CHAPTER
       1

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

               I




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

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




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

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




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

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




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

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




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

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

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




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

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




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

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




CHAPTER
       2

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

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




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

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




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

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




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

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




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

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




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

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

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




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

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

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




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

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




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

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

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




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

CHAPTER
       3

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




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

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




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

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

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




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

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




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

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




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

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




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

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




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

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




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

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


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

CHAPTER
       4

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




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

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




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

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




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

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




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

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




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

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

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




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

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




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

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

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




CHAPTER
       5

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

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




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

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




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

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

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




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

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




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

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




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

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




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

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

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




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

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





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

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

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




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

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




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

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




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

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




CHAPTER
       6

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

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





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

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

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




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

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




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

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

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





    The ship careened to starboard as a glancing
blow rammed along her side.
    "Minor hit on deck three," T'Rul said. "Commu-
nications and long-range sensors are out."
    Didn't need either of those--Sisko worked his
console as if he had three hands. "I'm locking the
lead ship into the fire-control system."
    Facing the main screen, Sisko fixed his glare on
the two ships he could still see maneuvering on
their perimeter.
 "Fire."

  "I've lost contact."
    "So have I. Can you pick up anything on your
tricorder?"
    "From space? Thanks for the compliment, Lieu-
tenant, but no."
    "You're welcome. But I meant locally. Any
changes?"
    "No, and I sure am trying. I'd like to get these
damned alarms to cut off. Let me try the other side
of the room... never heard so much clatter--"
  "These monitors are dead."
  "What'd you say?"
 "I said the monitors are dead."
    "They've got some kind of automatic shutdown.
I'm trying to trace it. Looks like it's over
there .... "
 "I think... should... alone."
  "What?"
  "I think... leave it alone!"
    Miles O'Brien looked back across the expanse of
the technical outpost they had discovered and had

been peacefully investigating when everything had
started to go wrong. Until ten seconds ago he'd
been over there beside her, looking at the monitors
as they flashed coded information at them. Now he
was across this large, low-ceilinged deck area, half-
way under a console, their voices drummed out by
an inharmonic wail of klaxons and warning whis-
tles that made Red Alert on a starship sound like a
church bell choir.
    He stopped what he was trying to do when Dax
waved at him. Why did she want him to stop? He
straightened, came back toward her, and glanced
around the room, frustrated now that he couldn't
try to make the noise stop.
    "What've you got in mind?" he asked as he
joined her.
    "If we did something to set these off," she said,
"then we're already in trouble. If not, then we'd
better not be the ones to--"
    The bells fell off, and a thought later, the klaxons.
Echoes pealed through their heads, then also
drowned in quiet.
 Dax sighed. "Oh, I don't like this .... "
    Beside her, O'Brien shook the pounding out of
his skull. "Did you send a complete set of coordi-
nates back to the Defiant about the location of the
signal traffic?"
    "I don't know. I hope so," she told him, "because
I think they've been forced to veer off. Otherwise
they'd be beaming us off. Since they're not, I have
to assume they were forced to cloak."
    He felt a pallor wash through his ruddy cheeks.
"You think they left us?"


  "Or they're trying to create a diversion."
    "I know what you're saying." He nodded in tense
agreement with himself. "The mission is more
important than we are."
    "We've got to batten down here," she said. "Give
them a chance to come back for us."
    Taking pause from panic just for a moment,
O'Brien watched the lithe dark-haired woman as
she strode the room for possibilities. Jadzia Dax
remained a kind of mystery to him, like a story that
haunted him but whose message lay under the
surface.
    Like Irish poetry, he noted. That old stuff that his
Mum tried to make him appreciate.
    What couM have made her peaceful with a mind
�.. That nobleness made simple as a fire... With
beauty like a tightened bow, a kind that is not
natural in an age like this... being high and
solitary and most stern? Why, what could she have
done being what she is?... Was there another Troy
for her to burn?
    He'd never had a clue what any of that should
mean, because he turned almost as dead an ear to
the history as he had to the poetry. But he thought
of it as he watched Dax's profile while she touched
a console. He remembered his mother's voice and
the roll of her eyes as she tried to communicate the
significance that flew right over this boy's noggin.
She had wanted him to be so Irish. And he'd
wanted to make lights go on in the dark and
machines work that were broken.
  Oh, well. Poetry wasn't for everybody.

    Except Jadzia. She was a poem, one of those
strange ones with a secret.
    Kind of like that worm living inside her, where
all the brains were.
    Imagine having a worm inside, hitching a ride for
life, with three hundred years of experiences all
stored up. He couldn't fathom it. There'd been
every manner of alien coming and going through
his tenure with Starfleet and he could get along with
the strangest of them, but there was something so
parasitic about the Trills, the whole manner of
having some animal inside... if a man fell in love
with Jadzia Dax, who would he be loving?
    O'Brien shook his head to beat down the willies
and wanted to get home to his wife and daughter.
Sometimes he just needed the basics. Man, woman,
lots of babies. And maybe he'd give his parents a
call.
    A wall-mounted console burped and whistled off
to his side. He ran over there and tried to make
sense of the unfamiliar markings.
    "I think forcefields just came up," he said. "God
knows where, though."
    "To protect us or keep us in?" Dax came back
toward him.
     "No idea. Uh-oh... there goes the systemwide
readout. Ships coming in!" He looked at her.
 "How many?" she asked, unflapped as ever.
 "Doesn't say."
 "We've got to get out of here."
 O'Brien turned to her. "And go where? This





place is a rock. We've got no survival gear--I'm not
even sure about the atmosphere."
    "No, we have to stay in this complex. There's no
animal life. They'd pick the two of us up on sensors
almost immediately in an open area. How big is
this terminal?"
    "Judging from information I picked up on the
Defiant, it's about two square kilometers--Damn!
Somebody's beaming down!" He pointed at the
jumping sensors on his own tricorder.
    Quickly Dax gathered her tricorder and other
handhelds. "How are you at stealth?"
    With a buried shudder O'Brien scooped up his
own equipment. "I've got some survival ideas.
Let's give 'em a whirl."
    They ran for the nearest exit as the whine of
transporter energy filled the area behind them.
    "I hear transporters," he said. "Must be a couple
dozen."
  "You can tell from the sound?"
  "I can guess from it," he admitted.
    His guess was apparently good enough for her.
She moved a little faster.
    She ducked before him into a narrow corridor--
very narrow, wide enough for two of them or
maybe one Jem'Hadar at a time. O'Brien skidded
around the corner, then paused to look back.
    A couple dozen Jem'Hadar soldiers now stood
where a moment ago the two of them had been
standing.
    "Go, go," he whispered, nudging her forward. He
had no idea what kind of tracking equipment those
creatures possessed.

    Dax led the way through dim corridors, all
packed with equipment of various kinds. The me-
chanical stuff even lined the ceiling over their
heads. Without time for analysis, O'Brien knew he
wouldn't be able to tell life support from the lunch
counter.
    "Wait!" He stopped suddenly. Without pausing,
he started turning on some of the electronics
around him.
    Dax was waiting for him at the next corner,
phaser drawn.
    When he joined her, he said, "Switch on every-
thing you see for the first three minutes. Processors
and maintenance machines, anything else we see.
Then we'll veer off and hope they have trouble
tracking us. It might blind their sensors--at least,
that's what I'm guessing."
"What keeps them from turning it all off?."
"This does." He had been hoping she'd ask.
Leveling his phaser at the controls, he blasted his
daughter's initials into the surface mechanism.
Sparks drenched them both. The mechanism
melted.
    Dax lit up the dim corridor with her smile. "I like
the way you think."
    Stiffly he nodded, but couldn't muster a smile to
hand back to her, and felt bad about it ten seconds
later. By then, she was already halfway down the
next corridor.
      "There must be a schematic of these halls," she
said. "We should get out of them."  "Where'11 we go?"
  "A subspace relay station isn't exactly a radio on





 a pad, Chiefi This is a complex place. If we can get
 into the guts of these mechanics and follow an
 arbitrary path, we'll double chances that they won't
 be able to track us."
     "I'm all for it," O'Brien responded. "But don't
 forget what that does to the chances of Commander
 Sisko finding us if he comes back here."
    "Oh, I don't intend to wait for that," Dax said as
she pried off a wall panel.
    "Not that one," O'Brien said. "That's just sur-
face access. Let's try this one over here. It's bigger.
What is it you've got in mind?"
    "We have a mission," she reminded. "We should
try to follow through on it."
    Astonished, he glowered at her while hammering
a wall seam apart with the butt of his phaser.
"That's daft. Here in the middle of a swarm of
these bumblebees? They'll kill us on sight."
  "Not if we see them first."
    It seemed she was unremitting. He could tell she
was thinking, dreaming up a plan while she helped
him dismantle the wall.
    "Don't bend it," he said as he lifted the dislodged
panel and set it at his feet. "We have to get it back
on or they'll know where we went. You know,
you're talking about going on the offensive. You
realize that, don't you?"
    "Yes. Something you said a moment ago...
you've given me an idea."
    "I have? Here, let's have you get in here first. I'll
pull up the panel."
 As she arranged her long legs and torso into the

innards of the wall, he did his best to keep his eyes
where they belonged.
    "Hustle up, there," he said. "I can hear them
coming."
    "What you said about bumblebees." Her voice
was muffled by the insulation in the walls. "We
have to snare one of the Jem'Hadar."
    O'Brien crawled in after her, then managed to
crank around and retrieve the wall section. It
wouldn't fit back in.
"What do you want one for? Autopsy, I hope."
Far into the machinery now, Dax sounded very
faint. "No, no. Alive. Tangle him in a web long
enough to talk to him."
    "We could stun--" O'Brien bit his tongue as the
wall panel slipped through his fingers and bumped
the deck with one comer.
    The comer bent as it hit. Would it fit back in
now? He tried again, trying to maneuver his thick
fingers to do what pinchers and magnets were
meant to do.
    Scrapes and voices down the corridor lanced him
with panic. He fought to control himself and bring
the wall section up slowly, fit it properly.  "We could stun one," he said quietly.
    She didn't answer. Probably didn't want to raise
her voice.
    The top of the wall section went in all right this
time, but he was still holding the bottom edge with
two fingers. If he could just leave those two fingers
behind, everything would be fine.
  "Here." Dax's voice was right over his shoulder.




He drew a hard breath. "You scared me!"
"Shh. Here." In her hand was one of the things
she used to keep her long hair slicked back and tied
between her shoulder blades. It had a decorative
piece, and a thin metal part with a small hook.
    "Oh, that's good, great, just right." The metal
part of the barrette fit right where his fingers had
gone. There wasn't much leverage, and the barrette
wasn't strong, but it held long enough for him to tug
the bottom of the wall panel almost into place. "It's
wedged in. I don't think--"  "Let's go, then."
    The service passage was a head-bumper and the
devil on their knees as they made their way deep
into the relay station's guts. They took several
arbitrary turns and climbed one rickety ladder that
hadn't been used in years, judging by the rust all
over it and the detached tines.
    "We have to capture one of the Jem'Hadar," Dax
thought aloud. "Long enough to talk to him."
    "Uch, that gives me the worms. Sorry--nothing
personal."
    She looked back at him and smiled again, but
didn't say anything.
    "I could try to find one alone and stun him," he
offered, completely unable to imagine what she was
going to tell one of these monkeys to get him to do
their bidding.
    "We can't drag a creature that large around the
station for ten minutes until it comes out of it," she
said. "You've got to think more brutal than that,
Chief."
 He rubbed his ear after snagging it on a piece of

plastic sticking out into their pathway. "Now, look,
I can be as brutal as the next man. I'd take that
personally if I weren't a roaring coward."
    "All right." She found a bare spot and sat down,
inching around to face him, and pulled her
tricorder strap until the instrument lay on her lap.
"Let's see where they are."
    O'Brien squatted and tried to spare his aching
knees.
    Her tricorder clicked faintly as it searched for
life-forms below them.
    "Three to our right... thirty meters... four
more in that direction... fifty-two meters... one
behind you... eighty meters... one behind
me..." She dropped her volume abruptly and
looked up. "Ten meters!"
    O'Brien hiked up onto one knee and brought his
phaser around--just in case. "That's our boy," he
whispered.
    Forcing herself around onto her knees, Dax
ducked her head so her back-combed hair wouldn't
catch in the machinery. She had a job on her hands
to bundle up her long frame and limbs enough to
inch through this passage. O'Brien noted that he
was as tall as she was, but he somehow folded up
into a package better than she could.
    They followed the tricorder's directional sensor,
but had to double back twice to find passages they
could get through and still follow the targeted
soldier as he made his way through the complex,
looking for them.
    Dax changed course once more, scooting along
on two knees and a hand, holding the tricorder in




her other hand. All at once she stopped and turned
to face him, inching backward a little more.
    She motioned to him, and pointed almost direct-
ly downward at the area of ceiling sheet between
them.
    He pulled up close to her. "Let me go first," he
whispered. "Got a few pounds on you."
    She nodded, adjusted her phaser, and inched
back a little more.
    O'Brien holstered his own phaser and flexed his
hands. This wouldn't be easy.
    Without waiting for fanfare, Dax aimed the
phaser and fired directly at the thing they were
crawling on.
    A pool of red heat spread two feet wide almost
immediately, and within seconds there was a gap-
ing hole between them. O'Brien gathered his nerve,
shoved his feet through, and jumped, doing all he
could to avoid searing himself on the hot edges.
    With a shout he plunged onto the floor below,
and with his right arm managed to catch the
startled Jem'Hadar around the neck. He'd hoped to
land square on top of this two-hundred-pound
beetlehead, but that's not the way the wheel spun.
Luck was with him only in the fact that he landed
behind the fellow and not right in his arms. How
would that have looked?
    The Jem'Hadar practically blew up in O'Brien's
arms. It was all the engineer could do to hang on,
get his arms around the soldier's throat and hang
on for dear life while Dax dropped through the hole
after him.
 By then, the Jem'Hadar was plunging backward

to pin O'Brien against the wall--oh, yes, that hurt.
Half the air was pounded out of him on the first
impact, and the Jem'Hadar levered off to do it
twice.
    O'Brien willed himself to hang on, bury his
knuckles in the Jem'Hadar's tough throat plates,
and try to cut off his breathing. If he could just
weaken the bugger--he felt as if he had a crocodile
held up against his body and if he let go he was
going to be eaten.
    Dax moved in and smashed the soldier across the
ribs with the butt of her phaser. There was almost
no reaction, except for a brief tuck, then an angry
roar. While the soldier clawed at O'Brien's grip on
his neck, Dax managed to wrench the energy weap-
on out of his paw.
    The soldier howled with fury. Another purpose-
ful slam, and O'Brien lost his grip.
    He fell hard onto his side, arms tingling and
numb, his spine rattling, lungs drawing desperately.
Forcing himself to act before he lost the chance, he
tucked his ribs and coiled both his legs around the
Jem'Hadar's ankles just as the big soldier took a
grab for Dax to try to get his weapon back.
    The Jem'Hadar came down like a felled oak,
without the chance to break his fall. The whole
deck thrummed.
    Staggering onto his knees, O'Brien scrambled to
the other side of the corridor, gasping and trying to
get the blood back into his trembling hands.
    "Stop!" Dax ordered, aiming her phaser and
the Jem'Hadar's own energy weapon at him, just in
case he didn't understand the phaser. Even if he




didn't understand English yet, her message was
clear. "Stop! We want to talk to you!"
    The Jem'Hadar stopped--just long enough to
rip a metal suspension bar off the wall and turn it
on O'Brien.
    O'Brien ducked at the last second and caught the
whish of the bar across the side of his head. During
the duck, he launched a fist into the Jem'Hadar's
face. The good barroom punch gained him about
two inches. Enough to slip on past.
    But as he dodged, a force came down on the
middle of his back as if he'd been struck by a
dropping anchor. With a gush of breath he hit the
floor on his belly, totally helpless and blinded with
pain.
    "Stop, I'm telling you!" Dax was calling a few
feet away.
    O'Brien brought his hands flat on the floor and
struggled to push himself up. His legs dangled
behind him, numb.
    Then, the howl of energy erupted over his head.
He ducked and covered his head with both arms. A
stink of burning flesh flooded the corridor, and a
moment later there was sudden silence.

CHAPTER
       7

SOMETHING GRASPED HIS ARM and pulled him over
onto his back. He drew back a fist.
    "No, Chief, don't!" Dax knelt over him. "I had
to vaporize him. He was going to kill you. Are you
hurt?"
    A grunt of effort helped clear his thoughts as she
helped him sit up. "Well, I'm hurting," he groaned.
"Big beast just wouldn't give up, would he?"
    "No," she said. "Come on. The weapons fire has
drawn their attention. I can hear them coming.
We've got to get out of here."
    She pulled him to his feet. Dizziness swept over
him, then a swirl of nausea, but he struggled to
straighten up and follow her, as the sound of
pounding boots egged him on.
    Somehow she found a place for them to hide,
where O'Brien could rest for a few seconds. They




managed to duck behind--well, there was no tell-
ing what it was. Big and black and metal. Good
enough.
    "Sit down," Dax said to him. She pushed him
into a comer, then crouched at guard, phaser
drawn, while several Jem'Hadar pounded toward
them, past, and right on by.
    Sweating like a plow horse, O'Brien clasped an
arm over his chest, irrationally afraid the pounding
of his heart would summon them here.
    After a few moments, Dax scooted backward to
,huddle with him. "So much for getting one alive."
    "Oh," O'Brien gasped, "don't give up yet...
they're big, but they're dumb. There's a way to
corral one."  "How?"
    "Well... let me get out my... my tea leaves
and rll tell you."
    Somehow she drummed up one of those smiles
again. "All right. Rest."
    How could she do that? Smile right in the middle
of all this? Without even knowing what happened
to the commander and the ship?
    O'Brien found Dax's stability heartening, but
just another mystery about her. Somehow, in those
three hundred years of lifetimes and body-
switching, she'd gathered up enough experience to
know that nothing's over until it's over and there's
always one more wacky thing to try before going
down in flames, and even then a stalwart soul Could
still spit.
  "In a minute they'll split up again," she said

quietly, tilting her head and listening to the faint
bump of bootsteps through the complex.
    Now that his head was clearing and he could
breathe again, O'Brien sloughed off his fascination
at her coolness and started to grasp at straws. How
did a person go about snaring a water buffalo?
  "I know!" he began. "Power."
  She looked at him. "What?"
    "This complex is full of power. Let's use it. We
can fabricate some kind of forcefield or numbing
field. Not like a phaser blast. Something that would
leave our prisoner conscious, but immobilized."
  "Tell me what you need."
    "I'll need a synthetic or rubber material to
insulate myself with... and--well, let me hunt
about for a minute. Stand guard, eh?" "Yes, I will."
    They moved in two different directions, for two
different purposes and one goal.

 "Ready?"
 "Ready."
 "Here he comes."
    For the second time in an hour they had isolated
a Jem'Hadar soldier moving through the complex
by himself. With jolts of phaser noise and tapping
on the wall, they'd led him away from the others
who were spreading through the area.
    Now O'Brien stood beside his improvised zapper
field, a monstrous arrangement of electronics can-
nibalized from the very walls. Except for his nose
and his toes, he could just about hide behind it. His




right upper ann, wrapped with a rubber gasket, was
poised over the enabling hookup.
    Down the passageway, Dax stood in full view,
rapping her phaser against the wall. It made a
hollow thunk.
    A guttural shout from another passage gave
O'Brien a surge of both victory and terror. They'd
attracted another one. Here he came.
    Dax let herself be seen, then turned toward
O'Brien and ran. Even under these conditions, just
for a few seconds, O'Brien couldn't get the image of
a gazelle out of his mind.
    This new Jem'Hadar came barreling around the
corner, howling in rage and joy at having found
them.
    O'Brien held himself in check as Dax flew past
him and his machine--he hoped it would work.
There'd been no testing.
    As he heard the heavy breathing of the
Jem'Hadar and caught the first whiffof the pungent
animalistic scent, he threw the switch on his
tricorder.
    Hooked up to the thing beside him, the tricorder
buzzed with effort, and a fierce electric-green field
burst to life.
    The Jem'Hadar snarled and screamed, but
couldn't take another step. A netting of energy
caught him by the middle body and dragged him up
against O'Brien's mess of crackling equipment. It
wasn't working very well, but it was working. Every
few seconds it snapped off, then on again, but not
enough that the Jem'Hadar could get away.

 "Dax! I got him!"
    The Jem'Hadar struggled pitifully, thrashing to
one side, then the other, pounding the back of his
skull against the machines.
    Dax ran up to them and stood beside O'Brien,
her phaser and energy weapon both trained on the
captive, just in case.
    "Stop struggling!" O'Brien called to the raging
Jem'Hadar, speaking over the rattle and roar of the
electrical net. "Stop fighting it! I don't know how
much power's going through you. Do yourself a
favor, man! Stand still!"
    He didn't think it would have any effect and was
surprised when it did. The captive slowed his
thrashing, as if to see what would happen. The
energy net calmed down markedly, but to O'Brien's
relief didn't lose all its power. It kept buzzing
around the captive, mostly around his chest and
neck.
    The Jem'Hadar quit struggling altogether, and
stood there sucking air, obviously hoping his lack
of movement would make the net fade away.  It still might.
    Dax glanced at O'Brien, then moved forward.
They might not have much time.
    "I'm Lieutenant Jadzia Dax from the Federation
station Deep Space Nine, just on the other side of
the wormhole. Do you understand what I'm say-
ing?"
    The Jem'Hadar gritted his teeth. Fangs. Whatev-
er those were.
  "M'rak!" he said.




    O'Brien frowned and looked at Dax. "What
d'you suppose that gibberish means?"
    The Jem'Hadar flexed his arms and pulled to-
ward him violently. The energy net sizzled hot
again and held him. "It's my name!" he boomed.
  "Oh... sorry."
    Dax stepped closer. "We want you to take us to
the Founders."
    "I will kill you! Or the others will. You will never
reach the Founders!"
    Raising the energy weapon to their captive's face,
Dax firmly said, "We'll kill you if you don't do
what we say."
    He glowered back at her. "Kill me. I am sworn to
guard them. I will guard them!"
 The field sizzled again, forcing Dax back a step.
 O'Brien sighed. "This is going well .... "
    "Why?" Dax persisted. "Why are the Founders
so afraid?"
    "The Founders are not afraid. They are not for
you to see or talk to."
     "All right," she said steadily. "Then I will talk to
you, and you will listen or we will kill you."
  "Kill me."
    "No, you listen first. It is your duty to protect the
Founders, yes?"
 "Yes. Kill me."
    "Give it a rest, man, will you?" O'Brien pro-
tested as he tampered with his frankenstein ma-
chine to keep the power running, and glanced down
the corridor, hoping no more Jem'Hadar showed
up just yet.
 Dax pushed up as close as she could get, so close

that O'Brien could see the fine dark hairs framing
her face begin to squirm.
    "We're here on a mission initiated by Command-
er Benjamin Sisko of Deep Space Nine. Command-
er Sisko believes that the Jem'Hadar and the
Founders should get a chance at peace before you
force us to destroy you. We have fought many wars
and never lost. We don't think the Founders under-
stand what is happening. Pay attention to me...
there is a fleet massing on the other side of the
wormhole, awaiting our response. A thousand
ships, just like the U.S.S. Odyssey, which it took
three of your ships to destroy. Do you have three
... thousand... ships?"
    As she paused and glared into M'rak's face, the
captive inched back just enough to give away his
shock. He seemed barely able to comprehend that
kind of numbers.
    "We have weapons that can destroy whole star
systems in a single shot," Dax went on.
 M'rak made a dirty sound and said, "You lie."
    The beautiful woman turned evil before him.
"Shouldn't it be up to the Founders to decide?"
    Shuddering at the pure venom, O'Brien almost
grinned, almost leaned to Dax and told her how
well she was doing, but at the last second held
himself back. What a crazy thing that would be to
do! He must still be half in a daze from that
pounding he took. He shut his mouth and admired
her in silence as she went on without a flinch.
    "Maybe you can win and maybe you can't," Dax
said. "But don't you think the Founders should
have the choice?"




