by Andy Mangels
Kira caught her before she hit the deck. “What’s wrong with her?”
“What isn’t?” Tarses said, taking the woman from Kira’s arms and lowering her gently to the airlock floor. “Just look at her. She’s been the victim of hours of physical and probably psychological abuse. I have to get her to the medical bay.”
Kira tapped her combadge. “Kira to Defiant.”
“Bowers here.”
“Two to beam out, Lieutenant. Have Chao lock on to Dr. Tarses and the injured Bajoran next to him. Tell her to beam them straight to the medbay.”
“Acknowledged. Stand by.” There was a pause as Bowers relayed the orders to the transporter bay, and shortly thereafter, Tarses and his patient were enveloped in a curtain of shimmering light, and then were gone.
Kira exhaled heavily. “Sam, have Shar scan this ship again for life signs. What do his readings show?”
A moment later, she heard Shar’s voice over her combadge: “Nineteen, Captain. The seven remaining members of the boarding party, plus the original twelve . . .” Shar trailed off, realizing the impossibility of the readings. If they were genuine, then they should be showing one less than the original twelve occupants of the craft, now that one of them had been beamed aboard the Defiant with Tarses.
“Let me guess,” Kira said. “You’re still showing them concentrated in engineering and the bridge.”
“Confirmed,” Shar said.
“The problem is, with the exception of the doctor’s patient,” Kira told him, “everyone we’ve found aboard this ship so far has been recently killed. Something here is sending out false life signs.”
Bowers’s voice came back. “Captain, I strongly recommend aborting the mission and returning to the Defiant.”
“Not yet. Stand by,” Kira tapped off, then on again. “Kira to Gordimer.”
“Gordimer here, Captain.”
“Report, Ensign.”
“Sir, we’ve secured the bridge, but the crew was already dead. They were all killed by weapons fire.”
“Stay where you are, Ensign. I’m coming up.”
* * *
Residual energy signatures were consistent: the deaths aboard the Besinian freighter had been caused by the same weapon.
Kira studied the killing field. She noted the single door leading out of the bridge, center aft, saw that all the crew stations faced the forward viewer, considered where and how each of the bodies had fallen, and formed a picture in her mind of how it all happened.
A single killer, making his way through the ship. He or she would have started here, in the bridge. The female Arkenite slumped over the command console was first, shot point-blank like the mercs in the corridor outside engineering. But to get away with that, the killer had to have somehow come in unnoticed . . . or had to have been known to the crew. Someone they hadn’t feared. One of them.
The sound of the weapon would have caused the rest of the bridge crew to turn. The killer had fired next on the two farthest to port, a female human and a male Bolian; both victims’ disruptors were still holstered. Next to go had be the human conn officer, who had perished in the act of taking out his weapon.
The last to die had put up a fight: a Nausicaan who probably took cover behind the tactical station at starboard when the shooting began. By the time the killer’s arc of fire had swept to that side of the bridge, the Nausicaan had freed his weapon and started shooting back; the front of the command console was seared. For some reason the Nausicaan stood up—perhaps he thought he had shot his attacker?—and that was all the killer needed to finish him off. The Nausicaan’s broad torso was charred black with multiple hits. He’d fallen back against the forward bulkhead, dead before he slid to the deck.
The killer had then proceeded to engineering, met the two in the corridor on the way, dealt with them, and then went on to eliminate the rest of the crew. It made sense for the killer to start in the bridge and work his way aft; the engineers would have been slower to react if they lost contact with the command crew, whereas those on the bridge might have determined more quickly that there was an internal danger to the ship. Taking out the bridge crew first would have given the killer time to cross the distance between the two sections before the engineers were fully aware that anything was wrong, especially if they were occupied with being chased by a Federation starship when it all happened.
