The Long Night (12 page)

"Aye, sir," she said.

"Sir, they're hailing the station," Ensign Coleman said. "The Starship Madison will arrive in about a half an hour, followed by the Starship Idaho an hour later. They expect to rendezvous with the Starship Bosewell in a few hours."

Sisko let out the breath he had been holding. The ships arrived too soon for Kira to have contacted them. The Federation had sent them. But he didn't know why.

"Any communications as to their mission?" Sisko asked.

Ensign Coleman shook his head. "No, sir. But Major Kira just informed them that the station was on red alert."

So she had seen the Cardassians. Good. Sisko felt his shoulders relax. He could leave this mess to her for the moment.

"Commander," Ensign Dodds said, "there's something else here, something odd."

"What is it, Ensign?"

"A ten-ship fleet of Jibetian warships has just entered the space near the station. They'll arrive within the hour."

After the Madison was at the station. Captain Higginbotham had been on Utopia Planetia with Sisko. He was a good man, a savvy judge of character with excellent diplomatic skills. He would balance Kira well until Sisko arrived.

Sisko stood and paced the bridge. He had several options himself. He could return to the station and get in the middle of the diplomatic tangle; he could stay here, guarding the Nibix; or he could return to the asteroid to help the crew below.

Kira would know the situation soon enough. Deep Space Nine would be a powder keg, with Cardassians, Jibetians, and three starship captains. Too many cooks, as his mother used to say. Sisko would only be one voice among many. Kira knew how to deal with the Cardassians, and Higginbotham would have control over the situation since he was the highestranking officer to arrive on the scene.

They didn't need Sisko.

He swallowed, beating down nerves. Normally he would head right back to the station to protect it, the wormhole, and Jake. But this wasn't a normal situation.

Because if Bashir, Dax, or O'Brien made any mistakes on the Nibix, the entire Federation would have to answer for them.

"Ensign Kathé," Sisko said. "Take us back to our former coordinates over the Nibix asteroid. We will remain cloaked. As such, our shields will remain down, and we will not send or receive communications."

"But, sir," Ensign Coleman said, "the station seems to be in trouble. Won't Major Kira need to reach us?"

"There's a leak on Deep Space Nine," Sisko said, not caring that Coleman breached protocol. "The last thing we need is for those two fleets of warships to converge over the asteroid. Any communication with the Defiant will show the Jibetians and the Cardassians where the Nibix is. Major Kira is a capable officer who has handled far worse situations. She will be fine."

"Aye, sir," Coleman said, but his tone remained unconvinced. All five ensigns were experienced enough to know that two different fleets and three starships hovering over a space station was a diplomatic nightmare at best, a holocaust at worst.

But nothing would happen until Sisko returned with news of the Nibix.

He hoped.

KIRA PACED THROUGH OPS. She walked from the turbolift across the front, up the stairs, around Sisko's office, and back down again, all the time pretending to monitor the Ops crew. Instead, she was thinking. The Cardassians wouldn't dare touch the station. They had signed a treaty with the Federation. They had to be here as a warning.

Because of the Nibix?

They hadn't contacted her to say, and that bothered her more than anything. Tappan was monitoring them. Beth Jones now manned the science station in place of Dax. Three other ensigns were working the boards. Odo was checking the docks, making certain all the ships were secure. He would arrive shortly, and then she would have someone to talk to. Someone to confide in. Someone who understood.

Odo knew what it was like to face down Cardassian warships. Odo knew how difficult it was for her to follow Starfleet protocol when all her instincts urged guerrilla attack. Sometimes she thought she was happier in her rebel days, fighting for her people in the most creative way she could.

Not defending some wrecked ship that might hold the head of a religion she didn't understand.

And certainly not facing down Cardassians to do so.

"Major," Ensign Moesta said. She was monitoring communications. Deep shadows marred her eyes. She had been asleep when the red alert sounded, and Kira had sent for her, knowing that Ensign Moesta was one of the most invaluable members of Ops. "There's an incoming message from the Starship Madison."

