"Not Cardassian," Kira whispered, and didn't know she'd spoken aloud until Bashir looked at her.
The ship fired then, a massive phaser bolt streaking toward them, toward Gift of Flight, and Kira flinched in spite of herself as light momentarily filled the screen. And then the screen went blank, was replaced by an innocuous image of the local starfield.
"See if you can raise them," Kira said, dry-mouthed.
"I'm trying," Bashir answered. "Major, there's no response."
No, there wouldn't be, Kira thought. "Keep trying," she said aloud, and Bashir nodded.
"I still have a sensor reading," he said. "The hull's still intact—maybe it just took out their communications."
Kira looked at him, and saw her own hopeless anger reflected in Bashir's eyes. "Maybe," she said, and saw Bashir's gaze falter. "Open a channel to the station."
"Yes, Major."
Sisko's image appeared in the main screen a moment later, looking reassuringly solid. "Yes, Ganges?"
"Gift of Flight's taken another hit," Kira said, baldly. "We've lost their transmission."
"Do you still have them in sensor contact?"
"Yes, sir," Kira answered. "So far."
"All right." Sisko's eyes narrowed, as though he were calculating. "Continue as planned, Major, there may still be survivors. But do not, I repeat, do not attempt to engage the pirate. Your concern is for Gift of Flight's crew, not with pursuing the enemy."
Kira bit her lip, but had to admit that Sisko was right, this time. "Yes, Commander."
"One thing more," Sisko said, and his expression in the viewscreen seemed to bore through to her very soul. "You have the recordings from Gift of Flight's sensors?"
Kira looked at Bashir, who nodded and patted his console. "They're all here, Major."
"We have them," Kira said.
"I want you to send the data back to DS9 immediately," Sisko said. "Dr. Bashir, Lieutenant Dax will give you the transfer settings."
"Yes, sir," Bashir said, and a secondary screen flashed the numbers. "I have the settings locked in," he reported a moment later. "I'm ready to transmit."
"Go ahead, Doctor," Dax's cool voice said, and Bashir touched a key.
"Transmitting now."
Seconds ticked by, then minutes. Kira glanced covertly at Bashir's console, wondering when the transfer would end, but couldn't read his screens from her angle. It seemed to take forever, longer perhaps because she understood all too clearly why it was important to make the transfer now: if Ganges did not survive, at least all the data they had collected would reach DS9.
"Transfer complete," Dax said at last. "Thank you, Doctor."
"Good, Major," Sisko said, cutting off any answer the doctor might have made. "I want you to keep an open line to us, all data to be passed directly to us from now on. Is that clear?"
"Yes, Commander," Kira said again. All too clear. She looked at Bashir, who nodded.
"I've got a direct line set up, Major, using the same settings as before."
"I heard that," Sisko said. "All right, Major, carry on—and good luck. Sisko out."
"Thank you, sir," Kira said, and didn't know if she'd been heard. She sighed, leaned back in her chair. There was nothing more she could do, except wait. Sisko had their data, would have anything else they discovered almost as soon as they collected it themselves. "It's a wise precaution," she said aloud, and Bashir looked at her with a wry smile.
"I rather hope it's an unnecessary one," he said.
* * *
Kira returned the smile. "So do I, Doctor, so do I."
Sisko stared for a long moment at the empty screen, then forced himself to turn away, ignoring the numbers that still scrolled across the bottom of the screen. Over two hours before Ganges could reach Gift of Flight's last reported position, two long hours during which the attacking ship could take the Xawe freighter apart at their leisure. The attack had been too thorough, pursued with too much ruthlessness, to make it likely that the mystery ship's commander would leave survivors to betray him. He turned away from the screen, from that thought, and went to stand behind Dax at the science console.
"Anything significant from Gift of Flight's transmission?" he asked.
Dax shook her head slowly, not looking away from her multiple screens. "It's too soon to tell, Benjamin. There's a lot of information there, but it takes time for even our computers to analyze that much data." She touched controls, brought something indistinct onto her screen. "I can run the visual image for you, if you'd like."