Gordimer’s people had found an isolinear cube inserted in the command console. The block contained a sophisticated autopilot program, adaptable to fit the conditions defined by external sensor readings. Thus, evasive maneuvers and defensive measures continued even after the crew was dead, and a special signal designed to give outside observers the impression of twelve distinct life signs in two separate areas of the ship convinced the Defiant that she was still engaged in a meaningful pursuit. Even the voice Kira thought she’d heard over the static of the comm channel had been fake, designed to mislead.
“DeJesus to Captain Kira.”
“Go ahead.”
“Sir, I’m still on the engineering deck. I found a shuttlepod bay, just large enough for one craft. The doors were open and the bay is empty, but my tricorder is showing atypical graviton concentrations.”
“A cloaking device?”
“That’d be my guess, sir. I think whoever killed these people planned his escape.”
That power spike Shar thought he detected, Kira realized. If it was a thruster burst, a cloaked shuttlepod could have propelled itself clear of the freighter while Defiant was still on approach, and then gone to warp without our realizing it.
Gordimer approached her. “This was all planned,” he said, voicing the same conclusions she had. “All of it. But why?”
Kira’s thoughts during the chase returned to her: Maybe most of these were mercenaries, opportunists. But someone among them was sending out a message to whoever would come after them for what happened on Bajor.
Then an earlier notion replayed itself in her mind: the fact that the Defiant had beaten the odds against finding the Besinian vessel after so great a head start. Now Kira knew the truth: The Defiant hadn’t beaten the odds at all. It had been lured out here.
Nog reported in: “Captain, I’ve managed to get the warp drive operational, and have already initiated a restart sequence, which should take no more than fifteen minutes. A minimal crew should be able to get this thing back to the station for analysis by 0100 tomorrow morning at warp five.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Stand by for further instructions.”
Kira’s mind raced. The killer expected, even wanted, the freighter to be caught. The crew had probably been misled into believing there would be a very different outcome to the confrontation, and had been killed to keep them from talking. The autopilot and the decoy readings were designed to keep the Defiant’s crew distracted so the killer could escape.
But why not destroy the ship? Kira wondered. Why not just—?
Kira’s thoughts froze as she saw it. The restart sequence.
“We’ve got to get out of here. Now,” she told Gordimer. “Contact the ship. Have them lock on to both teams and be ready to beam us out on my command.” Tapping her own combadge, she cursed herself for not seeing it sooner. “Kira to Nog.”
“Nog here, Captain.”
“Shut down the restart sequence, Lieutenant.”
“Sir?”
“Shut it down, Nog,” Kira snapped. “That’s an order.”
“Aye, sir . . . . Initiating core shutdown . . . . Uh-oh.”
“What is it?”
“The antimatter injector isn’t responding. It’s continuing to cycle up to release, and the rate is accelerating. Sir, this thing is going to rupture any second.”
Kira turned back to Gordimer. “Now, Ensign.”
“Energize, Defiant. Seven to beam out.”
The alien bridge dissolved around Kira, replaced by the cramped confines of Defiant’s transporter bay. Chao had successfully snatched all seven members of the boarding party.<
br />
Kira tapped her combadge as she bolted off the stage and started running. “Kira to bridge. Shields up. Get us out of here, Sam. Best speed.”
The ship pitched beneath her, knocking her against a corridor wall as she ran: the blast front from the exploding warp core. The artificial gravity winked as the Defiant took the hit, throwing her to the deck. Then the ship seemed to right itself; she felt the vibrating hum of Defiant’s acceleration to warp through the deckplates, and she knew they were clear.
Bowers turned toward her as she entered the bridge. “Are you all right, Captain?”
Kira nodded. “Status?”
“Still in one piece,” he assured her. “No serious damage. But it was close. What happened?”
She filled Sam in on the evidence found, the conclusions drawn. His face became a mask of barely contained anger as he understood the extent to which he, along with everyone else, had been fooled by their adversaries.
“We were played,” he said.