The Madison was one of three ships that Admiral Wolfe had sent to assist her. The Idaho and the Bosewell would also come to the station soon. She had been relieved to hear which ships were coming. She had met both Captains Higginbotham and Kiser before, a number of years back.

"Put it on screen," Kira said. She stopped in front of the closed door to Sisko's office, spread her legs slightly, put her shoulders back, and raised her chin. "Captain Higginbotham, this is Major Kira Nerys, first officer of the Federation Space Station Deep Space Nine. I understand you'll be joining us soon."

"And I wish it were a pleasure trip, Major." Captain Higginbotham's lean face appeared on the screen. Some gray had crept into his beard since she last saw him.

"So do I, Captain," Kira said.

"We're reading some unusual activity in your sector," Higginbotham said.

"We've dealt with Cardassians before, Captain," Kira said.

His smile was faint. He had heard her war stories all those years ago. "Indeed you have, Major, but that's not what disturbs me. It's the fleet of Jibetian warships that will join them in a few hours that has me the most concerned."

A chill ran down Kira's spine. The Madison's long-range sensors were more sophisticated than hers. She had known the Jibetians were going to come, but she hadn't realized they would arrive so soon. This drama would play out long before Sisko ever returned.

She gripped her fists behind her back. If she survived this, she'd give him a piece of her mind for going treasure hunting while she had to deal with the biggest diplomatic crisis of her career.

"I spoke with the Jibetians earlier," Kira said, deliberately keeping her voice calm. "They had said nothing about coming to the station."

"Jibetian politicians are rarely direct, Major," Higginbotham said. "I've dealt with them before. Their presence does not surprise me."

"The fact that they're bringing a fleet of ships has me rather concerned, Captain," Kira said. "The Cardassians are quick-tempered. Having two sets of warships near Deep Space Nine could create an incident if one lowly officer is trigger-happy."

"Certainly no one on your staff or mine fits that description, Major," Higginbotham said, clearly reading her concern about both groups, even though she had been less than honest about the cause. He knew, as she did, that the Jibetians and Cardassians were both after the Nibix and had no interest in the station at all. But in case one or both groups were monitoring, she had to play along with this scenario. "I estimate our arrival to be in twenty-two minutes. We will not dock, but instead will patrol the space near the station. The Idaho and Bosewell will do the same."

That solved one of her problems. She could continue the station lockdown. "We are on red alert here, Captain," she said. "And we are prepared to take any steps necessary to protect the station."

"A prudent move," he said, steepling his long, thin fingers, "despite the fact that the Jibetians are allies and the Cardassians have signed a peace treaty with us."

If they were monitoring, they would hear his warning.

"Sometimes contracts don't mean much to the Cardassians," Kira said, allowing some bitterness into her voice.

"Let's hope it means more to them than you believe it will," Higginbotham said. "I suspect the Cardassians know, as we do, that there is little worth risking a fragile peace over."

"Ever the optimist, Captain." Kira said with a smile.

"I prefer to think of myself as a realist, Major. We'll see you shortly." His image winked off the screen.

Kira relaxed her stance. She wasn't as tense as she had been a moment before. She had forgotten how much she liked Captain Higginbotham. At the dinner he had attended on DS9 several years ago, he had regaled them all with stories about Sisko when the two of them served on Utopia Planetia years before. At that time, she had only known Sisko a few months and couldn't imagine the mischievous man that Higginbotham described. Now sometimes she saw that imp peeking out of Sisko's eyes, and she always knew she was going to enjoy the joke.

Right now she missed him. He was much better at subtlety than she was. She felt as if she had been about as subtle as a phaser when talking with Captain Higginbotham. Any Cardassians or Jibetians listening in would have known most of that interchange was for them.

Kira took a deep breath. "Ensign Moesta, put a schematic on the big screen. I want to see the location of all the ships heading toward the station at this moment."

"Yes, sir," the ensign said. Within a moment the screen showed a targeting diagram of the station and nearby space. The station was a white dot in the center. The starships were small gold dots heading toward it, two close, with a third lagging behind. The five Cardassian ships appeared in red, and the ten Jibetian ships appeared in blue. The Madison would definitely arrive first, followed shortly by the Idaho. Then the Cardassians would appear. The Jibetians and the Bosewell would arrive at the same time.

