The Mist (12 page)

Smoke filled the air. Dozens of small fires burned under and near panels. Ops had been clean and well lit and in prime condition when I last saw it. Now it was dark and filthy and littered with smashed equipment.

We had arrived in the very center of Ops. In case I didn't tell you, our Operations area is built in a sunken circular pattern, and we were in the middle of that sunken circle. Although I knew there were others in the room, I could not see them, except as shadows in the smoke. O'Brien, proprietary as always about his engineering work on the station, made a small sound of dismay at the mess, but that was the only reaction we were allowed.

A phaser shot cut between me and Worf, spinning one of the security officers around behind me. The chief and I ducked behind Kira's station as Worf rolled to a position under the security panel. The other two security-team members dragged the injured officer to a sheltered position near Dax's station.

"Good to see you, Captain," Major Kira's voice rang out over the craziness.

"Good to be seen, Major," I said.

More phaser fire cut into the panel near my head, scattering metal. One piece stuck into Worf's arm, but he didn't seem to notice as he returned fire, sending a colonist twisting up and backward in pain.

Through the smoke, I did my best to get a grasp on the situation. It seemed that Kira and three others were pinned down against the wall near the turbolift by a dozen Mist colonists near my office. But, from the looks of things, she had made sure that even if the colonists had captured the station, it wouldn't be working for a time.

I tapped my comm link. "Dax?"

"Go ahead, Captain."

"Lock on to the life signs nearest my office and beam them into the brig."

"Aye, sir."

For a moment the firing continued; then suddenly it stopped as the Mist colonists were beamed away. It took a moment before Kira and her group realized it was over.

"That's it?" Kira said, standing up. "That's it? Beam them away and it's all over?"

She sounded almost disappointed.

"No, Major," I said. "This stage is over. We still have a long way to go."

"Boy, do we," O'Brien said, brushing some dirt off himself, and staring at the mess.

Dax's voice came clearly over the now silent room. "Captain, we have six colonists in the brig. The Klingons have beamed onto the Promenade and are taking care of the remaining colonists there."

"Good," I said. "Beam Security Officer Thomason to sickbay. Stand by to beam me back to the Defiant's bridge."

"Aye, sir," Dax said.

Thomason became a series of light-colored particles, and then vanished. Worf moved a piling aside. The other security officers began putting out the fires. O'Brien found the environmental controls and brought the lights back up.

That was a mistake. The edges of the smoke reflected the light, while the interior sucked the light inside. My eyes felt as if someone had rubbed them raw.

Then the exhaust fans started, gathering the smoke and sending it through long vents toward the vastness of space.

I felt an internal clock ticking away. We didn't have much time. I turned to Worf. "Secure this area and set up a guard. Be prepared for any beam-in attacks."

"Yes, sir," Worf said, quickly turning and directing the remainder of Kira's crew and the two security-team members to positions.

"Chief," I said, "you and Kira need to get this place back up and running as quickly as you can."

"That might not be so easy," Kira said. She pushed a strand of hair out of her face. She was covered in soot. Two long gashes had nearly severed the sleeve of her uniform.

"I understand," I said. "But do what you can. I plan to make this station reappear in the middle of all those Cardassian ships. In the very least, I would like to have shields. Ideally, I would like weapons to go with them."

"We'll see what we can do, sir," O'Brien said.

"At least we sabotaged them," Kira said. "We know how we broke them. We should know how to fix them."

"It's easier to break things than it is to repair them," O'Brien said.

They continued bickering which was sometimes their best work method as I beamed out of the station. In those few seconds between leaving the station and arriving on the Defiant, I felt hope. Hope that we could accomplish the goals we set out to accomplish. Hope that we would make it back.

But the moment I materialized on the Defiant, that hope vanished. It seems that there were a few more things about the colonists and this entire situation that Captain Victor hadn't told us. If Dr. Bashir was right, it looked as if the station was never to leave Mist space.