Kira nodded, suddenly recalling a human expression of Captain Sisko’s that seemed to fit their circumstances perfectly. “Someone is throwing down a gauntlet. And we need to figure who, damn fast.” She turned to sciences. “Shar, I want you to work on compiling and analyzing the tricorder data collected by the boarding party. Cross-check those scans against the Defiant’s sensor logs and prepare a report for our return to the station. If there’s anything useful in those readings that will help us figure out what’s really going on, I want to know about it.”
“I can begin at once, sir,” Shar replied. “But the work may best be conducted in science lab one. Permission to leave the bridge?”
“Granted,” Kira said, crossing to the command chair and settling into it as Shar exited.
“Sir,” Bowers said. “I want to apologize for before. My intent wasn’t to challenge your authority to lead as you see fit, only to remind you you had others you could depend on who were ready to walk into danger on your behalf.”
Kira shook her head. “No apology necessary, Sam. And I know I can depend on you. That’s why I left you in command. But you need to remember that even though this uniform is still new, I’ve sat in Defiant’s center seat before, as well as that of her predecessor.” She smiled at him. “Not to mention the fact that I’ve had the destruct codes for both ships since Day One. I’m no stranger here.”
Bowers nodded. “Understood, sir. I suppose some of us, the veteran Starfleet people, I mean, still need a shot of cold reality to remind us of those things. At least, I did. And that surprised me. I thought I understood, intellectually at least, that for a good many Militia officers this transition would be an easy one. But part of me still reacted to you like you were new to the game. I just want you to know it won’t happen again, Captain.”
She gave him a nod, accepting his honesty without judgment. “Return to station, Lieutenant.”
“Aye, sir,” Bowers said, withdrawing to his standing console in the aft section of the bridge.
“Captain,” Tenmei said from conn. “I’m picking up a temperature fluctuation in the ablative armor, grid sector Z-47.”
Kira turned to the engineering station. “Mr. Senkowski?”
“I see it. It’s a second-decimal-place differential. I don’t believe it’s cause for concern, Captain.”
Kira noted that Tenmei seemed displeased with Senkowski’s response, but had refocused her attention on conn. “Keep an eye on it anyway,” Kira told the engineer. “We don’t want it turning into a bigger problem.”
“Medical bay to bridge,” came Tarses’s voice over the comm.
“Kira here. How’s our guest, Doctor?”
“I regret to report she expired five minutes ago, Captain. She’d suffered multiple internal and external injuries, including cranial trauma. The injuries were inflicted methodically and with great precision. She was definitely tortured, sir.”
Kira’s left hand curled into a fist. “Have you had any luck identifying her?”
“Nurse Richter transmitted her DNA scan and her earring design to Militia headquarters on Bajor a short while ago. They’ve verified her identity as Ke Iniri, 24, a resident of Sidau village. More than that, they weren’t able to say. I’m sorry, sir. I wish there was more I could have done.”
“Don’t beat yourself up, Simon,” Kira said. “I know you did everything possible. Please see to her remains according to Bajoran custom until we can determine her next of kin. Bridge out.” Kira turned to face the forward viewer, trying to keep her voice even, silently vowing to find whoever was responsible for Ke Iniri’s death and make sure they were never in a position to harm anyone else. “Helm, set course for Deep Space 9, warp eight.”
“Warp eight,” Tenmei echoed. “Aye, Captain.”
* * *
Hours later, moving through the airlock linking the Defiant to the station, Kira found Vaughn waiting to greet her on the other side. He was leaning back against the corridor wall, his arms folded.
“Welcome back,” he said. “Heard you had some trouble.” He fell into step alongside her as she entered the docking ring, and together the two of them moved down the gently curving passageway.
“I assume Dax filled you in?” Kira asked. She’d been in communication with ops during the journey back, and had informed Ezri of all that had transpired.
Vaughn nodded grimly. “I’m getting the sense that this whole thing is much more than an act of terrorism.”
