by Emily
And so soon after losing Odo. It's so unfair. Kira projected a comfortable understanding of Odo's choice to return to the Great Link, but Ezri suspected that it still hurt her—and having to deal with the murder of a childhood friend would reinforce conscious and subconscious stresses of abandonment That was the psychological standard, anyway; Ezri had been acting as station counselor for long enough to know mat emotional reactions weren't exactly set in titanium. / hope she'll talk to someone about it, though. Before she has time to bury Ae pain.
She would have gone to see Kira already, except for the incredible workload that had practically everyone on the station occupied; as disheartening as it was, Kira undoubtedly needed Dax's engineering skills more than her ability to listen. The original plan, pushed for by the Federation and Bajor, had seemed feasible enough—take it all apart with the Aldebaran keeping
watch, refurbish the Defiant's tactical systems and armor, rewire communications and most of the subspace systems for the station, and put it all back together again in one short and brutal push. An updated Defiant, but more importantly, no more endlessly overlapping maintenance shutdowns for the station, no more makeshift patches between Cardassian and Federation technology that only seemed to test until it was really important for them to work....
... and if ninety percent of the SCE techs weren't off repairing war damage, we could have gotten away with it, too. They just didn't have the staff they needed to get everything done in a reasonable amount of time.
Nog's combadge chirped, and he sat up a little straighter as he answered, drawing Ezri's attention. The obvious pride he took in his position was good to see; they'd all suffered in the war, and deserved a little happiness—
—and tile strangest thing happened. She was still on her back and was looking up at Nog, and the change that came over his upside-down face—a flash of pure panic that started in his eyes and seemed to spread, contorting his rounded features—had her believing, just for a second, that he was having some kind of a convulsion.
"Nog, what is it?"
He couldn't seem to catch his breath. He stood and stumbled to communications, running his hands over the console, and as she squirmed out from beneath the flight controls, Shar's voice spilled out into the bridge.
"—is on her way, but power up now. I repeat the station has gone to red alert. We need the Defiant's interface on-line, and a full status report. Commander last is
beaming over, but the colonel says to get ready immediately, attack ships are—they're firing on the Alde-baranf"
Nog looked positively ill. He ran back to where he'd been working and started digging frantically through his tools, calling for the computer to assess the Defiant's current condition. There was a sudden flurry of movement behind them, as the three other techs on the bridge rushed to various impaneled consoles and started powering things up.
"... in-line impulse system operating at forty-two percent Secondary subsystems for engineering interface, reaction control, science control, and torpedo launchers, inoperative. Primary subsystems for..."
As the computer's calm voice continued to list all that was wrong with DS9's best defense, as only a handful of engineers raced to put it back together again, Ezri was suddenly quite sure that people were going to die. She tapped the flight control interface and scanned the numbers, Nog yelling for an interphasic coil spanner over the computer's growing index of problems.
Maybe a lot of us.
It happened faster than Shar would have thought possible.
Only minutes ago, he'd been trying to stay awake, vaguely wishing for the warmth of his quarters. Now he stood at the central ops table amid flashing red lights, relaying orders to Nog and trying to activate the display screen at the same time, about to call for an engineering status on the shield emitters—when the station's sensors registered a hit on the Aldebaran. Even as the
ship's data flow fluctuated wildly, the screen that dominated ops spun to life, displaying the fierce battle.
The trio of fighters were pulling away from their first run, flashes of brilliant light sparking from a series of shield deflections across the rapidly approaching Aldebaran's bow. The Nebula-class Starship seemed slow and lumbering as the three Jem'Hadar peeled away and looped back, strafing the saucer's underbelly, their tactical choreography almost like hunting—a pack of vicious carnivores attacking some mammoth beast.
All around Shar, techs were calling out instructions in low, tense voices, moving about purposefully and quickly, making room for the small crowd that erupted from the turbolift. Status reports started trickling in from all around the station, appearing on the table's master display. Shar ran a collation and fed it to Kira's office, channeling his body's elevated awareness and need for action—stimulated by the situation, his antennae fairly throbbed with it—into lending him greater speed.
When he looked up next, he could only see two of the darting fighters. Both twined back and forth in front of the Aldebaran as if taunting it, narrowly dodging a series of phaser blasts, the energy streams dissipating harmlessly into the darkness. He tapped at the table's display, looking for the third ship, but mere were problems with several of the station's short-range sensors. He could only get a partial read, a suggestion of functional energy behind the Aldebaran's starboard Hank—
—and there was an explosion low on the ship's structure, a misty spray of light and escaping gases
forming behind what could only be the Aldebaran's main engineering decks. The third fighter flew down and away.
"Their shields ace gone!" someone behind him shouted, and a glance at the Aldebaran's interface confirmed it. A second later, the interface blanked out, but the station's sensors picked up evidence of the powerful blast, much more powerful man could have been caused by a Jem'Hadar striker's phased polaron beam. It was some type of quantum warhead, and even as Shar sent the newest data into command, Kira burst out of her office, a look of angry shock on her face.
