The Long Night

by Dean Wesley Smith

  Bashir stuck his hands under his arms, an obvious defense against the cold. "If someone did all that," he said, "why not just shut off the cold-sleep chambers?"

  "That would activate a different fail safe, Doctor," Sisko said. "It was simpler to do this."

  "That's my theory," O'Brien said. "Besides, this way the saboteur didn't commit actual murder."

  "Because the cold-sleep chambers should have kept everyone alive as long as the ship ran." Bashir shook his head. "Ingenious."

  "And nearly perfect." Sisko rubbed his hands together. They would have to go somewhere warm, too. "If the ship hadn't passed through this asteroid belt, no one would have found it."

  "The Nibix would have stayed a part of history," Dax said. She looked at Sisko. "This means extra trouble for us, doesn't it, Benjamin."

  "I don't see how it couldn't," he said. He understood her concern. He felt it, too. The sabotage was important. The Nibix's influence had always reached through history. The sabotage wouldn't be any different.

  Jake sat on the only chair in the room, his arms crossed over his chest. The little surveillance room had grown stiflingly hot, and he worried that air wasn't circulating through it. He didn't tell his worries to Nog, though.

  Nog hadn't spoken to him since Jake kaboshed his uncle.

  Nog and Rom hovered over Quark, who had only recently regained consciousness. He had been out over thirty minutes, during which time Nog had repeatedly berated Jake for his stupidity. Jake had let him; he had been around Ferengi long enough to know such verbal abuse was a way of blowing off steam and tension. Besides, it was safer for Nog to blame Jake than to take the blame himself. Quark's punishments could be bizarre and severe.

  Jake's stomach growled. Their situation had grown desperate. The hunger wasn't that bad. The heat and the lack of water concerned him the most. The red alert showed no signs of abating. Jake had hoped that Kira would shut off the alert quickly and then the doors would open, but so far that hadn't happened. During Nog's beratement, Jake had watched the screen showing Ops and realized that the situation there was growing worse, not better.

  Which meant that the red alert might continue indefinitely.

  Quark moaned. Rom was murmuring soothing words, and Nog was hovering over both of them, occasionally throwing helpless glances over his shoulder at Jake. It felt as if Nog wanted Jake to make Quark better. Jake didn't have that skill. The only thing he could do was figure out a way out of here.

  He had tried to talk to Rom about how they had opened the door from the outside, but Rom had said Quark had done that. And Quark wasn't answering any questions. Yet.

  Jake stood and walked to the panel of screens. Watching Ops would get him nowhere, and he had already apologized to Nog. Jake had to go back to what he was doing before the other Ferengi arrived. Studying the panel.

  The setup made no sense to him. It seemed to be some sort of surveillance system made to spy on the station, but who set it up and why? And where was the information going out? And for that matter, how? Jake didn't know that much about station security, but he couldn't imagine Chief O'Brien, Odo, and his father not discovering some sort of signal leaving the station from this panel.

  Jake stood back from the panel and tried to really look at it. Chief O'Brien had taught him a lot about machinery. A general rule, he said, was to examine the pattern. Anything that didn't fit into the pattern bore investigating. So Jake stared at the panels and let what he was seeing form patterns.

  It took a moment, but then he saw it. The screen in the lower corner really didn't show a strategic area of the station but showed instead a hallway just outside a docking bay. And the main focus of the picture wasn't the door to the docking bay, but a communications wall unit near it.

  "Why would that be?" he said to himself.

  "Why would what be?" Nog asked.

  Jake started. Nog was standing beside him. He hadn't even heard his friend approach. And Quark had stopped moaning. He was still holding his head, but now he was watching Jake. Rom crouched beside him, his small eyes bright.

  "Did you find a way out of here?" Quark asked. He didn't sound like he was in as much pain as he had been in a moment before.

  "I don't think so," Jake said. "But this screen is focused on only a communications panel near a docking bay while the others show main areas of the station."

  "So?" Nog said.

  "It's a relay station," Rom said.