    She stopped talking and stared right into M'rak's
astonished face. The glare was one devil of a tactic
and she kept it going until O'Brien thought he'd
bust.
    "If the Founders go to war with the Alpha
Quadrant," she went on evenly, "the Founders will
be destroyed. That's our message. Don't you think
the Founders should hear it?"
    M'rak looked at O'Brien, then back at Dax. "The
Founders know everything," he protested. "We will
protect the Founders. We will destroy you."
    "We will destroy the Jem'Hadar," Dax told him
without a beat. "And there will be no one left to
protect the Founders. And it will be M'rak's fault.
Your fault."
    This time M'rak said nothing, but his face went
suddenly numb, as if her message had gotten
through his thick skin all at once.
    Dax pushed for a vein. "I can prove what I say.
And you will protect the Founders by taking us to
the Founders."
M'rak narrowed his snakelike eyes. "Prove it."
"All right." Dax stood back a foot or so and
roistered her phaser. "I'm going to give you back
your weapon now. Chief... turn off the field."
    O'Brien felt his blood drop to his feet and he
almost passed out. He stared at her, waiting for the
punch line, but she didn't even look at him.
    She continued gazing firmly at M'rak, her pur-
pose fixed in place.
    Mourning the thing he'd so quickly fabricated,
not to mention his own life, which wasn't going to

be ticking along much longer, O'Brien held his
breath and turned off the energy net.
    The field crackled, gave M'rak a last zap for good
measure, then fizzled and died.
    Dax held the Jem'Hadar energy gun forward,
barrel up.
    "I'm giving you this weapon," she gambled. "Kill
us if you need to. But remember what awaits our
silence."
    M'rak blinked down at his hands as Dax placed
the ugly weapon into his open paws. The message
was even clearer than her extremely clear words.
Kill us and you kill the Founders.
    The Jem'Hadar soldier looked like a big kid
holding a firecracker that he didn't know how to
light. Evidently Dax had convinced him, at least in
part, that he was holding the Founders' future in
his hands.
    Clumsily fielding M'rak's glare, O'Brien simply
shrugged. "You can always kill us later, right?" he
contributed.
  "Take us," Dax prodded.
    M'rak stood straight--and only now did O'Brien
notice that this particular monkey stood a good six
foot five--and peered down at them like something
in a tree. He looked at O'Brien, at Dax, at O'Brien
again, and back at Dax. Then he looked down at the
weapon in his own hands.
  Remember what awaits our silence.
    M'rak stumbled sideways and squared off in the
middle of the corridor, staring at them.
    O'Brien almost drew his phaser, but forced him-
self to take his cue from Dax.





     Suddenly M'rak drew a long breath and waved
 his weapon like a flag, his eyes flaming with fanati-
 cal determination.
  "I will take you!"
     He ran off, demanding with his urgency that they
 follow.
    Dax turned in cautious victory to O'Brien. "Let's
go, Chie~"
    O'Brien hurried along beside her, one hand on
his phaser. "You're good at this!" he awarded. "I
almost threw up when you gave him that gun
back."
    "So did I," she said as she stepped up the pace.
"And it's not a very pretty picture when a Trill
throws up."
    M'rak was running full-out, in mortal despera-
tion now to get that message back to the Founders
so he wasn't the one who had kept it from them.
Simple threat, simply delivered.
    To M'rak it was a simple truth and it evidently
scared the stuffing out of him. He was almost
outrunning them, plowing a path down the narrow
corridor.
    What a sight we must be, O'Brien thought as he
followed Dax at such a run that they almost struck
the walls when the path took a turn. He did slam
into one outcropping of mechanical stuff and al-
most got an eye punched out by some odd piece
sticking out. This place just wasn't built to have
people hurrying through. At least, not people the
size of humans, and certainly not the size of
Jem'Hadar.
 His chest started hurting again as he strained to

keep up. His vision started to close in, turn black
on the sides, and he feared he wouldn't be able to
stay on his feet. His back knotted and throbbed
from the hard punch he'd taken before, and almost
everything else hurt too, right down to his ankles.
He didn't want to stumble--that would look bad
after the show of power Dax had put across.
    All at once there was a bloodcurdling commotion
before him--he skidded into Dax, and almost
instantly she was pulled off him and he was
knocked sideways. lie skidded to one knee and
looked up.
 Two more Jem'Hadar!
    M'rak had plunged right through them, appar-
ently without noticing them until one of them had
reached out and cracked O'Brien a good one.
    The engineer stumbled to his feet, but one of the
soldiers grabbed him by both arms from behind.
    "Run, Dax!" O'Brien scratched his heels against
the floor and plowed backward into the
Jem'Hadar's chest. For a moment he shoved the
soldier off balance, but the grips on his arms never
faltered. "Go on, go on!"
    The lieutenant's supple posture served well as
she communicated through pliancy to the
Jem'Hadar soldiers that she was giving up, that she
wouldn't fight anymore.
  "It's all right, Miles," she said.
    He couldn't tell if this was part of the plan she
had or just a bet she was making, but she obviously
wasn't going to leave him behind.
    M'rak came charging back just as the other
soldier was leveling his weapon on Dax.




    "No!" he shouted. And he started babbling in his
own language.
    Not a growl of it made a bit of sense to O'Brien.
He didn't recognize a single sound or inflection.
He'd gotten fair at catching the �dd Klingon phrase
from time to time and even a word or two of
Cardassian, but this was just too new and too
snarly to make a bit of sense.
    M'rak argued his point fitfully, fanatically, and
awfully damned loud. The other two Jem'Hadar
stared at him. The one holding O'Brien didn't let
go.
    Abruptly the other Jem'Hadar, standing between
Dax and M'rak, started shouting too, waving his
arms and shaking his own weapon furiously.
    Then, suddenly and without warning, M'rak
leveled his weapon and blasted the guts out of the
soldier shouting at him. The soldier choked and
tumbled backward, and hit the floor in a gush of his
own entrails.
    M'rak turned now on the beast holding O'Brien
and aimed to shoot.
  Dax shouted, "Get down, Miles!"
    O'Brien let his body go limp and the surprise of
that caused the Jem'Hadar to let go of him in order
to defend himself against M'rak. Bands of energy
pealed through the corridor as the two had it out
right over O'Brien's head, until a heavy body
slammed to the floor beside him, crushing one of
his legs.
    He choked in pain as his pelvis was twisted by
the weight of the fallen soldier.

            I I'IE ~l'~NlM

    "Chiefl" Dax was over him now, shoving the
ghastly corpse to one side.
    The corridor filled with the stink of Jem'Hadar
blood and gore. At the corner, M'rak stood like a
colossus, flushed with the panic of his purpose.
    "I will take you!" he bellowed. "I am taking
you!"
    He waved his weapon in a big beckoning arch,
turned, and started pounding away down the pas-
sage again, determined to find some other
Jem'Hadar who would believe that he had a mes-
sage to get through.
    "Lord," O'Brien gasped. "Is that crackpot going
to cut through every one of his own crew like that?
We'll never make it! They'll rip us to bits!"
    Dax pulled his arm over her shoulders and gave
him as much support as she could.
  "I've created a monster," she said.
    Waxy with sweat, O'Brien forced his bad leg to
hold his weight.
    Giving her the most encouraging glance he could
muster, he straightened his aching back, sum-
moned his voice, and sputtered, "Yes, master--off
we go."

    Defiant's phasers were thick-beamed flyswatters,
power-heavy and extra bright. Aim was fierce and
accurate too--one of the Jem'Hadar ships was
blown to sparklers with the first shot.
    Surprised victory slammed through the bridge,
tempered almost instantly by Bashir's hushed
voice. They'd hoped the ship could do what she had




been designed to do, even unfinished and unfamil-
iar, and here, for strangers who needed her, she had
thumbed her nose at the vicious.
    "The other two ships are moving out of phaser
range."
    "We just gave them something to think about,"
Sisko said with a flush of vindication, more secure
than he felt inwardly. "What's the status of the
warp drive?"
    T'Rul took an extra second to look up, possibly
expecting O'Brien to answer about his own equip-
ment before remembering that he wasn't here and
that she was the closest thing to an engineer that
they had in their skeletal crew. "The starboard
power coupling is completely destroyed. I'm trying
to reroute main power."
    Sisko glared at her. She'd just told him the sky
was falling.
    That first shot from Defiant had proved that this
ship was up to this monumental task, that it could
fight to victory, force a peace, or take so many of
the Jem'Hadar down that the enemy would be the
ones worrying about how to guard the wormhole.
    Instead, one of those ships had hammered them
a thousand-to-one shot and blown their main coup-
ling! Damn! One lucky shot!
    Suddenly they were the Bismarck with a smashed
rudder, going around in circles while the enemy
bore down.
    All right, they would die. But they wouldn't die
easily.
"They're coming around for another pass,"

            I HE ~EARCH

Bashir said, "but they're moving a little slower this
time."
    "They'll be more cautious this time," Sisko bet,
hoping the enemy wouldn't realize how crippled he
was. "Doctor, use evasive pattern delta-five. We
need to keep them off balance until we get warp
power back."
"Aye, sir," Bashir responded, eyes on the screen.
One of the Jem'Hadar ships angled into the
periphery of the screen, turned on a pylon, and
angled toward them on an obvious attack maneu-
ver, weapons slicing across Defiant's bow.
    "Torpedoes!" Sisko gasped in that fleeting sec-
ond between fire and strike.
    Around them the ship rocked, then shuddered.
On the aft bridge, one of the consoles exploded,
sending hot sparks and a putrid electrical stink
swelling over the crew.
      T'Rul grabbed for a console a full body-length
away. "Torpedoes ready."  "Now!" Sisko shouted.
    Deftant launched a fan of quantum torpedoes,
bright and just as unfamiliar as the weapons of the
Jem'Hadar. Each torpedo broke formation and
horned in on the nearest Jem'Hadar ship. Instead
of the fan opening up, it closed to a spearpoint and
all struck at once. If there had been anything in
their path, they might have split up and struck two
targets, but this time only that one Jem'Hadar ship
was within homing range and it had to take the full
impact of all those salvos.
    Heavy damage sparkled across the enemy vessel.
It faltered in its flight path and fell off attack stance.




 "T'Rul, where's my warp power?"
    Creased with aggravation on the upper deck,
T'Rul waved at the smoke still billowing from the
exploded panel. "I wish the engines worked as well
as the weapons. I can't get the phaser inducers to
properly align with the ODN matrices in the--"
    "Commander!" Bashir sang out. "Three more
Jem'Hadar warships are approaching off the port
bow!"
    "Full impulse," Sisko said quickly. "Try to get us
out of here!"

CHAPTER
       8

DISENGAGED FROM ARMS AND LEGS, swimming
through open thoughts as detached as snowflakes,
Kira Nerys drew a steadying breath.
    Consciousness swarmed back with the swelling
of her lungs. For a moment all she could think
about was a good breakfast and maybe a cold pack
for the way her head felt.
  Breathe... again... again.
    Dust. Chips of insulation. She coughed. That's
what finally roused her. She tried to lift her head.
    They still had air... no hull breach... at least,
not in this section. No whistle of leakage.
    Wreckage cradled her on both sides. Something
must still be falling apartlshe heard the crack of
metal against metal, chunky wall sections creaking
and grinding.
  All at once a spasm jumped through her legs and




thighs and her feet started tingling to a point of
pain. Circulation had been cut off. Now it was
coming back.
    She'd been trapped. The noise wasn't more
destruction--it was Odo pulling a bulkhead off
her.
    "Are you all right?" He leaned over her, his long
hands scooping under her arms. He helped her to
her feet.
    She wobbled, but ignored the screaming tingle in
her feet and managed to stay up and tap her comm
badge. "Just a few bruises .... Kira to bridge."
Nothing happened. She tried again. "Kira to br--"
    The ship rolled again, the deck bluntly dropping
away beneath them to port and nearly throwing
them both down again. Odo caught Kira's arm and
kept her up, and kept himself up by catching hold
of an exposed girder that twisted down across the
open gap between the berth and the corridor. She
almost pulled him back, afraid he would cut his
hand on the ragged metal, and only when the ship
steadied again did it occur to her that he couldn't
be cut. The hand could be sliced right off and it
would probably jump up, run back, and fuse again.
    She shook herself away from that line of thought.
"Well, we're definitely in a fight with someone. We
have to get to the bridge."
    He didn't respond, except to start pulling the
wreckage away from the hole in the wall so they
could both go through.
    The corridor was a bastardized memory. Wreck-
age blocked their way back to the bridge, They were
struggling to clear piles of collapsed material and

heaps of insulation crumbs when the ship was hit
again. They managed to stay on their feet, but the
lights went completely out and suddenly they were
maneuvering in a collapsed cave.
    She felt as if her spine were being compressed.
This business of fighting on a ship, dying on a
ship...
    Was the air getting thinner? Was something gush-
ing into the corridors and making her sweat?
    They had to get up to the bridge! There she would
discover some magic or other that would get them
out of this, free her from this enclosing nightmare.
She had stared into the face of an enemy who
wanted her dead... how many times? She had
always been able to strike and run, run far. This
time, the idea that this ship could be hulled and she
and Odo could suffocate or be left for dead, with no
power until they froze to deathmthis was no way to
die!
    The station had been confining enough for a
woman used to the wide spaces of a planet, but at
least from the station she could look down and see
the open areas that had hidden her and her fellow
rebels for all the years of her childhood and youth.
Not rational, but real.
    With a strained flicker, a safety light in the
distant corridor came on, casting just enough
opaque light for them to make out each other's
shapes and the general heap of material they were
picking out of their way.
    "We've lost main power," Kira said. She still
couldn't see her hands. It helped just to hear her
own voice.




     Odo was moving with nearly frantic determina-
 tion beside her. "We have to get to one of the
 shuttles."
    "Our duty," she reminded, gauging her tone
cautiously, "is to get to the bridge and help defend
this ship."
    "If main power is out," he said, "then the shields
are out too, Kira. There's nothing we can do."
    Together they heaved a buckled support knee out
of their way.
    Kira repressed a shiver. Maybe that was true.
Maybe not. Maybe he was glad to have a reason not
to struggle to get to the bridge, searching for an
excuse to fulfill his drive to get to that place he
wanted to go to.
    And who was to say the Jem'Hadar wouldn't
blast a shuttle to ions?
    They had to get to the bridge--how could she
convince him? How could she let him go flying off
into hostile space all by himself?.  How could she stop him now?
    First they had to get to the end of this corridor. If
the whole side of the ship was punched in--
    Tall bands of energy hummed before them out of
nothing. Pillars of light appeared and formed al-
most immediately into three Jem'Hadar soldiers.
    Do these polliwogs do everything in threes? Kira
thought as she charged them. It was the first thing
she thought to do, perhaps to catch them in that
instant of fog that hits just after transporting.
    Within seconds, she was at the throat of a
clammy-skinned creature who outweighed her, out-

gunned her, and outpowered the punch she drew
back to throw.
    The blow connected with the Jem'Hadar's left
eye and he fell back--just long enough for Kira to
draw her weapon.
 The corridor lit up with phaser fire.
    She squeezed again and again, driving one
Jem'Hadar behind part of the collapsed bulkhead.
She turned in time to see Odo dispatch another of
those animals with a blow to the throat.
    Counting that as a solid victory, Kira led the way
over a metal embankment and landed on the other
side of the collapsed inner hull. Recovering, she
turned toward the open corridor.
    A burst of weapon fire streaked toward her--she
thought for an instant that she had squeezed her
phaser and fired accidentally--but when the bolt
struck her full in the chest, she realized she'd made
a mistake.
    She'd opened herself to attack... if she could
get back on her feet, explain her mistake... get
another chance to aim and fire...
    Pain poured through her lungs. She battled to
stay up, but couldn't tell where up was anymore.
Her feet wandered before her eyes, her hands
waved in open air. Her head slipped back and she
had no more strength to raise it.
  The sounds of fighting sizzled away.

    "Main power is off-line," T'Rul called over the
crackling of the demolished bridge. "The shields
have collapsed."




 Bashir was coughing. "I've lost... helm control
 �.. inertial dampers... failing--"
    "Ready escape pods," Sisko said through a
clamped throat. "Stand by to abandon ship."
    They picked through a field of debris, helping
each other across the mess toward the turbolift.
    The lights were ninety percent down, the bridge
clouded with chemical smoke from burning con-
soles. Most of the panels had selectively shut down.
Valiant though she had tried to be, Defiant couldn't
hold back the onslaught of so many heavily armed
Jem'Hadar warships.
    Sisko clamped his lips and blasted himself for his
foolish attempt to come into this quadrant with
only one ship. Why had he thought any ship could
hold back the Jem'Hadar by itself'?.
    He wanted cooperation, wanted the wormhole to
be used for more than the odd bit of research here
and there, wanted the Bajoran population to know
that Federation membership was more than just a
shipload of antibiotics now and then. He wanted
peace in his life--even if he had to fight for it.
    And here he was, barely half a day into the
mission, abandoning their ship, their one chance to
do this.
    Two crewmates lost--how many dead here? At
least one engineer here on the bridge. He felt bad
about that young fellow slumped over the helm. He
didn't even know the man's name. How many
belowdecks?
    His throat knotted, jaws locked. Dax and
O'Brien--the cost of this failure. He'd botched it
all. Already his mind was racing ahead to the

            I HE bEARCH

struggle to get back alive, and after that explaining
to Keiko O'Brien and her little daughter that Miles
O'Brien was missing, presumed dead... and left
behind in hostile space.
    And what would he go back to? His mission had
utterly failed. They had thrown their best punch at
the Jem'Hadar and now they would be laughed at.
Go ahead, invade, there's no one to stop it from
happening�
    He was hit with a sudden overpowering urge to
get home. Jake needed him. Life was about to
become a brutish struggle for survival. He had to be
with Jake.
    More than that, he had to get back and find some
way of keeping these bastards on their own side of
the line.
 Could he get back in an escape pod?
    Limping across space in a pod? With three, six,
nine Jem'Hadar ships in the immediate area?
    He ushered Bashir up the command-deck steps
toward the turbolift� Everyone looked battered.
Smoke and hard hits from outside could do that.
All their muscles were tense�
    Before they even made it to the upper deck, six
columns of vibrant energy appeared around the
bridge--six Jem'Hadar soldiers materialized,
weapons already drawn and raised�
    T'Rul was the first to act--she was already
armed.
    Her disruptor cut through the smoke and stench
to slaughter one of the Jem'Hadar at close range.
    In retaliation, the nearest to Bashir smashed him
across the chest and blew him off his feet, driving




him away from Sisko, then moved in for the kill on
the helpless physician.
    Sisko braced to lunge, but T'Rul came down
from the high deck, tackled the Jem'Hadar and
slammed to the deck with him, then finished him
with two bitter blows to the throat.
    Sometimes it was hard to remember that T'Rul
was an enemy soldier. Right now it wasn't so hard.
    Sisko rounded on another of the Jem'Hadar, but
found himself grappling with not one, but two. He
twisted and kicked, but he was overwhelmed.
These creatures were armoredmevery blow he
delivered landed on a hard, form-pressed surface.
    The turbolift blew open and four more
Jem'Hadar piled out, spread across the bridge.
    Sisko started clawing upward, going for the eyes
of the soldiers who held him, but he could barely
raise his arms. They had him by both wrists.
    So he drove backward and ground an elbow into
one of the soldiers' chest plates. There he encoun-
tered a measure of give, so he dug his heels into the
carpet and rammed harder. Flailing wildly, the
Jem'Hadar tripped backward on a fallen chair.
    Sisko took it as a gift, cranked around, and
buried his fist in the face of the bastard that still
had him.

CHAPTER
       9

Is ODo's Mira> a piercing demand rang. Not a song,
not a call, but it compelled him to answer.
    Behind him Kira was down again, hard this time.
Dead, probably. She would prefer it to be this way,
to die fighting, in one sudden stroke.
    It was a chance for him to escape, to shed himself
of this part of his life, and go where destiny
summoned.
    Odo had no feelings for the Jem'Hadar. No
feelings. Kira had possessed her own animosity for
them and a measure for him. At the moment they
were nothing more than an obstacle between him-
self and the place that called to him. He knew that
wasn't right. A few days ago the death of one of his
friends would have enraged him. His mind was
clogged today.
  Escape. The shuttle. He could turn into many




            L/IANL LARLY

things, some things with no effort, others with such
effort that he was left dizzy. He could not turn into
his own shuttle and fly away.
    As he took his first step around the turn in the
corridor that would lead to the shuttlebay, he
paused.
    She's dead by now. I will surge forward and go
where I need to go.
    Thus, he had a pretty poor explanation for why
he was headed back toward the collapsed corridor.
With effort he could split into a million pieces and
reassemble again. Then why was it so painful to be
pulled in two directions?
He should be used to it. He should be rubber. Oil.
Stumbling over cracked and shattered sheets of
wall facing and internal mechanics, he cursed the
physical and drove forward through it, constrained
by it, drowning in it.
    Two Jem'Hadar soldiers roared toward him,
brandishing bladed weapons and shouting in a kind
of magnificent vanity. One of them had just risen
from the dust--and there was Kira, lying beneath
the crust of junk where the Jem'Hadar had ap-
peared. Had he killed her?
    Yes, she was dead and there was no reason to
stay, nothing here for a creature like Odo, no
purpose, no way to get to the bridge. He clawed his
own fevered mind for an excuse to escape and go
his own way.
    Destiny boiled in him, but so did devotion. They
butted like two fists meeting in midair.
The first Jem'Hadar was almost to him. Odo

stopped moving and stood up straight. All he had
to do was laugh and turn and leave.
    He kicked at a shattered conduit casing, catching
it on his toe and sending it spinning into the first
soldier's face. It sliced across his cheek and lodged
in his temple. Clutching at the jagged edge, the
Jem'Hadar staggered away.
    The second soldier was on Odo before the first
could gather his agonized howl. Odo had no idea
why these two had decided not to use their energy
weapons on them--perhaps because Kira was
down and they thought they were winning and
enjoyed the physical fight.
    A day ago this would've been a challenge for him
to which he would have clung as a problem in
dissecting the intent of the criminal. Today it gave
him nothing but a waste of time.
    The Jem'Hadar's mouth widened with a snarl of
joy as he took Odo's narrow forearm in his own
heavy, armored mit and began to twist.
    Odo let the creature have a moment's success,
perhaps as a tactic or possibly because he was still
deciding in which direction he would allow himself
to be flung.
    Then he caught a glimpse of Kira's iron-red hair
lying in a bed of emergency light, and he turned on
the Jem'Hadar.
    In the Jem'Hadar's grip Odo willed his own arm
to melt away. All at once the Jem'Hadar had a
handful of liquid and no leverage at all.
    Shock threw the Jem'Hadar's eyes backward as
he looked wildly for the thing that had just been in
his grip.




    With his solid hand, Odo brought his elbow back
and his shoulder forward and rounded a punch to
the enemy's raised chin, and took an instant to
enjoy watching the heavy-bodied alien smash into
the opposite wall and glare in abject astonishment.
    Odo paused and glared back. The Jem'Hadar lay
there like a malleted fish and gaped at him, at his
own empty paw, then back at Odo.
    "Changeling... changeling!" the Jem'Hadar
gurgled.
    While Odo stood over him, the panic-stricken
enemy twisted until he gathered his legs, squirmed
a body-length away, scrambled up and ran down
the corridor, tripped, glanced back, then continued
his escape from the terrible monster.
    For some reason, Odo found confused satisfac-
tion in that horrified reaction. He let the
Jem'Hadar get away and spread the virus of his
panic. Where one was afraid, others would hear of
the terror.
    Besides, he would be gone before the animal
found his teeth and came to root him out.
He picked his way back through the wreckage.
Kira wasn't trapped this time. She had taken a
hit from the Jem'Hadar energy weapon, possibly
the hit that now was saving their lives. The
Jem'Hadar had felt secure enough to go into a
hand-to-hand fight after Kira went down. They had
allowed themselves to savor the fight, and that was
their downfall.
    Odo filed that tidbit in his memory of how
criminals work, and carelessly hoisted Kira out of
the rubble.

            I H~: 3b~RLN

    Nowmnow--finally he could plunge full into
those other desires, go where this inner pounding
demanded he go.
    Kira moaned against him as he carried her to the
shuttlebay, but this was her only protest, and this
he could ignore.
    The shuttlebay was arctic cold and pressure was
dropping. There was a structural breach some-
where. Slow leak. Every wall was crusted with
moisture gradually turning to ice. As he arranged
Kira in the copilot's seat, Odo began to worry that
the bay doors would jam and he still would be
trapped here, an inch from death with this knelling
in his head that insisted he go off into unknown
space and find the bell.
    "Computer," he rasped as he dropped into the
pilot's seat. "Launch sequence."
    "Acknowledged," the dead-toned voice re-
sponded. "Engines on. Life support activated.
Shuttlebay depressurizing."
"Sensors scan immediate area and report."
"Scanning... registering twelve vessels over
one hundred thousand tons each, no coordinated
formation, seven within shuttle phaser range."
    "Shields up. Stand by phaser weapons. Red
Alert. Open shuttlebay doors."
    Before him on the wide screen, the huge fluted
bay doors began to open like an Oriental fan. He
paused for that moment during which he could do
nothing else and absorbed his last view of this
technical life he had led. The shuttlebay doors
jarred for a few seconds, then continued to open,
but that pause shook him out of his reverie.




