Star Trek - Day Of Honor 02

by Armageddon Sky

  Benjamin Sisko could still remember precisely what he'd felt three months ago, in the moment he'd heard about the breaking of the Khitomer Accords. A single icy spike of disbelief, then an explosion of frustrated anger at the success of the Dominion's divide-and-conquer tactics. Despite all the later emotions that had knitted themselves into the tangled tapestry of his feelings toward the Klingons -- betrayal, annoyance, even unexpected sympathy for Worf's impossible position in Starfleet -- the sharp memory of that initial reaction had never faded. Great moments in history did that to the people who lived through them -- crystallized a single day's events inside the shifting smoke of memory the way a supernova hammered a permanent singularity through the fabric of space and time. Sisko sometimes wondered if those shock-carved memories weren't the truest imprint of history, more real and indelible than any datachip's video record.

  Unfortunately, not enough time had passed since that day for his deep-seated rage to be relegated entirely to memory. The embers of it still smoldered, banked beneath the accumulated worries and stress of the hundred intervening days. And the disrupted emergency transmission he had just watched flicker across the main screen of Ops hadn't done a thing to quench it.

  The turbolift platform hissed into sight, rising far too slowly, as it always seemed to do in tense situations like these. When it finally arrived, what looked like a medieval Klingon melee poured out into Ops, making one of the junior officers gasp and another stifle a laugh. Sisko lifted an eyebrow as he recognized the senior officers who made up the core of his tactical analysis team beneath the sweat and jangle of lacquered armor. Kira shot him a rueful glance of apology, while Worfjust looked stoic. Dax went to her science console as if reporting for duty in ancient Klingon fighting garb were something she'd done a dozen times before. Knowing Curzon, that might even be true.

  "We got a report in from the Victoria Adams already?" she asked, reading the signature frequency of the transmission on her display before Sisko could even open his mouth to brief them. "But they can't have had time to gather much data on the cometary event. They were only scheduled to arrive in the KDZ-E25From system a few hours ago."

  "It's not a scientific report." Sisko crossed Ops to join her in front of the panel, frowning at the digital gibberish that scrolled across her screen. "Unfortunately, right now that's all I'm sure of. The message was so badly disrupted that all we could make out was that Captain Marsters encountered Klingons and an emergency situation had developed. Can you sift through the interference and clean the signal up, old man?"

  "I can try." Dax handed him her bat'leth and pulled back her unruly mane of hair, then focused on her data display with the kind of instant intensity that only a joined Trill symbiont and host could summon. Sisko took a step back and reined his simmering impatience in with an effort. Badgering Dax for results right now would only slow her down.

  Instead, he wrapped his fingers tight around the traditional Klingon weapon he'd been given, feeling the deep warmth of the metal blade radiating through its sweaty leather grip. Whatever archaic Klingon ritual his senior officers had been re-creating down in Quark's holo-suite, their battle gear hadn't just been donned for authenticity. Only a long and hard-fought battle could have soaked so much of Dax's body heat into her weapon. Sisko raised an eyebrow at Kira, and saw his first officer drop her hand almost guiltily from the sore shoulder she'd been massaging.

  "Could you reconstruct the Victoria Adams's coordinates at the time of transmission?" the major asked, clearly determined to ward off any questions about her fitness for duty. "If they veered off course toward one of the areas the Klingons have claimed as theirs --"

  Sisko shook his head. "The signal tracked right back to the E25From system. That's nowhere near any of the disputed territory."

  Worf frowned over his armored shoulder. "Still, there has been a significant increase in Klingon incursions throughout the entire demilitarized zone in the last few months," he reminded Sisko. "If you recall my warnings on the possible dangers of this scientific observation mission --"

  Sisko winced. It had been easy at the time the Victoria Adams had departed to dismiss Worfs warnings as Klingon paranoia. No incidents, other than a few distant sightings of warships and smugglers, had disturbed the uneasy peace of that part of the Klingon-Cardassian demilitarized zone. And there had been nothing special about the KDZ-E25From system -- aside from its unfortunate ownership of a disintegrating giant comet -- to attract the attention of either the Cardassian or Klingon empires. "Limited landmass, no significant resources, and utterly impassable vegetation" was how the ancient Starfleet survey charts had summarized the system's single Class-M planet. It had seemed a safe enough place for a small shipload of planetary scientists and retired Starfleet officers to go to view a cosmic fireworks show.

  "This isn't deliberate signal-jamming," Dax said abruptly, saving Sisko from having to answer his tactical officer. "The interference cuts randomly across the entire subspace spectrum."

  "Couldn't the noise be coming from all those comet impacts the Victoria Adams went to observe?" O'Brien inquired.

  Dax shook her head. "Not unless the comet fragments in that shower are made of dilithium instead of ice. The electromagnetic noise generated by bolide impacts on a Class-M planet might very well contaminate the radio and visible bands, but it shouldn't touch subspace frequencies. Not even to mask --"

  Her voice broke off without warning, and her fingers began to fly across the computer panel. Sisko shot a frowning glance at her data output screen, but saw nothing he could recognize as a significant change in the random display of noise.

