal racket started up
again, sounding to Odo as if some persistent neigh-
bor were beating on the airlock with a battering
ram. Odo moved to the airlock and cycled it open.
    Standing before him was an aggrieved and very
noisy Quark. "Don't tell me you simply forgot to
let me in on the departure time," whined the
Ferengi.
    "Forgot? Quark, I never forget anything. Let me
assure you, the snub was quite deliberate."
    "Captain--I appeal to you in the name of... of
kindly benevolence. These people who are taking
the station over are absolutely impossible. They
haven't the first idea of how a free market should
work--believe me, I know. I've tried to open a
franchise on Bajor for the past--"
    "You mean," interrupted Constable Odo, inter-
preting for the captain, "you've been trying to
palm off your stolen merchandise, but the Bajorans
are too moral and ethical to deal in contraband."
Odo crouched low to stare directly into Quark's
eyes; he was gratified to see the felonious Ferengi
lose his train of thought.
    But Quark quickly rallied. "Not in the least,
Captain Sisko. I have legitimate business interests
in the sector you're headed toward .... "
    Odo was on a roll; Quark couldn't seem to open
his mouth without convicting himself. "Really,
 Quark? And just how do you know where we're
 headed? That information is classified."
    The Ferengi managed to look innocently sur-
prised. "Aren't you going to the binary pair of the
neutron star Stirnis? I heard through the grape-
vine--"
    "There is no grapevine, Quark; the information
was classified. And I suppose you're going to deny
tapping into the station computers?"
    "Odo! That would be illegal." Quark grinned,
exposing a full, snaggly set of freshly sharpened
teeth. "Captain, I just want to come along with
you. I can't stand all this... religion." He shud-
dered, glancing back over his shoulder.
    Odo stretched both hands out and gripped the
sides of the airlock door, expanding his arms into a
nice imitation of a thorny thicket. "Captain, I
strongly advise against allowing this... unin-
dicted co-conspirator to accompany us."
    Dax wormed her way past an exasperated Worf
and stood next to the constable. "Oh, come now,
Odo. Would you rather leave this unindicted co-
conspirator alone on the station to work his magic
while you're gone for at least two weeks?"
    Odo said nothing at first; then the full horror of
the lieutenant commander's point became clear to
him. Quark, alone on the station, with nothing but
Bajoran religious figures to control him ....Quark
running amok.
 "I believe Dax has you there, Constable," said
the captain; he almost sounded as though he were
smirking. "The real question is, are you selfish
enough to wish Quark on the rest of the station just
so you, personally, won't have to deal with him?"
    The blow slid home like the well-aimed thrust of
a Klingon d'k tahg. "No, I... I suppose I'm not,"
mumbled Odo, feeling thrice a fool, three times
over. Glumly, he retracted his thickets; after a
moment spent in a glaring contest with Quark, Odo
stepped aside and allowed the Ferengi to enter.
    "Thank you," said Quark, with a shirty sort of
exaggerated politeness; he rolled his eyes as he
passed the constable. "Really, imagine trying to
hog all that latinum for yourselves."
    It took a moment to sink in. "Latinurn? Quark,
how did you know about the latinum? You did
break into the Federation planetary database!
That's a class-two felony ....Captain, I must
insist--"
    "Odo, Odo, Odo," said Quark, shaking his head
sadly. "I'm shocked, shocked that you have never
heard the Ferengi legends of, ah, the Grand Planet
of Latinum, fabled in Ferengi lore. Have you?"
    "No, Quark," said the constable, curling his lip,
so close, he could almost taste the charge... and
the Ferengi was in danger of slithering away again.
"I've never heard of a 'Grand Planet of Latinum,'
and neither have you! There is no such legend."
    The Ferengi made a grand theatrical gesture.
"Why, every Ferengi knows it lies in, why, right
 there in Sierra-Bravo 112. When I heard where you
 were going, I just knew I had to explore... for
 Ferenginar--for the Grand Nagus, not for myself."
     "Every Ferengi?' demanded Odo, making him-
 self bigger. "So if I were to ask, say, Nog--"
    "Ah, youth! Young Ferengi are so poorly edu-
cated these days, and I'm afraid my ignorant neph-
ew is even less assiduous about it than most."
    Odo opened and closed his mouth, feeling as a
starving solid must feel when food is dangled, then
snatched cruelly away. But once again, Quark had
beaten the charge. The constable snorted and
turned away, frustrated.
    "All aboard," sang out Chief O'Brien; it was
evidently some obscure Federation reference, and
Odo didn't catch it. Snorting heavily, Worf poked
at the door panel with a meaty forefinger, and the
airlock slid shut.
    "Are we all done now?" inquired Captain Sisko,
looking directly at the constable.
    "I, uh, don't think there will be any more inter-
ruptions," muttered Odo, still struggling to find the
flaw in Quark's ridiculous fabrication. Great Plan-
et of Latinum!
    "Thank you. Cast off, Old Man; let's really wring
out this beautiful piece of machinery. Who knows?
It may be our last time."
    With a wistful-sounding "aye, aye," Dax ran the
final launch checklist, detached the Defiant from
her moorings, turned a sharp 130 degrees, and
headed off toward the star system known onty as
Sierra-Bravo 112. Odo watched Quark as if the
Ferengi might shoplift a warp coil.

    The days crawled with exaggerated slowness for
Major Kira Nerys as she nervously awaited Sha-
kar's arrival. She paced the long, crowded corridors
in the habitat ring, sidestepping the hundreds of
boxes and antigray dollies, dancing around civilian
and Starfleet movers, and occasionally studying
some transitioning resident's requisition without
really seeing what she saw. She really had too much
to do herself to waste time wandering the rest of
the station; every security code and classified pro-
gram in Ops had to be either changed to Bajoran
standards or encrypted and hidden away, in case
the "temporary" turnover really did turn out to be
temporary.
    Secretly, in her heart, Kira suspected that was
the most likely outcome. I guess I really don't think
we're quite ready yet, she thought, feeling strangely
ambivalent where she ought to feel either patriotic
pride in Bajor's accomplishments or burning
shame at the places where they fell short. But
having sat through more than her share of Bajoran
council meetings and seen, firsthand, the astonish-
ing acrimony over the slightest miscommunication
or dispute, she was sure the Federation had been
wise to slip in the sixty-day escape clause.
    Am I just being an unpatriotic snob? What,
Bajor's not "good enough" because we're not the
wonderous, omnipotent FEDERATION? The
thought truly bothered her, as did what it implied
about her lack of confidence in Shakar, but there it
was with all its humiliating consequences: I truly
believe we're just not ready and this whole turnover
is going to be a fiasco.
    What was worse, Kira was ninety percent certain
that Kai Winn was setting Shakar up to fail; and
the Kai would use his so-called "failure" as a
hammer to bludgeon him out of his post as First
Minister. "Beware, Shakar; Winn has always
wanted exclusive power in the hands of the ve~
deks," spoke Kira into a letter log she planned to
send down to Shakar before he departed for the
station.
    But she knew it was to no avail; if Winn offered
the governorship to Shakar, there was no way he
could refuse it without appearing weak and losing
face. That, too, might cost him his ministerial rank.
Shakar would just have to take his chances; maybe,
against all the odds, he could succeed so well that
the turnover would become permanent.
    Kira finished the letter log and encrypted it using
the special, one-way key code she and Shakar used.
(It was definitely the sort of undiplomatic missive
one didn't want falling into the "wrong hands,"
especially the Council of Vedeks.) Then she sent it
with a request for receipt confirmation. The major
waited for fifteen minutes near the console, but
there was no friendly double beep; evidently, Sha-
kar was not available to hear it right away.
 Odo's office was immaculate, of course; he had
not packed up anything, since there was still a
reasonable chance that the Bajorans would keep
him on as internal security officer, or "constable."
Kira had made a persuasive case that Odo could
enforce Bajoran social-religious law as easily as he
could Federation law... or for that matter, the
harsh Cardassian legislative code of Terek Nor,
though she still wasn't quite sure he appreciated
her efforts. Still, because it was a good time to do
it--Captain Sisko would need a full legal account-
ing for his final outprocessing report--Kira
wanted to perform a complete inventory of all
cases handled, their dispositions, active and on-
going investigations, informant lists, and profiles
of "suspicious characters," as Odo termed them
(by whatever arcane methods he used to arrive at
that determination). Odo would have done it him-
self, of course; it was just the sort of nitpicky thing
that Odo loved and the major detested. But he was
away on the Defiant, and the task fell to her.
    She started setting up the query criteria for the
computer, similar to an engineering diagnostic
scan but for security office actions rather than
computer responses. She yawned several times...
and then blinked her eyes, confused, feeling the
warm, smooth press of Odo's desk against her
cheek. It took Kira several seconds to realize she
had actually fallen asleep at her task, and more
than an hour had passed.
    Jumping up with a confused start, she stared
wildly around; the computer beeped, and Kira
 realized that was what had awakened her in the first
 place. "Attention Major Kira," said the smooth
 female voice, "runabout from Bajor docking at
 Docking Bay Four, carrying the new governor of
 Deep Space Nine."
    "Shakar!" So that~ why he never acknowledged
my message; he was already en route. Kira headed
for the door but had to stop halfway and squat onto
her hams to avoid passing out. When her blood
pressure climbed back to "awake" level, she jogged
to the nearest turbolift, which hauled her out to the
habitat ring, up the pylon, and into the docking
bay. She straightened her uniform and only belat-
edly realized that she was the only person in the
reception area not in dress uniform. When the huge
airlock door rolled aside on its geared teeth, she felt
a flush of embarrassment creep up her neck to her
cheeks and nose ridges. If only she hadn't stupidly
fallen asleep, she could have greeted the First
Minister with the proper ritual. Her cheek still felt
creased from Odo's desk.
    The inner airlock and the door of the runabout
rolled back simultaneously in opposite directions,
and a mob of diplomatic-looking Bajorans shuffled
out, murmuring ritualized greetings and well-
wishes.
    Then the mob parted, and a large gentteman--a
vedek Kira didn't knowmstepped up to her. "Ma-
jor? May I present the credentials of the new
governor of Deep Space Nine, now called Emis-
sary's Sanctuary."

    The vedek stepped aside, and a small, plump and
frumpy woman stepped forward with grave dignity
and a phony, ingratiating smile. "Hello, my child,"
said Kai Winn, beaming. "May the peace of the
Prophets be with you always."
    Kira forgot every word of the wonderful speech
she had prepared. She stared in horror at her new
boss for the next sixty days... or maybe forever.
"I... !... hi, Kai." Then she flushed even hard-
er. "The, ah, station greets you, my Kai; may the
peace of the Prophets be on you. Be with you. This
is so... so--"
    "Unexpected?" suggested Kai Winn with a
toothy smile. It wasn't exactly the word Major Kira
had in mind.