    Beyond the doors, he could see three... four
�.. five of the Jem'Hadar ships. One was maneu-
vering away and turning to approach again. Others
were holding a pattern, and at least one was adrift.
    "Emergency launch, battle mode," he said sharp-
ly, as though that would help.
    The computer forced all systems to immediate
heat, and the shuttle surged out of the bay at twice
normal launch speed.
    Two of the Jem'Hadar ships tried to fire on the
shuttle immediately, but couldn't turn fast enough
to take a fix on a target shooting out of the back of
the pounded Defiant. For some reason these idiots
failed to anticipate launch of any life pods or
shuttles. Either that, or they simply didn't know the
design of Federation ships and didn't know where
the launch bay was.
 Could they be so stupid?
    Odo glanced at Kira, still slouched in the copi-
lot's seat, and wished she were awake to help him
appreciate the enemy's dullness of wit. He thought
again of how the Jem'Hadar had run away from his
shapeshifting abilities, and reveled that his last
action in this concrete life he had lived would be
one of such pure simplicity. These were creatures of
the concrete.
 He could use that.
    A science shuttle was no fighter. It wouldn't even
have the maneuverability of a station runabout. In
a few seconds, his element of surprise would be
completely gone. The two Jem'Hadar ships that
had fired and missed were even now spreading the
word that there was a shuttle escaping.

            I HI: ~I:AK~H

    He thought about asking the computer to plot
locations of all the other ships, but he didn't care
about those. He would deal with the ships he could
see, and then he would get through them and go as
far away as anyone had ever been.
    The Defiant had apparently had a vicious and
striking effect, he realized as he surveyed the five
ships--six now--that he could see. At least three
were definitely limping, one completely adrift.
    "Computer, scan the drifting ship for life-
forms."
    "Scanning... no life-forms. Ship is completely
depressurized. There are signs of toxic chemical
leakage."
    Hull breach, both inner and outer. The crew had
been poisoned first, then suffocated. The same fate
he had feared might happen to Defiant had been
foisted upon her enemy.
    Again he wished Kira could see. In the coming
hours, when he was forced to tell her that the ship
was abandoned and there was no sign of other life
pods, no rational suggestion that the commander
or any of the others might have survived, she would
need something to cling to.
    He was assuming they would survive the next few
minutes.
    The shuttle selectively dodged another shot from
one of the limping ships and Odo was forced to
catch Kira as she was nearly pitched out of her seat.
Realizing he should're laid her amidships where
she would be safer, he pushed her back and took
over control from the computer. Though he daily
refuted the concrete, today he wanted to have his




hands on the controls, to make the shuttle do his
bidding, and land one personal blow before he
resigned himself to seclusion.
    The swarm of Jem'Hadar ships were turning on
him now, though the shuttle could maneuver better
in tight space than the large ships. Good--the
Jem'Hadar hadn't thought to launch any smaller
sweeper vessels for just this kind of emergency.
    He didn't want to fight them. He wanted to get
away, to fly toward that ringing in his head and the
place on the star chart that had set off the alarm.
    Another ship moved in below him. They were
boxing him in. He angled sharply to sub-starboard
and suddenly there was a rain of debris whacking
and pounding the shuttle's shields. Odo leaned
forward to see what was hitting the shuttle, and
noted several manufactured parts fly past. Parts of
a ship, a completely shattered vessel.
    The Defiant had done even better than he had
realized.
 Parts of a ship--as dangerous as asteroids.
    He turned sharply again and dipped into the
drifting field of debris, bumping and slamming his
way through, and two of the ships pursuing him
slowed down to contemplate what they should do.
    The debris field got thicker, more dangerous. The
shuttle bumped past many sharp edges and broken
pieces that could impale the shuttle in an instant,
but he couldn't think of that.
    He shouldn't have brought Kira. If the shuttle
was destroyed, he might survive. He wasn't like her.
He might find some way to cling to something ....

    But she was here and her life was in his hands.
For her to survive, the shuttle had to survive.
    When he saw a clear area of space, clear but for
the derelict Jem'Hadar ship with no life aboard, he
headed out of the debris field and took a direct
course for the dead ship. Two other Jem'Hadar
vectored into pursuit. In seconds they would be in
firing angles.
    Another ship came up under him again. His hand
hovered over the phaser-enable... if he could
hold back a few seconds...
    The dead ship loomed on his forward screen.
Increase speed toward it... hold course...
    Bolts of energy surged up from below his forward
viewport. The nearest ship was firing on him--and
missed. They wouldn't miss again.
    Closer to the derelict ship, closer... target its
weakest points, where Defiant had already ruptured
the hull braces.
"Fire," he uttered aloud, and hit the enable.
Phasers lanced from the shuttle to the dead ship
and cut cleanly across the nose and into the blaster
ports. The dead ship split along its damage lines
and fell apart, ripping its own power feeds to bits.
    When the pressurized fuel cells were sliced open,
they blew up. A great red plume vomited across the
space before him.
    The shuttle was pummeled and sent spinning,
but since it was already past the ship it was sent
along its own trajectory and simply pushed away.
    "Aft viewer," Odo ordered, and looked at the
monitors.




            UlANE ~AKLY

    The ship behind him was drowned abruptly in
the explosions from the crippled vessel. Since the
Jem'Hadar had been in pursuit of him, it had been
heading directly toward the derelict vessel and
hadn't vectored off in time.
    He paused and watched. Glittering damage blew
along the length of the pursuing ship as it hit the
fusion reactions blowing out of the dead vessel. The
raw power it took to bring life into space could also
turn upon life and destroy it.
    Satisfaction coald find no harbor, though, for
immediately there were two more Jem'Hadar an-
gling to fire on him.
    He was forced to turn off his course, away from
the bell in his head. There was no path to get away,
except to go between the ships that were turning
toward him.
    Death at the hands of the Jem'Hadar--his lega-
cy. A legacy instead of a destiny. His and the
major's together.
    And no one would ever know. He had left no log,
nor could he take time to leave one now.
    That was bad judgment. Inefficiency. He should
have taken that time.
    The Jem'Hadar ships were positioning to head
him off now. He could see the glow of gathering
power in their weapons ports.
    Leaning forward as though to urge the shuttle
onward, he increased speed again, preparing to run
the gauntlet. Run it and die.
    The Jem'Hadar ships were enormous from this
vantage point~ great ambling fortresses in space,
bottles of unthinkable power and alien design.

They were almost angled to slaughter him, to fire on
him without getting in each other's crossfire.
    A glowing weapons port destroyed his apprecia-
tion for the massive picture gathering before him.
    He pushed the speed. The two ships grew huge
before him, one on the side, one on top. With one
hand on the console, he reached to his side with the
other hand and placed it over Kira's arm, as if to
hold her in her seat as they died. What else could he
do to preserve her last instant of dignity?
     Humans liked to close their eyes at moments like
this. He had seen some of them do it. He had no urge to close his eyes.
    The two ships turned a little more toward him as
his shuttle raced at blinding speed toward the sliver
of space between them. Beyond them, another
enemy ship was maneuvering.
    Suddenly he leaned forward and let go of Kira.
What had he seen?
    The weapons portals were falling cool. Cease
fire?
 No--he must be imagining it!
 Why would they?
    The shuttle soared between the two Jem'Hadar
ships, then onward to the one waiting beyond, and
then miraculously beyond that.
    He twisted to look at the aft viewer, to see if they
were trying to hit his thruster ports, but that didn't
make sense. Those ships could cut this shuttle apart
with one swipe, without the slightest aim.
    They weren't maneuvering to pursue. In fact,
they were coming to all-stop behind him. He was
beyond them!




            I.JI~N I' IL.,~"~KI: y

    They had ignored him. Considered him inconse-
quential. Given him up to those depths of space.
Did they know something about this area of space
that he didn't know? Were they laughing, because
there was nowhere for the feel in the shuttle to go
in such a small ship?
    Sagging in the seat, Ode faced forward again and
found his limbs trembling.
    Vibrating around him, the shuttle continued to
race outward now, heading into the depths of black
space, farther than anyone from the Alpha Quad-
rant had ever ventured.
 He had escaped. He had saved Kira.
 Now he would save himself.

CHAPTER
      lO

A1R... WARM AND QUIET. No pounding. No smell
of burned insulation. The subliminal hum of en-
gines.
    A moan. Her own--and a faint buzz in her
throat. Elbows against padding... she pressed
back on them.
 And she almost fell out of the seat.
    With heavy concentration Kira managed to open
her eyes.
    Before her, a helm/navigation control board. A
runabout?
 No. This was a Starfleet shuttlecraft cockpit.
     She shoved her head forward, insisting that her
neck muscles do their work. They did, but it hurt.
  "Where am IT'
    "You're in a shuttlecraft. You've been wounded,
so try not to move around much."




    With a wince, she looked to her side. Odo was
piloting the shuttle.
    She touched a tender spot on her temple and
tried to judge just how badly she was wounded.
    Memory flooded back and she grasped for the
control board to hold herself upright. "Odo, what
happened? The Defiant... the Jem'Hadar--we
were under attack!"
    Odo never took his eyes off the console. "The
ship was boarded and you were wounded in the
attack. I managed to get us to a shuttlecraft, but I
don't know more than that. The last time I saw the
Defiant she was dead in space and surrounded by
Jem'Hadar ships."
  "Sisko?" she gasped. "Bashir?"
  "I don't know."
    Resistance volleyed through Kira's aching head.
She soaked in the shock and tried to deal with the
crashing thoughts of her commanders and her
shipmates, her friends, caught up in the Jem'Hadar
web. How many had they left behind? Until now
she hadn't even tried to count up the number of
skeleton crew they'd put on board. O'Brien had
been in charge of that. How many engineers had
been belowdecks? Not many... two or three, may-
be. How many on the bridge? One?
    Had they escaped, or were they all still back
them, fighting?
 "Where are we?"
 "Approaching the Omarion Nebula."
    She twisted to him no matter how much it hurt.
"You should have taken us back to the wormhole."
 "You didn't object at the time."

            I HI: DLAKCH

  "I was unconscious!"
  "Your most cooperative state."
    Through the main viewer, the Omarion Nebula
lay like spilled paints across the black matte of
space. Arms of the nebula reached out and spilled
around the shuttlecraft. They were already inside
it.
    Cloying worry struck her. This wasn't Odo. To
leave the others without checking about their
condition... and to fail to take vital information
back to the Alpha Quadrant that might never be
known if the two of them didn't survive? Not Odo
at all.
    He didn't even seem particularly concerned with
her.
    No, that couldn't be all there was. Something was
working on him, driving him in the wrong direc-
tion. His hands on the controls, the fixed expres-
sion on his face--and he wouldn't look at her.
    "All right," Kira relented. "Have you found
anything?"
    He didn't answer. But by the set of his hands and
body, the stern unrest in his eyes, he hadn't seen
anything yet to make him turn back. He was still
magnetized by whatever force had moved him to
come here.
     Just when she thought he wasn't going to respond
at all, he nodded slowly, without looking at her.
  She shifted to look at his monitor.
    "There's a class-M planet ahead... but no star
system. A rogue planet?"
 "Yes," he said, deep in his rapture.
 Unwilling to settle for murmurs, Kira pressed,


"You think that planet is what you've been looking
for?"
    Somehow the bluntness of her demand seemed
to surprise Odo. He fielded a moment of wonder,
thrill, panic, then clearly fought to get those reac-
tions out of his face.
 "I'm going to find out," he said.

A darkened planet, roaming through space, unes-
corted by the most meek of debris.
    Wide and broad though outer space might be,
rare was the body that ran alone. This was one.
    No home star brightened the surface of this
place. Only the charitable haze of distant clusters
and the wash of comets' tails lay a moonlike gauze
over the surface.
    The choppiness of coming through the crystal
clear atmosphere left Kira nauseated. Probably the
head injury, she decided as she waited for her eyes
to adjust to the constant twilight here.
    Odo had set the shuttle down in a small clearing
where sensors had read a quiet forest area. Over
there was a broad lake, sprawled over a marshy
area, rolling and surging as if there were wind here.
But there was no wind.
    Forest... atmosphere... lake... on a planet
with no sun? No heat source?
    It had taken Kira until now to realize how
impossible that was and assimilate that there was
something more spooky about this place than just
purple shadows and branches breathing against the
sky. The fact that they could land here, breathe

here--it went against everything she had ever
learned during her tenure in space.
 Forever night. This was a mournful place.
    The two wandered together pointlessly, trying to
find something with their senses, their experience,
and their bald curiosity. Kira followed Odo, hoping
the instinct that had brought him here would also
give him direction now.
    Was Odo a lower life-form or a higher one than
herself and her own people? Or something com-
pletely different, not on the line of evolution so
many humanolds had traversed?
    Of course, he only appeared humanoid as a
matter of convenience, or perhaps to fit in. He
really did want to fit in, she knew, and that was the
root of her affection for him. Hers, Quark's,
Sisko's...
    The commander--where was he? And Julian
and the rest. Captured? Held by the Jem'Hadar?
Would torture come into the picture?
    Leading the way toward the polished lake, Odo
moved through crisp waving grasses that clung to
his long legs and danced with reeds whose heads
bobbed in the starlight.
    The lake responded to the starlight, rolling and
moving in imaginary winds. Drenched in fatigue
and the lingering aches of her wounds, Kira wanted
to sit down beside the reeds and watch them, lie
down beneath the stars and the sweeping arms of
the nebula overhead and to all sides, and watch the
liquid in the lake move and sway.
 Liquid... why hadn't she thought "water"?




    She stopped walking and scanned the lake as
Odo approached the edge.
    He looked down into the gleaming mercurial
brew as if looking at a mirror. He did all but stoop
down and touch it, though he seemed throbbing to
do so.
  Kira watched him.
    She was still watching him when the lake started
to move--and then she watched the lake.
    Pillars of gelatin rose from the edge of the lake.
Purposefully they formed into four humanoids,
their faces and bodies the same unfinished plastic
of Odo's face, simple tunics draped from their
shoulders.
    Kira wanted to step back, withdraw from the
moment, but she was too stunned to move.
    Some were female, some male, all gazing with
unmeasurable sensation at Odo, who stood staring
back.
 A female creature smiled and came toward Odo.
    She parted her narrow lips and blinked her
nymphlike eyes.
 "Welcome home," she said.

CHAPTER

11

IN T~IE LILAC HAZE of the nebula's arms above, the
lakeshore swelled and fell back, then did the same
again, as though tasting the gentle grasses, which
would not be able to grow anywhere but on a
magical world, if that world had nothing but star-
light with which to nourish them.
    There was no sun here to nourish them, yet they
grew. No warmth, yet they flourished.
    Kira Nerys watched all this through her throb-
bing eyes, demanding that this not be a dream
inflicted by her injuries, and she knew it wasn't.
Beside her the mysterious and melancholy Odo,
always privately desolate, grieving relations he had
never known, was today standing on the brink of
fulfillment. He had found others like himself.
    The other shapeshifters looked just like him.
That same premanufactured doll face, like a doll




before the features were painted, or a doll caught
for a moment in a fire. A face that just wasn't
finished.
  Were they doing that on purpose?
    Kira tried to think like these creatures, but
empathy had never been her strong suit. Survival,
but not empathy.
    Were these creatures trying to empathize with
one of their own kind? They hadn't imitated her
face, so they didn't have any doubt which one of the
two was their kind. She'd seen Odo make the
detailed faces of rats and other living things, and
she'd seen subtle improvements in his imitation of
the human form, so she assumed there were
shapeshifters here who could do better or worse if
they had the skill.
    Yet they were mirroring his image, his version of
this form.
    Could it be that they hadn't seen any better
version than his?
    But I'm standing right here... they must be
doing this for him. A kind of welcome... .
    Odo stood in some kind of shock beside her,
staring at the four shapeshifters, who simply stared
back as if they'd give him all the time in eternity
and had it to give.
    "You really are just like me," he croaked ulti-
mately, "aren't you?"
    "Yes," the female shapeshifter in the foreground
said.
 "And... this is where I'm from?"
 "This is your home."

    He swallowed a few lumps, scanned the beautiful
lake of mercury, and seemed afflicted to accept
what he saw.
 "I wish I could remember it."
    "It's understandable that you cannot. You were
still newly formed when you left us."
     He took an imperceptible step toward her.
"Newly formed? You mean I was an infant?"
  "An infant, yes."
    Kira peered through the gauzy starlight, trying to
read the masklike face of the being who spoke,
detecting an unfamiliarity with that idea--infant.
This creature was doing everything she could to
understand what Odo was talking about and pro-
vide him with the answers that had been his
constant torment in the past.
    Odo steeled himself for the big question, and had
less trouble than Kira would have predicted in
asking it.
  "Tell me--do I have parents? Any family at all?"
    "Of course," the shapeshifter said. Behind her,
the three others stood in mute support.
    "I'd like to meet them," Odo requested, "if that's
possible."
    The shapeshifter motioned to the others, and to
the big lake. "You already have. We are all part of
the great link."
    Before them all, the lake moved and surged, as
though responding, knowing she was talking about
it... them.
    Odo peered out at the lake. "Is that all of us, or
are there others?"




    Kira looked at him. He was having such trouble
dealing with the whole situation--he'd reverted to
courtroom questions, probably that had been fes-
tering in his mind for a long time. She had no idea
how long.
    Suddenly she felt a little guilty for knowing so
little about him.
    "Odo," she murmured, "this isn't a police inves-
tigation."
    "I'm aware of that, Major," he grumbled back,
but there was a twinge in his posture that hinted
gratitude.
    "Then stop interrogating these people," she pur-
sued. "You've waited your whole life for this mo-
ment. The least you can do is try to enjoy it." She
moved forward toward the edge of the lake and the
four lissome shapeshifters standing like angels in
the starlight. "He really is happy to be here...
aren't you?"
    "Yes, of course," he stammered, and seemed
embarrassed that he had communicated something
else. "It's just... this is all very sudden--"
    "And you have many questions," the female
said, smiling.
    Bolstered by her gentle anticipation, Odo said,
"Yes."
    "I wish we could answer them all for you. Unfor-
tunately we find the language of the solids to be as
imprecise and awkward as their bodies."
    Irritated, Kira found the shapeshifter's bluntness
rude, but decided to ignore that if she could get
clarity. "Solids?" she asked.
 The bland face turned to her. "Our term for

monoforms like yourself who will never know the
joy of the great link."
    Maybe it was an insult, but Kira didn't really
care about that. Something in their attitude was
making her stomach tight. An arrogant disregard
for her personal identity? Her very existence? Yes,
that was it. They didn't just regard her as unimpor-
tant, but as inconsequential. That female entity
looked at her with the same cold-bloodedness as a
thousand Cardassians she'd encountered in her
life.
    "Well, Odo has had to communicate with us, and
he hasn't done too badly."
    "I doubt Starfleet Command would agree with
you, Major," Odo said.
    The female shapeshifter waited until he looked at
her again. "Have you enjoyed living among the
solids?" she asked.
    "At times... though I never really felt at home
with them."
    "What exactly," Odo asked, "is this great link
you keep mentioning?"
    Kira almost stammered an answer before notic-
ing that he wasn't talking to her.
    Odo was still squared off with the female of his
own kind.
    "The link is the foundation of our society," the
female said. "It provides a meaning to our exis-
tence. It is the merging of form and thought, the
sharing of idea and sensation."
    Kira watched Odo digest these vaguenesses. At
first she couldn't understand why he didn't plunge
in. Literally.




    But as she watched him, she realized how foolish
that would be, even if it's what she would have
done. It was the mistake she always mademthat
somehow a physical similarity meant people were
the same.
She'd assumed that before and she'd been wrong.
After a life of solitude, the prospect of imminent
merging was overwhelming for Odo. He faced the
opening of everything he had ever felt, decided,
thought, to the scrutinization of strangers.
    Yes, these beings were only strangers, as if Kira
herself had been dropped in a tub with a thousand
Bajorans she had never met. That must be what was
troubling Odomlikeness didn't necessarily mean
sameness.
    What was their way of life, their common mea-
sure of rights and wrongs? Fluid of physical nature
though he might be, Odo was used to dealing with
the intensely concrete. Day by day he had dealt
with the brutal inflictions of the Cardassians and
Jem'Hadar, the latter of which might today have
cost the lives of their closest associates and the man
whose orders were the anchors of all their days. He
had gone from the grip of the Cardassians to the
slingshot freedom of the Federation. He knew all
the grandeurs and pettinesses of a gurgling civiliza-
tion, but he didn't know this commonality, this
"link" his own kind talked about.
    She saw that he was smart enough to understand
that he didn't know. He was holding back. Yes, that
was smart. Even more, it was wise.
    Her admiration of him ratcheted up a couple of
notches.

    Once again the female gestured at the vast silver
swarm.
    After trying to swallow all this talk about merg-
ing and sharing, Odo scoped out more answers by
saying, "It sounds very... intimate."
    Kira could tell he wasn't trying to be polite. He
was trying to get a clearer explanation.
    The female shapeshifter smiled pliantly at him
again. "That is an adequate description."
    So the language wasn't so bad, so inaccurate,
after all, Kira noted. She knew Odo hoped there
would be more.
    "It's just," he faltered, "I've lived a very solitary
life."
    "That was unfortunate," the womanlike form
said, "but necessary, as you'll learn in time. But
that part of your life is over. You're home."
    She extended her hand. Nearby, a male
shapeshifter reacted to the gesture. "What are you
doing?" he asked.
 "Take my hand, Odo," the female said.
    The male moved forward a little. "But it's not
time. He isn't ready."
    The female looked only at Odo. "He has been
gone too long. He needs to remember, if only for a
moment. Don't be afraid," she said to Odo. "Take
it."
    With less hesitation than Kira expected, Odo
reached out and clasped the female's hand.
    Together, the two hands blended into the silvery
satin of their natural state and glowed mauve under
the deep shadows and ashy night.




    Odo's face lost its tension, his eyes their focus.
Kira thought for a moment that he would slip away,
be drawn into that gunmetal mass, and she would
never be able to get him back. He was so vulnerable
right now, could he think for himself in that liquid
state? What did it mean for him to be swallowed by
that opal mass?
Where would his mind go when he was in there?
She couldn't comprehend that kind of existence
and suddenly didn't want to try. They were here
and Odo was here, she was here and all she wanted
was for all this to work out. She wanted to go home
just as much as she wanted Odo to find his real
home.
    Almost immediately the female broke the grasp.
Their two shapeless forearms warbled briefly in
the liquid state, then drew into human hands
again.
    The female looked satisfied. Odo, though, looked
as if he'd been hypnotized.
  "Odo?" Kira attempted. "Odo?"
  He didn't respond. Just stood there, dazed.
      "What did you do to him?" she asked the
shapeshifter, trying not to sound accusative.  "I allowed him to experience the link."
    Kira ignored the repeat of vagueness, reached
over, and clasped Odo's arm. "Odo..."
    He blinked, turned to look at her, and finally
said, "Yes, Major."
    "Are you all right?" She gave him a moment to
nod, then asked, "What happened?"
 He blinked at her before looking again at the

wide lake, its shimmering oyster surface that
moved with inner momentum, and at the beings
who waited in perfect simplicity for his decision.
  Rare proof shone in his face. He was smiling.
    "I'm not sure," he said. "But I know one thing.
They're right... I'm home."




CHAPTER
      12

"COMMANDER'S LOG, SUPPLEMENTAL... It's been six
clays since we were forced to abandon the Defiant
during the Jem'Hadar attack. We still don't know
what happened to the rest of the crew. Dr. Bashir
and I have plotted a course back to the wormhole,
but whether our shuttle can get us there is question-
able. Our engines are failing, our external sensors
are barely functioning, and life-support systems are
at twenty percent and dropping."
    "But other than that, we couldn't be in better
shape."
    Julian Bashir's voice startled Ben Sisko as he
tried to make his log entry without disturbing the
doctor.
    In the copilot's seat beside Sisko, Bashit
straightened up and smiled at him.

