The Mist (2 page)

"Gentlemen," Cap said, his voice stopping Sotugh from continuing. "Instead of yelling across the bar, I suggest you sit down together and continue this conversation."

"Sit with Sisko," Sotugh said, laughing at the suggestion of the bartender. "I will fight with him against the Dominion, but nothing more."

Sisko leaned over his ale. "Still mad at me for the Mist incident, I see."

Sotugh's hand went to his knife. "The Mist would be members of the Empire if not for your action. Their weapons would help us fight the Cardassian and Dominion scum."

Sisko smiled. "As usual," he said deliberately, "your opinions blind you, Sotugh."

Sotugh stepped forward, his hand gripping his knife.

"Sotugh!" Cap said, his voice stopping the Klingon warrior in midstep. "Only a coward draws on an unarmed man. You are not known as a coward."

Sisko placed the bottle on the bar and opened both his hands to show Sotugh that they were empty. The bartender clearly knew how to handle Klingons. Around the bar a few other patrons laughed softly.

Sotugh only looked angry, but his hand left his knife.

"It seems," Cap said, "that since the Mist are considered nothing but legend, there is a story behind this. Am I right, Captain?"

Sisko picked up his bottle and finished the last of the ale. "There is a story," he said. He grinned at Sotugh, who only sneered in return. All the patrons in the bar now had their attention riveted on the two.

While the tension held the bar in silence, Cap opened another bottle of Jibetian ale and slid it down the bar, stopping it just beside Sisko's hand. Then he quickly poured what looked like a mug of blood wine. "Arthur, hand this to Sotugh."

The young-looking alien, the one who looked like a slender child, grabbed the mug from the bar. He moved easily across the floor, his robes flowing around him, and handed the mug to Sotugh as if the glowering Klingon were nothing more than a happy patron.

"I would be very interested in hearing a story about the Mist," Cap said. "Would anyone else?"

It seemed that from the yesses and applause, everyone agreed. Sisko only shook his head in amusement at Sotugh's expression of disgust. It had been a number of years since the meeting with Sotugh over the race called the Mist. There was nothing secret about the incident. But it hadn't become widely known, since shortly after it happened the Klingons invaded Cardassia. Now the story would only add to the legend of the Mist.

"Pull a couple of those tables together," Cap said, pointing at a few tables in the center of the room. "Does anyone need refills before the story starts?"

The young Arthur took Sotugh's blood wine before the Klingon had a chance to drink and set the mug on an empty table. To Sisko's surprise, Sotugh did not seem to mind. He went to the nearest chair, chased away a yellow-and-green gecko with a stumpy tail, grabbed his mug, and took a long drink, slopping some of the liquid down the side. Miraculously, Arthur managed to avoid getting drops on his robe.

Two patrons quickly pulled another table over to Sotugh's. Sisko nodded to Cap and moved over to the group table, sitting across from the Klingon. After a moment everyone in the bar, except for the Caxtonian at the bar and the strange lizard-man near the door, had gathered at the large table with drinks in their hands.

"Sotugh," Sisko said, smiling at his old adversary. "Would you like to start? Klingons are legendary for their ability to tell a story."

Sotugh simply waved his hand in disgust. "Klingons tell stories of honor. But this story has no honor for anyone. You tell it. I will correct your errors."

Sisko took a quick sip from the bottle of cold ale, then nodded at Cap, who stood near the bar.

"In my years in Starfleet, I have seen many strange things," Sisko said. "But little as strange as the Mist."

"Now that," Sotugh said, "is something I agree with."

Sisko smiled at Sotugh. He had known it would be impossible for the Klingon to keep silent during this story.

Cap laughed. "Sotugh, you have given the story over to Captain Sisko. Please let him tell it."

Sotugh sat back in disgust, the mug of blood wine clutched in his hands.

"Go ahead, Captain," Cap said.

"As you may have gathered, most of this story will be hard to believe. But I'm sure Sotugh will correct anything I may get wrong."

Sotugh only grunted.

"I first heard the legend of the Mist," Sisko said, "when I was a cadet in Starfleet Academy, but I didn't encounter them until many years later. By then I had almost forgotten who and what they were...."