“It was a trap,” Kira confirmed. “I barely saw it in time. Someone’s toying with us, and I don’t think they’re finished. What makes it worse is that I didn’t learn a damn thing about why this is happening.”
“Ro thinks she’s making some progress on that front,” Vaughn told her. “She hopes to have something solid to report soon.”
“I hope so,” Kira said, sounding weary in her own ears. “I could use some good news.”
“Maybe you’ll feel better once we’re on Bajor.”
Kira stopped and stared at him. “That’s tonight, isn’t it? I completely forgot. What time are we supposed to be there?”
“Twenty-one hundred,” said Vaughn. “I already have a runabout standing by.”
“Good,” Kira said as they resumed walking. “That’ll give me some time to shower and clear my head.”
“Anything you need me to do in the meantime?”
“Yes,” said Kira, handing Vaughn a padd containing Shar’s sensor log report. “That’s an analysis of every reading we took during the encounter with the Besinian freighter. See if you can reach Gul Macet. Make him aware of what’s happened and send him a copy of that report. The fact that the ship was equipped with Cardassian weapons and Dominion shields should be of particular interest to him. Do the same with the Allied commanders of the protectorates. If anyone inside the Cardssian Union has run across that ship, they may be able to tell us something that’ll help us to find whoever’s behind this.”
“I’ll get right on it.”
Her brow furrowed. “What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you were still on Bajor.”
“Had to report for a physical. Dr. Girani got tired of waiting.”
Kira smiled. “Now that you mention it, I seem to recall Julian predicting you were going to be a problem when it came to your exam.”
Vaughn looked at her as they reached a turbolift. “Does Bashir talk about me behind my back to everybody on this station?”
“I don’t think he spoke to Morn before he went on leave, but I could be mistaken,” Kira said good naturedly as she stepped aboard. “Habitat ring, level one,” she told the lift. After it got under way, she asked, “Any word from Julian?”
Vaughn shook his head. “My understanding is that he was in London very briefly, then decided to go to Sudan. I think he still has family there.”
“Sounds like he’s trying to get as far from his life here as possible.”
“That’s understandable, I think,” Vaughn said. “He hasn’t taken a vacation in a while, and
between that business on Sindorin earlier this year, the mission to Gamma Quadrant, the parasite affair and the subsequent mess on Trill, not to mention his split with Dax . . . he needed a break.”
Kira frowned. “I hope that’s all it is.”
“Give him time. Once he clears his head, he’ll be back.”
She looked at him, imagining Vaughn must have gone through similar periods in his own life, perhaps more than once. Come to think of it, so had she. Benjamin too, after his first wife died, and then again when Jadzia was killed.
“Ezri seems to be holding up pretty well,” she said.
Vaughn nodded. “All things considered. Joined Trills do tend toward having greater resilience to changes within their lives.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Kira said. “Anything else going on I should know about?”
“I tried talking Girani into joining Starfleet.”
“Let me guess: she shot you down.”
Vaughn shrugged. “Figured it was worth a try. But her mind’s made up; she wants to return to Bajor. Ro made some recommendations for Girani’s replacement, and I narrowed those down to three. Their files are in your personal database.”
“I’ll look them over tomorrow. What else?”
Vaughn told her about Ro’s observations regarding the Militia, and her proposal to reinstate the liaison position. He also informed her that Ro’s recommendation for the job was supported by General Lenaris.
“Really?” was Kira’s reaction.
“She’d like the liaison to start immediately in order to help with her investigation into the Sidau massacre. With your permission, of course.”
Kira considered it. Given the nature of the investigation, it made sense to keep the Militia fully involved. Finally she said, “Have Ro report to my quarters, with the officer’s file, in thirty minutes. I’ll make my decision after I speak with her. But unless there’s something in his record I’m not happy about, I think it’s a sound idea.” The lift came to a stop, and Kira stepped out. She turned and hit the hold button. “Hey, did I hear right? Is today your birthday?”