  "What is it, old man?"

  Dax looked up, her eyes crackling with sudden realization. "This interference we're seeing -- it's not a generated signal at all, natural or artificial. It never adds to any wavelength of the Victoria Adams's sub-space signal, it only decreases it to a greater or lesser extent. In the places where the transmission's nearly wiped out, there's no static in its place. Just nothing."

  "What does that mean?" Kira asked.

  "It means the Victoria Adams's subspace signal has been filtered through a massive depolarizing field."

  A rumble too fierce for a groan and too wordless for a curse emerged from somewhere deep in Worf's chest. Sisko shot a questioning look at him, and saw the bared-teeth grimace that said his chief tactical officer didn't like what he was going to have to say.

  "There is only one way to create that kind of field in open space." Worf's voice deepened in a bleak mixture of vindication and regret. "Massive Klingon disruptor fire."

  "Yes," Dax agreed. "The Victoria Adams must have been under Klingon attack when she sent this message."

  For a moment, the only sound in Ops was the beep and hum of computers handling the routine business of the space station. The machines were the only ones oblivious to the military and political crisis crashing down upon them. Then Sisko grunted and allowed three months of stifled anger to escape in a cascade of orders.

  "Dax, get me the best resolution you can on that transmission. I want to know as much as we can about what happened out there." He swung to face the rest of his crew. "Major Kira, put in a high-priority call to Starfleet and brief Admiral Nechayev about the attack on the Victoria Adams. Commander Worf, I want an updated report from Intelligence on all known and suspected Klingon forces in the demilitarized zone. O'Brien, get the Defiant ready for immediate departure and notify Dr. Bashir to assemble an emergency medical team."

  "Yes, sir." The cadet-sharp response from the whole crew told Sisko he was probably letting a little too much of his temper spill into his voice. He took a deep breath, but it didn't do much to ease his tension. Bad enough that the Klingons had decided to spit in the face of the Federation by attacking a civilian ship. But to have that ship be the defenseless research vessel Victoria Adams with its load of vacationing Starfleet retirees -- it made Sisko's gut burn with a rage fierce enough to scorch any remnant of hesitation from his mind.

 
; The familiar, gravelly sound of a throat being cleared brought his narrowed gaze around to the one senior officer to whom he had issued no orders. Odo gazed back with a quizzical expression in his not-quite-human eyes, his eyebrows arched in wordless inquiry. "Is there a problem, Constable?"

  "I don't know. You certainly seem to think so."

  Kira snorted without looking up from her communications panel. "The Klingons just declared war on the Federation, Odo. You don't call that a problem?"

  "Did they?" the Changeling asked dryly. "It's not as if the Victoria Adams was in Federation space when she was attacked. Maquis and Cardassian ships have been getting fired on and chased out of the Klingon demilitarized zone for the past three months. We knew there was a risk the same thing would happen to the Victoria Adams. Wasn't that why Commander Worf recommended our science officer not join the expedition?"

  "True," Sisko agreed. "But that doesn't mean the Federation can turn a blind eye to the destruction of an unarmed research vessel on a scientific mission."

  "Or that we can ignore a Federation vessel's distress call, and leave its survivors to die, just because we are afraid of Klingon retaliation," Worf added grimly.

  "Ah." Odo tilted his head, an ironic glitter in his pale eyes. "No doubt you all learned that lesson at the Academy, from that Starfleet training exercise -- the Kobayashi Maru."

  Sisko exchanged frowning looks with his chief tactical officer. "This is not a no-win situation, Constable," he said at last. "If we can get to the E25F system in time to rescue the crew of the Victoria Adams, we might be able to avert a diplomatic crisis"

  "-- over a misunderstanding that could be resolved just as easily by negotiation between the Federation and the Klingon Empire," Odo pointed out, with the same unerring logic that made him such an impartial arbiter of merchant disputes on the Promenade. "The loss of a small research vessel --"

  "-- might be smoothed over," Sisko agreed. "But the loss of the last two surviving officers from the long-range explorer Glimmerglass, the only captain to take her ship successfully through the Chienozen passage, the science officer who established contact with the first inhabited neutron star, the diplomatic liaison who --"

  Odo held up a hand, giving Sisko the stiff nod he used to acknowledge his mistakes. "You're saying we have to interfere because the Starfleet veterans who went along for the comet show were unusually important --"

  "No, they weren't," Sisko said bluntly. "Except for one or two, they were just the normal run of Starfleet retirees. What I'm saying, Constable, is that the loss of anyone who served in uniform as long and as honorably as those people did is going to poison Starfleet's relations with the Klingons for years to come. No matter what the Federation diplomats may say or do."

  "Enhanced transmission coming up on the main screen." Dax broke into the argument without ceremony. "I managed to extrapolate an additional seventy percent of the signal from the fragments that got through. Be prepared -- we're still going to lose the end."