"I thought you were sleeping," Sisko said apolo-
getically.
    He'd waited until Bashir fell asleep to begin his
roster of all things broken and cracked, all possibili-
ties fading fast, and hadn't mentioned in his log
that their visual and audio communications were
out, most of the monitors busted, and the escape
pod's thruster ratios off-line because of the batter-
ing the little ship had taken in the asteroid belt.
    He tried not to grumble too much about the
asteroids that had saved their lives. Trying to
back-alley fistfight away from the half-dozen
Jem'Hadar who'd stormed the bridge was a losing
adventure, but he'd tried it anyway. Something
inside him had just refused to give up and try to
"negotiate" his way out of the moment. Those
creatures hadn't been out to talk. They'd been out
for blood. Hand them the sword, and they'd have
hacked him and Bashir to death with it.
    He'd seen Bashir go down, valiantly kicking, and
felt himself draining of strength after investing
most of his knuckles in at least four Jem'Hadar
faces, and he thought he'd been hit when the
Defiant shuddered over and over around them.
    Asteroids--big ones, little ones, iron-compound
ones, wonderful ones. In a complete panic, the
Jem'Hadar had rushed back to their ships before
the rain of rocks pulverized them. The low-level
grunts who had stormed Defiant's bridge had been
stupid enough to run for cover without their cap-
tives. They thought they were leaving Sisko and
Bashir to die on the condemned starship.
  In the confusion, bare minutes before Defiant




 was hammered to slivers, Sisko pushed Bashir into
 an escape pod and blasted out while the shuttlebay
 collapsed behind them.
    An escape pod--just small enough to dodge the
medium and large asteroids and duck out of sensor
range of the Jem'Hadar. Just sheer luck he hadn't
piled into one of those rocks while trying to remem-
ber how to fly one of these walnuts.
    "From the sound of things," Bashir said, "I wish
I were still sleeping."
    "Things could be worse," Sisko told him, re-
membering the jar of asteroids piercing the
starship's hull plates as he dragged Bashir through
the ship.
    He was lying. Things could be worse, but not
much more horrible. He hadn't been able to find
Kira or Odo. Hadn't even been able to reach those
decks.
    He hadn't even known where Bashir had quar-
tered Odo--didn't even know where to look. Sen-
sors had been down... only their two lives ...
that was all he had been able to salvage with his
bruised hands and his pitiful efforts.
    And how often could that happen to one man,
and have him remain sane?
    His heart still pounded to go back when he
thought of them, even after six days. How could he
ever know now whether the Defiant was destroyed
by the asteroids, cut apart in vengeance by the
Jem'Hadar, brought in tow like a miserable hulk
and hauled back so those bastards could take credit
for damage they didn't complete, or whether his

shipmates were trapped inside, to be tortured or
killed?
 How could he have left without knowing?
 For the second time in his life.
 In someone else's life.
    No regulation in his fleet or any could fault him,
yet his heart roiled.
    And now the only succor, the only armor of
wisdom, he could give his one remaining compan-
ion was to say that things could be worse. Marvel-
ous.
 He poked at a few controls. Didn't help.
    Suddenly the pod slammed to a dead stop,
throwing them both forward hard.
    "I believe you!" Bashir gasped, clinging to the
arms of his chair, his face once again sheeted white.
    Sisko pushed himself back from his panel and
checked it. "We're not moving."
 "You think it's some kind of tractor beam?"
    "Could be... I wish these sensors were work-
ing."
    The ship was hit again, this time with a sonorous
metallic clang that echoed inside. Somebody had a
mighty big can opener.
 "Now what?" Bashir yammered.
    Sisko listened to the scrapes and understood
their verdict.
    He pushed out of his chair and pulled his phaser.
Heartfelt pride bubbled past his panic when Bashir
also pushed forward to the hatchway and drew his
own weapon. A blunt sensation washed through
Sisko that his crewmates were too good for him. He




 couldn't let Bashir down as he had let down the
 others.
    This whole mission--such folly! Fly into hostile
space and demand that it cease hostility, that it see
the broad future that could be before them as
clearly as he saw it, so no one else would ever have
to abandon their friends, their crew, their families
in the heat of battle, and doubt for the rest of their
lives.
    It wasn't folly, he insisted as he leveled his phaser
at throat height on the hatch. Safety and peace were
things to be constructed and insisted upon, not to
be hoped for while quivering in a dark corner.
Anyone who thought the Alpha Quadrant could be
safe while that wormhole remained open--and
how long would that be? Two weeks or two million
years? There was no real isolation anywhere.
    He wanted that safety and the flourishing that
could come with it. Wanted it for his son and all the
others trying to carve out a life on the edge of the
new frontier.
    "Wait until you have a clear shot," he said to
Bashit.
    The doctor squared his phaser on the hatch and
arranged his feet squarely on the cramped,
contoured deck. "Right."
    Sisko fixated on that hatch, driven daft by the
clanging and clunking going on out there. All right,
so the hatch was jammed. So what? Torch it open
and get on with it. Waiting for a fight was always the
worst part of the fight.
    How many would come through there? The first
two would be phasered down for sure. After that,

one or two more might be hit again if both he and
Bashir were fast enough to get shots in before they
were shot at.
    How was the entranceway to the ship that was
boarding them? How deep? Could more than two
charge in at a time? Calculations raged through his
mind even as adrenaline tried to drum them out
and make him revert to instinct, punch his way out
without a plan. The punching might work, as it had
on Deftant, but he wanted the plan just in case.
  If they came in shooting--
  Boom... There it was. Docking.
    The hatch shuddered, creaked. Began to slide
open against its own dented frame.
    Sisko stiflened his hand on the phaser. He was
one pulse beat from etching his name in the metal,
not even waiting until he saw a face come through.
    Good thing he waited. The face that came
through was O'Brien's.
    "Hold on! What kind of a greeting is that?" the
engineer said quickly. "Don't shoot! We surren-
der."
  And Dax's face too--
  "Chiefl" Sisko surged. "Dax?'
    Bashit almost tripped on his own relief. "I don't
believe it! We thought you'd been captured by the
Jem'Hadar!"
    Breathing heavily just from having to stand there
and wait to shoot, Sisko lowered his phaser with
specificity, knowing his hand was still so cramped
on that trigger that he could hardly feel his fingers.
     Dax looked at him, then at Bashir, with that
 bright-eyed non-smile, with just the corners of her




lips drawn outward slightly, as if she thought they
were cute or something. "We had our doubts about
ever seeing you again either, Julian."
    O'Brien nudged Bashit's phaser a little more
down and said, "We've been searching for you for
days."
    Sisko nodded, suddenly impatient. "What about
the others?"
    Dax lowered her eyes briefly, then brought them
back up again, and they weren't exactly pools of
hope.
    "No sign of them yet," she said. "But we still
have ships out looking for them."
    "Meanwhile," O'Brien added, "our orders are to
get you back to DS9 as soon as possible."
    Dax took Sisko's arm and angled him toward the
open hatchway. "Big things are going on there,
Benjamin. I think you're in for a surprise."

    A brilliant sky. The paint of night inside a
nebula.
  Of night forever.
    Moss-velveted rocks, rustling ornamental
grasses, broad hosta leaves bowed in the changeless
starlight. Ivy, fern, ribbongrass, reeds, tufts of
sedum, lamb's ears, moon flower, and stargazing
lilies punctuated a perfectly formed meditation
garden. There was even something that looked like
bamboo, and over there flowering tobacco and
herbs added gentle scents.
    Rocks and benches broke through the tranquilli-
ty to add texture and encourage pause.
 Still weakened and aching some, Kira paused

over a clump of what looked like some kind of
ornamental cabbage. The first-aid kit in the shuttle
had provided antibiotics, some high-powered anal-
gesics, and a couple of stimulants, all designed to
give a wounded person a boost in an emergency
situation, which was the general idea behind the
first-aid kit--assuming a person using it might
need strength and consciousness more than rest.
    But she still ached. She turned and looked at the
sky, disturbed by knowing that there wasn'tm
would never be--sunlight to make these fronds
grow. All this was false. Not just sculpted and
groomed, but flat-out fabricated. This was the most
purposeful garden she'd ever seen.
    Nearby, Odo was oblivious to the draped and
rustling beauty around him... beauty that might
have been created for him. She wasn't ruling out
that possibility. Just because they found the planet
didn't mean they hadn't been expected. They obvi-
ously knew something about Odo.'
    He wasn't looking at anything in the garden. He
sat, alone of spirit, a few paces away and stared at
the distance as if expecting some unplanned ar-
rival.
    Kira wandered back toward him. "Whoever cre-
ated this place was a real artist. It's beautiful."
    "How long do they plan on making us wait
here?" was the edgy response.
     Not getting too close, Kira said, "It's only been a
 few hours."
     "I finally return home and I'm still treated like an
 outsider."





     "Believe me," she told him, "you're not the
 outsider here. I am."
  He looked at her. "You?"
     "You heard the way they talked about 'solids.'
 I'm the one they don't trust. Not you."
     She started to say more, to apologize to him for
 casting suspicion on him in the eyes of his own
 kind, but another voice cut through her intent.
   "How perceptive of you, Major."
     They both turned, Odo with cautious anticipa-
 tion, Kira with some physical effort. The female
 shapeshifter was entering the garden behind them.
     "If our history has taught us anything, it's to be
 wary of solids," the creature said.
    Kira drew up her posture and squared her shoul-
ders. "That may be, but I think you'll find Odo's
done quite well living among us."
  The female looked at Odo. "Is this true?"
    "I'd say that on the whole it has been gratifying,"
Odo condensed.
    "But as you say, you've never really felt at home
with them," the female said. "That's because your
home is with us." She turned to Kira. "Unfortu-
nately, I can't say the same about you. We have no
place for you here."
    Kira dropped her attempt at pride and went
straight for bluntness. "I don't intend to be staying
long." She turned to Odo and added, "There's still
a chance Sisko and the others could have survived
the attack. I'll try contacting them from the shut-
tle."
    "I'm sorry." The shapeshifter moved her hands
uneasily. "We cannot allow any communications to

be sent from the planet's surface. They could be
traced back here. We value our isolation." "Yes, of course," Odo said.
    The female nodded to Kira. "However, you're
free to leave here to search for your friends at any
time."
    Gratified that the shapeshifter had at least
avoided saying something deprecating about "sol-
ids" again, Kira simply said, "If you don't mind, I
think I'll stay a while longer."
    If the supple alien did mind, it didn't show. "As
you wish. However, you'll have to provide your
own shelter and provisions, as we lack those essen-
tials necessary to sustain humanoid life."
  "Don't worry about me. I'll be fine."
    The female gave another nod, this one more
dismissive, and turned again to Odo.
    "I hope you've made good use of our arbore-
tum."
  Perplexed, Odo asked, "In what way?"
    "By assuming the various shapes and life-forms
surrounding you."
    Odo glanced at Kira. For a moment she thought
he was going to ask what life-forms, but he asked,
"Why would I do that?"
    "Isn't it obvious? To become a thing is to know a
thing. To assume its form," the female proposed,
 "is to understand its existence."  "Understand it? How?"
     The female surveyed him as if he had the ques-
 tion engraved across his bare brow. Sadness and
 pity weighed her gaze.
  "Living among the solids," she said, "has dam-





aged you far worse than I realized. It has left you
ignorant of the gifts you possess."
    Kira wrinkled her nose to avoid opening her
mouth. So ifI put on an egg crate, does it make me
an egg? Do these people believe that form is more
important than substance? No wonder they don't
understand us.
    Unfortunately, Odo suddenly looked humbled,
even shamed. "Then teach me what I need to
know," he said.
    The female nodded slowly. "I will do what I can.
But in the end, this is another journey you must
make on your own. And when it's over, you will be
ready to take your place in the great link."
    She reached into a bunch of silver grass and
pulled out an ordinary palm-sized rock. She placed
the rock in Odo's hand, then blandly turned and
walked out of the garden.
    Overmastered and humiliated, Odo watched her
go. The shadows and patches of nebula wash filled
in the empty place.
  "Odo," Kira attempted gently.
    "Major... I'd like to be alone, if you don't
mind."
    He held the rock as if he didn't know whether to
drop it or throw it or turn into it.
    "All right," she sighed. "If you need me, I'll be in
the shuttle, trying to contact Sisko." When he
looked at her with that suspicious concern typical
of him, she said, "Don't worry--when I was in the
Resistance, I learned to camouflage subspace mes-
sages with quantum interference. I taught this
method to Sisko. If anyone intercepts the signal, all

they'll read is a slight elevation in background
radiation."
    He seemed eased by that, or at least so wrapped
up in his own rite of passage that he was willing to
trust her to know what she was doing and not draw
attention to this crooked paradise he had discov-
ered.
 "Good luck," he said.
    She watched as he contemplated his rock, and
struggled with a dozen ways to tell him she wanted
him to find the happiness that had been missing
from his burdened, expressive eyes.
 All she could think of was, "You too."




ir nudged past them, offering Jake a
         "Nothing a few days of light

 over his son's shoulder--used to be
 head--and saw that Bashir's
 )ut to shatter.
       stood back from the episode,
   with that blond-on-blond color-
schoolmarm civility, implying with
    he wasn't facing a weekend of

was chafing to talk business--he
 what business could involve the
 point. Maybe she just wanted a

to come all the way into deep

         for him, all hovering about
    his moment with his son. They
on with whatever was about to

 Jake on the shoulder. "I'm fine,
 on home. I'll see you later."
    glanced at the admiral, then am-
the corridor.
    ducking back to that airlock before
with unfinished homework.
do was approach the pallid admiral
addressed.
       "she said, "it appears your
an even greater success than we


CHAPTER
      13

"DAD!"
    Best sound in the universe. Always had been,
always would be.
    Ben Sisko shoved his way past his own
crewmates as they all piled out of the airlock. "Hey,
there, Jake!"
    He snatched his skinny son out of midair and
hugged him hard.
    "I was afraid you weren't coming back," Jake
muttered, choked up.
    Sisko coughed up the one thing all kids want to
hear, the one thing no commander could promise
with a whole heart. "I wasn't about to let that
happen, was IT'
    The white lie brought relief into Jake's big brown
eyes as the teenager pulled back. "You sure you're
all right?"

    Julian B
pat on the
duty won'l
    Sisko 1o(
looking o'
promise w
    Admiral
passively v
less face a
her preset
recovery.
    The adi
couldn't i~
admiralty
report.
    She had
space to g,
    Everyor
while he t
wanted t(
happen.
    He slag
really. No
    Smiling
bled off dl
    Sisko fe
he was cal
    All he c
and wait 1
     "Well, ~
 mission
 hoped."




     "So I'm told," he answered. "Has the delegation
 from the Founders arrived on the station yet?"
     "They're already meeting with representatives
 from the Federation Council and a dozen other
 Alpha Quadrant systems. We're hoping to have a
 treaty signed within a matter of days. And we have
 you to thank for it."
     She started down the hall, so he had no choice
 but to follow. He gestured Dax and the others to
 come with them.
     "It's really Lieutenant Dax and Chief O'Brien
 who deserve most of the credit. If they hadn't
 convinced the Jem'Hadar to hand them over to the
 Founders, none of this would be happening."
     Necheyev scooped up Dax and O'Brien in one
 studious but not particularly generous glance.
    O'Brien quickly said, "We were lucky the
Jem'Hadar turned us over to the Founders."
    "We just had to convince them that we were
serious about peace," Dax added.
    Sisko glanced back at her. She was hiding some-
thing.
    "Actually," O'Brien said when he saw the glance,
"it didn't take much convincing."
    They didn't want to talk, at least not in front of
Necheyev. They had a story to tell, he could bet.
Dax was giving him one of those non-looks.
    "I suppose," he dodged, "the only question is
whether we can trust them or not."
    He didn't mean to sound so uneasy, but he was
uneasy. This was exactly what he had hoped for.
 Why, then, was his stomach in his throat? If the

Founders wanted peace, what was the excuse for
the brutal tactics inflicted upon any ventures into
the Gamma Quadrant up until this point?
    Surely not defense. There hadn't been anything
to defend against. Many a tyrant bargained for
peace while preparing for war.
    He found himself unkind toward this new devel-
opment. He had more at stake than Necheyev or
any of these bureaucrats who possessed high
perches from which they laid down the law, but
which they had not helped to build.
    Only the threat of a harsh defense would bring
the Founders to the negotiating table, and even
then, could the agreement be trusted? The
Romulans and Cardassians hadn't been interested
in halting their brutish expansion until they real-
ized they could lose everything in an all-out fight
with the free systems of the Federation.
    On the other hand, alien races could have alien
motives ....
    "It's a risk, I know," Necheyev went on. Evident-
ly she was trying to read his face, then ignore what
she saw. "But both the Federation Council and
Starfleet Command believe it's one worth taking.
By the way, Commander, one of the Founders
asked to see you the moment you arrived on the
station."
     Suddenly feeling as if the corridor were getting
 narrower and narrower, Sisko looked at her.
 "Asked to see me?"
  "If you're not too busy."
  "Oh... I think I can spare a few minutes .... "




     "I know we've had our differences, Ben, but I
 want you to know what a fine job I think you've--"
     Sisko ground to a halt. A Jem'Hadar soldier was
 standing at guard down the corridor.
     He fought the instinct to go for his phaser as
 Necheyev told him, "It's all right, Commander.
 The Founders have asked that the Jem'Hadar han-
 dle security for them during their visit."
    "Is that so," Sisko bristled. Ordinarily that
wouldn't have been an outlandish request, or even
particularly notable. But it wasn't every day that a
proven enemy of the Federation, destroyers of a
starship, and open murderers were invited to stand
at arms inside a Federation outpost.
    This wasn't normal. It wasn't even abnormal. It
was outlandish. What was going on here?
    "If these talks were being held in the Gamma
Quadrant," Necheyev presumed, "we'd want our
security people along as well. Enjoy your meeting."
    She didn't even stop walking. She left him stand-
ing there at the door, face-to-face with a Jem'Hadar
excuse for a face.
    The Jem'Hadar stepped aside--the first time
one had ever done that to him.
  He didn't like it. "Thank you," he said.
  "You're welcome," the soldier responded.
    So they had taught their dogs to sit up and bark
on command.
  No, this wasn't right at all.
    Suddenly he wished Odo were here to keep an
eye on all this. Odo could be standing right here
pretending to be a piano, and none of these intrud-
ers would be the wiser.

    Of course, it might look a little suspicious if Sisko
came into the meeting carrying a piano.
    With a stewing glance back at his crewmates, he
went in alone.
"Commander Sisko," someone said, "come in."
He didn't recognize the man's voice. Most of it
was buried under the swish of the door closing
behind him.
 But he did recognize the appearance.
    Startled, he stepped toward the charming high-
boned face and small painted eyes of a man he'd
never met, but didn't trust any farther than he
could throw the station.
    The young man's china-doll face, egg-sized
cheekbones, and twisted buns of black hair abso-
lutely contradicted everything he knew about his
race of people.
  They were dangerous--that he knew.
    "I've looked forward to meeting you. I am
Borath."
    He approached, but didn't extend a hand, per-
haps because Sisko's posture didn't invite a hand-
shake.
  "You're one of the Founders?"
    "That's correct," Borath said. "You seem sur-
prised."
    "Not really. Only I hadn't realized until now that
I've already met one of your people."
    "You're referring to Efts, of course. Yes, she's one
of us. Though she couldn't very well admit it while
you were pointing a phaser at her. I'm glad to see
you're not holding one now."
  What a joke. Sisko could no more hold these




 people prisoner with a phaser than catch sunlight in
 a bottle.
  "Do I need one?"
  "Not at all... you seem skeptical."
  "Can you blame me?"
    "No," Borath allowed. "I realize you have no
reason to trust the Dominion. But you must under-
stand we were only trying to defend ourselves."
  Sisko swallowed a bitter grunt. "From what?"
    "We felt threatened by your incursions into the
Gamma Quadrant."
    "Threatened? Like when you ordered the
Jem'Hadar to destroy the Starship Odyssey?"
    Borath shrugged, his poise intact. He didn't
display any of the reaction Sisko was fishing for.
"That was regrettable."
  He didn't regret it a bit.
    Aggravated at the words without the feelings,
Sisko felt his blood go to slow-boil. "And the
massacre at New Bajor? That was regrettable as
well?"
    "Commander, you risked your life to bring us a
message of peace and friendship. We chose to
accept your offer. Would you rather we refused?"
    Blistered, Sisko found himself forced to back off.
He couldn't blow all this just for the satisfaction of
taking down a set of creatures who'd embarrassed
him once before.
"No," he said evenly, and gave Borath the point.
"Good." Borath offered him a smile. Poison
smile. "Because, believe me, Commander, an alli-
ance between the Dominion and the Federation
will he beneficial to both our people."

    He wasn't telling the whole truth and they both
knew it. This offer of peace was being delivered
wrapped around a big stick. The Founders had
called the Federation's bluff, so why were they
backing down? Certainly not timidity at the idea of
bloodshed--they had the Jem'Hadar to shed it for
them.
    Sisko pressed his lips tight. No point responding.
He'd just be handing Borath evidence for the
prosecution after he knocked the sublime alien's
pretty head off.
    The sentiment of peace was beautiful, but there
just wasn't substance behind those eyes.
    He wanted to reach out into the station and grab
Necheyev by the collar and drag her in here to look
into Borath's noncommittal eyes, drench her with
that underlying ridicule--
    Was he imagining it? Was he just personally
offended that he was the person to do the talking
for the Gamma Quadrant?
  Okay, so he was offended.
  Borath gazed at him with that smug satisfaction.
  He couldn't buy it. He only saw the lie in his eyes.
  Was he the only one who could see it?

 "Doctor--welcome back!"
    "Thank you, Garak. It's good to be back. Busi-
ness keeping you busy?"
    Julian Bashir kept walking as the Cardassian
tailor fell in beside him. The crossover bridge gave
the two of them a vantage from which the crowd
here and down on the Promenade could be seen.




Lots of people, everywhere. DS9 wasn't the same as
when the Defiant had left.
    "I've missed you, Doctor," Garak said, those
bony brows making goggles around his eyes. His
blue-gray face was animated today, maybe more
than usual. "I admit I was very concerned for your
safety. Lunch hasn't been the same without
you.*'
    Bashir understood that Garak was hunting for
gossip, details he might be able to siphon back to
the Cardassian high command, perhaps return
himself to favor with them.
    "That's very kind of you to say, Garak. Hopeful-
ly things can start getting back to normal around
here."
    Garak looked over the railing at the heavy crowd
below. "Oh, I doubt that's going to happen, Doctor.
I doubt that very much."
    Bashir had heard for days now this sad nostalgic
muttering from DS9's regular inhabitants that
things were just too changed for them, likely too
crowded. Those who had come this far out in
space didn't do so to walk in the thick of any
populace.
    He'd heard a hundred reasons so far. One more
couldn't hurt.
 "And why is that?"
    "There's an old saying on Cardassia," Garak
said. "'Enemies make dangerous friends.' And I
fear the Dominion is going to make a very danger-
ous friend indeed."
 "I take it you're referring to the peace talks."

    "Exactly. I'm afraid these treaty negotiations are
a mistake we'll live to regret."
    As they started down the stairs to the main level,
Bashir avoided mentioning the "if we live" element
of that sentiment. "Is that your opinion or the
opinion of the Cardassian Central Command?"
    "The former, I assure you. The Central Com-
mand is very much in favor of this treaty, which, as
far as I'm concerned, only justifies my fears."
"Well, I hope you're worrying about nothing."
They were approaching the infirmary, which
meant that Bashir was about to be sprung from
having to console another of his friends or
stationmates or space-sick total strangers, unless
somebody was waiting inside that examining room
with a headache too big to get through the exit.
    When the door opened before he and Garak got
to it, he thought his next headache might be coming
out to meet him.
    But it was T'Rul, coming out with a bandage on
her hand.
    "Subcommander T'Rul, have you been hurt?" he
asked.
    "I had a minor disagreement with some Starfleet
Security officers. They refused to allow me to speak
with the Federation's negotiating team."
  She glared at Garak, but said nothing to him.
    Bashir asked, "What did you want to talk to
them about?"
     Things had been so good since getting back from
 the other quadrant... there was talk of treaty, no
 one had broken any bones lately, he had a date for




tonight... but T'Rul's bottled rage was scratching
a hole in his lifeboat.
    "I wanted to protest the exclusion of the
Romulan Empire from treaty negotiations!"
    "I wasn't aware that anyone had been excluded,"
Bashir sputtered.
    "Every great power in the Alpha Quadrant has
been invited to participate, except us."
    Astonished and trapped in this abrupt new whirl,
Bashir searched Garak's face for denial from the
Cardassian sector, but there wasn't any.
    Fumbling to ease the moment until he could get
answers, he gasped, "There must be some mis-
take?
    "The mistake," T'Rul blasted, "is thinking the
Romulan Empire will stand by and allow such a
betrayal to go unchallenged. Believe me, Doctor, if
a treaty is signed without our approval, it will mean
war!"
    She spun and stalked away, every muscle crying
like a harp string that she meant what she said and
she was on her way to implement that promise,
even if she had to personally cut a thousand throats
in the night.
    Beside him, Garak watched her go. "Still feel I'm
worrying for nothing, Doctor?"

 "Commander? May I see you a moment?"
 "Yes, Doctor, you and everybody else."
    Ben Sisko leaned back in his lounge and turned
off the music he'd been expertly ignoring.
 "Is my son sick?"