0

CHAPTER
       3

THIS IS a bad dream, thought Major Kira. Any
minute now, I'll wake up and--
    Kira sat up suddenly in bed, head spinning like a
gyroscopic stabilizing unit. She had been having a
nightmare: Kai Winn fired everybody in Deep
Space Nine, even the Bajorans, and replaced them
with corpses and monsters reanimated by black
magic.
    The reality wasn't much different, except instead
of the walking dead, the Kai was in the process of
replacing all the longtime administrative personnel
on the station with her own cadre... what Kira
insisted upon thinking of as the Kai's "toadies."
Although the top officers of Deep Space Nine were
all Starfleet (hence, leaving anyway), the women
and men who did much of the day-to-day "real"
work were civilians: the janitors, dockwallopers,
communications and traffic controllers, ship in-
spectors, security personnel, jailers, tour guides,
lawyers and paralegals, maintenance workers, as-
tronomers, fuel handlers, painters, and polishers.
None of these people was actually required by
Starfleet to leave when the Federation pulled off the
station, and since most of them were Bajorans,
Kira had simply assumed that Kai Winn would
keep them in their jobs.
    No such luck. The Kai arrived in the airlock with
sixteen bags of personal effects and a forty-screen
list of patrons who had supported her bid to jump
from vedek to Kai. Kira stood next to Kai Winn,
still blinking pieces of sleep out of her eyes and
desperately wishing for another coffee, and high-
lighted names on the list as they showed up at the
station. The docking pylons had become huge
traffic snarls, jammed with resentful members of
the newly disemployed shuffling out and down, to
be replaced by smug and fervent boosters of Kai
Winn cycling up and in.
    The major's only consolation, as she broke up
the third fight that morning--a laid-off gardener
with two children tried to plant a geranium in the
skull of a childless, unmarried lay pastor who had
just taken his job--was that Kai Winn was setting
herself up for a spectacular failure .... After
which, with Winn disgraced, surely the Council of
Vedeks would reconsider the only other obvious
candidate for governor... First Minister Shakar.
    The lay pastor's head turned out to be much
harder than his attacker anticipated; Constable
Odo was away on the mission to Sierra-Bravo; Kai
Winn was far too busy to worry about minor
details like assault and battery; the holding cells
were already full to overflowing; and to tell the
truth, Major Kira's sympathies lay entirely with
the gardener. There was nothing to do but scream
at the attacker for several minutes and send him on
his way.
    The major was just pushing the subdued family
man onto the runabout, which would take him
down to Bajor and a long stint in the Office of
Labor Resource Allocation, waiting for another job
opening, when the stupidity of what Kira had been
doing for the past few days hit her square in the
conscience. She turned away, mumbling a long
string of blasphemies against the Kai through
clenched teeth, and discovered herself nose to nose
with Kai Winn.
    The Kai smiled ingratiatingly. "Child, what
troubles you? Do you worry about the justice of
removing so many people, even Bajorans, from
their jobs?"
    "Kai!" Kira stared, dithering between keeping
her job and keeping her sanity; sanity won.
"Well... now that you mention it, yes. Why are
you doing this? What have these people ever done
to deserve..." Kira groped for the word. "To
deserve exile?"
    "Exile? No one is being exiled, child. They are all
welcome to stay." Kai Winn gestured expansively,
evidently including the entire station. "If these
Bajorans wish to begin taking more seriously the
traditions and spiritual beliefs of our people, they
may even be given new jobs here on the Emissary's
Sanctuary."
    "Big of you." Kira struggled in vain to keep the
sarcasm out of her voice.
    Kai Winn shook her head sadly. "They have
made their choices, child; those who choose to live
by the secular law alone, not according to the
ancient wisdom of the Prophets, have only those
rights protected by the law: which means, my child,
l can let them go whenever I decide others should
take their places."
    Isn't there anyplace in the heart of a Kai for
compassion? Kira thought, and for a moment won-
dered if she had spoken aloud. But if Kai Winn
heard anything, she chose not to take offense; she
merely smiled and repeated the justification that
those being "let go" were the purely secular work-
ers who were either not devoted enough to the
Prophets... or at least not public enough in their
devotions and rituals.
    "Fine. Just fine--my Kai." Then I should be the
first one fired, Kira thought as she squeezed her
fists, fingernails stabbing painfully into her palms;
and where the hell were YOU when we 'geculars"
were fighting Cardassia to ,give you back your bloody
world? Fortunately, the major left the latter unsaid.
    "No, Major Kira," said the Kai with the same
smug, irritating smile, "you are still needed. For
reasons i cannot discuss, I must retain you in your
position as executive officer of Emissaryg Sanc-
tuary."
    Kai Winn put her hand on Kira's head, murmur-
ing a blessing; then she walked away, already
having forgotten the major's outburst... and the
very real concerns that sparked it.
    She doesn't understand that the turnover is just a
temporary measure, thought Kira, amazed; does
she really think it~' going to be PERMANENT? The
major's next thought was even more chilling: What
if she has a plan I don't know about?
    The Federation ordered the turnover to see how
well the Bajorans could adapt to running a full-
sized starbase, a "coming-of-age" test to see how
mature Bajor was after decades of Cardassian
occupation. Kira had always told herself that after
the sixty days, everything would revert to normal.
But Kai Winn was a Very Imporant Life-Form in
the Federation recently... and if the Kai abso-
lutely insisted on keeping the station, would Star-
fleet risk an interstellar incident by insisting on
taking it back? In fact, who was to say the Kai
hadn't already worked it out (at a level far above
Captain Sisko) that Bajor would keep the station,
no matter what the agreement read?

    For the first five days of Kai Winn's tenure (of
either sixty days or forever), Kira's anger and
jumpiness increased exponentially. She followed
the Kai around like a pet dakthara, taking dictated
orders and being sent to tell families that their fates
were now in limbo: they were being removed from
positions they had held, quite literally, since Deep
Space Nine had been Terek Nor. By the end of the
transition period, as the last of Kai Winn's "toad-
ies" was ensconced in a job that used to be consid-
ered critical but now was just patronage, Kira had
developed a burning itch to beam the Kai into
empty space. The major had just begun to envision
the infuriating old woman gasping for a lungful of
nonexistent air when she realized what a blasphe-
my even such a thought was. Kira forcibly erased
all violent thoughts from her mind; she was more
religious than she generally liked to let on, even to
herself.
    She sat in her normal chair up in Ops, all alone,
feeling as if she were the one who had moved to a
new duty station; instead, it had been quite literally
everyone else who had abandoned her. The patrons
of the Kai who had been placed on Ops duty
rotation--every one a brother, sister, or an or-
dained sub-vedek--were far too busy "adminis-
trating," whatever that meant, actually to stand
their watches; they never showed up, leaving Kira
to do the work of four people.
    It hardly mattered. The stationwide com-
channel chimed, catching Kira's attention. The
Kai's beaming visage appeared on the main
screen--a prerecorded message, Kira guessed.
"Good day, my children. I know how hard it must
be for you to adjust to your new duties. The ears of
Bajor have heard your heartfelt pleas .... Until
this trying turnover is complete, Bajor, in my
person, hereby bars all ships' traffic with Emis-
sary~ Sanctuary. For the moment, until we stand
aright again, we Bajorans must concern ourselves
only with Bajor; the outside world must wait."
    "Excellent idea," muttered Kira, making sure no
"ears of Bajor" were stretched nearby. "Who needs
the sector, the quadrant, the entire Federation
when we can stick our heads in a hole instead?"
Surely we couldn't be invaded TWICE.t but she
kept the last thought silent.
    "In keeping with this new focus," continued the
smug smile of Bajor, "each must concentrate him
or herself on the inner soul. There are a number of
old customs and laws from the bright days before
the Occupation that must be restored, if Bajor is to
be once again Bajoran. A complete list shall be
available on the main computers and will also be
posted on bulkheads in the Promenade, in accord-
ance with the ancient custom."
    "By All the Prophets," breathed a stunned Kira,
"are we going to revive the old laws?" She stared at
her hands, hands that had about as much chance of
becoming great sculptors as Kai Winn had of
winning a Ferengi beauty contest.
    Frantic, the major poked at the panel before her,
calling up the file. It took a moment to find; she
finally tried "Code of the Prophets," and the list
appeared.
    It wasn't as long as she'd thought it would
be... and it did not include certain archaic pro-
visions that she had feared--praise the Prophets
and the Kai~ mercy/But as Kira read each law,
most of which she had never seen before, her
mouth opened in astonishment. "Rank? Seniority?
Etiquette between boys and girls? This is a military
code." When she reached the detailed passages
about food preparation, incense burning, hair
length--she fingered her own too-short hair, won-
dering whether the executive officer of Emissary's
Sanctuary would be forced to grow locks down to
her shoulders--she sat back, more amused than
angry. "Yeah, good luck, my Kai."
    Kira met Kai Winn on the Promenade. "Child,"
said the Kai, "there is one den of iniquity that I'm
sure you'll be pleased to see converted to more,
shall we say, appropriate uses?"
    Kira thought for a moment, but really, the refer-
ence was clear. "You mean Quark's Place?"
    Winn leaned close. "It's not just that it serves
liquor," she whispered, glancing left and right
conspiratorially; Kira followed suit automatically.
"Child, you cannot be aware of what dreadful
debauchery lurks in the upper chambers."
  "Oh, you mean the..." Kira stopped; if the Kai
thought she hadn't known about the holosuites,
why disabuse her? "You mean the other Dabo
tables?"
    Kai Winn shuddered, marking the sign of the
Prophets upon her ample belly. She took Kira's
arm, clumsily wrenching the major's elbow pain-
fully. "You don't want to know, child; truly, thank
the Prophets you were in ignorance! But now that
the--Ferengi--will be leaving, we must decide
what to do with the space. And we must inspect the
premises now, painful as that may be.
    "Let your moral code guide you," prayed the
Kai, "and walk hand in hand with the Prophets."
    Rom, who was looking after the bar while Quark
himself was mercifully away with the Defiant, in-
stantly busied himself monkeying around with the
glassware. His hands shook, and he clinked the
glasses hard enough to break one, leading Major
Kira to the conclusion Rom was very much aware
that almost everything about Quark's was a viola-
tion of the Code. The Ferengi didn't even glance up
as Kira and the Kai entered, clinching the case, but
Kira decided to keep her mouth shut, hoping the
Kai was too preoccupied to notice.
    "Rom/" shouted Kira, trying to alert him. "Two
root beers. Kai Winn, you have to try this drink/"
    The Kai declined and headed out quickly. Kira
hurried on behind the blithely indifferent Winn as
she bustled out of the erstwhile bar and headed
into the Promenade; the Kai set a straight line for
the turbolift, ignoring the swarms of the devout
who parted around her like waves before a ship.
Kai Winn enunciated a firm "Operations" to the
computer, and the lift obediently began to rise.
    Dog's breakfast, that's what Chief O'Brien wouM
have said,' this whole experiment is turning into a
real dog's breakfast. Kira should have exulted: the
station in an uproar, positions filled by incompe-
tent political hacks, ancient religious codes forced
upon reluctant residents... surely all this non-
sense would lead to the complete disgrace of Kai
Winn and her entire faction.
    The major almost smiled, but she didn't feel like
smiling; instead, she felt a great sadness that Bajor
had been given a chance and was throwing it away
in a futile effort to recapture the glory days of the
Prophets instead of moving into the modern cen-
tury.
 "Dog's breakfast," said Kira with conviction.
 "I'm sorry, my child, I don't understand."
 "It's something Chief O'Brien says."
"Oh, yes. Colorful man. What does it mean?"
Kira shrugged. "Oh, I can't really say." Not
QUITE a lie, she told herselfi The turbolift
hummed for Ops, carrying the Kai to the very
office once occupied by the Emissary, and before
him, by Gul Dukat, as he oversaw the enslavement
of the world.