  The main screen of Ops blanked, then exploded' into a signal so brilliantly over-enhanced that Sisko had to squint to make out the burned-in shadows of the Victoria Adams's bridge. Dax frowned and adjusted some control on her screen, muting the stilled image down to more bearable levels of brightness. The colors of deck and uniforms and bridge stations remained artificially monotone, however, a computer's extrapolation rather than the varied tints and shadings of real life. A single rawboned figure occupied the captain's chair. Dax's enhancements hadn't changed the tense set of his lantern jaw or erased his scowl, but they had brought into finer focus the sweat that beaded his face. He looked out across time and space with intent eyes, making Sisko once again feel that the man was making eye contact directly with him.

  "This is Captain Charles Marsters of the Federation research vessel Victoria Adams," said a clipped, precise voice. Sisko barely recognized it as the same static-fuzzed drawl he'd managed to decipher only a few words from fifteen minutes ago. "Request urgent assistance from Deep Space Nine. We've encountered an armed Klingon blockade around the planet KDZ-E25F." A blast rocked the science vessel, staggering the captain and momentarily knocking the image back to glittering white nothingness.

  "Blockade?" Kira demanded incredulously.

  Sisko grunted. "I thought that was what he said before, but I couldn't be sure. This was where we lost the audio feed."

  Dax adjusted something on her panel, and the Victoria Adams's bridge did a slow fade back into existence on the screen. "-- attacked us for not leaving fast enough," Marsters said, still sounding calm despite the crackle of on-board fire beneath his words. "Hull and warp core integrity are holding, but we lost all life support systems in the initial attack. We're running on limited emergency backup now. All passengers and nonessential crew have --" The transmission shattered into nothingness again, presumably due to another close-range disruptor blast. This time, when the visual feed coalesced back into existence, it looked more ghostly and snowed over than before. And although Marsters's lips were still moving, no sound emerged.

  Sisko cursed in fierce disappointment. "That's the best you can do, old man? We still don't know exactly what happened."

  "The subtractive effects of the disruptor fire were worst in the audio portion of the signal. I can't extrapolate something from nothing, Benjamin."

  "They evacuated the rest of the crew and passengers in a large planetary sampling shuttle," Odo said unexpectedly. "The Victoria Adams is going to cover their departure by leading the Klingons as far out of the system as possible."

  Sisko swung around, startled. His chief security officer stared so intently at the screen that he didn't even blink at the final, blinding explosion of white nothingness. It was at times like this that Sisko remembered Odo's humanoid shape was merely assumed, and not hampered by any biological limitations.

  "Constable, how do you know that?"

  "I can read lips." Odo's pale eyes swung over to him, irony washing through them like a chill of frost across a windowpane. "It's a valuable skill to have when you're watching Ferengi make illegal bargains across a noisy bar."

  Sisko lifted an eyebrow, but it was with respect, not skepticism. His years of experience had taught him that the Constable never claimed to have skills he didn't possess. "Did Captain Marsters say where the shuttle went after it left the ship?"

  "Down to the planet," Odo said promptly. "I believe he said something about deliberately taking a depowered entry path, to make it look to Klingon sensors as though they were a falling comet fragment."

  Dax frowned. "But in a thick Class-M atmosphere like that, a steep entry path could destabilize the shuttle and force them into a crash landin It seems like such a risk --"

  "Not as much of a risk as staying on the Victoria Adams, with the Klingons in pursuit and life support failing." Sisko felt his jaw tighten around the next question he had to ask. "Was that final explosion the ship blowing up, Dax?"

  She surprised him with a shake of her head. "I don't think so. The signal strength was actually fading compared to the disruptor depolarization toward the end. I'd say the Victoria Adam, was actually pulling away from her pursuers."

  "I just hope they pulled all the Klingons away with them," O'Brien said. "That would leave the system clear for us to go in."

  "Yes." Sisko turned to pin Kira with a frowning glance. "Any reply yet from Starfleet Command?"

  Kira grimaced. "Regional headquarters acknowledged our hail, but says Admiral Nechayev is in a crucial meeting with representatives from the Vorta. She left orders that all emergency situations be handled under the protocol of sector commander recognizance."

  Sisko's breath hissed through his teeth, but it was in satisfaction, not annoyance. "That means that, for now, the decision is up to us. Recommendations?"

  "Go," said O'Brien curtly.

  "Go," Dax agreed.

  "Go now!" growled Worf.

  That was the Starfleet side of his mixed command crew, reacting exactly as Sisko had expect
ed. Their majority vote essentially settled the question, but Sisko forced himself to look over at his Bajoran second-in-command, trying to make sure he wasn't allowing service loyalties to overrule his better judgment. He got back a look of crackling impatience.

  "Of course, we have to go," Kira said. "Give the Klingons a research ship in the demilitarized zone, and they'll take a starship in the Alpha Quadrant. If we don't stop them now, we'll just have to deal with them later."

  "Constable, do you agree?"

  Odo snorted. "I think we're going to start exactly the war we're trying to prevent. But since I appear to be the only one who feels that way, I'll save my energy for saying "I told you so" a few days from now."

  "I appreciate that," Sisko said dryly. "In the meantime, could you assemble a skeleton security squad for the Defiant? I want to take minimal crew, so we'll have enough room to evacuate all survivors." He glanced over at Dax. "Do you remember how many passengers and crew the Victoria Adams carried?"