mines without an EVA team, and there's just no time."
lime, Sisko thought. And that was the end of his indecision. As a Starfleet
officer, he couldn't risk polluting the timeline. But as a Starship captain...
his crew had to come first
"This is the Defiant to Captain Riker, I am—"
The stars on the viewer suddenly spiraled, and the Defiant's deck lurched to
starboard, felling everyone not braced in a duty chair, including Sisko.
"Another ship decloaking!" Worf shouted as three
bridge stations blew out in cascades of translator sparks. "We are caught in its
gravimetric wake!"
"Dax!" Sisko struggled to his feet. "Stabilize the screen!"
The spiraling stars slowed, then held steady, even though all attitude screens
showed that the Defiant was still spinning wildly on her central axis.
Then, with the same dissolving checkerboard pattern of wavering squares of light
that Sisko had seen envelop the Opaka, the new ship decloaked.
Again, Sisko had no doubt he was looking at a ship based on advanced technology.
But in this case the vessel was not of Starfleet design; it was unmistakably
Klingon—a battlecruiser at least the size of the Opaka. Yet this warship's deep
purple exterior hull was studded with thick plates and conduits, with a long
central spine extending from the sharp-edged half-diamond of the cruiser's
combined engineering and propulsion hull to end in a wedge-shaped bridge module.
"Whose side is it on?" Sisko asked sharply, even as Worf reported that he could
pick up no transmissions of any kind from the vessel. But Jadzia caught sight of
something on the Klingon's hull and instructed the Defiant's computer to jump
the viewer to magnification fifty and restore full resolution.
At once, Sisko and his crew were looking at a detailed segment of the warship's
purple hull. Angular Klingon script ran beneath the same modified Starfleet
emblem Tom Riker had worn on his uniform—the classic Starfleet delta in gold
backed by an upside-down triangle in blue.
"It has to be with the Opaka," Kira said.
12
Worf's next words unnerved Sisko. "And her designation is Boreth."
The Opaka was named for a Bajoran spiritual leader—the first kai Sisko had met
on Bajor. And Boreth was the world to which the Klingon messiah, Kahless the
Unforgettable, had promised to return after his death. The Starfleet of Sisko's
day did not make a habit of naming its ships after religious figures or places.
Something had changed in this time. But what?
"Thirty seconds," Worf said tersely.
Sisko faced the viewscreen. "This is Captain Sisko to Captain Riker and to the
commander of the Boreth. My crew stands ready to join you. We require immediate
evacuation."
"Course change on the two remaining attackers!" Kira announced. "Coming in on a
ramming course!"
Sisko clenched his hands at his sides. He didn't understand the tactics. What
about the antimatter mines? Their adversaries could destroy the Defiant without
sacrificing themselves in a suicidal collision.
Sisko turned abruptly to O'Brien. "Mine status?"
"Only nine left! Seven ... five... Captain, they're being beamed away!"
"The Boreth," Sisko said. That had to be the answer. But why?
He looked at Jadzia. "Any transporter trace?"
"Still nothing detectable, Benjamin."
'Ten seconds to impact with attackers!" Kira shouted. "The Opaka is firing more
of those... torpedoes or whatever they are ... five seconds...."
Sisko reached for his command chair. "Brace for collision!"
And then, as if a series of fusion sparklers had ig-
nited one after the other across the bridge, Dax, Bashir, and Worf—
—vanished.
One instant Sisko's senior command staff were at their stations. Then, in the
center of each of their torsos a single pinpoint of light flared, and as if
suddenly twisted away at a ninety-degree angle from every direction at once,
the body of each crew member spun and shrank into that small dot of light, which
faded as suddenly as it had blossomed.
"Chief! What happened!"
of... transporter, I think. It—it hit all through the ship, sir. We've lost
fifteen crew...."
Sisko strode toward Jadzia's science station, but Arla reached the Trill's empty
chair before he did.
"The attackers have gone to warp, sir. The Opaka is pursuing. The Boreth is
holding its position."
With an arm as heavy as his hopes, Sisko finally allowed himself to touch his
communicator. "Sisko to Jake."
No answer. Sisko's stomach twisted with fear for his boy.
Arla looked up at Sisko.
"My son—he was in sickbay," Sisko said in answer to Arla's questioning glance.
"Communications are down across the ship," Arla offered.
And then a far-too-familiar voice whispered from the bridge speakers, with
pious—and patently false—surprise.
"Captain Sisko, I cannot tell you what a privilege it is to see you once again."
Sisko forced himself to raise Ms head to look up at the viewer, to see the
odious, smiling speaker who sat in a Klingon command chair, a figure clad in the
unmistakable robes of a Bajoran vedek.
"Weyoun... ?"