"We've lost contact with the Aldebaran. Tactical, can we get targeting for quantum torpedoes?" she called out, turning to face the main screen. All three of the ships were starting another run at the Aldebaran. The Starship was turning, but slowly, much too slowly.
Lieutenant Bowers was tapping frantically at his station's console. "Negative. .Launcher sets three, four, and seven are down, and the station's internal locks are unreliable on five and six."
"Shar, establish communications with the Defiant, and try to get our interface with the Aldebaran back, at least text," Kira said. "Mr. Nguyen, take your team and get to engineering, I want you and Terek's crew on the shield-emitters. If we can get the Aldebaran close enough to one of me docking pylons—"
But it was already too late. Even with the visual dampening, the cascade of light that flashed through ops from the main screen was blinding. Shar was suddenly too busy struggling to compensate the station through the shockwave to see it, but enough of the sen-
sors were working to tell him the terrible, improbable truth, as hundreds upon thousands of pieces blew outward from where the Starship Aldebaran had been.
No. Ok, no.
Just over nine hundred people on the Aldebaran, and Kira couldn't allow herself the luxury of disbelief or sorrow. It didn't matter that it shouldn't have happened, mat an outgunned trio of tiny fighters shouldn't have had a chance; the ship was gone, and the second they finished dodging what was left of the Aldebaran, the Jem'Hadar would be back to run at the station. Their intent couldn't be clearer, and her options were limited. Shar called out that the majority of the wreckage from me Starship probably wouldn't affect the station, but she barely heard him, her thoughts racing to get ahead of what was happening.
Shields practically nonexistent, weapons arrays are out—if we could commandeer the docked ships— She rejected the idea immediately, remembering what was around. Four freighters and a couple of survey ships, maybe a dozen personal craft, and even with the runabouts and the evac pods, they wouldn't get a tenth of the popu
lation out before the attack, think, think—
Shar's usually melodic voice was strained, rough. "Sir, we're receiving a response to our priority distress call from the I.K.S.—"
"How far away?" Kira interrupted, not caring who it was, hoping wildly.
"Ah, 22 minutes."
In 22 minutes, it would be over. She'd seen the report that Nog had flashed, knew mat the Defiant's crew wouldn't have made it to the ship yet, and it didn't mat-ler; they had no choice. She tapped her combadge.
"Commander last," she said, silently hating Starfleet and herself for letting this happen, cursing the false security that they'd all been lulled into. "The Aldebaran has been destroyed. Hie Defiant is the station's best hope for defense; are you ready?"
Jast didn't hesitate. "We're ready."
"Do what you can," Kira said, and with a silent prayer, she turned to watch the screen, men and women calling out numbers and names behind her as they fought to keep the station safe, as pieces of the Alde-baran began to hammer at their shields.
A few seconds later, the Jem'Hadar started their first run at DS9.
After Ro's not-so-gentle persuasion, Quark had produced a Class 1 isolinear rod that he'd been storing for Istani Reyla; he had immediately followed up with an invitation to dinner, ostensibly to ensure no hard feelings, which she had refused—but pleasantly, for the same reason. She saw no reason to make an enemy of the Ferengi... and, she had to admit, she had a soft spot for people who didn't strictly abide by the rules.
She had just gotten back to the security office when (he red alert hit, and the computer instructed her to implement emergency shelter protocols due to an unnamed threat to the station; it wouldn't or couldn't elaborate any further. She had the computer display a checklist as she calmly locked the data rod away, hoping that her staff was better prepared. They had to be— i hough prepared for what, exactly, she didn't know. Communications between ops and the security office were down, Shar wouldn't answer his combadge, and
she didn't feel comfortable bothering anyone else during a crisis.
Doesn't matter anyway, the plan's the same for me. Direct civilians to the reinforced areas, evacuate and secure prisoners if there were any. There weren't, and a locator check for the security officers on duty informed her that she was the only one who wasn't in position.
Ro locked the office and stepped back out into the river of people rushing through the Promenade, finally unable to continue denying her own fear as she saw it all around her, A small child was sobbing somewhere in the crowd, a terrified sound of irrepressible angst, inspiring in Ro her own.
Is it war, again? Is it ever going to be over?
She was no stranger to battle. After the Dominion had effectively obliterated the Maquis, she'd led a small team of independent guerillas against the Cardassians and the Jem'Hadar, and later the Breen. Her group had held no allegiances other than to each other, earning no accolades for their efforts, nor needing any—as with the Maquis, the righteousness of the cause had been enough. She had been in as many conflicts as any Federation officer, if not more, and had done so with fewer people, less powerful weapons, and no outside support.
The difference is, I'm not in control here. I'm one of many, and the decisions aren't mine to make. It wasn't battle or even death that frightened her, it was feeling helpless. The station was under attack, and all she could do—all she was supposed to do—was try to limit casualties. And trust that someone else would make the right decisions, when trust was the one thing she'd never given lightly or easily.
However she felt about it, it was happening. Ro spot-
ted two of her deputies working to control the crowd and moved to join them, wondering if she would ever feel like she belonged on DS9... or anywhere else mat required her to pat her faith in others.
Bashir hurried past lines of muttering, frightened people filing through the corridors of the Habitat Ring, his emergency kit slung, his heart pounding with fear, Ezri was on the Defiant.