    The question did its job. Bashir paused in the
middle of a step, before coming too far into the
living room. "No, sir," the mellow young man said,
his expressive eyes patterned with trouble, "and I
know you don't like to have your home disturbed
by station business--"
    Rearranging his shoulders, Sisko folded his
hands over his chest, making it obvious that he was
busy relaxing and he wanted to concentrate real
hard on it. "No. I don't. So this must be a social
call, right?"
    "Mmm--no, sir. I'm sorry... but this is a tad
bigger than station business."
    Only then did Sisko notice that Bashir's hands
were clenched, his golden complexion blanched.
"All right, Doctor," he said in a different tone. "Go
ahead and tell me what's wrong."
    "I saw... I ran into... Would you mind if I sit
down, sir?"
  "No, of course not. Sit."
    "Thank you... I ran into T'Rul on the Prome-
nade. I was with Garak, and she looked at him with
the most awful hatred--"
    "So a Romulan and a Cardassian had a dispute,
and this shook you up?"
    Nipping the inside of his lip to keep down a
venomous grin, Sisko wallowed briefly in the
Cardassians and the Romulans disliking each oth-
er. It gave each of them somebody else to hate and
distrust and took some of the pressure off the
Federation. Of course, for the record, he wanted
everybody to play nice in the sandbox.




    "Oh, no, sir, but the reason for the argument...
Commander, T'Rul insists that the Romulans have
been deliberately left out of treaty negotiations
with the Gamma Quadrant, on the request of the
Founders. Can you imagine why?"
     Sisko plowed forward half out of his chair.
 "What?"
    Bashir's big eyes got bigger. "Oh, I'm so glad you
don't know! Then it's a rumor, isn't it?"
    "It had damned well better be!" Sisko found
himself on his unsteady feet. "T'Rul said this?"
    "Why, yes, sir," the doctor confirmed. "And she
didn't seem to have the slightest doubt... but
what really bothered me was Garak's reaction. He
didn't seem to be surprised about it, and he didn't
even try to deny it. I understand that he's only a
storekeeper here, but you know how much he wants
to be back in favor with the Cardassian command.
... You don't suppose he'd be in on something
that no one has bothered to tell you? I can't
imagine T'Rul's gotten everything straight .... "
    Rage boiling, Sisko scratched for ideas or an-
swers, a course of action, refusing to plunge out and
confront anyone on this before he thought it out.
That was a good question, but even as Bashir's soft
voice posed it, Sisko had most of the reasoning
worked out.
    The Romulans wouldn't--couldn't--let this go
by. A vast galaxy alliance, except for their corner?
They were paranoid anyway, always accusing
others of trying to hem them in whenever any-
one stood up against their corrosive expansion.

He didn't actually give a tinker's damn about
their feelings, except that this would prevent a
war with the Dominion by assuring one with the
Romulans.
    At once it struck him. Was this what Eris and the
Founders were up to? What better way to weaken or
destroy any resistance in the Alpha Quadrant than
to let the powers that be rip each other apart first. A
very old and effective trick.
    "If this is true," he said, "then I wasn't told
because somebody knew I wouldn't put up with
that kind of sideswiping going on right under my
nose."
    Bashir seemed tired and panicked at the same
time. "Are they trying to take you out of the loop?
Sir, these negotiations were your idea! You risked
your life--your command!"
    "And certainly not to foment a war with the
Romulans. Somebody must know that's what'11
happen."
  Enough thinking.
  He spun for the door.
  Bashir stood up. "Where are you going, sir?"
  "To have a talk with 'somebody.'"

    "Commander, Admiral Necheyev is here to see
you."
    Battling the urge to tell Dax, "Oh, joy," Sisko
stiflened a little at the desk in his office, summoned
his civility, and said, "Send her in."
    There she was. The very symbol of galactic
bureaucracy.




    Sisko surveyed Necheyev as she came into his
office, prim as a statue and twice as pale, and vowed
to look up Starfleet records and see just what strife
and contention this person had been through to
merit an admiral's pip.
"You asked to see me, Commander?" she began.
He shoved aside the slightest of greetings or any
segue, and asked, "I understand that the Romulans
haven't been invited to the peace talks."
  "That's correct."
  "I was wondering what prompted that decision."
      She moved toward the desk. "The Founders
requested that they be excluded."  "Did they say why?"
    "They felt the Romulans would be a disruptive
influence."
    He leaned forward. "More disruptive than the
Cardassians?" he roiled.
    "They seem to think so," she said. "Do you have
a problem with this, Commander?"
    Rising from his seat, he wondered if he was still
in the room or if she was just talking to the empty
chair. "Whether I have a problem with it isn't
the point. It's the Romulans we have to worry
about."
    Not a hint of emotion pressed into that fiat brow
of hers. "Commander, if this treaty is signed, and
I'm confident it will be, we'll never have to worry
about the Romulans again." "You're sure of that?"
    "Quite sure. After all, what chance would they
have against the combined power of our new alli-
ance?"

    "They wouldn't have much of a chance at all,"
Sisko said.
    "Fm glad we agree." The admiral paused, then
continued, a placating tone in her voice. "Believe
me, Commander, the Federation carefully weighed
all the options before entering into these peace
talks."
 "I realize that--" Sisko began.
    "Then," the admiral said, "we have nothing
further to discuss, do we?"




CHAPTER
      14

"COMPUTER, I want you to transmit a subspace
signal using a narrow theta-band frequency shifted
into a background radiation domain."
    "Working," the tinny computer voice bubbled
back at Kira as she sat sore and overmedicated at
the comm panel in the shuttlecraft. "Low-
frequency signals are virtually impossible to isolate
from background radiation."
    Kira frowned and muttered, "Unless you know
what to look for, and Sisko will know. If he's out
there."
    "Unable to transmit signal due to external inter-
ference," the computer twittered politely.
    Wishing that just once the damned thing would
swear at her and call her names for asking these
wacky things, Kira shifted in her seat and gave a
second of brain time to that one big remaining

mystery--how this planet could have warmth and
growth without any visible power source.
    No sun. It just couldn't be this way, no matter
how much those ectomorphs wanted to bubble
around their lake. There had to be some kind of
technology heating this place and forcing photosyn-
thesis without light. External interference...
  "Switch to theta band B," she said.
    "Switching. Unable to transmit signal due to
external interference."
    There it was again. "Okay," she said. "Switch to
theta band C."
    "Switching," it said. "Unable to transmit signal.
External interference at all frequencies."
    Kira grinned. The computer almost seemed an-
noyed at her requests. It was telling her not to
bother trying again. What kind of programming let
a computer anticipate what she was doing and tell
her she was being an idiot? Hell, it could be useful
all over the galaxy!
    Anyway, there it was. She'd hit a firewall. The
computer wasn't going to do this all the way
through the alphabet and into Klingon letters.
  Time for a whole different kind of search.
  "Identify source of interference," she ordered.
    "Scanning... interference generated by ther-
mal radiation, unknown power source."
    Thermal radiation was just heat. How could heat
interfere with trying to send a signal? But it couM
explain why there was warmth and growth and
photosynthesis on a planet with no sun.
    Well, maybe not the photosynthesis, but one
thing at a time.




     Ignoring the shooting pain through her chest, she
 leaned forward abruptly. "Locate power source!"
     "Power source is located three miles below the
 planet's surface, bearing one-two-seven, mark
 three."
  "Can you identify?"
     "Unable to identify due to presence of unknown
 poly-metallic substance within surrounding rock
 face."
    She started to ask for a breakdown of that
substance when Odo appeared at the shuttle en-
trance, and Kira clamped her mouth shut.
    How much could she tell him without "also"
telling those blobs out there? How much had they
"merged" with him?
  "Any luck, Major?" he asked.
  Well, it sounded like Odo ....
      She flipped a mental coin and came up on the
talking side.  Okay--
    "There's some kind of power source interfering
with my signal. Any idea what it can be?"
    He came all the way in, solemn and depressed as
ever. No, in fact he was more depressed than ever.
    "I haven't a clue," he muttered. He didn't seem
to care, either, which wasn't like him at all.
    She swiveled the chair around toward him. "Are
you all right?"
    He sighed. "I've just spent the last two hours
shapeshifting. Rocks, flowers, trees... I've been
everything in that garden."
 "And?"

    "And... nothing. Oh, I can become a rock all
right," he said miserably, "but I have no more of an
idea what it's like to be a rock than I did before."
    The pointlessness of such petty fabrications
shone in his voice and the slump of his long body
on the seat.
    She almost popped off something about who the
hell wants to be a rock anyway, but decided better.
"I'm not sure I know what that means," she
dodged.
    "I'm not sure either," he simply said. "And
that's... unfortunate. Now, if you'll excuse me, I
have to return to my bucket."
    He unceremoniously plodded toward the aft of
the shuttle, picked up his bucket and left the
shuttle. Somewhere out there he would slurp into a
cold pail while there was a whole lake of others out
there, presumably of his own kind, swirling and
whirling and cavorting in their own little paradise.
  It wasn't fair.
    Kira stared for a long time at the back of the
shuttle, though all she could see was the bulkhead
and the open passage.
  Stupid shapeshifters.
    Hadn't Odo displayed enough loyalty by coming
back here? Finding them on a lost planet, out in the
middle of an empty nebula? Why was it so much
had to be proven?
    Sick of proving herself all her life, if only to
herself, Kira felt her chest swell with a heavy surge
of empathy for Odo. How much did they expect of
him?




  Become a rock? Come on.
    So he was a rock. So what? So he was a stick. So
he was a mud pie.
  What could all that mean? "How" to be a rock?
    She was getting more and more sure just where
the rocks were.
    On a sharp decision, she got up and headed for
the exit, without even telling the computer to keep
working while she was gone.

  "Hello? I need to talk to one of you."
    Sparing a bruised thigh, Kira walked along the
lakeshore, stopping, then walking, then stopping
again. How exactly should a person talk to a giant
blob of glue?
    "Can anyone hear me?" she called, a little
louder.
    She almost jumped out of her skin when a
column of mercurial gunk floated up out of the lake
and drew together into a man's form with a face
something like Odo's.
    "We hear you, Major," he said. "But please be
briefi We find the humanoid shape awkward."
    Clearing her throat, Kira strode across the fresh
grass, but didn't get too close. It was irritating how
this creature snubbed the humanoid shape, even
after they had condemned at least one, and maybe
more, of their own kind to endure that shape which
they found "awkward."
    "I won't keep you long," she said. "It's about
Odo. He needs your help."
 "How would you have us help him?"

    Wasn't this the concrete question of the month?
Millions of space miles, a lifetime of searching,
subliminal devotion to match any religion, and
Odo was made to go sleep in a bucket?
    She held back for a beat, then resolved to be
civil.
    "By sharing your knowledge with him." You
insensitive tub of latex-- "By talking to him.
Telling him what he needs to know."
    A few seconds flowed by, but all he said was "In
time all his questions will be answered."
 He's already put in the time, you glue guru.
    She nodded impatiently. "And when will that
be?"
 "When he's ready to hear them."
    Oh, this was just great. Perfect. Elastic non-
answers. Odo could get this out of any summer
poetry workshop.
    "And you'll be the ones to decide that?" she
presumed.
     He moved a little. "Who better? After all, he's
one of us. We know him." "I 'know him' too."
    The male shapeshifter was either bored or curi-
ous, but certainly dismissive. "Do you?"
    "I'm his friend," she proclaimed in a tone that
said she meant the whole phrase sincerely.
    He stepped closer to her, but spoke with flat
contempt. "You're a solid. All you have ever done
is to teach him to be like you."
  Irritable now, Kira refuted, "That's not true."
  "Isn't it? If you really cared about your friend,




you'd stop interfering and let us do what's best for
him." He paused, then tilted his chin downward
slightly. It might have been candidness or
condescension--she couldn't tell which. "It's time
you went home, Major," he said. "Odo no longer
requires your presence here."
    So she was declared free to go by the reigning
power.
    Was she wrong? Were they pacing Odo in a way
that was right for them? For him?
    Why don't I have all the answers? Friends are
supposed to have a few answers for each other.
    She stood in silence and watched him slurp back
into the lake, and wondered if she had said too
much, and just how many beings she had just said it
to.
 Maybe I just got the answer.

    "That's very good, Odo. Now, don't worry about
holding your shape. You will. Just let go. Allow
yourself to feel the texture of the stone... the
warmth of the sun on the water. Allow it to become
real to you."
    The waters of a fountain shimmered in thou-
sands of drops and sang a brittle song, imitating the
efforts of a dampered harp. A chance for music, but
difficult.
 "Don't be afraid."
    Droplets like bits of King Arthur's polished
armor...
    Odo heard the muffled voice of the female
shapeshifter tinkling through his mind, for amo-

ment blended with his own thoughts and only
tacitly separate. The voice was a series of vibra-
tions, a tickle across his surface. Were there insects?
Or was she speaking again?
    He rolled quickly downward, tumbling, rising,
spraying, gathering into the pool of himself and
going again. Leisurely, yes, unhurried and slap-
dash. Concentrate. Go and discover quintes-
sence.
    It just couldn't be done this way... the tedium
erased any holiday emotions.
    Part of him slipped away--just a few drops.
Aware that he was being tested, he resisted the urge
to reach out and catch them back. How could they
take a piece of himself?. Surely they would not keep
the pieces. He was a singular being, separate unto
himself, with identity and purpose. He hungered for those droplets.
    A sheet of water washed over his eyes, grew
thinner and thinner, and was finally absorbed by
his body.
    And he could see her clearly now. The drizzle
was gone.
There was something to be said for solid eyes.
"How do you feel?" the female asked him.
"Like a baby learning to walk," he said. When
she tilted her head at him, he added, "It's a 'solids'
expression."
    She regarded him passively. "You have lived
among them too long."
    If the statement was meant to offend, it worked.
"Why do you dislike humanolds so much?" he




asked. "I know they have their flaws, but I've
known many of them to be kind and decent
people."
  "Like Major Kira?"
  "Yes. Like Major Kira."
    "Then you've been more fortunate than most
changelings."
    The words drew him across that line of thought
and into another. "Changelings?"
    Had she expected him to react this way? Had she
used the word on purpose?
    She gazed at him, still reserved. "It's a name
given to us by the solids. They meant it as an insult.
In defiance we took it and made it our own."
    As he tried to move forward toward her, he
almost slipped off the rock he was sitting on.
Thought he was still water-- "Go on, please," he said.
    There was a breath on the word please, a tiny
surge that betrayed his deep desire to know what he
was and how it was more than just trickery. There
had to be more.
 More, more...
    The female peered into his human eyes, eyes
fabricated and faketor had they become a clearer
expression of himself over all these years than he
ever would have admitted before this?
    She saw something in them. The reaction was in
her own superficial windows.
    "The great link," she began slowly, "tells us that
long ago our people used to roam the stars, search-
ing out other races, so that we could add to our

knowledge of the galaxy. We came in peace, but too
often we were met with suspicion, hatred, and
violence."
  "Why?"
    "The solids feared our metamorphic abilities.
We were hunted, beaten, killed. Finally we made
our way here. And here... safe in our isolation,
we made our home."
"Tell me," he pursued, "why was I sent away?"
"Because even in our solitude we desired to learn
more about the galaxy. You were one of a hundred
'infants' we sent off to gain that knowledge for
US."
    He searched for that ring of truth he had come to
look for in his years of experience. She had en-
treated him in the way of her people--their people
tto relegate suspicion to the past, even in the way
she explained the past. Yes, he suspected her. He
was an officer of the law more than he was anything
else, and he wanted the hole filled.
    These were convenient answers, these things she
was telling him. Yes, some races of solids were
violent and quick to react, but in all the galaxy
there were pockets of wisdom. He knew. He had
taken whiffs of those pockets, whether she believed
him or not. To have isolated themselves as a nation,
these shapeshifters had made a premature decision.
Were they here to justify it to him and make him
hide too?
 He didn't want to hide. He wanted to grow.
    "But how could you be sure we'd find our way
here?"


    "You had no choice," she said. "The urge to
return home was implanted in your genetic
makeup."
    "You mean the need to learn about my past? It
was all part of the plan?"
    It seemed illogical to him, and he involuntarily
frowned. To send messengers to learn about the
outside, yet imprint them with an overwhelming
desire to learn within--
    "Yes," the female went on. "And now, thanks to
the passageway, you are the first to return to us. We
were not expecting you so soon."
    Another clue. Another chance for a concrete
answer. "When were you expecting me?"
  "Not for another three hundred years."
    He almost slid off the rock again as the revelation
sliced into him. Three hundred years... Earth
years?
    How long had he been alive? Were there blocks of
darkness in his mind for which he must also
search?
    Steeling himself, he pressed for the answers that
might hurt.
  "How long was I away?" he said on one breath.
    "A long time," she responded. "But all that
matters now is that you're back."
    No, she wasn't going to give him that yet, he
could see. She was falling back to the vague. Or
possibly the language was failing her.
    He sat back and sighed, not entirely hiding his
disappointment. "It's different than I imagined it
would be."

    She saw his emotions, even in this imperfect,
solid form he wore on the outside, a form that had
become more comfortable than he had ever before
realized.
    To his utter surprise, she reached out and poured
the droplets that had come from his liquid form
back into his hand. The silver dots immediately
blended with the human hand he held between
them.
    "Whatever you imagined," she said, "I promise
the truth will be better."
    Surprise took him again as she reached for him,
but now her hands were not hands any longer. She
was holding his hands now.
    No... not hands either. Long liquid plumes of
bright silver--he so seldom looked at himself when
parts of him were changing--
    Slowly he felt his torso being drawn toward her as
well, and a movement set in where a moment ago
there had been a shell of skin and an infrastructure
of bone.
    Yes, he had made bones for himself, even though
it wasn't really necessary to the illusion of solidity.
Why had he done that so long ago, and learned it so
well?
    His thigh quivered and dissolved into jelly. Hers
were there too, liquid now.
    Until only their heads remained in humanoid
form, he felt himself blending with her, swelling
with memories that weren't his, a blur of past and
hope and fears.
 So many fears, so many guesses...




    Such beauty... such unblemished bursting
passion...
    Her face drew closer. His sight gave way to fluid
silver, then blended through to something even
more fundamental.
    And the dark planet around them was only a
pedestal.
 And he was alien to himself.

CHAPTER
      15

Qun~'s BAR. Noisier than usual, narrower than
usual, today poisoned with the presence of dozens
of Jem'Hadar who had discovered the Dabo table.
    Julian Bashit resisted the sensation of claustro-
phobia. The bar was crowded today. Beside him,
O'Brien was eyeing the crowd with the same toler-
ant disdain. Their home had changed.
    Bashir looked at O'Brien and wondered if this
could be the last straw for Miles and his wife. Keiko
had not liked DS9 at first, and he wasn't sure she'd
ever come to like it. The two had come off a
starship, clean and fresh, manned with crew in
bright, sharp uniforms, without a single bad ele-
ment from which they had to protect their little
daughter.
    Regret piled into BashiFs chest at the thought of
losing O'Brien. It hadn't been easy making friends




here. They were all so busy, and so easily suspicious
of each other--a band of misfits, each towing
baggage of a painful past, none ready to trust.
    What trust they had gleaned here had been at
danger's point. Deep space, nine stations out.
    And here they sat, in a pathetic mimicry of a pub,
enduring the presence of rabble and quarrelers,
larcenists and pirates, those who inevitably were
pushed out onto any frontier by the expansion of
decency as they ran before it in a shabby attempt to
profit before it arrived.
    Starfleet, Commander Sisko, the doctor and the
engineer--we're the ones with the badges on, sup-
posed to tame the wild.
  It didn't look to Bashir as if it could be tamed.
    "Excuse me, pardon me, after you, look out,
coming through--"
    That was Quark's voice. There was a drone about
it, but also a particular ring of satisfaction as well.
    "Sorry to keep you waiting, gentlemen," the
Ferengi said as he appeared out of the crowd.
"That's two synthales--on the house."
    Both Bashir and O'Brien cranked up to stare at
him.
    "What's put you in such a good mood?" O'Brien
asked.
    "Isn't it obvious? Business is better than ever!"
Quark deposited a bowl of salty nuts on the table
and lowered his voice. "I admit I was a bit nervous
at first, what with starships blowing up and rumors
of invasions through the wormhole... but I have
inside information that the peace agreement is
about to be finalized."

    Bashir cupped his hand around his drink. "And
where did you get this information? From one of
your 'friends' on the Federation Council?"
    Quark stood back and puffed up. "If you must
know, I overheard two Jem'Hadar officers talk-
ingre"
    Bashir smiled, taking his moment's cheer in the
fact that Quark could take such pride in his eaves-
dropping talent. "And you believed them?"
    "I don't see why not. Oh, I know we got off to a
rocky start, but they're not so bad, really." He
gazed at the burly Jem'Hadar soldiers pounding
about at the gambling table and approved. "I think
they have the gene."
    O'Brien glanced at Bashir, and when he got only
a shrug from the doctor, he looked up at Quark
again. "What gene?"
    "The gambling gene. They've barely been at the
station for a week and already they can't drag
themselves away from the Dabo table."
    Drowning his words in a sip, Bashir said, "How
fortunate for you."
    Beaming with success and no small measure of
power, Quark placed a hand on each of their
shoulders. "How fortunate for all of us. You
see... I have a dream. A dream that one day all
people--human, Jem'Hadar, Cardassian, Ferengi
--will stand together in peace... around my
Dabo table."
    He gazed off into the surmountable future, seeing
the twinkle of coins and the curl of bearer notes.
    Bashir and O'Brien shared one of those glances
they sort of hoped the subject would catch in his




periphery. But Quark was involved in his mental
ear-stroking and enjoying the rising noise from his
gambling table.
    Bashit leaned forward and glanced at O'Brien
again. "You're a regular visionary, Quark."
The Ferengi sighed in his joy. "I am, aren't IT'
O'Brien leaned back to drain his glass. Bashir
recognized the motion as an attempt to get out
from under Quark's companionable grip and to
keep his mouth shut on that one.
    All of a sudden there was liquid streaming down
O'Brien's uniform and he was coughing--he'd
been hit from behind by a passing Jem'Hadar.
    "You're in my way," the soldier barked down at
O'Brien.
 O'Brien glared up, but kept control. "Sorry."
    He tucked his ribs to bring the chair closer to the
table. The Jem'Hadar lashed out.
    The engineer hit the floor in a heap, his beer
landing on top of him, his face screwed up.
    "Now, look here!" Bashir pushed forward and
tried to get to O'Brien.
    The Dublin express didn't wait. O'Brien burst to
his feet and thundered past him. "Out of my
wayre"
    Pillaging Quark's paradise in a single crash,
engineer and alien pounded in a barrel roll across
another table. Glasses and liquid pasted the pa-
trons.
    "Gentlemen!" Quark shouted. "Remember my
dream!"
    Bashir pushed through the loud harping crowd,
struggling to get through the sea of shoulders and

armor and body odor to where the Jem'Hadar and
O'Brien were discussing their innermost philoso-
phies. Crude punches and kicks served well
enough, but he could see from here that O'Brien
was flushed and overmatched. There was no blow
that a bare human fist could land on a Jem'Hadar
and have much more than a bruising effect. Their
uniforms were armored and, beneath those, their
bodies were also armored. These were upright
iguanas, blessed by evolution with something close
to an outer skeleton.
    Only such beings could afford to be so easily
enraged.
    He saw the Jem'Hadar's eyes, white-ringed and
blazing, for he was chewing O'Brien's guts in his
mind.
    More and more the battle tilted toward the
decidedly one-sided. Bashir pushed and squeezed,
but he could barely make any headway against the
cheering, betting crowd that didn't care who won as
long as the floor got bloody.
    "That's enough!" he shouted. He tried to reach
past the Jem'Hadar, who had O'Brien on the
ground now and was crushing the life out of him.
"That's--"
    The soldier turned on him, and caught Bashir's
throat in one of those ten-pound claws they called
hands.
    Bashir hammered at the Jem'Hadar's arm, but
the grip was like granite. He clutched the
Jem'Hadar's wrist, catching in his periphery a
glimpse of O'Brien lying on the floor, hacking and
pulpy, sucking air and wincing.