  "Shut up, Rom, and let Jake work on this," Quark said. "We don't need your stupid comments."

  "He wasn't being stupid," Nog said. "He knows more about machinery than all of us put together."

  Jake frowned. He remembered his father mentioning that. Rom had wanted to use his mechanical skills. He had never wanted to go into business. Such an attitude was sacrilege for a Ferengi, but it had worked to Nog's advantage. It had given his father enough courage to fight for his son's desire to go to the Academy.

  "What makes you think it's a relay station?" Jake asked Rom.

  Rom glanced at Quark. Quark waved his free hand dismissively. "You brought the subject up. You defend it. And no long-winded theories. We need to get out of here."

  Rom swallowed. "I think it's a relay station because that's how I would have set it up."

  "But you're not known for your intelligence," Quark said.

  "Give him a chance," Nog said fiercely.

  "He's the only one with an idea," Jake said in his most placating tone. "Let's hear it out."

  Rom twisted his hands together. He wouldn't look at the boys. "A relay station near a docking bay is in the perfect position," he said. "It can send the information to a nearby ship—and it doesn't have to be the same ship every time. Just one that knows the right band. Then the ship can send the information out without the station sensors picking it up."

  "That makes perfect sense," Jake said.

  Nog smiled at his father.

  Quark shoved Rom. "Why don't you come up with something like that for me?"

  "You need spy equipment?" Jake asked.

  "No, not exactly," Quark said. "I just meant that we should be able to use his expertise to help the—"

  "You don't want to hear my theories, Brother," Rom said. "You always tell me to be quiet."

  "Yeah," Nog said. "Maybe you should listen to him more. He's a lot smarter than you give him credit for."

  The last thing Jake wanted was to be trapped in this tiny room while a Ferengi family quarrel raged. He had to focus the three of them. "Do you think the relay is working while the station is in red alert?" he asked Rom.

  Rom glanced at Quark, then at Nog. When neither of them said anything, he came forward and studied the screen. "I can't tell," he said. "But I would design the relay to dump its information on an exact schedule, every few hours or maybe twice a day. It wouldn't be logical to not have information going out while the station is under alert. But if I were designing this—"

  "Which you aren't," Quark muttered.

  "—I would make sure everything is being recorded very carefully while under alert, more so than normal."

  Jake studied the screens for a moment. Whomever was monitoring this would learn that Kira and Captain Higginbotham had planned strategy before the other ships arrived. They would hear confidential conversations from Ops to Security. Jake didn't know what had been discussed, but whatever it was had been important enough to cause the station to go to red alert. Having anyone learn about station business at a time like this had to be dangerous. And who knows when the information would dump next.

  "If this works the way you say it does," Jake said, "then we need to get out of here and make sure no information leaves the station."

  "How do you expect us to do that," Nog asked, "with us locked in here and my uncle mortally wounded?"

  "I'm not mortally wounded, Nog," Quark said. "That would mean I'm dying, and I'm not." He touched his head gingerly. "Although I wish I were."

  "I'm sorry," Jake said for what seemed like the tho
usandth time.

  "I'm just glad you're on our side, kid." Quark grinned. "You pack a mean chair." Then he snapped a finger at Rom. "Help me up."

  Rom put a hand under Quark's arm. Nog did the same on the other side, and together they heaved Quark to his feet. He swayed for a moment, rolled his eyes, and sagged against them. They staggered under his weight.

  "I'm all right," he murmured. "I'm all right."

  He stood again and shook them off, swaying for a moment and then using the wall to catch himself. He kept one hand on the wall for balance as he made his way to the door he and Rom had entered. Quark studied it for a moment, then put his free hand against his head.

  "Not a chance," he said, and sat down against the steel plate. "At least until someone cancels this emergency."

  "And when they do, it might be too late," Jake said.

  "Yes." Rom managed to get a lot of worry into that one word.

  "But," Quark said, "I doubt if it will help the Cardassians."

  "Cardassians?" Jake and Nog both asked at once.