    "A pig's breakfast," said Chief O'Brien, reading
the scanners over Dax's shoulder. "A real pig's
break fast."
    The Trill science officer looked back at the chief.
"What exactly do pigs eat for breakfast?"
    The chief didn't answer the question, at least not
literally.
    "Seven Cardassian warships, Captain," he
added. "Couple of heavies, GM-class, a cruiser,
and the other four are speeder-destroyers. Identifi-
cation shows they were all reported stolen over the
last two years."
    "So they may well be renegades," Sisko said, "or
perhaps Cardassian Central Command is looking
for plausible deniability. Chief, what odds would
you give us?"
    "If we popped off the cloak and opened fire?
Well, we might cripple one of the GMs in the first
volley, then the other would engage us, and the
destroyers would nibble us to death."
  "Wouldn't advise it?"
    "No, sir. Not if you're wanting to make it away
in one piece. And frankly, sir, I wouldn't advise
revealing our presence for any reason... not even
to send a diplomatic message for them to bug out."
    The captain stroked his beard; "I don't like this,"
he said to Dax. "I don't like sitting here doing
nothing."
    "Then we'd better get down to the planet our-
selves, Benjamin," she replied. Amen to that,
thought O'Brien .... Then he remembered the
odds: seven Cardassian warships could mean as
many as fifteen hundred soldiers on the ground.
Odo stepped off the turbolift onto the bridge,
fresh after several hours spent in his bucket.
    O'Brien watched the constable narrowly; Odo
frowned and scowled, clasped his hands behind his
back, and made other fidgety signs that he wasn't
satisfied. The chief decided information was more
important than secrecy. "Captain, I'd like to make
a full level-three scan of the entire system."
 "Chief, wait," said Jadzia Dax, "the Cardassians
can detect level three ....Maybe we'd better make
it level two."
    "That won't tell us enough, Commander." As
usual, O'Brien found himself annoyed when he had
to argue with a commissioned officer; he always
had the sneaking suspicion that he was starting
several points down already. "Level three will show
us any technology hidden on the second planet. We
can't rely on the lack of ships."
 "And the Cardassians?" asked Sisko.
    "I'm hoping they're too preoccupied with sup-
pressing the planet to pay that much attention to
their passive sensors."
    Sisko nodded absently; surprised at winning so
easily, O'Brien quickly completed the scan before
the captain could change his mind. The systems
chief stared at the viewer as the readout slowly
crawled across the screen; his mouth opened wider
with every pass.
    Dax, crowding the screen, said, "What are
you . . . oh. Wow."
    "Well?" demanded the constable. "Is there any
hidden technology on the planet?"
  "Well, Odo, I really can't say," said O'Brien.
    "And why not?" The changeling looked even
more annoyed than usual.
    The chief snorted. "Because I can't read a sundi-
al under a spotlight."
    Everyone on the bridge except for Dax stared at
the chief. "You're going to have to explain that last
one," said the captain.
    If he g upset now, just wait until he sees the report.
"I mean, sir, I'm not sure whether we're going to
rescue the life-forms on this planet... or vice
versa," said O'Brien.
    "Thank you, Chief," Odo said, "now perhaps
you'd care to explain your explanation?"
    "In short, simple sentences," added Sisko, artic-
ulating each word distinctly.
    "What he means, Benjamin," Dax put in, "is
that there's so much technology on that planet--
technology far beyond anything the Cardassians
have, or us either--that there's no possible way to
tell if there's anything unusual; it would be lost in
the glare."
    "And that, "said O'Brien in triumph, pointing at
the viewer, "is what a pig eats for breakfast."

0

CHAPTER
       4

JAOZIA DAX hunched down at her console so every-
body could peer over her head at the viewer. "Yes,"
she said, "I'd say this qualifies as a porcine meal,
Chief."
    Sisko voiced the thought on everyone's mind...
certainly on Dax's. "I don't think I've ever seen so
much technology in one place. And what technolo-
gy! I can't even begin to guess what half of it
does .... But why haven't they warned away the
Cardassians yet?"
    Dax noticed something and moved to shift the
scan frequencies, but Bashir's elbow was in the
way. "Julian J. Bashir, do you mind?"
    He jumped away from her instruments. "J?
What does the J stand for?"
    "You don't want to know," muttered the Trill,
readjusting to scan for life-forms. "Um... well,
looks like there's life on that planet, all right."
  "How many species?" interrupted Bashir.
  "Hm." Jadzia Dax ran a quick subroutine.
  "About three million, Julian. Mostly insects, I'd
  guess."
    Bashir gave her a look. "I mean how many
sentient species, as if you didn't know."
    "One. Wait, I take that back: there are actually
three .... Cardassian, Drek'la, and an unknown--
presumably the natives of the planet. There are
about a dozen Cardassians, a thousand Drek'la,
and eleven million natives."
"Drek'la?" Sisko asked. "Never heard of them."
"Me neither," Dax said, "let me check the re-
cords. Here they are. They're a space-living race,
very small in numbers. That thousand of them
must be a good percentage of their entire species.
They're like hermit crabs, stealing and/or recover-
ing old spaceships and using them as home."
    "Interesting. Are they working for the Cardassi-
ans, or did they capture the Cardassians along with
their ships? And just eleven million of the natives
on the entire planet?"
    "Yes, pretty sparse. There are quite a few cities,
but they're mostly deserted, except Cardassians
occupy two of them. The indigenous population is
sticking to the countryside. No subspace or radio
communications, no space presence."