"And I," Sisko said with a grin, "am going to have a bite of this jambalaya if it kills me."

"It very well might, Captain," the wraith said.

"You can't stop there!" the Quilli said. "What did you see?"

"Let the man eat," the Trill said. "The last thing you want him to do is pass out from hunger."

"I could finish this," Sotugh said.

Sisko ignored them all. His taste buds were enjoying the perfect blend of rice, meat, butter, and vegetables. Cap had done the spices exactly right just enough cayenne and chili powder, and the all important cloves.

He sighed in gastronomic ecstasy as all around him, the patrons of the bar began pounding their fists on the table and bar, demanding that he continue with his story about the Mist.

Twelve

"SILENCE!" SOTUGH SAID, standing up. he held his hands out, palms down, as if he were directing an orchestra to play its music softer.

The patrons stopped pounding, but their hands or paws or limbs rested on the edge of the tables, waiting.

Sisko took advantage of the moment. He hadn't realized how hungry he was, or how long it had been since he had had any jambalaya besides his own. This was wonderful. And it went very well with Jibetian ale.

"I will tell you about the fight for the Promenade," Sotugh said.

"No!" several voices yelled.

"We want to know what Sisko saw!"

"What happened next?" the Quilli was standing on the very back of its chair. The Trill had his booted foot resting casually on the chair's seat, so that it wouldn't tip over.

Cap crossed his arms and leaned against the bar. He was grinning. "You have them, Captain," he said.

"Suspense is good," Sisko said around a mouthful of food.

"But not always the best for my bar," Cap said. "I promise you, the jambalaya will remain warm."

Sisko sighed, swallowed, and pushed the bowl away. Around him, patrons applauded, and the little Quilli fanned its bristles in joy.

"What I saw," Sisko said, and stopped, his throat closing around the words. The very thought of the destruction angered him to this day.

"What I saw," he began again, softer, and to an audience that was leaning forward in anticipation, "seemed as strange to me as those impossible planets had when I first entered Mist space."

"Was everyone dead?" the middle-aged woman at the bar asked, breathlessly.

"On the ship, no," Sisko said. "But in space" He shook his head. "In space, the destruction was indescribable."

The first words I heard were Dr. Bashir's. He was standing at his console, near the command chair, where Dax had beamed me aboard.

"I can't believe it," he said, and if anything, he looked even more shocked than he had when I had first left the Defiant. I couldn't believe that he wasn't already in sickbay. I had beamed the injured security officer to him not a few moments before.

I frowned at him, and was about to say something, when I realized that everyone on the bridge was staring at the screen.

I turned.

And felt all of the breath leave my body.

Let me try to explain this, for what I saw was a jumbled mess that at first made no sense to me at all. It took almost a half a minute for my brain to process the images.

Deep Space Nine remained in its normal place. That, as I have told you before, was how it looked from Mist space. Around it floated Cardassian ships, the handful of other ships that had been at the station when it disappeared, and, of course, the wormhole. All in normal space.

At first glance, this was what I saw, because this was what I expected to see. This was what I always saw when I was in the Defiant near Deep Space Nine.

"Minus the Cardassian dogs," Sotugh said.

Sisko nodded in his direction. "That's right," he said. "They would not normally be near the station unless there was trouble."

And believe me, I processed their presence that way: as trouble. To the Cardassians, of course, the station was gone, and they were guarding the wormhole. The approaching Klingon fleet would surely challenge that idea. A dozen other ships from different races were holding off toward Bajor, waiting.

That was what I expected to see, and what I did see.

It was in Mist space where everything had gone wrong.

Sisko cleared his throat. This was hard to say. He took a swig of Jibetian ale and that didn't help. Finally he downed half the bottle of water, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as Sotugh had done, and looked at the other patrons. They watched his every move.

"Oh," he said when he regained his voice, "the Madison was still there, and the Klingon ships ..."

... but the Mist ships had been destroyed.

Completely.