Two

MY CONTACT WITH the mist occurred during the period of tension between the Klingon Empire and the Federation, just before this quadrant's problems with the Dominion began. For those of you who do not know, I command Deep Space Nine, a former Cardassian space station, one of the farthest outposts of the Federation. We are the guardians of the wormhole between the Alpha and Delta Quadrants.

We run a twenty-four-hour clock on Deep Space Nine, following the long-standing Federation tradition of maintaining an Earth Day in space. I am in my office which used to be the Cardassian commander Gul Dukat's office in Operations by 0800 hours, and my staff knows not to disturb me until I have finished my first and only glass of raktajino. It is not that I awaken slowly, or even in a bad mood. I simply prefer a few moments of silence at the beginning of my day, since I know that, if the day runs true to form, those will be the only moments of silence I will have.

So that morning, when my first officer, Major Kira, our liaison with Bajor, knocked and did not wait for my response to enter, I knew we had trouble.

She stood in the doorway, with a slightly apologetic look on her face. She held a padd in her left hand.

"What is it, Major?" I asked, my hand wrapped around my steaming and so far untouched glass of raktajino.

"I am sorry to interrupt you, Captain," she said. "But I think you need to look at this."

I should say here that Kira is one of the best officers I have on Deep Space Nine. She breaks protocol only when necessity calls for it. An interruption from Kira is never frivolous, and always deserves my attention.

I took the padd.

Kira nodded once, then turned and left my office, the door hissing shut behind her. Through that door, I could see my morning staff at their usual positions, and I found comfort in that. Kira spoke briefly to Jadzia Dax, a joined Trill who sat at the science station, before going to the replicator to get her own morning glass of raktajino.

Before I turned my attention to the padd, I took what would be my only sip of raktajino that day. Then I read the report the major had prepared for me.

It seems that a few moments before my arrival, the station picked up a distress call. Sent in an ancient Earth code that had not been used since the early days of human interstellar travel.

But perhaps the most intriguing feature of the distress call was that it originated in an empty area of space near the Klingon border. The area did not have a planetary system, or large space debris, and our equipment could not pick up any sign of a ship or space station for light-years around.

A distress call was coming out of nothing.

"Your equipment. Bah!" Sotugh said. His outburst startled Sisko and others around the table. "I do not think the fault was with your equipment. Your people do not know how to run a proper scan."

Sisko slid his chair back slightly. "Your people had trouble as well."

"Let him tell the story," said a humanoid woman who had been sitting at the end of the bar. She stood. She was tall and slender, with catlike features and peach fur. She kicked a chair away from the table with a dark boot, and then twisted it, so that it faced the bar. She sat on it backward, placing her arms on top of the seat, and resting her chin on her arms. "I think it's fascinating."

"You would," Sotugh snapped.

"Leave your conflicts outside," Cap said. Then he nodded to Sisko. "Please continue, Captain."

Sisko nodded in return. "The report documented the anomalies I mentioned a moment ago," he said, with a glance at Sotugh, "but I felt they were strange enough to warrant another look...."

I left my office and entered Ops.

The day crew is my most experienced and efficient. My chief engineer, Miles O'Brien, had once served on the Starship Enterprise, and falls into that legendary category of Starfleet engineers, the kind who can make a starship out of spitballs and twine. Lieutenant Commander Worf, a Klingon ...

Sisko looked pointedly at Sotugh as he said that. Sotugh scowled into his blood wine and said nothing.

... who had also served on the EnterpriseD under the captaincy of Jean-Luc Picard. Worf has the finest sense of honor of any Klingon I have ever met. He also values perfection and brings a level of detail to his work that I find rare even in the ranks of Starfleet.

Jadzia Dax has been my friend through two different incarnations, and I find her wisdom and intelligence an essential part of our crew. I discovered later that she was the one, not Major Kira, who discovered the distress signal. But Dax has known me a long time, and she prefers to let someone else interrupt my morning routine. It goes back to the days when Dax was joined to Curzon, a rather surly old man who influenced me more than I care to say. But that is another story, for another time.

"Major," I said as I walked down the steps to the main section of Ops. "Are you still reading the signal?"