Sisko sighed, bracing himself. "Put it on the main screen." He looked around Ops, at O'Brien and the Bajoran technicians still busy at their places. "All of you, take a look at this. This is the tape from Gift of Flight via the Ganges. If you recognize anything about the attacker, I want to know it."
There was a murmur of agreement, cut off instantly as the starfield with its border of Xawe characters filled the main viewscreens. The silence deepened as the stars hung there, all eyes fixed on the screen, and then the image shimmered. A starship hung there, unpainted hull vivid against the stars, the grim solar face glaring from the tower that should be the bridge. Weapons mounts sprouted from every possible angle—Sisko, eyes narrowing, counted four projections that should be phaser mounts on just one of the down-curved, backswept wings—and the hull was laced with what appeared to be sensor points. And then the ship fired, a ball of light that grew and filled the screen, until the image vanished, to be replaced by a different starscape.
Into the quiet, Dax said, "The computers are working on a full analysis, Commander."
"Thank you, Lieutenant," Sisko said, and shook himself back to the business at hand. There was no time, yet, to mourn Gift of Flight's destruction; that would come later, after they had dealt with the destroyer. He made himself look around Ops, making eye contact with each of his people. The Bajorans looked shaken—most of them would have their own memories of war to deal with, he reminded himself—and O'Brien looked grimly outraged. "Well, gentlemen?"
The Bajorans stirred, glancing at one another, but said nothing. O'Brien cleared his throat. "It looks to me like a Klingon hull," he said, "an attack cruiser, maybe, but it's not a Klingon configuration, not with that tower of a bridge. I can tell you more once I've had a chance to go over the enhanced tapes."
Sisko nodded. "Could it be Cardassian?"
O'Brien shook his head. "It doesn't look like anything the Federation's ever seen from them."
One of the Bajorans said softly, "I was a prisoner on a war hulk for a year, Commander, and then forced labor at the yards on Ballimae. I never saw a ship like that."
"The computer doesn't have a match for that ship in our main databanks," Dax said. "I'm searching the secondary libraries now. If I don't find anything, I'd like to extend the search to Bajor's records."
"Permission granted," Sisko said. "Chief, I want you to help Dax go over the tapes, see what you can find out about this ship. I'm particularly interested in its offensive capabilities, and any weaknesses you can see in its structure."
O'Brien nodded, clearly pleased. "Aye, sir, I'll get on it right away."
"Also, Dax—" Sisko paused for an instant, ordering his thoughts. "Contact Starfleet, and see if any similar episodes have been reported in this sector. And I want a report on any other complaints made to Starfleet—anything from direct attack on shipping to commercial dirty tricks. This thing can't have come out of nowhere."
"Yes, Commander," Dax said. "It will take some time to collate those records."
"As soon as you can, Lieutenant," Sisko said. There wasn't much else they could do, at least not until Ganges returned, with or without survivors. And Starfleet had to be informed. Even though he knew, rationally, that he had done everything he could do, Sisko still found himself reviewing what he could have done instead, as though he might still find some way he could have saved Gift of Flight. And that, he told himself, would never do. It was a waste of time, just another way to put off a task he found
unpleasant. He squared his shoulders, and turned toward his office, forcing himself to begin putting his thoughts in order. "Inform me at once if there's any word from Ganges or Gift of Flight," he said. "I'll be in my office. O'Brien, patch me through to Starfleet Command, on a direct link."
"Aye, sir," the engineer answered.
Sisko was aware, as he turned away, of Dax's sympathetic gaze, but he did not dare meet the Trill's eyes. Dax knew him too well, or had known him, in an earlier host; Dax would know exactly what drove him now. And while that had been possible to accept from Curzon Dax, who had been physically older, wiser, a trusted mentor, Sisko still found it hard to accept that knowledge in Jadzia Dax. It was getting easier, he told himself, as the office door closed behind him. As he got to know Dax again, he was getting used to the new host form, and was coming to terms with that wisdom that sat so oddly in a young and beautiful body. But, he still occasionally shied away from Dax's ease with all aspects of their old friendship, and felt guilty about his own unease. Luckily, he thought, as the communications menu appeared on his working screen, Dax seemed not to notice—or, more likely, the Trill had been through this transition often enough to be able to make allowances for human behavior.