    "But that's it. "The chief suddenly stood, staring
at the forward viewer; he paced right up to it, so
close he was probably looking at individual pixels.
Dax waited patiently; Chief O'Brien continued.
"Captain, that's the explanation for everything:
these eleven million creatures must be the degener-
ated remnants of the mighty civilization that built
all this technology. They probably don't even know
how to use it anymore."
    "I hate to say it," said Quark from across the
room, "but the chief's got a pretty good explana-
tion."
    "When did he sneak in here?" demanded Odo,
but no one answered.
    "It would explain why they don't just zap the
Cardassians--or Drek'la or whoever--out of or-
bit," concluded Quark.
    "Let's not jump to conclusions. Dax, is there any
sign of resistance? Weapons discharge, explosions,
fires, battle lines?"
    Dax scanned from pole to pole, letting the planet
revolve beneath the Defiant, whose orbit was high
enough, forty-two thousand kilometers, that they
were only moving at half the angular velocity of the
planetary rotation. "Nope; nothing on this side.
The Drek'la and a few Cardassians are filling up
the cities, the natives are going about their business
in the countryside."
    "As if they weren't even aware they'd been
invaded," mused the captain. "All right, Dax;
throw an away team together. Starfleet Command
and I want to know what's going on down there."
    Dax stood, slipping out from the knot of players
to decide who would accompany her downstairs.
Worf obviously; O'Brien to evaluate their technolo-
gy; hm... oh, of course: Odo for infiltrations.
"You, you, you--volunteers. Meet me in trans-
porter room three in ten. Oh, Worf, where do you
keep the planetary exploration-survival gear? And
weapons; there are enemies about."
    Quark spoke up unexpectedly. "Commander
Dax, if you don't have any objection, I'd like to be
on the away team."  Quark? QUARK?
    "Well, Dax may have no objection," snarled
Odo, "but I certainly do."
    Quark shook his head sadly and spoke to Dax. "I
suppose he just has a problem dealing with any
authority but his own. Especially female authority,
poor fellow. If you choose to have me--I mean,
have me along--I don't see how it's any decision of
his; after all, the captain did put you in charge."
    Dax chuckled; she knew exactly what Quark was
doing. He made the same mistake everyone did:
assuming Jadzia Dax was as young and easily
charmed as Jadzia might have been (though in
truth, Dax didn't think even the prejoined Jadzia
had been all that innocent and naive a girl). On the
other hand, Dax did not have quite the same knee-
jerk reaction against Ferengi capitalists as did most
Starfleet officers, who believed that the Federation
had long since "transcended" such "destructive
competition." As an alliance of traders, the Ferengi
would deal with everyone... which meant they
had to learn to deal with anyone. Necessity had
given them an uncanny ability to penetrate right to
the heart of unknown cultures and civilizations--
and figure out what they could be talked into
buying.
    "Thanks for volunteering, Quark; glad to have
you aboard." Odo opened his mouth, but Dax
interrupted before he could say a word. "Get down
to the transporter and try not to kill Quark before
we make planetfall."
    Less than ten minutes later, everyone stood on
the transporter pads wearing backpacks with
enough equipment to climb Mount Traxanaxanos
on Betazed (a task which Torias Dax had actually
tried three times before giving up in disgust). A
transporter chief waited patiently for the order to
energize.
    Bashir went to each away team member in turn
and hyposprayed him in the neck. "There are trace
particulates in the air that are poisonous," he
explained. "This should protect you. But you'd
better perform a complete microbioscan of any-
thing local you want to eat or drink; a single
hypospray can't protect you from large doses."
    "Hit us," said Dax, pointing at the woman; after
a moment's hesitation, the transporter chief ran
her fingers down the transporter touchplate. The
next thing Dax saw was the side of a mountain,
appropriately enough; they were standing on the
slope, looking down into a verdant valley dotted
with small hamlets.
    She turned and did a slow scan with her tricorder.
"Well, one direction's as good as another, I sup-
pose," said the Trill. "Let's head down that way."
She set out toward the nearest hamlet, setting a
brisk pace that would get them to their destination
in just over half an hour. The Cardassians were a
hundred klicks away, not moving at the moment.
    The plant life was lush, but everything had a
peculiar bluish tint; Dax scanned the vegetation
carefully as she passed it: in addition to a form of
chlorophyll, the plants also contained peculiar
trace elements. "Cynanine," she reported, "and a
lot of radical cyanogens."
 "What does that mean?" asked Worf.
    "It means the doctor was right: please don't eat
the grass. We'll have to pack our lunch."
    "The food is poisonous? To Cardassians and
Drek'la as well?"
    "Well, I'm sure the Natives enjoy the spice. Yes,
Worf, poisonous to Cardassians and Drek'la too."
    O'Brien spoke up. "So what would they be
wanting with the planet, then? They can't live here;
they can't colonize the place."
    Quark was on hands and knees; at first Dax
thought he had stumbled, but he was examining
something on the ground. "That's an excellent
question, Chief," she said. "It's been noted and
logged. But at the moment, I don't have a clue
why."
    "Well, I think I do," muttered Quark; he began
to slither on the ground, sniffing at the dirt. "Looks
like that Starfleet database--I mean the Ferengi
legends were actually right." He continued rooting
along the soil like a worm.
    "Oh, please," said Odo, rolling his eyes in dis-
gust. "I've half a mind to change into a verlak bird
and swallow you whole."
     Quark looked up at the constable. "Well, you're
definitely right about one thing."
  "Oh? And what's that?"
  "You have half a mind."
    "Gentlemen, please. Now what did you just say,
Quark?"
    The Ferengi stood up, brushing off his painfully
colorful knickers and vest. "Oh, nothing. Never
mind."
    But Dax was wise to the ways of Ferengi. She
pointed her tricorder at the dirt. "Interesting," she
exclaimed. "The soil is saturated with latinum
drops."
    Quark stared mesmerized at the ground. "There
must be... thousands of bars, just waiting to be
siphoned up .... "
    Quark's nose was right; but latinum was the least
of the riches: tiny dilithium crystals were also
liberally scattered through the soil, as were eleven
other rare minerals. "The Ferengi Alliance would
die for the mining rights," remarked Dax.
    "Hey, I saw it first," wailed Quark. He dropped
to his knees and spread his arms protectively over
the ground. "I claim this dirt in the name of
Quark's Mining and Mineral Processing Facility."
    Odo snorted and pointed an accusing finger,
stretching it a full meter to wag directly in the
Ferengi's face. "You have no mining and mineral-
processing facility."
  "I do now," responded Quark defensively.
    "It belongs to the Federation, not to you and
your Nagus."
    "Look, I don't mean to interrupt," said Chief
O'Brien, "but this planet already has eleven mil-
lion owners. If anyone owns it, they do."
    Dax smiled. "Anyone who wants the mining
rights will have to find something the Natives want
more and negotiate for it."
    "That can be arranged," added Quark, still sul-
len at being denied his claim. "If necessary," he
added under his breath.
    "But at least," continued the Trill, "we have a
pretty good idea why the Cardassians and Drek'la
are here. And that means they're not likely to just
pack up and leave." Dax, she imagined Benjamin
saying, if you say "this place is a goM mine," your
away team is going to mutiny. She wrinkled her
nose--even she could smell the metallic tang of
latinurn.
    While everyone else mulled over the fortune they
were standing on, Dax decided to change the
subject. She recalibrated the field variables on her
tricorder and did another sweep. "I really, really
don't like being surrounded by tons of technology,
and I mean literally tons, that I don't have a clue
about. The stuff is just lying around, unattended."
Even worse was wondering how much of it the
Natives knew how to operate. At least there are no
Cardassians or Drek'la around, she thought with
relief; they would almost certainly figure out some-
thing quite nasty to do with the stuff.
    The away team headed into the village, still
spotting no one. "Big clump of Natives about two
hundred meters that direction," said Dax, point-
ing; she held up her hand, and everyone came to a
halt upwind of the mob. "The Natives are having
an intense discussion."
    "Must be some kind of a town meeting," guessed
the chief.
    Dax scanned. "Well, everyone's over there for
sure. The houses and stores are all empty."
    Odo glared at Quark for several seconds. "Well?"
he demanded. "I know you can hear them with
those big ears you're always boasting about. What
are they saying?"
    Quark glared needles, but turned in the direction
Dax pointed; he closed his eyes and started to
mumble inaudibly.
  "Out loud, Quark," snarled Constable Odo.
    "Give me a break. There's more than one of
them talking." He continued his mumble act for a
solid minute, then opened his eyes. "Everybody's
talking at once, and they're all saying things like
'what's she doing now,' 'did she find one yet,' 'is
she getting out,' 'she doesn't have much time,' 'isn't
she out of the well yet,' 'maybe she's just too
young,' 'too bad, she seemed like such a bright
child.' Lots of other things, but that's pretty much
the consensus."
    "Out of the well, Quark?" demanded the consta-
ble, incredulous. "With all this technology around
us, you're saying they get their water from a well?"
    "I don't interpret, Odo; I don't translate; I only
repeat."
    "Perhaps it is merely a rustic decoration," grum-
bled Worf. "I have seen such things in holodeck
programs."
    "Surely they would just turn a tap, or at least use
a modern, sealed well."
    "Maybe it's abandoned?" suggested Dax. She
noticed that Chief O'Brien appeared anxious, look-
ing back and forth from the group to the direction
of the mob. Dax looked at him and gestured for
him to spit it out.
    "Pardon me, sirs, but can't we save the philo-
sophical gobbledygook for later? There's a little girl
stuck in a well over there."
    Whoops. "Chief's right: double time, let's rescue
a kid." And maybe ingratiate ourselves just a wee
bit with the Natives .... Dax led the charge, weav-
ing through the buildingsmplastic houses and
storefronts molded into asymmetrical geometric
shapes made of triangles and hexagons, like pieces
of a honeycomb.
    She stumbled over nothing, dropping tricorder
and phaser; picking them up and rubbing her shin,
Dax stared back at the faint, shimmering beam
along the ground, ankle high. "Watch out for the
force beam," she warned.
    O'Brien stepped carefully over the beam, follow-
ing it left and right with his gaze. "You know, I
think it's a bench."
"So? As you said, we have a damsel in distress."
"But Commander... if they can manipulate
force beams like that, why can't they use them to
levitate the little gift out of the well? For God's
sake, even we can't make a park bench out of a
mobile force beam."
    Shrugging, Dax continued threading the houses
toward the congregation. But he does raise an
interesting science question, she conceded.
    When they reached the last building facing on a
large clearing, she finally saw the Natives. Human-
oid, fortunately, and not too different from the
Alpha Quadrant norm. The shape of their noses
was remarkably Bajoran, enought to make Dax
wonder if the ancient Bajorans, who used a type of
solar sail to ply the starwinds, might be related to
these natives in some way. Dax held up a hand,
halting the away team at the edge of the clearing.
At Dax's command, Odo, the least vulnerable
officer, led the away team forward, followed closely
by Worf, then Dax and O'Brien, with the gnomish
Quark hiding in the back. As they crossed the
clearing toward the mob of nearly seventy people,
the murmurs from the crowd gradually faded to
silence and everyone turned to look at the new-
comers.
    "Greetings," said Odo, making no gestures; the
universal translator would turn his words into the
Natives' speech, but there was no telling what a
raised hand might mean on this planet. "We come
from... another village a few days' journey from
here."
    "Another village?" said a gamine, nearly androg-
ynous woman; the others deferred to her as if she
were the local hetman. She looked the away team
up and down. "Are you sure you don't come from
another planet?"
"A-another planet?" said Dax, surprised.
"Those who occupy the cities came from another
planet, so I figured you might've. You look strange
enough, especially the short one with the cooling
flaps."
"Cooling flaps!" shouted Quark, enraged.
"Shh," soothed Jadzia. "Quiet, Quark, or you'll
never close the deal. My name is, ah, Dax. Whom
have I the honor of addressing?"
 "I am Asta-ha. I speak for these Tiffnaks."
    Just then, a shrill burst of profanity emerged
from the center of the mob, complete with reverb
and echo effect. If it was the child, she seemed to
be in reasonably good health; kid has breath enough
for some powerful screaming, in any event. "Asta-
ha, it sounds as if there's a little girl trapped in that
well there. Do you need help getting her out?"
    Asta-ha's face brightened at the suggestion. "Can
you find the tool? We can't help her, of course, the
poor child."
    "May we take a look?" Dax dodged her way up to
the lip of the well and peered over; the sun was in
later afternoon, and the slanty rays didn't quite
reach all the way down to where the little girl
waited, presumably stuck. Still, the well walls had a
high enough albedo that Dax could just pick her
out in the dim, reflected sunlight. "Hold on, little
girl; we'll find something to haul you up."
     Jadzia Dax was answered by another long chaw
 from the profanity plug, which the universal trans-
 lator thankfully failed to translate; the meaning
 was nevertheless as clear as an unstressed dilithium
 crystal, connecting the little girl's desire to be
 about ten meters higher than she was with her
 annoyance that she had no means to levitate her-
 self.
     O'Brien pushed his way through the crowd to
 join Dax at the well. "Ah, anybody have a rope?"
 he asked hopefully.
     "And some wood," added the Trill, thinking of a
 painter's chair. "A chunk at least this wide and this
 thick."
    The crowd oohed and ahhed in amazement.
Asta-ha clutched at Dax's elbow. "You can raise
her with such simple tech? How?"
    The lieutenant commander stared for a moment,
nonplussed. She opened her mouth to say some-
thing, then decided it would be unkind. Poor
woman probably got stuck with a bad set of chromo-
somes. "Well, get us the rope and the wood, and
we'll show you."