  Quark nodded and then flinched. "Who do you think built that panel? Little space ghosts?"

  "Hasn't this been here since we came to the station?" Jake asked. He couldn't reconcile that thought with the efficiency of his father's team. The chief wouldn't allow random signals and strange energy feeds in his station. Neither would his father. And if they failed to notice it, they had Dax. She always saw what was different.

  "No, it hasn't been here that long. It wasn't here six months ago, I can tell you that." Quark tapped the door he was sitting against. "And neither were these."

  The lump on Quark's head had to be more severe than it looked. He was imagining things. "I don't see how the Cardassians could install these doors and this kind of surveillance system under Odo's and Chief O'Brien's noses," Jake said.

  Quark laughed, then winced, touched his forehead, and moaned. "First," he said, his voice small as if he were in pain, "I said the equipment was Cardassian. That doesn't mean they installed it. Anyone could have done it for them at the right price."

  Jake gave him a harsh look.

  Quark opened his hands. "Why does everyone suspect me first?"

  "There's profit in it," Nog said.

  "Not for my brother," Rom said. "He doesn't know a laser bolt from a light tack."

  "Right," Quark said. "I think." He glanced at his brother and nephew as if he knew they had said something unusual, but he didn't know what it was.

  "But people can't just crawl around the station without someone noticing," Jake said.

  "You have," Quark said. "We just did. No one's hurrying to our rescue. No one thinks about these tunnels."

  "Chief O'Brien does," Jake said.

  "And where's he, hmmm? Off on the Defiant searching for treasure."

  "Treasure?" Nog asked.

  "But he's not always gone," Jake said.

  "He's been gone a lot this year," Quark said. "And so has your father and Dax and Odo, for that matter. All it would take is a few afternoons. I think there's been plenty of time to install this little spy shop."

  Jake glanced at the wall. Kira was pacing around Ops. The red alert was still sounding, and his father was nowhere to be seen. Quark knew something about the mission they were on, and he still hadn't explained his own presence in the tunnels.

  "How did you get here?" Jake asked.

  "I crawled, same as you," Quark said.

  "Why?" Jake couldn't keep the suspicion out of his voice.

  "I forget," Quark said, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back. And no matter how many times Jake tried to rouse him, Quark refused to utter another word.

  CHAPTER

  15

  HIS FAMILY'S GREATEST NIGHTMARE looked as if it were about to become true. Hibar Ribe stood in the center of the bridge on the largest warship in the Jibetian fleet, his hands clasped behind his back, his long black robe heavy and oppressive on his shoulders.

  His assistants were watching him warily. They recognized his foul mood and didn't understand the cause of it. They had rejoiced when they heard of the chance that the Nibix had been discovered.

  Everyone would.

  The warship's main deck crew worked tirelessly, pushing the engines at full power to arrive at the Federation deep-space station as quickly as possible. Ribe, who was head of the Jibetian Council and who had never even been on a warship until that morning, watched in complete fascination.

  Gone was the ornamentation of his usual starship. No observation decks, no domes open to space, no high-backed chairs. Everything on this ship was built sleek and long. Built for efficiency and maximum firepower and nothing more.

  Here, on the main deck, black walls rose. They were covered with equipment, computer panels, and small dividers separating each work station. No distractions. No thoughts allowed other than the ones the generals wanted the troops to hear. It had been this way in warships for nearly eight hundred years. The revolution, once it ended, would never happen again.

  His ancestors had seen to that.

  He shuddered and returned to his command chair. General Caybe had given him a position on the main deck, but it was only honorary. He could not give orders to the crew. Too many chances for confusion. If Ribe wanted changes made, he spoke to the general, who then issued the orders.

  But the command chair gave Ribe a good view of the crew. It also had its own screen, which he had left running. The screen showed, with the flick of a finger, a three-dimensional map with the fleet's trajectory plotted on it. The map showed the ship nearing the Federation space station. He then flicked the screen and saw the blackness of space punctuated by the light of nearby stars. It told him nothing. So he magnified the image ten thousand times.