Kira balanced her glass of raktajino on her knee as she glanced at her console. "Yes," she said.

"There is still nothing in that section of space," Dax said. "I have run every scan I can think of."

"As well as some she shouldn't have," Chief O'Brien said.

Dax smiled at him. "It didn't put any strain on the equipment."

"This time," he said testily.

This sort of interaction was common among my morning crew, and it rose out of their sense of perfection.

"Notify Starfleet," I said. "I would like to investigate this further, but its proximity to the Klingon border could create problems that the Federation does not need."

"Captain," Kira said, before she carried out my order. "This might be a trap."

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Dax shaking her head as she stared at her board.

"It may be a trap," Worf said from his security station, "but it is not a Klingon trap."

"Worf knows his people," Sotugh said.

Sisko took the momentary break to sip from his Jibetian ale. He wasn't used to talking this much; his mouth was getting dry already.

"So then what happened?" asked a green-skinned woman in a blazing pink uniform. Sisko wondered how, with such colors, he had missed her when he first scanned the bar.

"We notified Starfleet," Sisko said, "and they approved of the mission. I ordered the crew, along with our doctor, and several others, to be on our starship, the Defiant, within the hour. I left the station in Major Kira's capable hands."

"Very interesting," the catlike woman said. Perhaps it was better to describe her response as a purr. She leveled her bright green gaze on Sisko and smiled at him. "So that is what the Federation was doing. Yet you said this happened near the Klingon border. What were the Klingons doing?"

The dozen bar patrons sitting around the large double table shifted their attention from Sisko to Sotugh, waiting for him to answer. Cap leaned against the outside of the bar near the table, smiling. Sisko got the sense that, even though the catlike woman had directed the comment at him, she clearly had meant it as a jab at Sotugh.

But her question did seem to spark a lot of interest. A human couple, who had taken seats above the table at the bar to listen to the story, leaned forward. The woman watched closely while sipping from a cup of hot tea. The man, however, had abandoned his dark, carbonated beverage on the bar. "Yes," he said, with genuine interest, "did the Klingons hear the distress call?"

Sotugh nodded. "We did. And we understood its ancient language and message. But as Sisko said, there was nothing there. A waste of valuable time to investigate."

"Yet," the catlike woman said, still looking at Sisko, "you criticize the captain here for improperly using his equipment. What of yours?"

"We did not have time to chase ghosts in space," Sotugh said. "We trusted our readings and our equipment. Nothing was there to investigate."

"You didn't think that later," Sisko said, setting down his bottle of Jibetian ale.

"Things changed later," Sotugh said. "You are not telling everything, Sisko."

"I would, if you'd give me a chance," Sisko said evenly, making sure he was smiling.

In disgust, Sotugh downed the last of his blood wine. With a wide sweeping motion that almost caught the side of the Jibetian woman beside him, he handed his cup back to Cap, who without missing a beat slid it down the bar to Arthur, who was standing behind the bar. Obviously the young-looking Arthur was functioning as the assistant bartender.

"Please go on with your story, Captain," Cap said. "It seems clear that something was sending out that distress call after all."

Sisko raised his bottle of ale in a motion of agreement. "Oh, there was a ship sending out the distress call, all right. But our instruments, and Sotugh's, were correct. There was nothing there."

Sisko smiled at the puzzled expression on Cap's face before taking another long drink and going back to his story.

Three

THE DEFIANT IS the toughest starship in the Federation. It is sleek and streamlined, yet has more power than the Galaxy-class starships most people think of when they hear the word "Starfleet." The Defiant can run efficiently with a minimal crew. It is also the first Federation ship to be equipped with a cloaking device, a fact that we have relied on greatly in our current conflict with the Dominion.

I must be honest with you: As much as I like running the station, I love captaining the Defiant. When I sit on the command chair in the center of that bridge, I feel the way I always imagined I would feel when I was a boy dreaming of a career in the stars. Captaining the Defiant, even when we take her out on a routine maintenance spin to see if her parts are in working order, is like I imagine captaining an old seafaring vessel would have been. Sometimes I think, as the docking clamps release and the ship heads out into the blackness of space, There be dragons here.