0

CHAPTER
        5

FINDING A SIMPLE ROPE and hunk of wood proved
harder than Miles O'Brien had anticipated. You'd
think they'd have a hardware store back in the
village, he complained silently. Or even just a
clothesline. But at last, a couple of nameless
Natives--what did they call themselves? Tiff-
naks?--returned with the implements.
    Commanders Dax and Worf busied themselves
hacking the wood down to manageable size (using
hands and feet, not phasers), while the chief un-
coiled the rope and began tying loops for the little
girl's legs to fit through; it wouldn't do to haul her
halfway up, then have her tumble off the seat back
down the well. The shrieks from the child lent him
a sense of urgency ....He could just imagine that
was Molly down there.
    "Sir, I've got the rope ready," he cried. Dax
handed him the wooden seat, and O'Brien set
about carefully tying the rope to it so the loops
would dangle on either side. All the while, the
crowd pressed closer and closer, seemingly aston-
ished anew by each phase of the operation; they
pointed at the rope, the seat, and the knots and
whispered amazed explanations to their neighbors.
[ can't believe they've never even heard of a rope
rescue, thought the chief, even more amazed at the
crowd's amazement. Everything he was doing was
just plain common sense.
    At last, they had a workable "painter's chair," on
which artisans used to sit so they could decorate
the sides of buildings, back in the ancient days
before antigravs or even scaffolding. Worf dangled
it over the mouth of the well and began to lower it,
while O'Brien shone his hand torch down the shaft;
curiously, the same crowd that had stood aston-
ished at the painter's chair took the flashlight
without a second glance, as if they'd seen hundreds
of them, trading a score for a strip oflatinum. Worf
lowered the chair, swiftly but well controlled.
    After a moment's silence, there was a loud
thump, followed by a renewed string of cries from
the innocent child. "I think we made contact," said
the chief.
    "Sit on the chair, honey," he shouted clown the
shaft. The child seemed as utterly confused as the
crowd was amazed. "Little girl, sit on the chair,
and we'll haul you up here." At the words "up
here," the little girl's brownish face brightened into
a smile. She tugged the chair down into the ankle-
deep water at the bottom of the well and obediently
straddled it.
    The pose was all wrong; they wouldn't have
made it even a meter without losing her over the
side. "No no, honey; not that way ....Just like it
was a swing."
    "Swing'?" she queried--the first words that the
universal translator had deigned to translate.
    "You know, like the swings on your playground."
Blank stare. "Urn... well, put both legs on the
same side of the wooden seat--yes, now the other
leg, my wee tiny colleen. That's good, honey.
What's your name? Can you stick your legs through
those two dangly loops, dear?"
  "I'm Tivva-ma, and I'm seven."
    "That's wonderful, my heart. Now Tivva-ma,
can you put your legs through the little loops?"
    After several minutes of begging and pleading,
O'Brien, with Commander Dax's help, managed to
talk Tivva-ma into the proper way to seat herself
on a painter's chair. As she held on tightly, Worf
pulled up the rope hand over hand; within a few
seconds, Tivva-ma's dark face and bluish yellow
hair appeared over the well. O'Brien made a diving
catch, grabbing the girl in a strong bear hug and
depositing her on dry land.
  "You made it, honey. You're safe." Then he held
 her back at arm's length, inspecting her with great
 concern. "Are you all right, Tivva-ma? Is your
 mommy here?"
 "Yes, of course," said Asta-ha, "I haven't left."
 The entire away team stared at the plump wom-
 an. "You're Tivva-ma's mother?" demanded an
 incredulous Dax.
    Asta-ha seemed oblivious to the tone of shame in
the commander's voice. "Why yes; she's the crown
mayor, my heir."
    "Does this count, Madam Mayor?" asked Tivva-
ma in great trepidation.
    "It was rather an unorthodox solution," mused
Mayor Asta-ha, "but I suppose you could call this
ingenious rope thing new tech of a sort." The lady
mayor looked around the crowd. "Anyone want to
dispute the mark?"
    There was a low rumble of voices as everyone
glanced back and forth at his neighbor; the hubbub
gradually turned into a chorus of negative re-
sponses. "Yes, precious one," said Asta-ha, leaning
hands on knees, "it counts. Congratulations on
attaining the first mark."
    Tivva-ma whooped and began to march around
the clearing like a band leader; O'Brien stared back
and forth in confusion and mounting anger. "Do
you mean tae tell me," he shouted furiously, "that
this whole thing was a coming-of-age ritual?
Throwing a little girl down a well, your own
daughter?"
 Again, Asta-ha blinked in confusion. "We didn't
throw her down the well. What do you take us
for--monsters from another planet? We lowered
her quite carefully."
    Something was wrong; something smelled fishy
to the chief. He wrinkled his nose, savoring the
taste of the lady mayor's last remark. "Wait...
you lowered her? But--you were all shaken by the
rope rescue we just did .... You'd never seen such
a thing before. I don't understand."
    "Truly, we haven't. ! never realized you could do
such complicated tricks with such a simple piece of
new tech."
    Commander Dax butted her way back into the
dialogue. "Then if you don't mind us prying,
Madam Mayor, how did you lower her down?"
    Asta-ha answered slowly, as if fearing it was a
trick question. "With old tech, of course. Like
this .... "
    The mayor fished a tiny piece of equipment out
of her sporran; it looked like one of Dr. Bashir's
hyposprays; she pointed it at Worf and depressed a
button.
    As Asta-ha raised the tool, the gigantic Klingon
floated into the air; he began to bellow and thrash
his limbs. "Put me down. At once/" The lady mayor
held Worf dangling over their heads for a few
moments, then carefully lowered him back to the
ground, landing him with a gentle thump. The
Klingon didn't actually attack Asta-ha, but O'Brien
could tell it was only by the most extraordinary
forbearance on his friend's part. If steam could
 erupt from a Klingon's ears, Worf would have
 resembled a teakettle just then.
     Smoothly interceding before Worf could ex-
 plode, Commander Dax said, "We would abso-
 lutely love to see your village, if you have no
 objection?"
     "Objection? Tiffnak is open to all, unlike the
 angry villages across the big water."
     "Can someone show us around?" persisted the
 Trill.
    "I shall do it myself," said the mayor proudly.
"Tivva~ma, the crown mayor, must be paraded
through the streets anyway for her great success."
    ttER great success? snorted the chief to himself.
"Excuse me," he interjected, "but did you say the
town is called Tiffnak?"
  "Yes. Isn't it a wonderful name?"
    "What does it mean?" inquired Odo, looking
around curiously at the mix of high-tech buildings
and force beams and low-tech, rustic touches like
the wishing well.
    "It doesn't mean anything," said Asta-ha. "I
thought it perfectly expressed our emotion this
less-moon. As a people."
    O'Brien was trying to get at something. "So
when you say you people are the Tiffnaks, Mayor
Asta~ha, you mean you people here in this town,
this--ah, less-moon?"
    "Don't you like the name?" asked the mayor,
blinking her blue green speckled eyes at the chief;
he was almost overpowered by the urge to reach
out and pat her head.
    "It's a lovely name," said Dax, smiling. "But I
think what O'Brien is asking is whether you will
still be the Tiffnaks in, say, another couple of less-
moons... or what people a day's journey from
here would be called."
    "Two less-moons? Oh, I'm sure the mood will
have changed by then. We'll have lots more new
tech, since we have nine ceremonies of various
sorts scheduled before then. Our mood always
changes with each new tech; in fact, after seeing
what you gave us with rope and wood, I'd have to
say that maybe Tiffnaki would be better now."
Asta-ha brightened, and her nose ridges paled.
"That's it! We shall have another meeting, and I'll
suggest Tiffnaki. I'm sure it'll be approved."
    O'Brien mulled this answer. He edged closer to
the commander and spoke quietly; Asta-ha made
no effort not to listen .... Evidently, the Tiffnaks
or Tiffnakis had little concern for other people's
privacy. "Commander, I'm starting to get the im-
pression that these people didn't create all this
technologyrathe force beams and such."  
"They use it," she pointed out.
    "I think they find it, but maybe they don't build
it."
    Dax stared at the chief, lowering her dark brows.
Her spots were pale, always a bad sign.
  O'Brien tried again: "What I mean is, I think
somebody else built all this stuff, and these peo-
ple--Tiffnaks, or whatever they call themselves--
use what they find. I think they have coming-of-age
rituals where they put someone in a weird predica-
ment, like down a well, and see if she can find some
piece of 'new tech' that gets her out."
    Dax whipped up her tricorder and scanned all
around her, not only at the Tiffnakis but the plants
surrounding them. "Well," she said, "their DNA is
obviously related to that of every other living thing
within tricorder range. I think they did evolve here,
Chief."
    Now that he listened, Chief O'Brien heard click-
ings and rustlings in the wide-bladed, grasslike
flora at his feet; stooping low for a moment, he saw
large four-legged "insects" with bodies three or
four centimeters long and a pair of leg tufts at each
end; he saw what looked like a worm; and in a
fenced-in area near one building, he saw a furry,
tinned animal that looked like a cross between a
wolverine and a Bajoran whipbeast sunning itself.
While he watched, the animal rolled on its back
and writhed, just like a dog scratching its back
against the lawn. What a cozy, domestic scene, he
thought, almost enviously.
    He leaned even closer to the commander.
"Well... maybe their ancestors invented the stuff,
and somehow their civilization has degenerated?
How old are these buildings?"
    Dax scanned again, looked puzzled, and recali-
brated. She repeated the scan. "Well, according to
the decay rate of trace radioactive elements, I'd
guess these buildings are at least two million years
old."
 "Two million? Are you sure, ma'am?"
    Dax raised one eyebrow in a look she must have
learned from some Vulcan she knew in a previous
life. "I'm sure; I checked for carbon 14 in the
wooden squares encased inside the plastic, but it
was entirely gone. That was my first clue; I had to
switch to elements with a longer half-life to get a
preliminary estimate .... It's between two and
seven million years, which makes these structures
among the oldest still standing in the Alpha Quad-
rant."
    Well, ask a stupid question. O'Brien accepted his
lumps for having questioned the science officer's
science. "Well, that fits in with the thesis, doesn't
it, Commander? I mean, if they still had the
technological know-how, they'd have torn down
these old houses, or at least built new ones."
    "There's not a building here that was built
within the past two thousand millennia," said the
commander. "They're not just using old wood
chips, if that's what you're thinking, because if they
were that old, they'd have long since rotted away--
unless they were enclosed in the plastic, which I
presume happened only during construction."
    O'Brien blinked, wondering whether he was go-
ing to be tested. "All right, all right; I believe you,
Commander."
  Mayor Asta-ha (and her daughter, the crown
mayor) took them on a Cook's tour of the village; it
looked pretty much like any other village on any
planet in the Federation, except for the extraordi-
nary level of technology .... And the trivial uses to
which the Tiffnakis put it: they used antientropic
heat generators to dry themselves after bathing;
they used transporter technology to beam repli-
cated groceries from one end of the town to the
other; the children played on force-beam jungle
gyms.
    Worf sidled up to the chief while the hereditary
mayor explained the use of a self-mobile tractor
beam to sweep up rubbish after a picnic. "This is
like the Federation gone mad," he complained
bitterly. "If we are not careful, this is where we
shall end up."
    The tour was broken by a celebratory luncheon
that was actually for Tivva-ma, having passed her
first ceremony; but the Tiffnakis turned it into a
welcoming for the newcomers "from another plan-
et" as well. Tivva-ma was not exactly thrilled at
sharing her day; but she was only the crown mayor,
not the mayor.
    Luncheon was somewhat a misnomer; because of
the high cyanogen content of the food, which broke
down into cyanide, among other chemicals poison-
ous to Federation and Ferengi personnel, the entire
away team had to beg off the local delicacies. The
chief was uncertain how to do so, but Dax ex-
plained the rudeness by resorting to the religion
dodge: they were on a special diet ordained "by the
tech" and could only eat the food they brought
with them. Odo simply claimed not to be hungry.
    Most of the food looked like exotically prepared
fungus, and Chief O'Brien felt a great sense of relief
that he could eat none of it; Dax, however, being
more culinarily adventurous, seemed disap-
pointed. When the Tiffnakis had bloated them-
selves on a magnificent fungal feast (and the away
team had shoveled down some miserable combat
rations, "com-rats"), the postprandial interroga-
tion commenced.
    "Mayor Asta-ha," asked Commander Dax pleas-
antly at luncheon, after Tavvi-ma had given a
"commencement" speech that O'Brien found si-
multaneously charming and frightening, "you
spoke of the Cardassians and Drek'la earlier. How
do you know about them?"
    "Oh, it's all across the bush," said the mayor.
"They have overwhelmed several villages not far
from here. They live in the abandoned centers and
strike outward, trying to conquer all the different
people, I suppose."
    "Ah, gravy please," said the chief, pointing at the
away team gravy boat being monopolized by
Quark. "Thank you, your... mayorship. Doesn't
that concern you, aliens having conquered and
destroyed whole villages?" demanded O'Brien, in-
credulous that she could be so blas~ about the
obliteration of her own people.
    "Yes, it might pose some risk to the Tiffnakis,
but we have a great deal of new tech, surely much
 more than did the worthless and unsuccessful
 villages that fell to the invaders. You're sure you
 wouldn't like some succulent fungus?"
    "No... no thank you." Chief O'Brien stared
around the table, seeing only mirrors of Asta-ha's
own mask of unconcern. Sensor readings now
indicated Cardassian life signs within seventy
klicks, but nobody appeared to care. "Look," he
added, "maybe you're not aware of what some
aliens can do to the people they conquer. Odo?
Explain, will you?"
    "Yes," admitted the constable reluctantly, "I'm
afraid I do know a bit about it." He proceeded to
regale the mayor and her contingent for several
minutes on the atrocities visited upon the Bajorans
by their Cardassian masters, the scars still left
behind.
    "But that's terrible," cried Asta-ha, her mouth
dropping open.
    The mayor shook her head, clucking in sympa-
thy. But still, she didn't seem to connect the stories
and the pillaging of the other villages with immi-
nent danger to her own townful of Tiffnakis.
    "If you don't mind my asking," tried O'Brien,
starting to feel frustrated, "how did the other
villages fall? I mean, you have enough tech here,
new and old, even just what little bit I can figure
out, to send the Cardassians packing. How could
the other Natives--the other villages lose?"
 Asta-ha took on a dreamy aspect. "They must
not have found favor in the tech's eyes," she
opined. Looking heavenward, she added, "We Tiff-
naksmI mean Tiffnakismare beloved in the eye of
the tech."
 "Um, how do you know?"
    Blinking her way back to the here and now, the
mayor said, "Isn't it obvious? Were we not so
favored, would this marvelous and exciting new
tech have been given us? Imagine, a rope and a
stick that has the power of an antigray." She looked
so excited that O'Brien hadn't the heart to contin-
ue the inquisition.
    Later, after luncheon and after the away team
had been shown every point of interest in the
town--no churches or temples, O'Brien noticed,
not even one to "the tech"; replicators but no fields
or stockyards; technology for entertainment put
upon the same level of importance as that for
survivalsthe team huddled to voice their observa-
tions. At first, Asta-ha stood right next to them,
listening in a polite but somewhat uninterested
fashion, until Commander Dax asked if she could
leave; the mayor toddled off without apparently
taking offense.
    "All right, people," said the commander, "I want
to pull everything together before we contact the
ship; I want to give the captain answers, not
questions."
    "Frankly," said the chief, kicking off the discus-
sion (which he considered his right whenever the
subject was engineering and technology), "I don't
think they have anything to worry about. I don't
know the half of how these weapons work"--he
gestured at a haphazard pile of devices that the
Tiffnakis said they used to defend against other
villages' tech-raiding parties--"I mean, they might
be excavation tools, for all I know. But they make
damned good weapons; I saw Asta-ha's little
daughter Tivva-ma, no older than Molly, carve a
furrow in a hillside with that thing over there that
looks like a magic wand."
    "I concur with the chief," said Worf, his deep
basso vibrating O'Brien's teeth in their sockets.
"There is much here that Starfleet should investi-
gate."
    "Such as, besides the earth-moving equipment?"
Dax seemed considerably brighter at the news that
they had good stock to work with in defending the
planet from the Cardassians.
    "There is a personalized force shield that some-
what resembles those used by the Borg," said Worf.
    "And a projection device that I'd swear can
drain power from a phaser or disruptor at a dis-
tance," added O'Brien, remembering a fast demon-
stration by one of the other Tiffnakis, a tall man
with one blue-speckled eye and one red-speckled.
"I couldn't actually try it out because I wasn't sure
whether we should allow them to see our phasers."
    Quark spoke up. "By the Divine Treasury, do
you people even realize what we're sitting on here?
This is the greatest technological treasure trove
since--since I found the wormhole ....Or even
since the first Grand Nagus invented warp drive."
    "Ah," sneered Odo, "the new toys have driven
all thoughts of strip-mining the landscape out of
the tiny lump of latinum that stands in for Quark's
brain."
    The Ferengi glared at his old nemesis; not for the
first time, O'Brien found it somewhat surreal that
the animosity/friendship between the constable
and the Ferengi smuggler went back much farther
than the discovery of the wormhole (by Captain
Sisko, not by Quark), or the liberation of Bajor ....
In fact, the pair had known and hated each other
with passion since long before the Federation even
knew of the existence of Deep Space Nine, then
called Terek Nor. The marriage of hatred between
Quark and Odo predated O'Brien's marriage of
love with Keiko, which seemed to have been
around forever; Sisko was probably still a lieuten-
ant commander without even his own ship yet
when Quark and Odo met and discovered revul-
sion at first sight, and Major Kira was probably
rankless and hiding in a cave. With a connection of
hatred going back so far into the mists of antiquity,
how could Quark and Odo not be the closest of
enemies?
    "Constable Odo," said the Ferengi, with a deep
undertone of "talking to the idiot child" rippling
behind his words, "any fool would realize that
brand-new technology, especially weapons in time
of war, would be far more lucrative than mere
minerals. Any fool would jump at the chance to
profiteer--I mean profit--from such a discovery."
    "Yes, Quark," said the constable, smirking
slightly, "any fool."
    "Time's up," chirped Dax. "That was your one
exchange for the day. Now let's get back to
business .... Quark, your zeal to exploit the re-
sources and technology of these people is duly
noted; it will be greatly to your credit when you
reach the Divine Treasury."
    "Well, all right then," he mumbled, but contin-
ued working his mouth--as if trying to weigh the
whole planet on a latinurn scale, the chief thought.
    O'Brien took a deep breath and broached the
subject that had started nagging at him while they
discussed what they had seen. "Commander, I'm a
bit concerned about the Prime Directive ....How
do we apply it in this case?"
    Worf had an opinion on that subject, too. "Sure-
ly it does not apply to cultures this technologically
advanced."
    "But these people are not spacefarers," pro-
tested the chief. "They only barely know they live
on a planet. They don't even have a one-world
government .... How could they be considered an
advanced civilization?"
    "They use warp technology," insisted the Kling-
on, gesturing angrily at the pile of stuff on the table.
"Several of these devices are offshoots of warp
technology, including the power-draining device
and the personal shields. Chief O'Brien will con-
firm my observation."
    "Well, technically that's true," admitted the
chief; he was reluctant to interject his position in
between that of two lieutenant commanders and a
security chief, which must be a rank at least equal
to full, three-pip commander.
    "The planet's already been invaded, so any vio-
lations have already been committed; the Natives
are already fighting--and we want to keep our
presence here secret in any event," said Dax.
    O'Brien, satisfed that the officers had arrived at
a consensus that he, the lone enlisted man, could
definitely live with, tried to steer the meeting to a
close so he could get back to something important:
playing with the new toys to see what he could
learn. "I think we can report to the captain that the
Natives are mobilizing against the Drek'la and
the spoon-heads--I'm sorry, been hanging around
the major too long--the Cardassians."
    Worf suddenly sniffed the air; he looked around,
wetting his finger and raising it as high as he could.
He looked like a man who had a strong suspicion
about something.
    Plucking Commander Dax's tricorder from her
belt, he poked at it and then made a sweep. When
Worf realized everyone was staring at him, he
cleared his throat. "Well, we are about to find out
whether the chief's observation about the--the
planetary natives is accurate."
    "Why, Commander?" asked O'Brien, already
feeling the familiar tightening in his belly and
urgent desire to find a handy tree that he always felt
just before combat.
    Dax looked over Worf's shoulder down at the
tricorder. "Because we're about to have extraplane-
tary visitors," she said; "the Drek'la are com-
ing .... They're about forty kilometers distant and
moving fast."