  And froze.

  A fleet of Cardassians, which he had expected.

  Three Federation starships already docked, which he had not.

  "General," he said, "we must consult."

  His advisors moved closer. He used to joke that they were a small army trying to operate as one brain. It never worked. If it hadn't been custom for the head of the Jibetian Council to surround himself with advisors, he would have cut his loose a long time ago. But tradition and the past on which it was based were the foundation of Jibetian culture.

  It was his job as head of the Jibetian Council and the senior member of the Ribe-Iber-Bikon family to make certain that the past—the official, government-sanctioned past—was never challenged.

  "Forgive me, Lord High Sir," the general said, "we're nearing the station. I—"

  "You'll come here," Ribe snapped.

  The general's mouth thinned, but he whirled and took his place beside Ribe.

  Ribe gestured at the screen. "Explain this."

  "Our sensors just picked it up." The general lowered his voice so that only Ribe and the advisors could hear. "The station is at priority alert. It appears to be under some sort of threat from the Cardassians."

  "I thought that treaty was settled."

  "As did I, Lord High Sir."

  "But they are expecting us."

  The general nodded once.

  "And they have not told us to turn around."

  The general nodded again.

  "How much firepower does a Federation starship have?"

  "More than three of our ships combined," the general said.

  Ribe tapped his lip with his index finger. Strange. Very strange. But he didn't pretend to understand the Federation. It was a complex organization made up of dissimilar peoples. To ascribe it one cultural attitude was to underestimate it. "Then, in your estimation, they don't need us for firepower."

  "No, Lord High Sir. I don't believe they do."

  Ribe nodded. "You may return to your post. Keep me informed on our proximity to the station and its own status."

  "Yes, Lord High Sir." The general's tone had an edge of disrespect. He managed it in the repetition of Ribe's title, but technically the man had done nothing wrong. He was merely allowing his
resentment of Ribe's usurpation of his ship and his fleet to show in a subtle, unpunishable manner.

  Ribe hoped that the resentment would go no farther than this. He could not command a fleet on his own, and his advisors, useless in political matters, were dangerous with weapons at their disposal.

  He stared at the screen, thankful for the military efficiency of the vessel. No one would interrupt him. His advisors knew better, and the crew could not even make eye contact with him. He needed a moment to think. His emotions had been in turmoil since he received the news about the possible discovery of the Nibix.

  Children learned about the Nibix in Siberan religious classes. It was the great ship that took the Supreme Ruler to his destiny, and God saw fit to lose it among the stars. He had loved that story until he came into his majority.

  Then his father told him the truth. Told him about the past.

  Ribe snapped his fingers. His senior advisor, Concar, leaned over his shoulder. "Any news as to the Nibix?"

  Concar shook his head. "The ship's name has not been mentioned nor any search mission. Could our information be faulty?"

  Ribe pointed to the screen. "Three Federation starships and a station on alert would seem to say otherwise."

  Concar nodded but obviously did not agree. "Unless our security is not as tight as we might like to think."

  Ribe templed his fingers, a sign for Concar to remove himself. Concar leaned back, keeping a reasonable distance from the chair. Ribe studied the ships.

  The search for the Nibix and its wealth had entranced this entire sector for generations. In the rule of his great-great-grandfather, a possible Nibix had been discovered. The old man had visited the ship himself, even though he knew it was not, could not, be the Nibix. This cold-sleep ship had weapon burns on its sides, and its crew had died awake and fighting.

  The crew on the Nibix went to sleep one night and never woke up. Bikon had seen to that.

  Bikon, family legend held, was brilliant and charismatic, a man everyone trusted. Ribe had always doubted that part of the legend. Bikon may have been brilliant, but he would have been the only member of the Ribe-Iber-Bikon family to have charisma. The family had held its power all these centuries, not through love, but through complete and absolute control of history, resources, and information. The existence of the council itself was a mere formality. The religion had evolved into harmless pap, a mixture of legend, stories that made the people feel good, and common wisdom.