"Oh Captain, I feel so honored that you remember me after all this time," the
Vorta simpered. "Though I suppose for you it is only a matter of minutes since
you were plucked from the timeline and redeposited here."
Sisko stared at the viewscreen as if he were trapped in a dream and the
slightest movement on his part would send him into an endless fall.
No, not a dream, Sisko thought. A nightmare....
Because Weyoun's presence as a Bajoran religious leader on a Klingon vessel with
Starfleet markings meant only one thing.
Sometime in the past twenty-five years, the war had ended.
And the Dominion had won.
CHAPTER 2
the instant the sirens began to wail, Captain Nog was out of his bunk and
running for the door of his quarters, his Model-I personal phaser in hand. Then,
barefoot, wearing only Starfleet-issue sleep shorts and no Ferengi headskirt,
Nog slammed into that door. It hadn't opened in response to his full-speed
approach.
Coming fully awake with the sudden shock of pain, he slapped his hand against
the door's control panel, to punch in his override code and activate manual
function. But before he could begin, the lights in his cluttered quarters
dimmed, alarm sirens screamed to life and, with a stomach-turning lurch, Nog
felt the gravity net abruptly shut down, leaving him bouncing in natural
Martian gravity, still with all his mass but only one-third his weight.
Reflexively Nog slapped at his bare chest, as if his communicator badge were
permanently welded to his
17
flesh, then swore an instant later in an obscure Ferengi trading dialect. He
darted back to his closet to get his jacket, only to pitch forward as the first
shockwave hit Personnel Dome 1.
His cursing reduced to a moan of frustration, Nog jumped to his feet—and bange
d
his head on the ceiling because he'd forgotten to compensate for the suddenly
diminished gravity. Dropping to the floor once more, he yanked open his closet
door, then ripped his communicator from the red shoulder of the frayed uniform
jacket hanging inside.
He knew exactly what had just happened. The four-second delay between the loss
of gravity and the arrival of the ground tremor made it obvious. The main power
generators for the entire Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards had been sabotaged. Again.
Nog squeezed his communicator badge—a scarlet Starfleet arrowhead against an
oval of Klingon teal and gold—between thumb and forefinger as he turned back
toward the door. But all the device did was squeal with subspace
interference—jamming, pure and simple.
Nog tossed the useless badge aside, then punched in his override code for the
door. When the door still didn't open, he abandoned caution and protocol and
blasted through it with his phaser.
A moment later his bare feet were propelling him with long, loping strides along
the dark corridors of the shipyard's largest personnel dome. Multiple sirens
wailed, all out of phase and echoing from every direction, a sonic affront to
bis sensitive ears. Flashing yellow lights spun at each corridor intersection.
More shockwaves and muffled explosions rumbled through the floor and walls. But
Nog ignored them all. There
was only one thought in his mind, one goal as important as any profit he could
imagine.
The Old Man.
As he reached the main hub of the dome—a large, open atrium—he could see thin
columns of smoke twisting up from the lower levels, as if a fire had broken out
at the base of the free-standing transparent elevator shafts.
Nog rushed to the railing, leaned over, and peered down to the bottom level.
Glowing lances of light from rapidly moving palm torches blazed within the heavy
smoke that filled the central concourse five floors down. Though he could see
nothing else within the murk, his sensitive ears identified the rush of
fire-fighting chemicals being sprayed by the dome's emergency crews. He could
also hear the thunder of running footsteps, as other personnel bounded up the
stairways that spiraled around the atrium, fleeing the fire below.
To the side Nog saw a disaster locker that had automatically opened as soon as
the alarms had sounded. He ran to it and took out two emergency pressure suits,
each vacuum-compressed to rectangular blocks no larger than a sandwich. As
swiftly as he could, he tugged the carry loops of the compressed suits over his
wrist, then charged up the closest stairway himself, pushing coughing ensigns
and other Fleet workers out of his way while automatically counting each one,
even as he also kept track of each set of twenty stair risers that ran from
level to level. He was a Ferengi, thank the Great River, and numbers were as
integral to his soul as breathing—fourteen times each minute, or approximately
20,000 times each Martian day.
Torrents of statistics flooded his mind as he ran, triggered by the people he
passed. In this dome, he knew, most of the personnel were either Andorian (42
percent precisely) or Tellarite (23.6 percent), supplemented by a few dozen
Vulcans (48) and Betazoids (42) who had been unable to find rooms in the
respective domes set to their environmental preferences.
Of the six main personnel domes in this installation—hurriedly constructed
after the attack of '88— none were set to Earth-normal conditions. After '88 it
just hadn't made sense.