At the far edge of the screen, a green dot streaked toward the station.

"What's that other ship?" Kira asked.

"I can't identify it," Moesta said.

"It's still too far away," Jones clarified. "But at its current speed, it should be here in three hours."

The thought of one more problem was too much for Kira. "Let's keep an eye on it," she said, "and see if you can get it to identify itself. But three hours is a long way away."

And in three hours, the identity of the new ship might not matter. By that point, nothing might matter at all.

The small room had grown uncomfortably hot. Jake no longer sat in the chair. He stood and watched the screens, mostly Ops, as the situation in the station grew worse. Nog was sitting-resting, he claimed-but Jake could feel the fear coming off his friend in waves.

They hadn't located the panel that governed the steel doors yet, but they had discovered the sound switch. They used it to turn up the volume in Ops, and Jake wished that they hadn't. He didn't want to know that two military fleets were descending on the station, that his father had taken the Defiant on some undisclosed mission, that Starfleet was so concerned about the events at Deep Space Nine, they had sent three starships to protect it.

To make matters worse, the long search of the tunnels had left him thirsty, and the supplies box they had found was mostly empty. Nog wanted to eat the dried rations immediately, but Jake figured they could only use them in an emergency, which he defined, quite loudly, as not being found within a day or so.

That thought had depressed Nog completely and sent him into the chair where he stared at Ops and occasionally wondered aloud if he would handle the situation with as much aplomb as Major Kira.

Jake knew that his father would use more finesse, but his father was gone. Chief O'Brien was also nowhere to be seen in any of their scans. Rom and Quark had been busy arguing in the bar until they disappeared from the screen. Jake's greatest fear-and the one he couldn't admit to Nog-was that no one would notice they were missing until it was too late.

He had been wrong about this section of the station being the safest. It was clearly the most secure, but there was nothing safe about it. The lack of dust and the low rations made him uncomfortable. Perhaps someone else knew about these tunnels. Someone dangerous. Someone who would be very unhappy to learn that Jake and Nog had invaded this little room.

"Who swore?" Nog asked, suddenly sitting up. "I thought it was against Starfleet protocol to swear during a crisis."

"I didn't hear anyone swear," Jake said.

Nog held up his small hand. "There it is again. Hear it?"

Jake did, a voice reciting a whole string of curses, first in Cardassian, then in Ferengi, then Klingon, and ending with a Romulan epithet that was commonly considered to be the crudest and most descriptive in the galaxy.

Nog stood up, his head cocked and his huge ears focused. Then he crossed to the wall and reached into the sound panel, turning down all the sound.

The curses were louder. They continued in English, then followed with Caxtonian, and ended in premodern Vulcan, an arcane language that Mrs. O'Brien had insisted Jake and Nog learn to read along with Latin as one of the building blocks of interspecies linguistics.

"I don't like this," Nog said. He glanced around the room, looking for a place to hide.

"If that person knew we were here," Jake whispered, "they wouldn't be making so much noise."

"They'll know we're here when they see those doors slammed shut," Nog whispered back.

Jake shook his head. "We don't know if that's a normal response to a red alert. If it is, we have the benefit of surprise."

"Yeah, right," Nog whispered. "And what will it gain us?"

"If we play it right, we might be able to escape." Jake's heart pounded with the thought.

"You think so?" Nog asked.

"Yeah," Jake whispered.

The cursing had stopped. Jake thought he heard the rumble of another voice. He held up his hand.

"What are we going to do?" Nog mouthed.

Jake put a finger to his lips. He gestured Nog to stand near the door. Jake grabbed the chair and stood behind it.

The cursing started again. This time Jake didn't recognize any of the languages. He used the words as a cover for his own.

"Stand there when the door opens," he whispered. "Whatever you do, don't look at me. Just smile."

"Smile?" Nog's voice rose as the metal plate pulled back. He glanced at Jake, a wide, fear-filled look, and then plastered an unconvincing grin on his face.