0

CHAPTER
        6

ASTA-~IA came scurrying up to the away team,
proving that the Tiffnakis, at least, had as good an
early-warning system as did the Federation. "Ene-
mies coming, like you were talking about. Can you
fight?"
    "We can fight," said Worf; then remembering
what Jadzia had ordered, he added, "You must arm
US."
    "Spoken no faster than undertaken," said a short
man at Worf's elbow; his blue-and-red hair crest
was elaborately curled alternating left and right,
grooming that doubtless took hours to perfect. The
man handed Worf a tiny toy that looked and felt
like a finger torch, a child's flashlight operated by
squeezing the plastic sides together. Worf scowled
down at it, wondering whether he was being made
light of.... But he had enough respect for the
technology of the Natives not to point it at anyone
he liked.
    O'Brien was handed a man-sized rifle with sights
and a trigger, adding to the humiliation; the Kling..
on almost offered to trade with the chief, but he
reflected that it would be dishonorable.
    Jadzia received the excavating tool that Chief
O'Brien referred to as a "faerie wand," while
Quark and Odo were each given tubes with tiny
bumps. "Urn... um... what do I do with this?"
demanded the panicky Ferengi.
    "I don't know every function yet," said Hair
Crest, "but I've discovered that if you point this
end at the enemy and press this yellow nodule, his
skin cracks, causing intense pain."
    "But--but what do the blue-and-gray nodules
do?" demanded Quark, staring in horror at the
innocuous-looking tube. Hair Crest shrugged, un-
concerned, and the Ferengi staggered away mutter-
ing curses befitting his cowardly shopkeeper's
personality.
    Constable Odo seemed quite happy with his
tube. Worf edged close enough that no one would
overhear. "Perhaps you should shapeshift into
one of the planetary natives, to further confuse
the Cardassians. We do not want to be discov-
ered."
 "I think it might upset the Natives, as you call
them, if they saw me changing shape before their
eyes... don't you think?"
    Worf frowned; much as he tried to avoid it, the
psychology of the individual kept cropping up. "A
warrior does not concern himself with such fears,"
he muttered, retreating to the front line.
    Such as it was... there was no military organi-
zation, not even any attempt on the part of the
Natives to find cover or concealment. Jadzia and
the rest of the away team had found outlying
buildings to hide behind, and Worf joined them,
but the mayor, Asta-ha, and the other Natives
simply stood in a clump, monkeying with their
weapons and waiting for the Cardassians to slaugh-
ter them.
    "What are they doing?" urgently demanded the
Klingon in Jadzia's ear.
    "Best guess? To them, technology is warfare.
They don't have any idea what to do but stand in
the middle of the road and fire their tech at
anything unfriendly that approaches."
 "Have they never fought in any wars?"
    Jadzia shrugged. "Why don't you ask them?
Maybe you can get them to hide behind something,
at least."
  "How long until contact?"
    "The advance has stopped. It looks like our
friends are waiting for something. Interesting. I'm
showing a force of Drek'la led by a solitary Cardas-
sian."
    "Perhaps the Cardassians ~lied with the Drek'la
when their ships were captured." Worf rose, snuck
a quick peek in the direction where the Cardassian
invaders waited, then trotted to Asta-ha. He was
shocked to see that she had her daughter Tivva-ma
with her... and the young girl also carried a
weapon.
    Is this the honor of a young warrior? he won-
dered, or is it complete ignorance of the danger?
"Mayor Asta-ha... have your people, the, ah,
Tiffnakis, ever fought a war before?"
    "War?" She pronounced the word as if it had not
been translated by the universal translator... per-
haps because the natives had no word for war in
their language.
 "Do you have--enemies?"
    Asta-ha's puzzled look turned to sudden under-
standing. "Oh, enemies all around! There are the
Day who live over the hill toward the needle; we
aren't very friendly with the Tiffnakis, either."
    Now it was WorPs turn to be puzzled. "But...
you are the Tiffnakis."
  "Yes. Do you like the name?"
    "How can you be on unfriendly terms with the
Tiffnakis if---"
    "What? No, we're the Tiffnakis; it's the Tiffnakis
we have to worry about. They live to the left hand
of the needle."
    Worf snorted loudly; clearly, there was a nuance
of pronunciation that he could not hear. "Very
well. But should you not get to cover to more
effectively kill your enemies?"
 Asta-ha looked blank. "Cover?"
    "It is--you use..." Worf had what O'Brien
would call a "brainstorm." "It is another piece of
our new tech: you use the buildings as a... new-
tech shield against disruptors. As we are doing,
see?"
    The female's astonishment was painful for Worf
to see. Clearly, no such thing had ever occurred to
her in all her life; it was, truly, new "technology" to
her--the simplest, most rudimentary of tactics.
Without bothering to thank the Klingon--why
not? did not "new tech" fall from the trees every
day?--she bustled to her comrades to demonstrate
the gift from the tech.
    Satisfied for the moment, Worf returned to the
away team, still feeling a vague disquiet. "There is
something very wrong with these people," he com-
plained.
     "Well, we're about to see whether it affects their
ability to defend themselves." "Our friends are moving."
    "They paused for five minutes, then started to
roll again." Dax stood, called loud enough for her
own troops to hear: "Stand ready, men."
    Worf crouched, holding his weapon at arm's
length to get a better sight picture; he felt the thrill
of battle surge though him .... I am alive, a Kling-
on, a WARRIOR! He could barely contain his glee
when he saw the dust kicked up from the Cardassi-
an skimmers darken the eastern horizon--"the
right hand of the needle," the natives would proba-
bly say, assuming their needles pointed to magnetic
north.
    Worf held his fire until the first blast came from
the enemy. Then he squeezed his flashlight. Noth-
ing .... He tried again and again, but the weapon
was dead.
    "Blast," he snarled. "Somebody give me a weap-
on; mine has malfunctioned."
    In front of the Klingon, Jadzia threw her "faerie
wand" to the ground in disgust and drew her
phaser, but Worf swiftly grabbed her hand and
pointed the weapon towards the dirt. "No, Jadzia.
We must not let them know Starfleet is here."
    Snarling like a true Klingon woman (to Worf's
marveling eyes), Jadzia stood and spoke in com-
mand tones: "Does anyone have a working Tiffnaki
weapon?"
    From O'Brien's passionate, rich, Irish cursing,
Quark's temper tantrum, and Odo's look of dis-
gust, Worf understood the answer even without
anyone answering. Running across the gap to the
natives, who now milled about in total shock and
confusion, he discovered that their weapons, too,
had simply ceased working. There was not a man
or woman in the entire village whose tech would
operate .... Somehow, the Cardassians had
turned it all off.