    The periphery began to close. Bashir tried to
draw a breath, but the hand around his throat was
closing in. His hands trembled as strength fell out
of his arms. He couldn't fight and no one was
helping him. Would they stand by and let him be
killed?
  "All right! What's going on here!"
    Security officers piled into the ring. The grip
suddenly fell away from Bashir's throat. He
dropped back, pulled a huge gasp, then used the
crowd around him to claw his way to O'Brien.
    Security Chief Eddington and at least one other
Starfleet Security guard were slamming the
Jem'Hadar back against a replicator.
 "What's going on?" Eddington demanded again.
    The Jem'Hadar pointed at O'Brien. "He ad-
dressed me in a disrespectful manner."
    Bashir looked up from trying to straighten
O'Brien so the poor man could breathe. "That's a
lie."
    "Easy, Doctor," Eddington said. "We're all
friends here."
 "Tell him that."
    Eddington pressed up to the Jem'Hadar offender
and said, "I'll see this doesn't happen again."
    The Jem'Hadar leered into his eyes. "I expect
you will."
    And the former enemy turned and strode freely
out of the bar.
    "That's it?" Bashir derided to Eddington.
"You're just going to let him walk away?"
 "Our orders are to give them a wide berth."
 "I know what the orders are! But he attacked

Chief O'Brien. We have rules here against that sort
of thing!"
    "I'm aware of station regulations, Doctor," the
young man said. "However, the Jem'Hadar are not.
We have to allow them some time to get used to our
customs."
    Bashir gaped up at him, deafly outraged. "And
in the meantime, they're free to do whatever they
want?"
    Eddington discarded him with a blink. "Remem-
ber that before you get into another brawl with
them."
    He nodded to the other Security man and togeth-
er they picked their way over collapsed tables and
overturned chairs and left the bar much the same as
they'd found it. No warnings, no citations, no
questioning, no simple justice.
    O'Brien moaned. Bashir pulled his attention
from incredulous fury to bedside manner.
    "You'll be all right, Miles," he said, mostly just to
hear his own voice and cling to it. The engineer's
body was hot, flushed, all muscles tensed with pain.
"Don't move. You've a broken rib or two, I think
�.. no, no! Stop--he's gone. Don't fight."
    "Where's the--dirty bastard?" O'Brien coughed
and tried to sit up.
    Pressing his hands to O'Brien's arm and side,
Bashir tried to keep him down, but when that failed
he slipped a hand behind the chief and helped him
keep upright enough to breathe better. "He's gone.
It's all over. Someone give me a glass of water!"
    "Water?" Quark responded from somewhere be-
hind the onlookers. "I don't serve water!"




    "All right," Bashir said. "At least someone call a
medical team. Have them bring an antigrav gurney
and a first-aid kit."
    Beneath his hands, O'Brien struggled again.
"Julian... did they arrest him?"
    "No... no, they didn't." He lowered his vol-
ume. "Please stop moving, for God's sake, before
you crack in half. He wasn't pulling his punches.
He was out to kill you."
  "That was assault--" O'Brien choked. "He hit
me ...."
    "Miles, shut up, please." Bashir glanced around
the bar. Yes, there were still other Jem'Hadar
hovering in the background, ready to be incited.
    He didn't have to ask again. O'Brien curled in
pain and was lost to his own wounds. Lying here
unprotected, without a friend in the crowd who
would put his neck on the line by lending a hand,
Bashir and his patient waited for medical help.
    It was obvious now that they weren't going to get
any other kind on Deep Space Nine anymore.

    Ben Sisko played with his food like a two-year-
old. For a long time now--he had no idea how
long--he had chased one bean around his plate,
ignoring the heaps of dumplings and vegetables. He
was going to get that bean, but it had to be arranged
just right on the fork. It was the last one and he
wanted it to do what he told it to do. He wanted
authority over that bean.  "Dad?"
    The bean bumped up against a crushed dump-
ling.

    When had the dumpling been forked? He didn't
remember doing that. It looked cold. The gravy was
getting a skin.
 "Dad, pass me the potatoes."
    He wanted to get the bean away from the dump-
ling without getting gravy on it. He touched it with
the fine of his fork to see how stuck it was.
  "Dad?"
    Sisko's dream about the bean cracked and he
looked up. "Yes, Jake--what is it?"
    His son regarded him from across the table as
though surveying an escaped lunatic. "The pota-
toes?"
 "Oh..."
 "Dad, is something wrong?"
    Sisko tried to shrug, but didn't get it out. "Not
really. I'm just a little preoccupied, that's all. It's
these Dominion negotiations." "What about them?"
    A year ago Sisko would never have considered
discussing something like this with his son. Today,
though, and ever since he'd returned from the
Gamma Quadrant, he'd found his son to be the
only person he could speak to, the only one who
wouldn't get in trouble for talking to him, wouldn't
be watched by eyes around the corners. And he
hadn't told Jake much. He was afraid to.
    Everyone knew he was against what was happen-
ing, so no one who didn't trust him would speak to
him, and he didn't want to foist the authorities on
anyone who did trust him. Jake was the only person
that Starfleet wouldn't consider questioning.
  How long would that remain?




    His son was tall now, tall enough to be thought of
as an adult. How much longer can I protect him?
    "It's all happening behind closed doors," he said.
"I guess I feel like I've been cut out of the loop."
    Jake nodded, but didn't turn back to his food.
"No," he said, "it's more than that. There's some-
thing going on, isn't there?"
    Sisko smashed the bean with his fork and
scooped it up. "Like what?"
 Jake wasn't so easily put off anymore. "You tell
me."
    There. His son knew this wasn't a joke or a game.
Sisko felt transparent.
    The door chime saved him from explaining to
Jake the squandered possibilities of this great gal-
axy, the crumbling ladders so lately forged into the
darkness by the Federation. Suddenly sad that he
wouldn't have a chance to vent his plagued
thoughts, Sisko put his fork down. "Come in."
    But Jadzia Dax was already halfway across the
room.
 "Benjamin, did you know about this7"
    As agitated as he had ever seen her, she wagged a
padd before him.
 "Know about what2" he asked.
    "I've been transferred to the Lexington. I'm its
new science officer!"
    He thrust himself to his feet. The napkin slipped
from his thighs to the floor. "There must be some
mistake!"
    She shook the padd again. "l have the orders
right here." Her porcelain complexion was flushed
and she was holding back from pacing.

    He snatched the padd. "Let me see that. I don't
believe it--"
 "Bashit to Sisko."
    Damn it--he should have that blasted comm
unit blasted.
 "Go ahead, Doctor."
    "Commander, I need to talk to you about the
Jem'Hadar."
    He looked at Dax, and together they wondered
what else could go wrong.
 "Come with me," he said.

 "What happened?"
    Sisko piled into the infirmary and almost skid-
ded into the table with O'Brien stretched out upon
it, beaten so much he looked like those dumplings
back on that plate. Keiko was in the background,
drinking a cup of coffee. She nodded to him, but
didn't say anything.
    And she had that look on her face that Sisko had
been seeing so much lately--that look of fatigued
disdain, as if she didn't know what to do to keep
going, as if the simplest answers of daily life were
suddenly elusive.
    He didn't enjoy that expression. In fact, he was
plain sick of it. How could the same expression get
on so many faces of so many races?
     "Chief?." He looked down at O'Brien. Conscious,
at least. "Who did this?" "Jem... Jem..."
    "A Jem'Hadar soldier we bumped in Quark's,"
Bashir filled in. "Literally bumped, sir... Miles
just leaned back to swallow his drink, and this




fellow shoved him right off his chair. After that,
why, it was a free-for-all. It's never been like that
before in Quark's. Crowded and rowdy and--"
    "And they let him go!" O'Brien declared, trying
to raise his head.
    "Yes!" Bashir confirmed. "That Eddington char-
acter didn't even press charges! I couldn't believe
it." He touched O'Brien's arm in a gesture of
support and added, "This wasn't just a barroom
brawl. That beast was out to kill him."
    "Did anyone try to talk to Eddington?" Sisko
asked.
    "Commander?" Keiko O'Brien joined them,
drawn by her husband's pathetic efforts. "I tried to
talk to him, but I was told that Security just wants
to keep the trouble down, no matter what happens.
He refused to prosecute any Jem'Hadar. He said it
just like that! Sir, are we going to have to live like
this?"
    Sisko started to answer her, the rote answers that
piled up against the back of his teeth, things he'd
learned to say since becoming a station administra-
tor that would quell problems and reset values.
    But his own rage piled up too. He didn't want to
quell this. He wanted the vibrations of tumult to
rise here. Let all the people about him foment what
he saw in Keiko's face, in Bashir's, in O'Brien's. If
DS9 had to be the hingepin of rebellion, so be it.
  No. They couldn't live like this.
    He didn't even see the corridors as he charged
through them. Didn't notice the door open when he
stormed into the wardroom. He hesitated as he
absorbed the room, then veered to the table where

Admiral Necheyev and Borath were poring over
some star charts as casually as if they were doing a
jigsaw puzzle. Maybe that's what they really were
doing. Parceling out civilization.
    "I want to know what the hell is going on," he
demanded.
    Necheyev's pinched face rose before him. Oh, if
only she weren't a woman--
    Necheyev squared her thin shoulders. "Com-
mander, I don't appreciate your barging in here."
    "I want to know why my science o~cer's been
transferred without my consent. I want to know
why my chief of operations is lying in the infirmary,
while the Jem'Hadar soldier who brutally beat him
is free to walk the station. And I want to know why
the Federation is willing to risk a war with the
Romulans to form an alliance with a group of
people we hardly know and barely trust."
  Her little nose went up. "Are you finished?"
  "l haven't even begun."
    "Admiral," Borath said, "I think you should tell
Commander Sisko what he wants to know."
    Catching implications in the sentence, Sisko
backed off a step and demanded with his demeanor
that they follow through on that, and go past it to
the completeness of their plans. He was going to
understand this.
    Necheyev was resisting. She didn't want to give
in. She liked playing her games of closed doors and
galactic chess.
    He fixed his glare on her. If he had to, he would
resort to just being bigger, meaner, and definitely
madder.




    "All right," she said. "I suppose he deserves to be
the first to hear the news."
  Was he supposed to thank her?
  "What news?" he asked.
    She started pacing, that nasty, pompous little
stroll she did when she thought she had the upper
hand.
    "The Federation is pulling out of this sector. All
Starfleet personnel currently stationed on DS9 will
be reassigned to other posts. Yourself included."
    Sisko felt his arms melt at his sides, his stomach
kick upward until his throat knotted. Her spiritless
announcement gnawed at him as he gathered in-
stantly all the implications, the broken promises,
the petty handoffs.
    He openly scorned her. "What about Bajor's
entry into the Federation!"
    "Those plans are on hold for the time being."
Necheyev's chin bobbed downward and her head
tilted to one side, her eyes batting upward, as if she
were tolerating him out of her own generosity.
"From here on, Bajor will be the Dominion's
responsibility. They'll be running the station."
    "Are you telling me the Bajorans have agreed to
this?" he blazed at her.
 "We're confident they'll have no objection."
    In other words, nobody had the guts or the
decency to mention it to the people whose desti-
nies were closest to this monumental gaffe. Sisko
snapped back, "And if they do object, what then?
You send in the Jem'Hadar?"
 From the other side of the table, Borath spoke to

him with the same condescension. "The
Jem'Hadar are used only against our enemies.
Bajor will be protected, Commander. We'll see to
it."
    Sisko ignored him and continued to face down
Necheyev. "What about the wormhole? Do they get
to protect that too?"
 "It's the price of peace, Benjamin."
    "Well, if you ask me, the price is too damned
high. What's the Federation supposed to get out of
all this?"
    "Our friendship," Borath replied. "Isn't that
enough?"
    "And you, Benjamin," Necheyev added, "get a
promotion. Captain Sisko. That's an important
step toward that admiralcy you've always wanted."
    So they wanted to buy him off, shut up the person
who knew this area best, and best understood the
implications of dealing with the Dominion. Why?
What the hell is going on?
    What powers were coming into control at the
Federation Council? He knew those people--they
weren't like this. They couldn't possibly under-
stand what they were about to do, or they wouldn't
do it.
    "Admiral, I'd like a chance to speak to the
Federation negotiating team before this treaty is
signed," he declared, forcing himself to breathe
evenly and at least put up a front of mason. He
knew he wasn't going to get anywhere with these
two. He couldn't even break anything under these
conditions.




    Necheyev was as immutable as granite as she
stood before him. She gave him his answer with her
eyes even before she spoke.
    "It's too late for that, Ben. The treaty was signed
late this afternoon."
    Sisko stared at her. In his mind he saw the station
and the wormhole and the planet of innocent
Bajorans and all the future built here whirling
down into a single pit of complete betrayal.
    Borath moved to Necheyev's side. "It's the be-
ginning of a new era. And you helped make it
possible. Congratulations."

CHAPTER
      16

"Ovo? Age You HERE.9"
    The grasses and vines whispered in the ornamen-
tal garden. The fountain chittered nearby.
    Kira's conversation with the shapeshifter clung
to her like guilt as she wandered through the
garden, up to and past the place where she had sat
with Odo and listened as well as she could to what
his rite of passage was doing to him.
    She faced a big catalpa bush on its way to being a
tree if somebody didn't trim it.
    "Odo?" she tried again. "I'm going to try to track
down the source of the interference blocking my
theta-band signal. If I can't find it and neutralize it,
I guess I'll have no choice but to leave here and try
to find Sisko and the others." A faint smile pulled
at her lips and she tried to let part of it out without
losing too much control. "I'm glad you finally made




it home, Odo... I know things are going to work
Oat for you and--"
    The tree shivered as a long branch from some
other bush brushed against it. Maybe it was a
breeze, maybe just a vibration--she wasn't sure.
    "I don't believe this," she mumbled. "I'm talking
to a tree. You're probably not even here, are you?"
    There went dignity for the "solids" if any of
those other beach balls were watching from the
wings.
    She clamped her mouth shut. She'd been enter-
taining enough.
    With as much military elegance as she could
muster, she solidified her way back to the shuttle,
assuming she was being watched all the way.
    Why hadn't she thought of that? They weren't
just the lake. They could be anything around her,
listening and snickering. That's probably what that
bush was doing when it rustled.
    There was more of a mystery here than how
small a mouse those beings could morph them-
selves into. There was a power source here and she
meant to find it.
    The shuttle was in good working condition.
Computer-generated repairs had been made on a
few systems that had suffered during the attack on
the Defiant. It was warm and quiet on board.
      "Computer," Kira began, "can you pinpoint that
power source previously reported?"
  "Affirmative."
    "Is there a source of breathable atmosphere
down there also?"

 "Affirmative."
 "Describe the terrain there."
    "Solid rock consisting of limestone and shale,
with considerable cavern area--"
    "That's good enough for me. Find me a rock I
can stand on. Transporter... energize."

    It was a cavern, all right. Not particularly pretty,
as caverns went. And there was a light source
somewhere too. Dim, but here somewhere, casting
shapes on the rocks where there was no protrusion.
    Why would there be light down here and not on
the surface?
    Fabricated power source, obviously, not natural.
No matter how fluid and lovely those shapeshifters
appeared or how simply they dressed, they were
technologically based or harboring somebody who
was.
    Good. Kira liked simple answers, and right now
she was on a hunt to add to her collection.
    Caverns... atmosphere... for a gaggle of be-
ings who didn't need either.
Or did they? Could shapeshifters do without air?
She scraped through her memory to see if Odo
had gone somewhere without oxygen, without
gravity--just what were the limits of their abilities?
Did they have abilities Odo didn't know about yet?
Were they more practiced at being what they were
than he was? Did they have tricks he didn't know
about?
    Friendsrain spirit, perhaps, she and Odo, yes.
But had they ever shared these things with each




other? Had she cared enough to ask him about his
past and how he came to know of himself as a
shapeshifter? How many years it took him to cull
out the legends from the facts... how much pain
and fear had been thrown in his face before he
found his way to DS9, where he had purpose and
responsibility and deeply cherished both. No, she'd
never asked the way friends ask--just for the sake
of knowing.
    A glint of metal caught her attention. Metal or
just a deposit of shale or mica?
    She moved toward it, cautious of chipped stones
beneath her feet and gaping holes that she might
not see until it was too late. Metal, definitely.
Rather a large--  A door?
    Embedded in the rock face was a sizable panel of
manufactured metal, with a separation between the
metal and its rock face enough to slip a knife into.
This wasn't any accident or remnant of a wreck.
This thing was built this way.
    Obvious conclusion number one. Moving
along...
    "Why would shapeshifters need a door?" she
murmured aloud.
    Oh, the sound of her own voice was reassuring as
it tumbled through the cavern.
    Her tricorder burped and coughed when she
tried to scan for a reading. It provided her with the
construction of the door, but not what was beyond
it.
  She tapped her comm badge.

    "Kira to shuttle computer. Scan the area one
hundred and eighty meters dead ahead."
    "Scan unable to penetrate interference," the
computer returned without even the satisfaction of
a pause for a moment of hope.
    She let the tricorder fall to its strap, and stood
before the door with her hands on her hips. In, she
wanted in. There was always something behind a
door and she wanted in.
    She could take the risk of beaming directly in,
but without a way to scan, she might be beaming
into an open pit, or a chemical pond, or any
description of quick ends. There had to be another
way.
    She turned her portable lamp on the edges. All
the way up one side, around the top, down the other
side--
    A locking mechanism. Why hadn't her tricorder
picked that up?
    It was definitely there, though, not just wishful
thinking. She stooped for a better look.
    Out of reach, that's how it looked. This was a
technical age, but that lock was basic and mechani-
cal. It might be a backup; power had a way of
shutting down. Sometimes locks still had a good
old-fashioned key.
  Well, that didn't help.
  What would?
  "Not what," she murmured aloud again. "Who."

    Ornamental grasses and the fountain whistled
and played around her. The starlit night and arms




of nebula embraced the spraying waters. Crickets
and birds that couldn't possibly be surviving here
gamboled in their happy freedom.
  She was getting sick to hell of it.
    The bench under her was cutting into her thighs.
Sooner or later, one of these blobs would come and
talk to her. At least ask her why she hadn't gotten
out of here yet.
    Overhead, a large bird circled against the spar-
kling sky.
  A bird? Animal life?
    It came down more and more, landed in a tree
near her, prattled down through a branch and into
the bush beside her. She was about to get up, to put
some distance between herself and the huge preda-
tor, when its body distorted and expanded, then
drew together into a form she recognized.
    Odo smiled as he came to sit beside her on the
bench.
He was smiling! He didn't do that very often.
Pondering the fact that he could somehow make
a bird's beak but not a person's nose--of course,
maybe a bird wouldn't think it was so good--Kira
shoved that aside and said, "Odo, I've been waiting
for you."
    "Major, I've just had the most remarkable expe-
rience," he said, beaming. "For a few short mo-
ments, I actually felt what it was like to be an
Arbazan vulture. The air currents beneath my
wings, the exhilaration of soaring above the
treetops... it was all very stimulating."
 "I'm happy for you." She was forcing her own

smile, but the words were easier than she expected,
preoccupied as she was.
    He looked at her. Warmly he said, "I know you
are."
    "So," she pushed on, "I guess you'll be staying
here awhile?"
 He gazed at her.
    More gratitude rose in his eyes. Their years
together, functioning and fighting side by side,
suddenly truncated into not enough time.
    "I've enjoyed working with you, Major," he said
solemnly.
    She nodded. "I've enjoyed working with you,
too .... But before we say good-bye, I'm going to
need your help one last time."
 That seemed to please him. "Of course."
    "Remember that power source 1 was telling you
about?"
    "The one preventing you from trying to contact
Commander Sisko."
      "Well, I've discovered its location, but I need you
to help me examine it."  "What can I do?"
    Relieved that in this one last way he was still with
her, she adjusted herself on the bench. "There's a
door blocking my path. I need you to help me get it
open."
  Odo frowned. "What kind of a door?"
    "It's composed of some kind of metal the
tricorder can't identify. But other than that, it's an
ordinary door. The kind used by humanoids to get
from one place to another."




    Puzzled, Odo said, "That's odd. My people have
no need for doors. They dislike taking humanoid
form."
 "I know."
 "Then who could be using it?"

    "Commander Sisko, does the Federation really
expect Bajor to hand over Deep Space Nine? To
hand over control of the wormhole? To hand all
that we have over to the Dominion?"
    Not a bad bunch of questions. Absolutely rhetor-
ical. Nobody expected that of Bajor, at least not
passively. Bajor's control over the wormhole was
the only advantage this poor, underdeveloped, rav-
aged, and tired planet had in its favor. They'd come
reluctantly into the Federation, distrustful of oth-
ers, frightened of a Cardassian reorganization and
new assault, willing finally to trust the Federation
to help them help themselves. It had been an act of
benign desperation, this trust, and the Federation
had something to live up to.
    Those words they had ridden in upon, that silver
horse that, until now, had never stumbled.
    Sisko gripped the edge of his desk and looked
into the monitor, seeing the pale shock on Bajoran
Minister Jod's face. Could Jod see the nausea on
his? He hoped so.
    He didn't know this man well, but he didn't have
to.
    "That's exactly what they expect," he admitted.
It almost sounded like a desperate warning. Get out
while you can--but there was nowhere to run.

"And I don't understand or agree with their reason-
ing any more than you do."
    "Then why don't you try to talk some sense into
the Federation Council?"
    "I've tried. Their response was that I should
follow orders and begin the evacuation of Starfleet
personnel from the station."
    Jod sat back, drained. "So that's it, then. The
Federation has turned its back on Bajor."
    The words trumpeted through Sisko's head. How
often had Kira accused them of this and Sisko had
to argue it down? Promise otherwise, swear other-
wise? Now what was she going to say?
    "Well, I have news for you, Commander," Jod
swore. "Bajor has fought for its freedom before and
if necessary we'll fight for it again. And if that
means going to war with the Jem'Hadar, then that's
what we'll do."
    Sisko almost nodded, but kept from doing it. "I
admire your courage, Minister Jod, but do you
really believe Bajor could win such a war?"
    "Alone? No. But we won't be alone." Jod pulled
forward in his chair again, his chin stiff and his
resolve screwed up tight. "The Romulans will be
fighting alongside us."  "The Romulans?"
    "They're as anxious to keep the Dominion out of
the Alpha Quadrant as we are. So as of this
morning, we've signed a pact pledging to stand
together against the Jem'Hadar... and their al-
lies."
  Bajor as an enemy of the Federation, after all




this. Sisko gathered the picture in his mind. "I hope
it doesn't come to that," he murmured.
    Jod's lower lip bunched up as anger welled over
the monitor and flowed into the office. "Then you'd
better hope the Jem'Hadar stay on their side of the
wormhole."
    The transmission ended. Sisko could've sworn he
heard a crack when Jod cut off the signal.
    When had things gone out of control? A few
weeks ago, there was a thriving station, a recuperat-
ing planet, a bright bridge to another place--now
there was only this. Collapse. Abuse. Maybe war.
    Definitely war. Definitely. Now that the
Romulans had an ally, they would not remain still
under Dominion incursion. They wouldn't wait for
a war to gurgle out of skirmishes and incursions.
They'd start one.
    I don't blame them, Sisko thought. Empathizing
with the Romulans?
    Why not? Right was right and wrong was wrong,
even in deep space. And this...
    He walked the station. The whole station, from
the docking pylons to the Promenade. No one
spoke to him and he returned the favor. The faces
of the hundreds of innocents, Bajorans, humans,
even the Jem'Hadar soldiers who kept clear of
him--probably under orders or temptations. They
would have this whole station in a matter of days.
They were holding their tempers until then.
    When he had first come here, how he'd hated this
place. How ugly and vulgar it had seemed to him.
    It had been as far out into space as he could go
and still manage to provide a semblance ofciviliza-

tion for his boy. As far away as he could get from
wars and the Borg and the sour taste of his own
rank and the death of his wife. He had nothing but
bitterness to wear on his shoulder in those first
weeks, and only the nagging hand of common sense
kept him from surrendering his commission and
living in a hut somewhere.
    The station didn't look so vulgar to him today.
He had learned to see the possibilities in the ugly
Cardassian design and the clutter of beings who
came here to hang out and escape from their own
horrors. Or perhaps create a few.
    The ten thousand headaches for him to deal with
in the running of a critical outpost--those were the
horrors. At the moment they weren't so horrible.
Those endless nettles had walked him through
losing his wife by making him think of what she
would tell him if she were here, through raising his
son by welding him in place and making him face
up to it.
    Ten thousand headaches had rebuilt his life. In
the process, the lives of thousands of others had
been undergirded. The whole planet below, Bajor,
planet of rebels, planet of liberated captives, planet
of refugees, finally had become a planet of free
citizens constructing a future, leaning just enough
on the broad shoulder of the Federation. Soon they
would have pushed off, and been a bright star in
someone's night sky.
    Mostly mine. I never realized how proud of them I
was. Kira never realized it... and I never knew to
tell her. I was always telling her, "I assure you, I
assure you." Why didn't I come right out and say, "I




like the Bajorans, I'm proud of Bajor, and I'm going
to defend all of you with my life"--
    And it had come to this. Bajor talking about
alliance with the Romulans. Certainly the Bajorans
understood that alliance with the Romulans meant
eventual dominance by them. They'd slipped into
the one-step-at-a-time mode. How could the Feder-
ation fight against the Bajorans, who only wanted
the freedom the Federation had promised them?
He felt like a liar. He had so ferociously demanded
that the Bajorans see the difference between the
Federation and the tribalistic thugs that roamed
this part of the galaxy. Benjamin Sisko would go
down in Bajoran lore like the names of Judas or
Benedict Arnold.
  "Ah, Commander!"
    Sisko blinked and winced. That was Garak's
voice. He didn't turn to meet it. He didn't want to
do station's internal business right now, squabbling
with store owners who might or might not be spies.
This just wasn't the moment.
    He found himself sitting in the Replimat with his
hand cupped around a cold mug of raktajino.
When had he gotten here? Fine. He was here.
    "I was hoping to see you before you left," Garak
said as he plunked into the chair beside Sisko. "I've
wanted to tell you how impressed I've been by you
the last two years. You run this station with
strength, dignity, and compassion. Well done."
  Sisko almost spat in his face.
 Then he looked up and saw something he wasn't

used to in Garak's expression, something that
wasn't usually there. Honesty.
     "Thank you, Mr. Garak," he forced out. "Your
being here helped make those two years..."
  "Interesting?"
    A smile creased his cheeks and almost cracked
his face. "Very interesting," he agreed.
    Garak nodded. "I tried .... Oh, I'm sure you'll
be back before long. Though from what I've heard,
when you return it'll be to fight against Bajor."
    "I've heard the same rumors." Bile rose again.
Sisko smoldered, "That Bajor has made a pact with
the Romulans to make a stand against the
Jem'Hadar... and their allies."
    "The Bajorans have fought for their freedom
before. It makes sense that they would fight for it
again."
 "So much for the results of my 'peace' mission."
 "Do I detect a note of bitterness in your voice.
 "I wouldn't be surprised."
    "If it makes you feel better, I happen to share
your feelings about the Dominion treaty." Garak
bobbed his--well, eyebrows, if that's what those
were. "I've given it a great deal of thought, and the
only explanation I can find is that our leaders have
simply gone insane."
  He offered a strange little smile.
    Sisko looked at him, then couldn't help but smile
back. "It seems that way."
    "Unfortunately," Garak went on, "there's noth-
ing you or I can do about it."