Imagine twenty of those lovely Mist ships, the wings arched over the small bodies, black against the darkness of space. Then imagine them shattered, those black pieces shrapnel, space debris, junk, floating and twisting in a grotesque imitation of dance. The pieces spun all over space, going through at least to my eyes the Cardassian ships, spinning out of control toward the wormhole.

I sank into the command chair.

All the hope that I had held, all the feelings that I had had, the beginnings to the end of this nightmare, were gone. Deep Space Nine would now be forever a part of Mist space. That was what I thought at that moment.

The implications were incredible: there would be a war for the wormhole. The Klingons and the Cardassians and the Federation, not to mention Bajor, and of course, the Dominion although at that time I had no idea of the scope and power of the Dominion would all battle for this small sector of space. Kira, Odo, and the others would have to remain here, in this strange reality, for the rest of their lives.

"But that didn't happen," the wraith said. "You've talked about the station since."

"Shhhh," said everyone around him.

I said nothing to the doctor. I knew that he had already thought of this implication. That is why he looked even more shocked than he had before.

What I first needed to know was who made this tragic error and then I needed my best medical and engineering minds on finding a way to get my station back to its proper place in space, before that sector of space became a battleground.

"What happened?" I asked. My voice felt as if it had come out of a deep well.

"I've never seen anything like it," Dax said, and in her voice I could hear the same shock that I felt. "Two of the ships tried to make a run past the Madison."

"Paul did this?"

"I honestly don't know. I don't think so," Dax said. "But the way it happened ..."

"Get a grip on yourself, old man, and then tell me what you saw."

Dax swallowed and nodded. Apparently she, too, was thinking of the loss of the station, and what it meant to the entire sector. What it meant to our friends.

She took a deep breath. "The Madison simply exploded a photon torpedo in front of them, to warn them to stop. It didn't explode anywhere near the ships, but at that moment, every Mist ship exploded."

Every Mist ship. I stared at the debris floating around and through the ships in my usual reality. Every Mist ship.

"Could this have something to do with the differing molecular structures that you were talking about?" I asked Dr. Bashir.

"I don't think so," he said, not taking his gaze off the screen. "You see how the two kinds of matter interact. It's as if one can flow through the other."

"But a weapon"

"A weapon should work the same way," Bashir said. "Otherwise you'd accidentally blow up ships in Mist space when you used a photon torpedo in ours."

Of course. Of course. This was beginning to make some sort of sense to me, but in a subconscious way. Over the years, I have learned to trust that feeling, to allow it, and not my conscious brain, to sort through things I did not entirely understand.

"Explain what happened again, old man," I said to Dax. "How did those ships explode?"

"It was as if someone pushed a button and they all just exploded."

"All at the same time?"

She nodded.

"Was it a chain reaction?"

"Oh, no," she said. "It happened too fast."

I felt cold. My subconscious brain did not like that.

I leaned forward in my captain's chair. I could not see anything on that screen but the exploded Mist ships overlaid on the Cardassian, Klingon, and alien ships.

"What about Captain Victor and the other homeworld ships?" I was almost afraid of what her answer might be. If they were gone, we, too, were trapped in Mist space. Forever.

Her hands flew across her console. Apparently, in her concern and shock, Dax had not thought of our situation.

"They're fine," she said, and I felt a relief that I hadn't thought possible. "They're standing half a light-year off."

"I doubt it was the photon torpedo that caused this," I said. "Given what I understand of this, if it were the torpedo, the ships would have cascade-exploded in a chain reaction. They did not. So either there's a phenomenon we don't understand happening with our equipment or something else is going on."

And considering how difficult the situation had been with Captain Victor, how little he told us, and how often we found out the truth was slightly different, I would have wagered all of Quark's latinum that something else was going on. Perhaps the ships had had weapons, or, what I considered to be the more likely scenario, they had self-destructed when we took the first prisoners.

Prisoners. That brought me back to other matters.