    Jadzia leapt up and gave the hardest order for any
warrior to give: "Retreat!" she shouted, waving to
the Natives; they stared in confusion--evidently, it
was yet another piece of "new tech" they had never
seen. "Run away," she tried, to no avail. "Are you
deaf?." she shouted, pointed rearwards. "Point your-
selves in that direction and run like the wind.t"
    A few of the natives understood, including Asta-
ha and the mayor's daughter; they turned and ran,
slowly at first, then in panic as the Drek'la leisurely
opened fire with their disruptors on the clumped
group. Worf caught a glimpse of Natives being torn
to shreds by the Cardassian weapons, then he, too,
was forced into the ignominy of running away like
a dubbop being chased by a hunter.
    It was easy to escape; the Drek'la were in no
hurry. The away team and approximately two
hundred of the Tiffnakis kept running until they
had put five kilometers between themselves and the
village; the Drek'la stopped in the settlement and
settled in, at least for the night. The first pitched
battle between the Drek'la and the Federation for
the tiny mud ball Sierra-Bravo 112-II was a rout.
    Worf grabbed Jadzia by the arm as she limped
past, trailing blood. She refused to rest until after
she made sure O'Brien, Quark, and Odo were
safely stowed, as a Klingon would. Her eyes were
the color of violets with flames around their edges,
or the Klingon Sea of the Stand when the sun was
nearly set in the distant waters. Her face burned
with shame, and the Trill spots were dark against
her bone white skin. She looked like the goddess of
death.
    "It was not your fault," Worf said, offering a
warrior's comfort. "It was a system failure that you
could not anticipate."

    Major Kira sat in Ops, sipping tea and musing
on the wild workings of chance and fate. She closed
her eyes and listened to the hum of the station ....
What had been Deep Space Nine was now Ernissa-
ry~ Sanctuary--and it was running like a Bajoran
children's prayer top.
    To Kira's immense frustration and annoyance
beyond her (political) ability to say, every senseless
move Kai Winn had made had turned out per-
fectly: the vedeks and flatterers she had placed in
charge of every aspect of station operations, tossing
out men and women who had done their jobs with
~clat for years, turned out, each and every one, to
be brilliant bureaucrats; and contrary to everything
the major had always believed, good bureaucrats
were exactly what the station truly needed all this
time.
    The vedeks managed to bring out the best and
most selfless devotion in the workers, and jobs that
were done only haphazardly at best under Captain
Sisko sparkled under Governor Kai Winn. The
infrastructure of the station, which Miles had spent
every waking hour complaining about, was syste-
matically replaced with fine Bajoran craftsman-
ship; it could have been done under the Federation,
but it would have taken every hand working triple-
overtime shifts around the clock for a week...
which was exactly what the new Bajoran workers
did at a word from the Kai.
    Devotions at the temple had never been better
attended; even the replicators seemed to work
better; the food tasted like the devices were being
overhauled every other day--which they probably
are, thought Kira in mingled awe and bitterness.
    At this rate, far from replacing the Kai as gover-
nor of the station, Shakar would be lucky to keep
his post as First Minister. "Oh, Prophets,"
breathed Kira, eyes still tightly shut and head back,
"if only she could face a small crisis or two. Just a
little one--it's all I ask."
    Immediately, Kira felt a chill run along her
spine. "Be careful what you wish, for you may get
it" was as common a saying on Bajor as it was in
the Federation. She had the most terrible feeling
that such prayers, especially this close to the worm-
hole, the lair of the Prophets, were far too easily
heard: something was surely about to go terribly
wrong.




0

CHAPTER
        7

ThE FroSt disruptor blast took Major Kira com-
pletely by surprise. There'd been no warning.
    There they were, eleven ships, to be precise.
They'd plowed out of the wormhole in minutes.
Not one of them showed up on Deep Space Nine's
deep-imaging sensors, none tripped the early-
warning alerts. There was nothing.
    When the pounding began, the first thing Kira
did was raise the shields; while they were still rising
in intensity, she scanned for enemies. At last, she
switched to straight visible-light viewing--"look-
ing out the window," as O'Brien called it--and
that was when she finally saw the eleven ships.
According to the scanners, they weren't even
present.
    "Dominion," said Kira to no one, since the last
time she checked, she was alone on the Ops floor;
Kai Winn's patronage appointees still refused to
show up for their watches, though she had to admit
they had done a good job with the routine aspects
of running Deep Space Nine.... No, it's Emis-
sary's Sanctuary now, she thought, smiling at the
grim joke. Some sanctuary.
    "Are you sure, child?" said Kai Winn from
directly behind the major. Kira jumped and spun
around. How could such an out-of-shape woman as
the Kai move so quickly and quietly, on a station
that was heaving with every hammer blow?
  "Kai! Sure about what?"
  "That it's the Dominion."
    Kira returned to her threat board. "I can't aim
the damned phasers .... The sensors don't even
see them." Kira tried a couple of line-of-sight
shots, but the attackers were moving too quickly,
making random evasive turns. "Who else would it
be? They came through the wormhole, and they
don't show up on the sensor array." But she didn't
even recognize the ship design--they were like no
Dominion ships she had ever seen.
    The Kai seemed remarkably cool, enough so that
Kira noticed in the heat of battle. "Isn't there any
other weapon you can bring to bear against them?"
she asked.
    "Yes, of course. The quantum torpedos--they
don't have to be precise hits." Kira snapped the
guards off the arming touchplates and proceeded to
arm the thousand torpedoes that Captain Sisko
had installed against just such an eventuality. Her
hands were working so quickly, she had already
moved to key in the launch sequence before realiz-
ing that the board had not caught up with her.

  PLEASE ENTER AUTHORIZATION PASSWORD.'
    Kira blinked, staring at the message. The com-
puter's mellifluous voice repeated it out loud.
    "Child, what are you waiting for?" asked the
Kai, leaning over Kira's shoulder. "Enter the pass-
word."
    "There is no password," blurted Major Kira,
shocked.
  "But Kira, it asks for one."
    "It never has before." Kira half rose, forcing Kai
Winn to stand quickly to avoid contact. "Damn it!
Ah... ah--Kira Nerys, authorization Bravo-
Alpha-Bravo-Echo ....Unlock the damned torpe-
does!"
    "I'm sorry," said the computer with detached
efficiency, "but that is not an authorization pass-
word. Please enter authorization password."
  There it was, staring her in the face ....
 PLEASE ENTER AUTHORIZATION PASSWORD'
 "Blood of the Prophets!"
 "Child?"
    "Sorry--urn, Sisko, Benjamin, authoriza-
tion..." She struggled to remember what she once
had overheard the captain say to unlock a personal
message from Starfleet Command; she had never
used the code herself, of course, and it took her a
second to remember... a second during which the
attackers fired two more salvos, jerking the station
noticeably, even right through the shields. "Au-
thorization Hugo-Uniform-November-Kilo."
    "I'm sorry, but that is not an authorization
password. Please enter authorization password."
    Kira felt a flush of horrified understanding creep
up her neck and across her face. She hadn't ex-
pected the code to work, since the computer would
realize she was not Captain Sisko, but it gave the
wrong error message. She had expected the com-
puter to respond, "Invalid use of authorization
password," which would mean she had to tear into
the circuits and cross her voice patterns in the
main database clip with those of the captain. But
the response had been the same as to her own
normal authorization code.
    Kira turned and discovered to her astonishment
that the Kai had vanished; but a moment later, the
turbolift arrived carrying six mean-looking Bajor-
ans, four men and two women; they hustled to the
Ops battle stations without sparing a glance at
Kira: two at Dax's console, one at Worfs, and the
other two with heavy phaser rifles scanning the
room with low-intensity phaser beams to flush out
any changelings who might have infiltrated as seat
cushions or pieces of equipment.
    The Kai reappeared on Sisko's balcony. "My
flock, the Emissary's Sanctuary is under attack by
 unknown enemies from the Gamma Quadrant;
 they may be Dominion or may not... but we must
 defend ourselves and our planet, regardless."
    The combat team looked at the Kai with such
reverence that Kira felt outnumbered and uncom-
fortable. Then they turned their attention to the
phasers.
    She had no complaints about their competence;
they were a professional phaser crew either from
a Bajoran patrol ship or from the planetary de-
fense forces themselves. "Sensors out--visual
track, follow my tracer .... One-mark, two-mark,
three-mark--pattern analysis .... Are they re-
peating?--bracketing shots... clipped one, no
telemetry.
    Kira found herself excluded from the fight. No-
body told her to leave, but she quickly lost track of
what the combat crew were saying--they spoke in
the code word staccato of a squad that had lived,
eaten, slept, trained, and fought together for
months or years. Realizing that she was about as
necessary as a piloting stick on a runabout, Kira
stood down from her console and joined the Kai on
the balcony.
    Kai Winn followed the battle with hard, calculat-
ing eyes; she betrayed no emotions and even of-
fered intelligent and workable suggestions to the
team (which accepted them gratefully). "They're
trying to get close enough to launch boarding
parties," warned one of the two women at Dax's
console.
 "Seal the station," ordered the Kai.
    "Kai Winn," said Kira in great urgency, "I have
to contact the Federation and get the authorization
codes for those torpedoes."
    Without looking away from Ops, which had
become a de facto CIC, a combat information
center, the Kai responded forcefully: "I'm sorry,
child, I absolutely forbid it."
"But without the torpedoes, we'll never--"
"This is a test sent by the Prophets, Major; we
must survive without the help of your Federation. I
have already sent for Bajoran destroyers."
    Kira's mouth was dry; she tried to lick her lips,
but there was no moisture. The station was struck
by a particularly close hit, and the deck yawed left,
nearly dropping Kira over the railing to the floor
below. The Kai crouched, clutching the rail tightly;
the combat crew didn't react.
    "Bajoran destroyers won't stand up against these
disruptor blasts," warned Kira. "The most they
can do is distract the ships long enough for us to get
a clean shot."
    "Then they will distract the enemy ships, child,"
said the Kai, still following the performance in Ops
rather than the conversation she wasn't quite hav-
ing with Major Kira.
    Gritting her teeth, the major spoke in a hoarse
whisper. "Kai, the Federation will release the tor-
pedoes-this is an emergency. With the quantum
torpedoes, we can blow these jerks to hell and back,
right back through the wormhole to the Gamma
 Quadrant. Don't you understand? We need those
 codes."
    For the first time since the assault began, the Kai
looked directly at Kira. "I am in command of
Emissary~ Sanctuary, child. You are my executive
officer. The decision is mine to make, and I will not
run to the Federation for help." She closed her
eyes, tilting her head back. "We are all in the hands
of the Prophets now."
    Kira waited a long moment, searching her heart
for what she should do, for Bajor, for Sisko, for her
friends and enemies still aboard the station: for
Jake, for Keiko, for Rom... even for that lousy
excuse for a Cardassian, Garak. "Yes... my Kai,"
she said at last. Winn was right; there was no other
way out for Bajormand the future of Bajor
trumped everything else.
    "Hadn't you better begin organizing the de-
fenses, Major?"
    "But your combat crew is handling it perfectly
well. I couldn't do any better."
    Kai -Winn looked directly at Kira again, and this
time, the major saw in the old woman's eyes the
same granite she had seen in the captain's when he
stood on the same balcony, overlooking a team
much like the one in the CIC below (a team that
always included Major Kira). "You had better
prepare the internal defenses, child; call out the
station militia." Winn handed Kira a data clip.
"This fight is not going to be easy or quick, I
believe; I've been here before. Prepare for forcible
boarding."
    Kira stared at the viewers; she had a good look at
the ships every time they passed one of the camera
eyes while shooting and dodging return fire: she
had definitely never seen the design before. "Who
the hell are these guys?" she asked, but the Kai had
already returned full attention to her CIC and the
combat crew running the desperate defense of
Emissary ~ Sanctuary.
    Kira Nerys slid down the ladderway, feet and
hands upon the rails, and darted for the turbolift
platform, snatching up her personal phaser en
route; she was almost thrown to the deck by a shot
that set the rotational axis of the station swinging
gently, like a pendulum, for several cycles before
the gyros restabilized Emissary's Sanctuary.
    Sealed by the turbolift after leaving Ops, Kira
tapped her combadge and said, "Computer, scan
all messages from Starfleet to Deep Space Ninem
or, ah, Emissary~ Sanctuary--since the turnover,
in particular any verbal explanation of the message
locking out the quantum torpedoes."
    "There is no record of a transmission locking out
the quantum torpedoes."
    "Headers of all nonroutine message traffic from
the Federation Council to the senior staff of the
station."
    The computer began rattling off a list of message
headers, most having to do with administrative
 elements of the turnover, but then Kira heard,
 "Message thirty-eight of forty-four, weapon exten-
 sion lockout explanatory communiqu6."  
"Stop. Read me that message."
    Another booming pair of assaults testified to the
battle still raging beyond the hull--the station was
holding its own, but it couldn't continue forever.
The damned Bajoran ships better arrive soonest,
thought Kira, gritting her teeth; the brief distraction
might be the only hope we have.
  "Please enter authorization password."
    Oh, Prophets. Here we go again. But when Kira
gave her own code, "Kira Nerys, Bravo-Alpha-
Bravo-Echo," the computer accepted it without
qualm; evidently, the accompanying text was not
as highly secure as the torpedoes themselves.
    "The Federation Council regrets that the new
administration must be informed that certain clas-
sified extensions of the weapons subsystems of the
station formerly known as Deep Space Nine have
been reallocated to a terminated state pending
approval of subsequent demonstrations of success-
ful operation of station service optimization proto-
cols; at time of such approval, normal preoperative
status of the affected subsystems will be reinitial-
ized into a resumptive condition."
    Translation, thought Kira, who really was be-
coming quite an expert at burospeak; after a while,
if you don't blow up the station, we'll send the signal
to unlock your torpedoes. But what was a while?
How 1ong--a week? The Bajorans had run the
station for nearly a week already, and there clearly
had been no reinitialization into a resumptive
condition. A month? The end of the sixty-day trial
period?
    With a chill, Major Kira realized they were
enmeshed in a terrible struggle against unknown
enemies while blind and crippled: they could nei-
ther see the attackers on the sensor array nor use
the only weapon that didn't require precision
aiming.
    And of course, much as it galled the major to
admit it, Kai Winn was right: if Bajor were to go
screaming to the Federation for help now, barely a
week into the turnover, the chances of it being
made permanent were like unto those of finding a
shrine to the Prophets on Cardassia Prime.
    The old--woman--gets another point, she
glumly admitted. The Kai had been full of sur-
prises lately, from her efficiency at running the
station to her startling capacity for command un-
der fire. Add now an insightful analysis of Federa-
tion psychology. Every such success stuck in Kira's
throat like a bone splinter, one more stone in the
pouch of First Minister Shakar, weighing down his
chances; he was already swimming upstream by
trying to force the government to remain secular,
when the Kai and most Bajorans clearly preferred
rule by vedek decree.
  The turbolift jerked to a stop at the Promenade
 level, and Kira pushed into a scene from a mad-
 house: civilians, nearly all Bajoran, were running to
 and fro in a frenzy; some were injured by the
 shaking, though no shot had yet penetrated the
 shields, and with every blow, more civilians fell to
 the ground screaming or ran into each other or
 tried to rush the turbolifts that could take them to
 the habitat rings, the launch bays, and presumed
 "safety" away from the station.
    The Kai's security guards refused to allow the
civvies to storm the lifts, quite properly: they were
needed to transport the security forces (the one
area that Kai Winn had packed but not purged).
"Commander," shouted Kira.
    The acting CO in Odo's absence, Dag Haraia,
ran to Kira and saluted; Kira was nonplussed for a
moment .... No one ever saluted on Deep Space
Nine. Then she remembered that he was now
"militarized" and under arms, which changed
things considerably. "Dag, round up these peo-
ple"--she handed Dag the data clip of names she
had gotten from the Kai--"and arm them; put
men at every port and airlock and shoot anyone
coming through; and get these damned civilians
into the shelters."
    "Yes ma'am!" he shouted; he saluted again and
ran to his lieutenants.
    Kira was surprised to catch herself taking a
moment to pray: Please, 0 Prophets, she said
clearly in her head, don't make me be the one to
have to explain it all to the captain. "The big one
that didn't quite get away," she muttered to herself,
but she was too busy to listen.

