The Long Night (11 page)

Dax smiled. That soft smile always made her a vision of loveliness. "I'm afraid so."

He shook his head slightly, then glanced at the opaque lid of the coldsleep chamber. The man inside belonged to a race Julian had never seen before. On the trip, he had brushed up on Jibetian physiology, but his material was on current Jibetian anatomy, not anatomy from eight hundred years before. He didn't remember much about the shallow-ridged cheekbones, although he did remember reading about the redundant internal organs that had been common among the royal family. Some scholars claimed those organs were responsible for the family's longevity.

"Dr. Bashir," Dax said, "You'll have to explain each procedure. This tricorder isn't set up for in-depth recording."

"I'm not going to talk my way through each stage," Bashir said. "It would take too much time."

"But you'll at least have to give us an overview."

He glanced at her, biting back his annoyed comment for the sake of posterity. She was positioned well behind the tricorder, and so when she shrugged, she added a bit of mischeviousness to her movements.

She was amazingly joyful for a woman trapped on a crashed space ship, eight hundred years old.

Bashir didn't want to think about that. If he were Dax, he would be exploring the ship. She didn't know the great luck she had, being able to see all these new places. He beamed down for crisis after crisis, rarely got a chance to explore his surroundings, and usually had to concentrate on some new type of medical emergency.

Like this one.

Something bothered him about this coldsleep chamber. But the technology was just unfamiliar enough to his Federation-trained eyes that he couldn't quite pinpoint the problem right away.

He flicked on his medical tricorder, then nodded toward Dax. "I am going to do a basic medical scan of the man inside this chamber. I need to make an overall assessment of his condition."

O'Brien had almost disappeared on the side of the chamber. He seemed to be working on something as well, probably examining the technology to see why it was still working. Bashir couldn't concentrate on that, nor could he think about the reasons behind Dax's intensity or the commander's unusual order to record their proceedings.

Instead, he focused on the readings from his medical tricorder. He hit a button that would record the readings for later use. If the commander could be that cautious, so could Bashir. The findings were just as he suspected, but for the sake of the unseen people who would review this case, he reached into his bag and pulled out a different tricorder, running the scan all over again.

Then he shook his head. "This man has massive cell damage from eight hundred years of cold sleep. I doubt anyone will ever be able to revive him."

Dax's expression changed from mischievous to one of pure horror. O'Brien popped his head up from the side of the chamber. "You can't make that kind of diagnosis from two tricorder scans, Julian," Dax said.

"I'm afraid I can, Lieutenant," he said, keeping everything formal. "Cells are cells, whether they belong to Jibetians or Trills. Everything in the universe does run along the same plan. Cells have a particular life span. A coldsleep chamber slows that span, but it does little else to lengthen it. Had this man slept the requisite number of years planned for the mission, he would have awakened aged only a few months. I dare say he's been here much longer than they ever planned for. His cells have the equivalent of freezer burn."

"Doctor," O'Brien said, "that's not any patient. That's the Supreme Ruler of eighty worlds."

Bashir started. They could have warned him about this before he came down. "Nonetheless," he said, "my analysis stands. It will take nothing short of a miracle to revive this man."

"Well," Dax said, her voice jaunty even though her expression was haunted, "time to add miracles to your repertoire, Doctor."

"This would be much simpler if we could beam this chamber onto the Defiant and take the whole thing back to the station," Bashir said. "If we did that, I might have a chance at saving this man. As it is, you're expecting me to do delicate work with thermometers and comm badges."

"With what?" Dax asked, stunned.

"It's just an expression," Bashir said. He rummaged in his bag, hoping he had brought everything he needed.

"I'm sorry, Julian," O'Brien said, "but I've been examining this chamber, and even if we wanted to beam it to the Defiant, we couldn't. This platform only carries half of the systems that are keeping this man alive. The rest are imbedded in the floors and walls of the room, and this room would take up more space in the Defiant than we have available. Even if we had the opportunity to beam it aboard, we simply couldn't. You'll have to work with the equipment you brought along."