Where I should be. If they'd only called a moment earlier. He'd been seconds too late, and the first explosion had hit the station even as he'd turned away from the sealed airlock. He'd seen a half dozen Defiant crewmembers on his ran back to the Promenade, all of them as unhappy as he was to have missed the ship's hasty departure. Unhappy, and not a little anxious; the Defiant had disembarked, presumably to go into battle, with a crew of techs.
Since he'd been unable to join the Defiant's crew, bis next priority was to coordinate with the other doctors on board, to help activate all of the contingency medical stations and prepare for trauma cases. He reached the Promenade and saw Ro Laren and her security team directing groups of civilians to the designated shelter areas Mid-Core.
As he approached Ro, the station rocked again, the thunder of another blast resounding through the hull, drawing startled cries from the hurrying crowd. The air was charged with fear, the constant bleat of alarms promoting urgency rather than calm.
"Lieutenant, do you know what's happening?" All he'd gotten from ops was the order to report to the De-hunt, and that the station was under attack.
She seemed surprised by the question. "Don't you?"
There was no point in stating the obvious as the station trembled anew with power flux; they were being fired upon by someone, communications were down all over, and their defenses were negligible at best. And with what Ezri had been telling him about the Defiant...
"We're hi trouble," Bashir said, and Ro nodded grimly. There was nothing else that needed to be said.
Ezri, be safe. The force of feeling behind the thought was so powerful that he felt short of breath, an intensity mat startled him. They had slept together for the first time just before the last great battle of the war against the Dominion, and going to fight then had been difficult, fearing for her as well as himself—but things had still been so uncertain, and at least they had been together. In only a few months, so much had changed....
"Ah, Doctor, I have to go make sure the shops have been evacuated—" Ro began.
"Of course. I... good luck, Ro. Be careful" Bashir said, and saw that he'd surprised her again, although he wasn't sure how. He didn't have time to consider it, either, or how his feelings for Ezri had complicated his life, or all of the things that could go wrong; he had his own duties to see to.
With a nod to the others, Julian turned away and ran for the infirmary, thinking that he would give anything to be on the Defiant, anything at all.
When Kira gave the command to engage the enemy, Nog tried to keep an open mind, to work the problems rather than consider how disastrous the situation was, but it wasn't easy. He knew better man anyone just how
pitiful their defenses were right now, how many systems were down, how many weapons off-line—and with the Aldebaran destroyed, their chances of coming away unscathed had dropped to a negligible percentage.
Focus, stay focused, reassign pulse phasers two and four to manual, got to divert partial impulse to shields-—
Commander last took control the second she beamed aboard, assigning positions and prioritizing system checks, but she was making decisions in part based on what he told her. Nog stepped between the engineering station and tactical, trying desperately to direct power where it was needed most, while Ezri struggled with the partially disabled communications interface—the science station was mostly dismantled, sensor arrays routed through tactical—and Prynn Tenmei sat at the helm. With the exception of the commander, Ensign Tenmei was the only person aboard who was where she was supposed to be—not a reassuring thought in spite of her piloting skills, because that was it for the bridge crew. The other techs were below, grappling with the weapons systems. The standard operational crew was forty; they had fourteen.
At least they weren't relying on the cloaking device, although that was small comfort. After the war, the Romulan government had agreed to let the Defiant keep it As the Alpha Quadrant's first line of defense against anything that came through the wormhole, it only mad
e sense—even to the characteristically skeptical Romulan Senate—to provide DS9 and the Defiant with every possible advantage. Unfortunately, like virtually everything else on board, the cloak wasn't even functional at the moment
—try to transfer the transporter EPS tap to the navi-
gational deflector, I can do this, I know this ship. Another thought that wasn't particularly reassuring, considering the state of the Defiant, but he was too busy to come up with anything better.
The Jem'Hadar scored their first hits against the station even as Kira gave the word. Nog had had nightmares worse man what was happening, but not by much.
"Ensign, take us out," Jast said. "The armor over the warp nacelles is still temp, so try to keep the targets below and in front of us. Nog, what can we do about the lag time on beam launch?"
Nog stumbled over to tactical as Tenmei disengaged the docking clamps and tapped thrusters, the ship's AG lurching with tile power flux. "Ah, not much, sir. Point six-five seconds, minimum."
Jast took it in stride. "We'll just have to fire early, then. Shields up. Stay with tactical, Lieutenant."
She spoke casually, as if the Jem'Hadar ships would hold still, waiting for the Defiant's phasers to catch up. Nog had been intimidated by Jast's generally cool disposition since she arrived, but considering the situation, her calm was a definite asset
The main screen showed a blank expanse of space until the Defiant swung around, just in time for them to see the station take another series of hits. Nog struggled to quash feelings of panic; all three of the attackers were apparently concentrating on the fusion reactors, at the base of the Lower Gore. He could see dark streaks of polaron damage all across the section's hull, visually warped by the disrupted shields.
They'll hold, they can take a lot more than that. They could... except with the upgrades, a heavy percentage of the station's power was tied up in bypass circuiting,