  "I suppose not."
    "After all, you have your orders, and as for
me... I would never dream of opposing the
wishes of the Central Command. A pity."
  Garak was looking at him. Fishing.
    "I agree," Sisko said, heavy with implication.
"That it's a pity."
  "I thought you would."
    More than anything, the Cardassian was proving
how far down the barriers had been whittled on
DS9, that perhaps the past two years had not been a
vain dilation of somebody else's schematic.
    "Mr. Garak," Sisko said, "I never knew we
thought so much alike."
 "Life is full of surprises, Commander."
 "Commander Sisko!"
    The shriek trumpeted down the open corridor,
burying the conversation they were having. The
crowd scrambled for covermsomeone choked out
a short scream. The first disruption Sisko saw as he
vaulted to his feet were three Jem'Hadar soldiers
plowing the citizens down.
 Then he saw T'Rul, running at full tilt--
    "There she is!" The Jem'Hadar had their weap-
ons drawn.
    Sisko raised his hand defensively, ready to shout
that those weapons had better disappear, they were
not allowed on the open Promenade, but two of the
Jem'Hadar were already aiming. "No!" Sisko blasted.
    Two harsh streaks of energy bolted from the
Jem'Hadar and both hit T'Rul square in the spine.

Momentum brought her crashing forward into
Sisko. He caught her as she slipped to the deck, the
fabric of her uniform and the skin beneath it
curling, melted and trailing a thin finger of smoke.
    Lashed to a fury, Sisko let the dead girl roll off his
knee just as the three Jem'Hadar charged into the
Replimat. He burst upward, took hold of one of
their power rifles, then fell hard to one side and
delivered the rifle butt into the gut of one of the
soldiers, right into the solar plexus, if this animal
had one.
    Without waiting to see, he pivoted and smashed
another Jem'Hadar full in the face with the rifle
barrel.
    But there were three Jem'Hadar, not just two,
and he was out of moves and trying to regain
balance too fast.
    He bumped up against a thick armor plate and
heard the heart beating behind it--or was this his
own heart? There were voices and astonished faces
around him, spinning and rising. Garak was calling
his name.
    He had never wanted to answer before, but
today...
    His throat burned. Air was sucked in, shoved
out. And the Jem'Hadar were above him now.
 And he couldWt see clearly anymore.

    The Promenade was more crowded but less
sociable than usual. Sociability had been on a
downward spiral for days now. People walked, yes,
but in a hurried manner, as though escaping from




whoever was walking behind. Peace had been muti-
lated by treaty. The future was haywire in the face
of shifting priorities.
    No one knew who would be sacrificed next,
which deck or which continent would be razed in
the name of expansion. The humans and Klingons
walked here in a rush to pack up. The Bajorans
walked here as if covered with boils. Parents pulled
their children through on the double. There was
purpose in every step, subtraction in every glance.
No one talked anymore.
    People were leaving. Civilians, traders, any Fed-
eration national, all Starfleet personnel. Leaving
this outpost they had hammered into salience with-
out subsidy.
  Now they must evacuate.
    Julian Bashir had come to hate walking on the
Promenade. Or anywhere else, for that matter. To
walk anyplace other than the Promenade was to be
met with flagrant suspicion from the guards posted
where once there had been none.
    Astoundingmhe had come to notice that this
rough station, until recently, had required almost
no formal policing actions. Sisko had demanded
order, Odo had provided it. There had never been
guards standing posts before.
    Now they were everywhere. Protecting what?
The visitors from the residents, or the other way
around? No one was sure.
    He stood outside the infirmary, watching, con-
vincing himself of what he already knew.
    Ah--friendly faces. Well, one friendly face and a
facsimile. Dax and Garak.

 "How's Chief O'Brien?" Dax asked.
    "Still a little sore," the doctor answered, "but he
should be in position by now."
     Garak gestured down the corridor. "In that case,
Doctor, I suggest we be on our way." "Agreed," Dax said. "Let's go."
    Bashir let his knuckles fall against the infirmary
door as he dropped his hands to his sides. The door
was cool and stable.
 He would remember that.
    Together they walked to the office of the chief of
security and went in without announcement. Over
Garak's shoulder Bashir could see Commander
Sisko sitting in one of the holding cells.
    Sisko was sitting with his elbows on his knees
and his hands clasped. Even here, he was somehow
part of DS9 or it part of him. Bashir resisted the
urge to wave hello.
    "Can I help you?" Chief Eddington looked up
from his desk.
    Dax swayed toward him. "We're here to see
Commander Sisko."
 "Sorry. My orders are that no one sees him."
    Bashir tried to seem submissive. "But we're here
on urgent business."
    Eddington might have shrugged, or that might
have only been a shift of his shoulders. "You'll have
to talk to Admiral Necheyev. She's in charge here
until the Jem'Had--"
    Garak reached across the desk and shoved a
Cardassian hypospray against Eddington's arm.
Eddington slumped onto the desk and Bashir




stared at him, wondering if the poor man was still
alivethe was still breathing, yes.
    "l'm sorry," Garak said flatly, "but we are
rushed for time and I knew neither of you would
feel comfortable striking a fellow officer."
    While Bashir stood there with his mouth gaping,
trying to figure a response for that, Dax said, "I'11
get Sisko."
    "If you would be so kind as to take his legs,
Doctor," Garak said. He scooped up Eddington's
considerable shoulders.
    "If I didn't know you better," Bashir uttered,
'Td swear you were enjoying this, Garak."
    "Not at all, Doctor. Though I admit, after three
years of hemming dresses, a little action does seem
a welcome change of pace."
    Grunting with the effort of hauling Eddington
into an anteroom, Bashir heaved, "I hope you'll
still feel that an hour from now."
    He straightened as Sisko and Dax came dashing
into the main security area, which now looked
quite innocent with Eddington snoozing merrily in
the back, out of sight.
    "Now," Sisko was saying even before he got to
them, "first thing we have to do is get our hands on
a runabout."
    "It's already taken care of, Benjamin. Chief
O'Brien is waiting for us at landing pad C with the
Rio Grande, carrying a full complement of photon
torpedoes."
    "How did you know we'd be needing photon
torpedoes?" Sisko asked her, with a tone that

implied subterfuge and approval all at the same
time.
    Bashir watched them, always fascinated with this
bizarre relationship between his commander and
his fellow officer. Sisko wasn't saying anything, yet
he wasn't exactly asking.  He was testing.
    Bashir tensed with the importance of all this. If
Sisko would force Dax to say aloud what she had
deduced and acted upon, anticipating his personal
logic, then there were strong actions in the offing.
    The doctor didn't move. He looked from one to
the other in the space of those two seconds.
    Dax eyed Sisko too. "Because I know you. You
want to make sure the Dominion stays on its side of
the galaxy. The only way to do that is to blow up the
entrance to the wormhole."
    Bashit felt something in his chest snap. An
astonishing act--a fabulous solution. The end of
their careers, yet the one great action a person
could take for what he believed in. What happened
to a soldier who had sworn an oath, but whose
leaders had made an immoral decision.
    The doctor knew that indecent cooperation had
been bought with a cloak of promotion for Com-
mander Sisko, and he was here and now rejecting
that. They all were.
     The doctor searched Commander Sisko's face for
the slightest doubt. None.
    'Tm glad we're all in agreement," Sisko said. His
passive courage was heartening.




    "Well," Bashir clipped, "I guess this means the
end of our Starfleet careers."
    "I wouldn't worry about that, Doctor," Garak
said, as if he were one to talk.
    Dax threw him a glance. "That's easy for you to
say."
    "You misunderstand me, Lieutenant," the
Cardassian said. "All I meant was it's foolish to
worry about your careers at a time like this. After
all, there's a good chance we're about to be killed."
    Bashit widened his eyes. "Is that supposed to
make me feel better?"
    The commander was checking the Promenade
for Jem'Hadar guards. Apparently it was all clear,
because he came back in and gestured to his
miniature SWAT team.
 "All fight," he said, "let's get moving."

CHAPTER
      17

"Tins SEE~aS TO BE some kind of locking mecha-
nism."
    Within the cradle of the caverns, Odo peered at
the metal door that bewitched their tricorders and
defied their chants.
    Kira watched him with bottled impatience and
choked down an urge to spit out the obvious. Of
course it was a locking mechanism!
    "I was thinking the same thing," she said instead.
No point wrecking the last few minutes they had to
work together.
    "Interesting," Odo said. "The purpose of this
door is not to keep people out, but rather to keep
whatever's on the other side in."
    Pausing in her impatience, Kira was suddenly
filled with a whole new kind of curiositymshe




hadn't thought of that. "I wonder what's behind
there," she mumbled.
    Ah, marvelous. Now she was the one uttering the
painfully obvious.
    "I suppose we'll find out," Odo muttered, preoc-
cupied, "as soon as I can get this door open .... "
    His hand dissolved into a silver spike, and he put
the end into the lock. The spike went in a lot farther
than it should have been able to.
    Kira beat down a shiver. It was nauseating to
watch Odo's hand go into the lock almost up to the
elbow.
A mechanical lock--she heard the tumbler click.
Odo pulled his extremity back. On its way out, it
turned back into a hand. "Step back, Major," he
said.
    She moved out of the way, allowing him to put
his weight against the hefty metal barrier.
    It creaked, but it did move. There weren't any
blitzes of energy to pound Odo back. No
forcefields.
 Kira drew her weapon and looked in.
    Three Jem'Hadar soldiers glared back at her,
their weapons also out and up.
    One of them nodded to her. "We've been expect-
ing you, Major."

 "Halt! Put down your weapons!"
    The Jem'Hadar guards, two of them, material-
ized directly in front of Sisko, Dax, Bashir, and
Garak as they charged toward landing pad C.
    Sisko skidded to a stop. Dax almost piled into
him. Bashir managed to shy to one side. Garakm

    The Cardassian twisted toward the Jem'Hadar,
but he had his eyes--and his phasermon Sisko.
  "By all means, Commander, do what he says."
    Bashir, in his typical innocence, stared like a
child. "Garak?"
  "You heard me, Doctor."
    I'll peel those scales right off him, Sisko thought
as he lowered his phaser to the deck. He had to, or
the others would take his hesitation as a cue to act
against this traitor and those two ugly customers.
    Horn-mad, he shifted his glare to Garak and let
his silence speak.
    Garak sauntered toward the Jem'Hadar, his
phaser loose at his side.
    "I'm glad to see everything's going according to
plan."
    The Jem'Hadar stooges blinked at him. "What
plan is that?"
    "Didn't anyone tell you? You see, I pretend to be
their friend--then I shoot you."
    His phaser came up. A plume of energy swal-
lowed both Jem'Hadar.
    Sisko plunged to retrieve his weapon, scooped up
Dax's, and handed it to her. On the other side of
the corridor, Bashir got his own.
 "Well done, Garak," Sisko said.
 "Just something I read once in a book."
 Waxy and numb, Bashir sighed, "I'm sure."
 "Look out!"
    Dax shoved Bashir to one side and raised her
weapon.
    Sisko had to spin almost all the way around
before he could see what she was talking about--




two more Jem'Hadar aiming down the corridor
from around a corner. As the four conspirators
returned fire, he pressed Bashir back and motioned
Dax and Garak to fall back also. He aimed wild and
hit one Jem'Hadar in the upper body.
  Well, that was one. How many were there?
    Sisko pressed Bashir back farther and fired again,
not so wild this time, dodging return fire every step.
    Clumsy because of his own heavy Cardassian
build, Garak shoved Dax out of the way of a streak
of energy, and couldn't clear it himself. One bolt
glanced across his arm. The nextt
    Taking a blow full in the chest, Garak slammed
into the bulkhead beside Dax and skidded to the
deck.
  "Garak!" Bashir howled.
    He crossed Sisko's path toward the fallen
Cardassian, right into the path of cross fire, toward
Garak.
    Under cover of fire from Sisko and Dax, he
stooped at Garak's side.
    "It looks like we won't be having lunch after all,
Doctor," the Cardassian gurgled pitifully. He got
all the words out. That was his last bit of luck
before he died.
    Sisko caught Bashir bodily and dragged him
back. "It's too late, Doctor!"
    As he pulled Bashir away, Dax provided more
cover. Under the whine of constant weapons fire
they shuffled toward the airlock.
    "Come on!" Against his arm and side Sisko felt
Bashir pull back toward Garak. The doctor didn't
want to give up. What if Garak still had a shiver of

life in him? What could it be like to leave him there
like that?
 Sisko knew. Knew and hated it.
    The Jem'Hadar pressed them without relent to-
ward the airlock, making the going slow. Constant-
ly they had to duck close to the bulkheads as arrows
of unshielded crackling energy pounded so close
they could feel the buzz of cutting power against
the fine hairs of their skin.
    Dax got there first and hit the control panel. The
airlock gate hummed open.
    Sisko shoved Bashir inside, paused to fire one
final blast out the open gate, then plunged inside.
"Move it, Lieutenant!"
    "Right behind you," Dax promised. She finished
programming the panel so well that it wouldn't be
able to be unprogrammed without a full emergency
engineering squad. The gate buzzed shut between
them and the Jem'Hadar with a grinding clang.
    O'Brien was in the pilot's chair and Sisko dove
for the cockpit. The runabout was already warmed
up. Behind him he heard Dax and Bashit pile into
their seats, lungs heaving.
 "Get us out of here, Chief," he said.
    The engineer cranked around to count heads.
"What about Garak?"
 "He's not coming," responded Bashit grimly.
 O'Brien nodded in understanding. "Right. Hang
On."
    Sitting beside O'Brien as the runabout rose and
wobbled in open space before sliding out of the
station's perimeter at three times safe speed, Sisko
pressed his shoulder blades against the back of his




seat and forced himself to breathe evenly, to set an
example for the others, to show that he believed, he
knew they were doing the right thing. There was no
legal obligation to protect a planet that hadn't yet
taken all the steps into Federation membership, but
that was a petty loophole. If the little girl next door
was being torn apart by a pack of dogs, he didn't
have a legal obligation to put his life on the line, go
over there and kill the dogs. But anyone with an
ounce of morality would hop the fence.
    Funny how well the pack-of-dogs idea fit. The
way the Jem'Hadar ships had come and sur-
rounded the Defiant and chewed it to shreds...
    In the side viewer, Deep Space Nine spooled
against black space, chunky and inelegant, power-
ful and independent; its great archirig docking
pylons clawed both upward and down like the arms
of some great beast.
    He hadn't liked it when he'd first come here, but
he'd taken the job for the sake of Jake. Now for the
sake of Jake and a billion others he was leaving.
    Jake would understand if he never came back.
Garak was right--that chance was a good one, the
best one.
    If they lived, then he was definitely coming back.
Life as a fugitive wasn't in the cards. His obligation
was to come back and face court-martial and have
his say about what was happening in the halls of the
United Federation of Planets. It was wrong to cede
any territory to the Dominion at this stage. Maybe
at any stage. They were losing their sense of pur-
pose, their linear concept of right and wrong, that

which was elemental to basic freedom and the
sovereignty of the individual.
    He would come back and stand his trial and tell
them all. And his son would see him do it, even if
he did it in manacles.
    And he would have shown Bajor that they were
not alone, even if it was only the four of them in
this runabout who were with them.
    In a few minutes the Dominion will be sixty-seven
years away. And the Federation will have time to
think things out.
    "Thirty seconds to wormhole," O'Brien said,
and shook Sisko out of his thoughts.
    "Prepare to launch photon torpedoes," Sisko
ordered. The order came very easily. He didn't
have to think twice--those moments were past.
    "We're being hailed," Dax reported, keeping all
emotion out of her voice. "It's Admiral Necheyev."
    Sisko waited a beat, then reached forward and
engaged his panel. He didn't say anything, but only
waited until Necheyev appeared on the monitor
next to him.
    "Commander," Necheyev said with sharp re-
serve, "I'm ordering you to stand down. Return to
the station immediately."
    Well, now that that was over with, they could
have a real conversation. The admiral was jaun-
diced with rage, which made her even more waxy
and pale than normal. She was practically fading
away.
    "I'm afraid I'm going to have to refuse that
order," Sisko said simply.




      Borath lowered his nose. "Please, Commander.
Don't make us send the Jem'Hadar after you."
  Sisko almost laughed.
    "Go right ahead," he granted. "But you'd better
warn them not to expect any reinforcements for
about seventy years."
    He shut off the monitor. No point stretching the
inevitable. They were already hopping mad at him.
    He stretched back to enjoy it. That was all he had
to enjoy.
    The wormhole flashed awake before them, bright
white-yellow-electric-blue with a punch right down
the middle, an illusion of open space, like looking
down the eye of a hurricane. Strange how it seemed
to know when such a tiny ship came poking.
    "The wormhole's opening," Dax said unneces-
sarily.
      Sisko didn't acknowledge her. "Attack pattern
theta, Mr. O'Brien. Then hard aport." There was no pause. "Yes, sir."
    In the shaved seconds during which bright pho-
ton salvos that looked like nothing more than balls
of light flew out from the runabout and rifled
toward the wormhole, Sisko saw visions of Odo and
Kira and wondered if he was plastering shut their
only escape from the Gamma Quadrant--yes, of
course he was. That was exactly what he was doing.
With these shots, he was betting his friends were
dead. And if they weren't he was sacrificing them to
life on the other side, in whatever manner they
could cull out for themselves.
 He wished he could explain to Kira. He wanted

her' to know that her exile was for a reason, and that
someone over here did care about Bajor and stand
firm on the principles the Federation had always
declared.
    Simple statements. Not exactly Walt Whitman.
But he wished he could say them to her anyway.
    If he had any regrets, that was the one. Perhaps
the gesture of closing the wormhole was enough.
She would figure it out, wouldn't she?
    The torpedoes tumbled freely into the core of the
wormhole and, on their timed-release detonators,
blew up.
    A brilliant mushroom of destruction washed
back across their viewscreens from the phenome-
non that was barely beyond the theoretical. High
glare came tumbling over them at a rolling boil.
The Rio Grande surged backward like a toy on an
ocean wave.
    Sisko wanted to shout through the strain for
everyone to hang on, but they were already doing
that. He caught a glimpse of O'Brien's tensed arm
and hand clawing on the pilot's seat. The explosion
and residual shock waves piled out toward them
and the longest puffs of it engulfed them, but the
runabout remained intact and took the pounding.
  Not so bad.
    Sisko raised his head from the back of the seat.
Still alivem
     Another shock wave hit, harder this time. Had
one of the salvos delayed its detonation?
  No, that was closer!
  "Chief--"




    "It's the Jem'Hadar ship, Commander. It's left
the station and it's headed our way."
    "Hard about, Mr. O'Brien." He cranked around
to let the others see the set of his eyes. "Battle
stations, everyone. Strongest shields to 'em."
    Before they completed their swing around, they
took another hit.
  "Shields down twenty percent," Dax calmly said.
    Sisko didn't bother to acknowledge that. "Return
fire!"
    O'Brien did his best to dodge Jem'Hadar shots--
at close range those bolts could disintegrate a ship
this size.
    "Dax, take over shield controls! Sacrifice the aft
shield to fire power!" Sisko wheeled out of his chair
and plunged back to handle weapons himself, while
Dax stumbled toward the shield controls.
    Damned peacetime design--everything in these
runabouts was an arm's length and a quarter from
everything else. It took four people to do four
things.
 No time off to be annoyed.
    O'Brien was doing a fair job of making sure any
bolt that hit them was a glancing blow; then he'd
have to compensate for the hit and try to keep
control over the skid.
    "Try to target their thruster ports!" he shouted
over the din of another glancing hit. The runabout
whined around them as it swung on an invisible
string and came up almost directly under the belly
of the Jem'Hadar.
 "Now, sir!" O'Brien called over the thunder of

another attack--this one was a near miss. Rio
Grande only caught the backwash.
    The Jem'Hadar ship couldn't aim directly under-
neath, apparently, at least not this design.
    Sisko crammed his hands against the phaser
mechanism and opened fire, scraping a line of
blistering energy across the underside of the enemy
ship.
    "One thruster down, Benjamin," Dax said with a
note of victory in her voice.
    Small victory, but they would take it. The
Jem'Hadar ship was crippled, but not down. And
they weren't giving up, either.
    Sisko could almost feel the fundamental revenge
boiling at him from the enemy ship. They didn't
have a reason to smash the runabout to bits, but
that's what they were trying to do, just as they had
destroyed the Starship Odyssey and the battleship
Defiant. The only reason they hadn't done the same
to the runabout was the tiny ship's size, speed, and
ability to turn on a dime.
    "How long can we keep this up?" he grumbled to
himself. "Try to stay under them while I recharge!"
    "Aye, sir." O'Brien had his back stiff, his teeth
gritted, his eyes fixed on the enemy ship, and his
hands full.
    Ah, good old-fashioned sizzling provocation--
Sisko sensed the gall of the Jem'Hadar and he liked
it. If he had to die out here, he wanted to die
making these animals feel the sting of a roused
Starfleet. Even if they never went home, they'd
never forget.

CHAPTER
      18

nm~D down the barrel of the Jem'Hadar
am almost fired her own.
g o all her experience in that first second,
! b:tck. More than she wanted to kill the
lar,, she wanted to see what was in there.
to be alive to do that.
hewas still alive. That meant they wanted
;e it too.
[e,TM one of the guards accommodated.
k, ~rocky tunnel... a score of Jem'Hadar
fiaI lking both sides. Fighting was out of the
t. t}do could escape, but he evidently
to ] :now the secret of this planet that had
nul:es ago been his most hallowed place,
by the presence of the Jem'Hadar and the
wn people had apparently told him.
y light shone at the far end of this tunnel.