The Old Man's quarters, however, as befitted a VIP suite, had individual gravity
modifiers and atmospheric controls, enabling flag officers and distinguished
guests to select any preferred environmental condition, from the Breen
Asteroidal Swarm frigid wasteland to Vulcan high desert. Those quarters were on
the ninth level, just one below the topmost ground-level floor, with its
common-area gymnasium, arboretum, and mess hall.
By the time he reached that level, Nog's feet were stinging from a dozen small
cuts inflicted by the rough non-skid surface of the stairs. But mere discomfort
had no power to slow him. He looked up once just long enough to see that all the
clear panes of the dome's faceted roof were still intact, then headed away from
the stairs to charge down the corridor leading to the VIP units.
Nog swore again as he saw the bodies of two guards sprawled on the floor by the
shattered security door. Absolute evidence, he feared, that the sabotage of the
generators was just a diversion, that the real target was alone and defenseless
at the end of this final corridor.
Nog launched himself like an old-fashioned Martian astronaut over the
knife-sharp shards of the shattered door. At the same time, like a
twenty-fourth-century
commando, he thumbed his phaser to full power. The pen-size silver tube bore
little resemblance to the weapons he had trained with when he entered the
Academy more than twenty-five years ago. But at its maximum setting this new
model had all the stopping power of an old compression phaser rifle. For ten
discharges, at least.
Nog finally slowed as he rounded the last corner before the Old Man's quarters.
The sirens were quieter here, and only one warning light spun, presumably
because security staff were always on duty here. But none of those alarms was
necessary, because there was no mistaking the distinctive ozone scent of Romulan
poly-wave disruptors—and that was warning enough mat a security breach was under
way.
He had been right about the true target of this attack, but the knowledge
brought him no satisfaction. The Old Man was ninety-five years old—in no
condition to resist an attack by Romulan assassins. The best Nog could hope to
do now was to keep the killers from escaping.
Two more long strides brought him to the entrance of the Old Man's quarters. As
he had expected, both doors had been blown out of their tracks, sagging top and
bottom, half disintegrated, their ragged edges sparkling with the blue crystals
of solidified quantum polywaves.
Phaser held ready, Nog advanced through the twisted panels, into a spacious
sitting room striped with gauzy tendrils of smoke. The only source of light came
from a large aquarium set into a smooth gray wall. The aquarium obviously had
its own backup power supply, and undulating ripples of blue light now swept the
room, set in motion by the graceful movement of the fins of the Old Man's prized
lionfish.
Nog paused for a moment, intent on hearing the slightest noise, certain the
assassins could not have left so soon. The shields that protected the shipyard's
ground installations were separately powered by underground and orbital
generating stations, and not even the new Grigari subspace pulse-transporters
could penetrate the constantly modulating deflector screens. However the
Romulans planned to escape, their first step had to be on foot.
Nog had no intention of letting them take that step— or any others.
As methodically as a sensor sweep, he turned his head so his
ears could fix on
any sounds that might be coming from the short hall leading to the bedroom, or
from the door to the small kitchen, or from the door to the study.
He concentrated on the hallway. Nothing. Though that didn't rule out the
possibility that someone might be hiding in the bedroom.
Next, the kitchen. Nothing.
Then the study. And there Nog heard slow, shallow breathing.
He began to move sideways, still holding his phaser before him, aiming it at the
study door. There was just enough light from the aquarium to avoid bumping the
bland Starfleet furniture. He flattened himself against the wall beside the
study door, silently counting down for his own—
—attack!
His absolutely perfect textbook move propelled him through the study doorway in
a fluid low-gravity roll, smoothly bringing him to his feet in a crouch, thumb
already pushing down on the activation button of his phaser as he targeted the
first Romulan he saw—the one on the floor by the desk.
But when the silver phaser beam punched its way through the Romulan, the Romulan
gave no reaction.
For an instant, Nog stared at his adversary in puzzlement. Then reality caught
up to him. His shot had been unnecessary.
The first Romulan was already dead.
So was the second Romulan, slumped on the couch. The gold shoulder of his
counterfeit Starfleet uniform was darkened by green blood seeping from the deep,
wide gash that scored his neck.
Then a tremulous, raspy voice came from the direction of the room's bookcases.
The ones filled with real books. "There's a third one in the bedroom."
Nog slowly straightened up from his crouch. "Admiral?"
The Old Man stepped from the shadows, into the light spilling through the
doorway behind Nog. He was a hew-mon, slightly stooped. His bald scalp was
flushed a deep red, and his long fringe of white hair, usually tied back in a
Klingon-style queue, sprayed across his bare shoulders. Only then did Nog
realize that the Old Man was naked, his sharp skeleton painfully evident through
nearly translucent, thin skin. The only object he carried was a bat'leth. It
dripped with dark and glistening green blood.
But the Old Man's eyes were sparkling, and the creases around them crinkled in
amusement as he also took a closer look at his would-be rescuer. "It appears