Despite the cold, Bashir felt nervous sweat form on his back. He felt like he had when he took the final test for his medical license, the day after he had finished his finals at the Academy. He wanted to practice frontier medicine. It didn't get any more frontier than this.

"Then, Chief, please get the coldsleep equipment I brought with me. I'll need your help rigging this up." Bashir glanced at Dax's tricorder. "We may have already had our miracle," he said, addressing his remarks to the tiny piece of equipment in her hand. "No coldsleep system was ever designed for this many centuries. The fact that it even works is astounding."

"I'll say." O'Brien's voice echoed from below the platform.

Bashir removed three devices he hadn't used in a long, long time. Time to forget the impossibility, forget the expectations, forget the importance of his patient. It was time to get to work.

"Well, your highness," Bashir said softly, turning back to the coldsleep chamber. "Let's see what I can do to save your life. All eight hundred years of it."

THE BAR WAS UGLY when it was empty. Quark could see the ripped felt on the Dabo table, the jagged edges where the chair legs had been repaired, the missing paint on the walls. Rom was on his hands, scrubbing the floor. It hadn't been cleaned since the riot. When Dax returned, Quark would charge her for every single drink.

And then some.

The red alert lights flashed in the empty hall. The force field shimmered across the door. That hadn't been necessary. Quark would have stayed in the bar if someone asked him. But no one asked him. They had imprisoned him. With Rom. And no customers. They'd even let the Dabo girl go.

"Where do you suppose Nog is?" Rom asked.

"If I knew, I'd bring him here and have him scrub the bar with an ear pick. We needed that boy this afternoon. I can't believe you allow him to come and go as he pleases."

"He's almost an adult," Rom said. "He's going to go to the Academy."

"Which is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Where's the profit in that, Rom? His exposure to humans has taught him the wrong values, despite everything I've done for him."

"I'm proud of Nog," Rom said. He had his back to Quark, his arm moving frantically as he worked at getting spilled sweet nectar off the floor.

"You would be. You haven't a profit-making bone in your body. If you did, this bar would do better."

"This bar is yours, Brother. I merely help you."

Quark sighed and sat on a barstool. He put his chin in his hand. "It's not fair that they've trapped us in here. Odo only did it because Commander Sisko is gone. It has nothing to do with the red alert. It's just Odo. And I won't stand for it."

Rom sat on his haunches. He didn't say anything, but Quark recognized the warning expression on Rom's face.

"What? I figure they can use my services. The red alert probably has something to do with the discovery, right? So they'll need my knowledge. They just don't realize it yet."

"Brother-"

"And they'll be grateful. Very grateful."

"Brother-"

"Yeah," he muttered. "Grateful." He reached across the bar and tapped the comm switch.

"Odo, listen. You can't imprison us in here. We have valuable knowledge that could-" He stopped and frowned. His voice sounded wrong. "Odo?" He flicked the switch again. "Major?" Again. "Odo?" And again. "Anybody?"

Quark stood and examined the panel behind the bar.

"I was trying to tell you, Brother," Rom said. "They isolated us when they turned on the force field."

"They can't do that. What if we were in trouble? What if they needed our help?"

"I thought you said they did need our help." Rom was standing now, his scrub brush on the floor near his feet. A large sudsy puddle pooled beneath a table and began to trickle toward the stairs.

Quark pounded the intercom one more time and got no response. He slapped his hand on the bar.

"That does it." Quark went around behind the bar and pulled open a drawer. "I let more wealth than any Ferengi's ever seen slip through my fingers, and as a reward I get locked up here with you. I don't care what Commander Sisko threatened. Nothing is worse than this."

"Brother, you gave your word," Rom said.

"A Ferengi's word is worth nothing without profit," Quark said. "If I get the wealth off that ship, I will be more powerful than the Grand Nagus. I won't need this silly little bar and I won't have to listen to Commander Benjamin Sisko."

Quark riffled through the drawer and finally pulled out a pistol-shaped object covered with Ferengi designs. He slid it across the bar.

"Take that," Quark said. "We're getting out of here."