 "I can't hold course!" O'Brien gasped.
    Dax waved at the smoke between them. "Benja-
min, we've lost our fuel pressure!"
    Sweat sheeting his face, Sisko digested that and
made a decision. "All right, everyone, this is it. We
can't fight anymore. All we can do is take that ship
down with us."
    "Understood," Dax said. She wasn't surprised at
all.
    O'Brien had tears in his eyes. His voice didn't
falter. "Aye-aye, sir."
    Sisko turned to Bashir. "Doctor, do you under-
stand too?"
    Bashir gathered whatever he had left and all but
took his own pulse. "Yes, sir," he said. "I under-
stand."
    "Good. I want you all to know the great honor
it's been for me to serve with you. Chief O'Brien,
come about, full speed. Collision course."

mIRA GI
weapon
    Pullin
she hek
Jem'Ha.
She had
    And s
her to s~
"Insk
A dai
soldiers
questiol
wanted
only mi
spoiled
lie his o
A ha2




Together, under the studious presence of
Jem'Hadar guns, the two walked toward the light.
They weren't going to be shot from behind. There
was some other purpose to this parade.
    Aware of Odo beside her, Kira wanted to stop
him, turn and talk to him, tell him that she was
with him no matter what, no matter how sour
turned this party cake of life he had discovered,
that he... that they would all...
  Nope, nothing was good enough.
    Something had gone haywire and she could see in
the set of his mouth and sad browless eyes that he
realized his paradise was withering.  His people had lied to him.
      The two were ushered around a corner and
bathed by the light, where they both stopped short.
  "Please, come in."
    Kira moved inside. The Jem'Hadar didn't even
make any move to take her phaser away, but only
herded her and Odo into an area with a high
ceiling.
    There she stopped so quickly she actually hurt
her own ankle. And she stared like a fool.
    The crew of the Defiant sat around a small
interrogation room--Sisko, Dax, O'Brien, Bashir,
T'Rul.
    "Commander?" Kira blurted in relief and panic
rowere they dead? In suspension? "Dax!"
"They can't hear you," the �orta man said.
Sisko and the others were hooked up in a circle,
some kind of devices attached to their heads,
monitored by Borath and two other Vorta from a

bank of computer consoles. The Vorta was smiling
passively. Kira almost kicked the smile in.
    All the others were sitting attached to this hive of
machinery, eyes closed, faces tense, jaws clenched.
They were experiencing something.
    Odo pushed forward. "What have you done to
them?"
    "Nothing harmful," Vorta said. "We're just con-
ducting a little experiment."
    Sounded damned casual. Kira approached her
trapped crewmates. She could yank these mecha-
nisms away from them, but what would that do to
them? Was this some form of life support?
    She looked at each of them to be sure each was
alive--they were. Relief struck so hard that she
almost fell down.
 "What kind of experiment?" she asked.
    "To see how they'd respond to an attempt by the
Dominion to gain a foothold in the Alpha Quad-
rant." The Vorta wasn't as smug as usual. "We were
curious to see how much they'd be willing to
sacrifice in order to avoid a war with us."
    Kira glanced at Odo, then back. "And... how
are they doing?"
     The Vorta sighed, then shrugged. "Unfortunate-
ly, they're proving to be as stubborn as I feared."
  "I'm glad to hear it," Odo freely derided.
    "Are you?" The Vorta's invidious arrogance
popped back on like a light. "Well, that is a
problem. But, thankfully, it's not one I have to
solve."
  "But I do."




    Another voice entered the small drumming
room, moving through the faint throb of electrical
power and computer switching.
    Kira stepped back just enough. Odo came for-
ward.
    The female shapeshifter strode toward them
from an unseen entranceway.
     Through unveiled shock Odo said, "I don't un-
derstand. You know about this?" "Yes."
 "But how could you allow it!"
    The female puzzled over him, or was tormenting
him with a pause--Kira couldn't tell which. They
were certainly more complex beings than they
wanted to let on ....
    Almost on reflex, without thinking, Kira stepped
forward herself and said, "She belongs to the
Dominion. Don't you?"
    The face so much like Odo's, for whatever rea-
son, turned to her. "Belong to it? Major, the
changelings are the Dominion."
    Irreconcilable now, Odo gazed at her and carried
logic a step further.
 "You're the Founders," he said.
    He seemed unaffected, but Kira knew he was
doing that on purpose, so the shapeshifter and the
others would see only his strength, and not his
magnificent pain.
    "Ironic, isn't it?" the female said. "We the
hunted now control the destinies of hundreds of
other races."
  "But why 'control' anyone?" Odo demanded.
  "Because what you can control can't hurt you. So

many years ago, we set ourselves the task of impos-
ing order on a chaotic universe."
    "Imposing order?" Kira blared. "Is that what
you call it? I call it murder!"
 "What you call it is no concern of ours."
    Odo shook his head. "But how do you justify the
destruction of the Odyssey? The deaths of all those
people?"
    "The solids have always been a threat to us.
That's all the justification we need."
    Furious in the face of raw, smug bigotry--she
recognized it because she had done a little of that
herself---Kira realized she was tensing to throw a
punch or a slap or a spit when Odo came between
her and the shapeshifter.
    "These solids have never harmed you," he said,
waving his long elegant hands toward Sisko, Dax,
and the others held in this bizarre shooting gallery.
"They travel the galaxy, looking to expand their
knowledge, the same as you once did."
    The female's body grew tense, her posture rigid.
That, perhaps, was indignation.
    "The solids are nothing like us," she said
corrosively.
    Depths of sadness came into Odo's expression-
less face and rolled beneath its surface. He sur-
veyed the being who had seemed to be exactly like
himself, the symbol and presence of his great
homecoming, his search of many lifetimes, and he
saw for the first time the stunted substance below
the form. Unlike their mythical physical evolution,
these people's society had advanced to a certain
point... and stopped dead.




    Form to a shapeshifter was nothing, Kira real-
ized as she watched the silent interplay. She
watched and applauded in silence as Odo once and
for all dropped the string he had held that had
drawn him to these people.
    "No, I suppose they're not," he said finally. "And
neither am I. I've devoted my life to the pursuit of
justice. But justice means nothing to you."
    "It's not justice you desire, Odo," the female
said. "It's order. The same as we do. And we can
help you satisfy that desire in ways the solids never
could." She raised her own hand and motioned to
Sisko, still seated and involved in his fabricated
dream. "This will all become clear to you once
you've taken your place in the great link."
    "No." He lifted his chin, an action decidedly
solid. "I admit this link of yours is enticing. But
you see, I've already formed a link... with these
people." Without waiting for a response or seeming
to care if he got one, Odo turned to the �orta. "I
want you to remove those devices from Command-
er Sisko and the others. Then bring them their
comm badges."
    The man stared at him, then looked for guidance
to the female shapeshifter.
    Kira watched with supreme pride as Odo stood
before the shapeshifter, before all their people, and
decided the truth. They had sent him out to bring
knowledge and wisdom back, and to tell them what
he saw and believed about the outside galaxy.
When he had come back, they had belittled him for
his experiences. If they chose not to accept the

word of their own messenger, then who were the
foolish?
    The Vorta said, "We can't allow them to leave."
He glanced at Kira. "They know too many of our
secrets."
    Kira licked her lips and prepared to explain that
a big gooey lake and a planet where plants grew
without a sun wasn't that much of a "secret" to
keep--their "powers" weren't that impressive in a
modern age. But Odo spoke again.
    "I can't allow you to keep them here. They're
leaving and so am I."
    Again he gestured, this time much more compas-
sionately, at his commander and crewmates, and
there was nobility in his proclamation.
    The shapeshifter searched his eyes. "It took you
many years to find your way back home. Are you
really willing to leave it again so soon?"
  "Unless you intend to stop me."
 His scrappy decree surprised her again.
    "No changeling has ever harmed another," she
said.
    "Until now," Odo bluntly told her. "Because
whatever you do to them you're going to have to do
to me."
 Kira held her breath.
    Odo and the shapeshifter examined each other,
conviction for conviction, for what seemed a long
time, long enough that Kira had to hold her arms
straight at her sides to avoid lashing out, ripping
those attachments off her commander and the
people she had minutes ago thought were dead. She




had expected to have to go back and report the
slaughter of these friends of hers, to report the
failure of the Defiant.
  Where was the ship? Destroyed?
    She clamped her mouth shut and didn't ask,
didn't interfere.
    The female shapeshifter watched Odo for a long
time. He wasn't backing down. He didn't intend to
stay "home"abecause it wasn't his home. He was
rejecting instinct. To be bound by form was to be
primitive and tribal. What bound people was their
common principle.
    Kira felt a twinge of guilt. How often had she
been Bajoran first and principled later?
    Then, as simply as the shapeshifters did every-
thing else, the female turned to the Vorta man and
said, "They're free to go."
 Kira drew a breath to cheer her victory.
    But the Vorta was staring at the shapeshifter, not
doing as she had been told.
    The shapeshifter turned cold and said, "Do you
question my decision?"
    After a dangerous few seconds, the man backed
down. "The Vorta serve the Founders in all things."
    He and the two other Vorta began removing
those devices from their prisoners. They did so
with studious deliberation, no longer looking up or
questioning even in the slightest manner.
 "Thank you," Odo said to the shapeshifter.
     "Next time," she told him, "I promise you we
will not be so generous." "Constable?"
 Kira and Odo turned at the same time. Moving

in his chair, Commander Sisko was blinking and
forcing himself to come out of the haze imposed by
these machines. Beside him, O'Brien was looking
around too, and Dax and T'Rul--the hypnosis was
falling away.
    What had they been forced to experience? Kira
moved forward so they could see her too and get
the idea that they shouldn't try to fight, that the
situation was still complicated.
    "What happened to the Rio Grande?" O'Brien
asked.
    "The last thing I remember is collapsing the
wormhole," Dax said, by way of an answer.
    Kira gaped at her. Collapsing the wormhole!
Then they were trapped herea
    "The last thing I remember was being shot by
some Jem'Hadar soldier," T'Rul muttered, glaring
suspiciously at the two of those kind who stood in
the background. Luckily she had the sense to
restrain herselfi
    Sitting in a dim rocky room, in a gaggle of
mechanical equipment, with a half-dozen life-
forms standing around, was enough to give anyone
pause.
    Kira remained tense. Sisko wasn't ready to take
over authority yet. He was trying to stand up, still
foggy, fighting to understand what was happening
as the Vorta went to each of them and handed them
their comm badges.
    "I'm sure it all seemed very real," she said
carefully, waiting to be contradicted, "but the truth
is you've been held in this room ever since the
Jem'Hadar brought you here from the Defiant."




 Nobody told her she was wrong.
    "Eris?" Blinking at the Vorta, Sisko supported
himself first on the arm of his chair and then on
Kira as she reached out to him. "What the hell is
going on here?"
    "Your ship is in orbit," Eris said. "You may
transport to it whenever you're ready."
    Kira could see that the answer wasn't enough for
him. It wasn't really an answer. It was a twisted
suggestion with a gauze of warning over it.
    She watched Sisko. Was he awake enough to pick
that up?
    "Return to the Defiant, Commander," Odo
chanced. "I'11 be along shortly."
    "Do as he says, sir," Kira abridged, hoping Sisko
wouldn't notice that they were giving him orders
without explanations. Most commanders didn't
stand for that--not for long, anyway. "I'11 stay
down here with him and see that he gets back to the
ship."
    Sisko looked at her, then at Odo again, then
scoped the motley gaggle around them.
 He started to speak, but Bashir beat him to it.
    "It's another shapeshifter!" the doctor burst,
staring at the female.
    Sisko looked at the female, clearly seeing that
things were drastically changed, and he was obvi-
ously holding back questions and orders, waiting to
understand.
    "Commander," Odo said firmly, "you must
leave now. I promise you I'll explain everything
later."

            I HI: ~I-ARI. H

    With a gush of relief Kira noted Sisko motioning
Dax, O'Brien, and T'Rul into a transporter pattern.
The ship's automatic setting would do what he said
now, using his comm badge as a fix. She stepped
away, out of the pattern.
    "I'll look forward to it, Constable," Sisko said,
connecting significantly with Kira also before he
straightened his shoulders and touched his comm
badge. "Sisko to Defiant. Five to beam up."

"Commander, what on God's green growing
earth was all that!"
    O'Brien spun off his transporter pad and almost
fell off the platform trying to get around in front.
    Ben Sisko held his hands out to his crew to stay
calm and take a deep breath.
    "Dax, damage report," he ordered. "O'Brien,
status of the wormhole."
    "Checking, sir!" O'Brien ran for the sensor ac-
cess panel.
    Bashir was charmingly befuddled. "Was it all a
dream? We didn't really blow up the wormhole?"
    "All right, everyone calm down." Sisko looked
around at the intact bulkheads of the tough little
Starship Defiant. "Ship's still here... I thought
Borath was lying. Apparently we never made it
back to Alpha Quadrant at all. That means we
didn't blow up the wormhole."
    "Oh, come on!" O'Brien wailed. "We were there!
I launched the photons myself...." His panel
whistled at him and he looked down, then shook
his head and silently damned what he saw for some




kind of trick. "Wormhole is intact, sir--twirling
just as happy as anything. It's just as if we
never..." His effort petered away as he began to
doubt his own memory.
    "Damage report," Dax said, "shows the same
level of damage just before we abandoned ship, but
there have been some automatic system repairs and
some work done on the ship to make it
spaceworthy. We're holding stable orbit. Warp en-
gines have been jury-rigged." She looked up. "Efts
and her people, possibly?"
    "Or our people," Sisko guessed. "Kira and Odo
weren't hooked up to all that machinery down
there, were they? Did anyone see something I
didn't?"
    "I don't think they were," Dax agreed. "Eris
didn't have to hand them their corem badges--"
    "And they weren't disoriented, sir," Bashir
added. "At least not at the same time we were."
    Sisko nodded. "And they seemed to know what
was going on down there."
    He could see that Dax was more excited than she
was letting on to the others as she said, "That
means they escaped from Defiant before we were
captured, and something different happened to
them than what happened to us."
    "What is this about blowing up the wormhole?"
T'Rul demanded. She rounded on Sisko. "You
would never dare such a thing!"
    Sisko ignored her and turned to O'Brien and
pointed at him. "The runabout Rio Grande, cor-
rect?"

  O'Brien peered at him, nervous. "Yes, sir..."
  "Federation pulling out of Bajor?"
  "Yes..."
  "Admiral Necheyev--and I was under arrest?"
  "Oh, yes, sir .... "
    He swung around to Dax. "Handing guardian-
ship of Bajor over to the Founders?"
    Dax nodded slowly. "The Founders, who were
supposedly Eris and the other Vorta."
    "Yes!" Sisko said. "How do you suppose we all
had the very same dream?"
    "It never happened?" Bashir swelled. He clapped
a hand to his chest, sank back, and started silently
ticking off all the other things that probably didn't
happen. He peered at O'Brien, scouring for signs of
a beating.
    The engineer frowned at him and leaned away,
but didn't say anything.
    "So it was all a dream," Dax concluded. "All for
nothing."
    "It must be the next step above holodeck tech-
nology," O'Brien said. "Except you don't have to
create form or sensation. You just feed the experi-
ence directly into the brain."
    "It never happened?" Bashir followed. "But
why? What's the good of that?"
    T'Rul spun in place, anger limning her harsh
features. "There is no 'good,' engineer. We were
duped. Pawns!"
 O'Brien squinted at her. "Oh, shut up, woman."
    She raised her arm to backhand him, but Sisko
caught it in midair and shoved her away.




    "As you were," he snapped. "Just a minute. Let
me think about this .... "
    Touching the transporter mechanism, the bulk-
heads, the consoles to assure himself the ship was
indeed here with him, Sisko moved away from
them, forcing his groggy mind to think.
    "Not a dream," he said. "A test. And not for
nothing. The moment you leave a dream, it be-
comes a shadow of reality. But I remember all of
this. All our senses were there. They fed us the
situation, and we reacted. We even interacted and
said things to each other, didn't we?"
    He spun around, and each of his people con-
firmed with a nod, and Bashir punctuated, "Oh,
yes."
    "We had the same dream. And those were all
life-forms from the Gamma Quadrant," Sisko went
on. "I'm assuming the shapeshifter is from here
roomwe'll get that out of Odo."
  "You bet we will," O'Brien tossed in.
    "How many other shapeshifters do you think
there were?" Bashir asked.
    "It was Odo's situation," Sisko said. "You saw
Kira's expression. They knew what was going on
and they didn't want us to bust the tightrope they
were walking."
    Dax came toward them from the console that
still chirped for attention. "Think about the situa-
tion we were forced to experience. Why would--"
    Bashir snapped his fingers. "They were trying to
find out what we would do if the Federation could
be convinced to abandon the wormhole!"

    He held his breath suddenly and stared back and
forth from Sisko to O'Brien, wondering if they'd
done the right thing.
    "And abandon Bajor, too," O'Brien put in.
"Don't forget that."
    "I'm not forgetting, Chief," Sisko said. "They
were using us."
    Adding up the fragments and mortaring the gaps,
he prowled the deck, shaping the air before him
with his hands as he paced.
    "We were linked together, doing what we really
would've done if those things had happened. It was
one hundred percent as if we'd experienced it--the
feelings, the smells--it was no dream. They
wanted us to back down when faced with the
prospect of abandoning this sector. To do it and
just wilt away." He turned and pointed at each of
them just as he had a few moments earlier, but with
a new meaning this time. "But we didn't. We
turned our backs on everything we know and the
oaths we swore in order to do what was right. We
proved that at least some factions in the Federation
would refuse to buckle--possibly the whole Feder-
ation. After all, they were feeding us whatever
Necheyev and Starfleet Command were doing. I say
it did happen, in all but physical form." He balled a
fist and pounded the transporter column. "And I'll
bet they understand that."
    He paused, and thought about his original mis-
sion into this quadrant--how he'd wanted to
search for the Founders and instead had found his
own purpose of soul. He'd been willing to give his




life for this purpose, so billions of others could live
in safety, and so his son could say, "Yes, my father
did that."
    Until now, Ben Sisko hadn't been sure he had
that in him.
    He swung around easily and felt his face crack
into a devilish grin.
    "They don't even realize it," he said, "but the
Dominion has done us a favor. They didn't get
what they wanted, but we got a chance to fight, and
a second chance. We may well have bought time for
the Federation by showing these people that we're
not going to shy away."
    "Then... you'd do it again," Bashir prodded.
Not exactly a question. Not exactly.
    At that Sisko stopped his pacing. He turned to
the doctor and the others of his crew, and to the
Romulan who had come to work a machine and
ended up witnessing a revolution.
 "You bet I would," he said.

CHAPTER
      19

STILL ACHING FROM HER WOUNDS, favoring one arm
and breathing in shallow puffs, Kira stayed at a
respectful distance from the silver lake's edge.
    At the grassy edge, Odo stood with the female
shapeshifter.
    When they'd first come to this planet, Kira
remembered noticing how much like Odo these
shapeshifters appeared.
    Now they looked nothing like him to her. Noth-
ing at all.
    "I hope one day you'll return to us, Odo," the
female was saying, "and take your rightful place
within the Dominion."
    Odo wasn't looking at the lake. He wasn't moved
by it anymore. "I don't think that's possible."
  The female surveyed him thoughtfully. "Your




link to the solids won't last. You'll always be an
outsider."
    "Being an outsider isn't so bad," he said. "It
gives me a unique perspective. It's a pity you've
forgotten that."
    "Then perhaps one day I'll come and visit you.
The Alpha Quadrant seems racked with chaos. It
could use some order."
    "Imposing your brand of order on the Alpha
Quadrant may be more difficult than you imagine,"
Odo said, and there was a clear bolt of pride in his
voice.
    Kira saw the pride, and she warmed to it. These
people weren't Odo's people. He had figured that
out, and now she knew it too. Dax had talked about
blowing up the wormhole. That machine had been
some kind of simulator, drawing Commander
Sisko and the others into a scenario that demanded
the ultimate actions upon their creeds. She didn't
have the details yet, but these weren't the kind of
people to just talk about blowing up the wormhole
if they thought it was the right thing to do.
    They had acted it out. They thought they had
done it. And there was only one reason for them to
do something like that.
    The commander had come through on more than
his oath to Starfleet and the Federation. He had
acted on his promise to her and the struggling
people of Bajor that they wouldn't be shunted to
the back burner of Benjamin Sisko's command.
    Kira wanted to hear the details, but in a way she
didn't need to. Yet she knew it wasn't true that all
the answers a person was searching for weren't

always in your own backyard. Sometimes they were
seventy thousand light-years away.
    "We're willing to wait until the time is right," the
female was saying to Odo.
    Odo gazed at her, unwavering. "And when will
that be?"
    But the female only smiled her beguiling smile.
"I will miss you, Odo. But you will miss us even
more."
    Without giving him a chance to respond, she
swirled into a starlight-jeweled pillar, elongated,
and plunged back into the lake with the others of
her kind.
    On the lakeshore, Odo stood gazing out over the
puddle of his ancestry.
    Kira couldn't read the set of his shoulders as she
came up behind him. Was he having doubts?
    "Odo?" she began slowly, without really know-
ing what else she could say.
    But he turned to her, and there was no doubt, no
regret in his face. He hadn't taken the bait, the
tease. His search was over.  "I'm ready, Major."
    Kira looked for hesitation in his eyes, but there
was none. She reached out and took his hand,
burying the surprise in his face with a touching
squeeze.
  She touched her corem badge.
  "Kira to Defiant. Two to beam up."

    Sisko held back a grin of relief when he heard
that. Two to beam up, not one. Odo was coming
with them.




    The light of satisfaction nearly blinded him. He
had come into this quadrant to head off a war by
showing his willingness to fight if he had to. And
that's exactly what had happened. And he'd made
contact. That was something too.
    Two columns of energy appeared on the bridgem
good. Dax was beaming them directly to their
stations. That way, the ship could veer out of orbit
immediately. He knew they'd better scat before
something turned sour again or the "Founders"
changed their little liquid minds.
    That same relief washed over everyone as the
columns materialized into Kira and Odo. Sisko saw
in his crewmates' faces the overwhelming shock
and pure luck that they were all together again.
    But there was more. They were a fraction more
settled with each other than before. They knew the
sacrifice they had been willing to make--and in
fact had made.
    T'Rul made an effort to look smug as Kira smiled
and took her station and Odo came to join Sisko on
the command deck. Yes, the Romulans too would
get a message that wouldn't break out any celebra-
tion bottles. They ran on the supposition that the
Federation would weaken in time.
    This wasn't the time. The Federation had proven
up to the task, and the cloak had been proven
secondary to what happened. T'Rul was having a
bad day.
    "Take us home, Lieutenant," Sisko said to Dax,
and maybe he pressed an inflection on the word
home.

"Yes, sir," she said, answering the inflection as
much as the order.
    Sisko looked to his side, to Odo, who stood
gazing at the rogue planet, the dark dot on the night
sky of a foreign quadrant.
    "Constable," Sisko began slowly, "we have a lot
to talk about."
    Odo continued looking at that planet, and even
after the ship turned away and warped back toward
the wormhole, toward home, he continued to gaze
in that same manner--not as though he'd lost
something, but as though he'd found it.
    "You're right, Commander," he sanctioned. "We
do."




EPILOGUE

"APPROACHING THE WORMHOLE, Commander. It's
almost over."
    Dax's milky announcement lathered the bridge
with hope, meant as it was for all of them and not
just Sisko.
    Calm, cautious victory undergirded the DeJiant's
bridge. They had gone on a wild mission into the
darkness, carrying only that one tiny match, and
they were returning to tell of it.
    Not a story of resounding success, but of rudi-
mentary contact and of a chance to go forward. A
chance.
    That was all any pioneer hoped for as any
frontier opened.
    Dax had been right. Facts of frontiers had always
read like this. Not of giant, heroic leaps, but of a
thousand small and probing steps by the multitude
of the daring.




  "Sir?"
    Sisko blinked out of his affair with the forward
screen.
      Beside him, Kira stood with one foot casually up
on the command-chair pedestal.  "Major? A problem?"
  "Oh, no, sir, no problem at all."
  "Good. I didn't want a problem."
    "No, sir, no," she said. "Everything's absolutely
fine."
  "Good."
    He tried to let her off the hook, to sit in the
command chair in companionable musing, but
Kira wanted to say something and she wouldn't go
away.
    After a few moments of polite torture, Sisko said,
"Say it, Major."
  Smiles broke out and Kira rolled her eyes at him.
    "Sir," she attempted again, "I just want to say
... I'd like to say thank you."
    "Oh?" He kept his voice low. "You're welcome,
but why was that so difficult?"
    She pushed herself to arm's length and looked at
the floor long enough to gather herself.
    "It's not so difficult to say. It's difficult to get it all
into two words." Now she looked up at him. The
smile had gone, and there was a deep credence in
her bright, troubled eyes. "I think Bajor is going to
feel a little less alone in the galaxy after this, thanks
to you."
    Sisko offered her a humble nod. "For a while I
thought we'd lost Bajor to the Jem'Hadar. I didn't
like it, Major. From now on I'm going to step on

more toes, pull more strings, and ring more bells to
get resources dedicated to this corner of space. If
the Federation thinks I've complained too much up
until now, they're going to wish the Jem'Hadar had
kept me."
    Despite the undertones, he managed to get a
flash of cheer out of her, and out of himself. They
were both heartened by the prospect of stepping on
bureaucratic toes now that they had the leverage of
their brashness to do so. They had put their own
lives on the line, they had done that which no one
said could, should, be done, and nobody had any
l-told-you-so's to hold over their heads.
    Kira eyed him cannily. "Won't be long before
you're as stubborn and bickering as the rest of us
Bajorans, will it?"
    Wondering if she'd be offended if he laughed,
Sisko held his elbows against his ribs and paused.
    But she was scoping him in that Peter Pan way
she had, and she was smiling.
 "We work pretty hard on that image," she said.
 So they laughed together.
 "I'll practice, Major."