    Limping from her wound, which was still bleed-
ing slightly, Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax
led the rest of the away team, plus Asta-ha (the
hereditary mayor of the no-longer-extant village of
the Tiffnakis) and the surviving members of her
entourage, over a pair of hills that she named
Dreary and Black, across a stream that O'Brien
dubbed the Anna Liffey, and through a wood. (The
trees were the same scintillant blue and green as the
Natives' eyes.) They had put fifteen kilometers
between themselves and the Drek'la, who camped
in the ruins of the town after disruptor fire cut the
two-million-year-old buildings to shards; Dax de-
cided they were safe for the moment.
    If the worst came, and the Drek'la struck too
quickly for them to bug out conventionally, the
Trill had already decided they would call for an
emergency beam-out of everyone, and to hell with
the Prime Directlye. "It's too bad we can't move
any faster," she said. "Are you sure none of your
neighbors has any tech for moving quickly along
the ground... say, something with wheels or float-
ing on an antigravity field?"
    Asta-ha shook her head; her daughter Tivva-ma,
who announced she was still seven, shook her head
at exactly the same time, causing both Dax and of
course Chief O'Brien to chuckle. "Damn," mut-
tered Dax; she wondered whether she could talk
 Sisko into having the Defiant replicate a vehicle
 and beam it down where they could "stumble"
 across it.
     "Please watch your language, Commander,"
 cautioned the chief. "There are young ones
 present."
    "Um, sorry about that, Chiefi" The Curzon
within her ached to cut loose with a stream of
profanity that would straighten out O'Brien's hair
and turn it white, but Jadzia Dax controlled it.
    Asta~ha sighed. "Yes, too bad. If you really
wanted to get somewhere fast, we could use the
Instantator tech in the village of the Shignavs. But
I'm afraid I have no tech of the kind you seek."
    "The... Instantator?" Dax suddenly had a hor-
rible feeling she knew exactly what they were
talking about... and it could have saved them a
lot of grueling travel.
    "I have seen it in operation," breathed the hered-
itary mayor. "You step into a booth, sparkles
obscure your body, and you disappear--only to
reappear days' and scores of days' travel distant, in
the next booth." She described the obvious trans-
porter with such holy reverence, Dax almost felt
like bowing her head; from the description, Dax
realized that, like the one in the Tiffnaki village for
food, it was a booth-to-booth device, but sophisti-
cated even by Federation standards. Still, she
sighed, it wouM have been useful.
    Quark came limping up to the group, moaning
and trying to massage his calves while still walking;
he was followed closely by his elongated shadow,
Constable Odo, sneering at every Ferengi protesta-
tion of weakness, being done for, and prediction of
dire consequences.
    "Oh, get off it, Quark; you're going to make it,
because no one is going to pick you up and carry
you. Honestly, you're like a spoiled child at an
excessively permissive nursery school."
 "Have a little heart, Odo ....Or better yet, why
don't you make one?"
    "It's too much effort to bother with unnecesary
internal organs, Quark; besides, I'm happy as I am.
Too bad you can't say the same about yourself."
    The Ferengi sneered. "Well, you certainly didn't
put any effort into a brain, now did you?"
    "Oh, very funny. I'm hysterical, ha, ha, ha. Let's
see how your quadrant-famous sense of humor gets
you through your upcoming ordeal: selling your
banned bar and becoming an employee of Kai
Winn."
    Quark shuddered. "I'd tell you to bite your
tongue, if you had one."
    "Gee... I wonder whether Rom has unloaded
the bar to some luckless Bajoran yet?" Quark
simply glared, so Odo won the round.
    "Boys, boys," said Dax halfheartedly; in truth,
she was barely listening to them bicker .... She
was far more concerned about what had happened
back at the village of the Tiffnakis. I blew it. I
screwed it up and nearly got everyone killed. Now
that the immediate danger was past, and they were
far enough away to feel a little safety, Commander
Dax began to get the shakes. The more she thought
about the Cardassian raid, the more like a fiasco it
looked.
    "I think I've figured it out," said O'Brien, plop-
ping down on the dewy teal grass with a disassem-
bled mass of components in his hand; the jumble
used to be a disruptor rifle. He glared at the hunk
of disassembled junk--then turned a sympathetic
gaze on Dax herself. She leapt to an interpretation:
even the chief thinks I completely screwed up the
mission, she raged to herself; it3 only the sheerest
luck that we weren't all butchered back there.
    Dax started to realize that she could have, should
have, evacuated the village; if she had, a hundred
dead Tiffnakis, including a dozen children, would
still be alive. She felt sick.
    "You figured out what happened back at the
defense?" she asked, leaning forward too eagerly,
trying to drive deep inside thoughts of her own
terrible command decisions. "What went wrong
with all the weapons?"
    "Nothing, Commander; nothing at all." O'Brien
sounded bitter, and he looked like he wanted to
spit into the mechanism. "Nothing?"
    "But it looks like it runs on some kind of
broadcast power, of a variety our tricorders
couldn't detect. The Drek'la must've somehow cut
that power before attacking."
 But would Asta-ha have withdrawn anyway?
"You mean, Chief, that there isn't a single backup
power source anywhere around here?"
    "No, Commander"--the chief scanned with his
own tricorder--"I've adjusted my tricorder and
can now get faint readings of the kind of power
being broadcast. The nearest power source I can
detect is four hundred kilometers away."
    While they spoke, Worf, Quark, and Odo had
joined them. "Gentlemen," said Dax, "I've got a
very bad feeling about this whole mission. If all the
enemy has to do is kill the lights and pull the plug,
then we are in giant-sized trouble."
    Worf spoke up, immediately seeing the tactical
situation: "The natives will have to learn to fight on
their own, even without their devices."
    Dax looked at the Klingon and felt a chill; was he
looking at her with a faint trace of charity? Was he?
If he was, she couldn't stand that.
    "Fight and win, "corrected Dax. Her wound was
painful, possibly infected, and the pain was making
it hard to think. Courage and bravado can take me
only so far; there's more than my pride at stake
here. As much as I'd like to finish this mission, it's
time, as Benjamin would say, time to call in a relief
pitcher.
    "People," she said, "I'm kicking this decision
upstairs. And I'm taking myself out of the game."


0

CHAPTER
       8

 CAPTAIN BENJAMIN SISKO materialized in a loose
wood, the trees not quite thick enough for cover or
dense enough for concealment; but there were
enough of them to make any disruptor shot tricky.
As soon as he appeared, he glanced first at Worf,
then Odo, then O'Brien; the three stood alert but
not tense, and the captain relaxed a bit.
    He had just completed a very unsatisfactory and
alarming conversation with Dax. She had filled
him in somewhat but wanted the captain to make
his own assessment before she made her full re-
port... so his tactical judgment wouldn't be "in-
fluenced by expectation." He had reassured her
that there was little she could have done differently
without psychic abilities... but she was still furl-
ous at herself for not foreseeing the future and
preventing the deaths of the villagers.
    The away team stood by themselves on a small
rise; water welled from underground at the base of
the rise, trickling down to fo