The puddle had pooled around Rom's boots, but he didn't move. "I don't believe in violence, brother."

"I'm not saying you should," Quark snapped. "Who are you going to shoot anyway? Me?"

"I can't help you," Rom said. "It's not right." Quark glanced at the tool on the bar. "It's a cutting torch, you idiot. Now pick it up and come with me. I'm going after that treasure ship."

"If I help you, will I get a share of the profits?"

"You'll get the bar," Quark said. "Now take the torch."

Rom crossed his arms. His hands were red and puckered from the strength of the soap. "I don't want the bar. I want a share of the profits."

"For what?" Quark asked. "You don't know how to invest. You'd just waste the money on frivolous things."

"I want it to pay for Rom's schooling."

Quark gaped at him. The entire world had turned around. Schooling? The next thing Rom would tell him was that he had found a good Ferengi woman and was going to dress her and give her a home on DS9.

"See?" Quark said. "I told you that you'd spend it on something frivolous. You can have the bar. It's worth a little bit of money. And I won't be needing it any more."

"If you give me the bar," Rom said, "I'll sell it."

"I won't care what you do with it, dimwit," Quark said. "I'll be the richest man in the galaxy."

He grabbed the cutting torch himself and tossed it at Rom. Rom caught it with both hands. Quark went to the wall near the Dabo tables, then glanced at Rom to make certain he was following. Rom was. He was leaving boot-sized footprints on the sticky floor. Quark winced and then remembered that it wouldn't matter once he escaped. Nothing in the bar would matter.

When Rom reached his side, Quark pointed to a plain metal bulkhead. "Cut a small hole in there, chest high, but big enough for us to crawl through."

"We can't tunnel our way to the docks," Rom said. "It'll take weeks."

"We don't have to tunnel, dear Brother," Quark said. "The Cardassians already did that for us. There's a series of spy tunnels behind this wall that extend all the way through the Promenade, into the main guest quarters, and around Ops. The first rule of Cardassian life. Trust no one. They used to spy on their own through that grate up there." He pointed up at what looked to be a return air duct.

"How did you find out about it?" Rom asked.

Quark laughed. "I've always said knowledge equals profits, Rom. You'd do well to remember that. And it's my business to know everything about this bar."

Rom still held back, clutching the cutting tool. "What if we see Cardassians in there?"

"We won't, you idiot. Those tunnels have been deserted since the Cardassians left. And it's not like the Federation to use them, even if they did discover them." Quark pointed to the wall. "Now cut. And don't make the hole too big. I want to cover it up with a chair when this is all done."

The atmosphere on the bridge of the Defiant was tense. Sisko hadn't worked with a crew this young since he trained cadets years before. He had forgotten the terror new crew members felt when doing new tasks and facing new challenges.

He rarely felt terror any more.

He was too experienced for it and had too much control. Now he knew that new challenges were inevitable, and mistakes were part of learning. A good commander faced the challenges and moved beyond the mistakes.

There had already been more challenges than he wanted on this mission and not quite the normal number of mistakes with a rookie crew. That knowledge made him nervous. Something would change, and when it did, he was afraid it wouldn't be in his favor.

"We're at full stop," Ensign Kathé said. She had maneuvered the Defiant halfway between the Nibix and Deep Space Nine. They were under cloak, monitoring the Cardassians bearing down on the station. So far the Cardassians had assumed the Defiant had returned to the station. Sisko hoped they would continue to believe that.

"I want the entire bridge crew to be scanning for anything unusual out there," Sisko said. Had it been his normal staff, he wouldn't have told them. But he had to reaffirm everything here for his own peace of mind.

He did feel a little out of control on this one. Kira and Odo were responsible for the station now, for everyone on it, including Jake.

Dax, O'Brien, and Bashir were responsible for the Nibix, for the Supreme Ruler, and for future relations with the Jibetians.

And Sisko, the man nominally in control, was the one stuck in space, a glorified bodyguard, waiting.

"Sir," Ensign Dodds said, "two starships are approaching Deep Space Nine at full warp."

"Federation ships?" Sisko asked, his mouth dry.