Sisko sighed, and put that problem aside for later consideration. O'Brien had done his job: a standby notice filled the working screen, warning that a channel to Starfleet was ready, and that someone was ready to receive his message. He took a deep breath, and touched the screen to open the channel.
"This is Commander Benjamin Sisko, Federation space station Deep Space Nine. I have to report an unprovoked attack on a Xawe merchant ship in our sector. . . ."
* * *
Ganges moved cautiously toward Gift of Flight's last reported position, speed cut to warp two, sensors at full stretch. Julian Bashir strained his eyes, staring into empty screens, and wished for the first time that he had paid as much attention in the required military intelligence courses as he had in his medical studies. He had a good memory, but the material he had been expected to learn was no more than rudimentary—it was not a doctor's job to deal with things like starship identification; even in an emergency, his duties would be expected to lie elsewhere—and for the first time he felt a surge of indignation. He could have memorized the information, that was not a problem; what had failed him was his training, and that was an unexpected betrayal.
And then, quite suddenly, numbers shifted at the bottom of one of the two screens. In the same instant, the computer painted a shadowy haze across the other screen, a core of pale yellow light surrounded by a wider, spreading sphere of blue. "Major!" he said, and ran his hands over the controls, feeding the input directly to the runabout's relatively limited computers. "I'm picking up something now."
"Well?" Kira demanded. "What is it?" Her voice sharpened abruptly. "The attacker?"
Bashir spared her a pained glance—the Bajoran seemed sometimes to go out of her way to think the worst of him—but said only, "No, I think it's debris—the sensors show a core of metallic fragments surrounded by an energy shadow. The shadow is spreading—it matches the results of a matter-antimatter blowout."
"Confirmed," the runabout's computer said, in its emotionless voice. "Further analysis suggests that the energy shadow is a result of the deliberate destruction of a Federation-derived warp drive system."
"Gift of Flight," Kira said.
"I'm afraid so," Bashir said. "It's centered on their last position." He ran his hands across the controls again, seeking the largest fragments he could find, and shook his head. "Major, the hull, and everything else, seems to have been completely shattered. I'm not finding any pieces larger than a meter across."
"The bastards," Kira said, and slammed a fist against her console. "Those utter bastards. They didn't need to do that, not if they were after the cargo, they could've left the ship intact—" She broke off abruptly, and Bashir heard the intake of breath as she got herself under control again. "No sign of the attacker?"
Bashir shook his head. "I've ordered the computer to scan for the wave emissions I picked up earlier, and for any other sign of a cloaked ship, but so far there's nothing out there. I think they're long gone, Major. What would they stay around for?"
Kira didn't answer, her thin face intent, eyes on her navigational screens. "What about lifepods?"
"I'm not picking up any emergency beacons," Bashir said. "We may not be in range yet. . . ." He heard his own voice falter, remembering another lecture, and felt that last hope drain away. Emergency beacons, the kind of emergency transmitters installed in lifepods, were variations on standard subspace radio, designed to be heard over interstellar distances. They were well within range of any standard beacon; if there were survivors, they would surely be signaling by now. "They could have non-Federation lifepods," he went on. "Or maybe they're afraid of bringing the attacker back down on them?"
It sounded feeble even as he said it, and he wasn't surprised when Kira didn't answer. She was frowning at her navigation screens, and Bashir risked a direct question. "How long before we reach their position?"
"We'll be in the debris cloud in ten minutes," Kira answered. "Another ten minutes to its center."
Bashir looked at his own screens, willing a blip to appear, some indication that someone had survived. He glanced over his shoulder in spite of himself, at the equipment he had brought aboard so eagerly. I could have helped them, he thought, I had everything they needed—if only we'd been able to get here in time.
"Open a channel to the station," Kira ordered, and Bashir pulled himself out of his thoughts.
"Yes, Major." He called up another screen, touched the proper controls. "Channel's open."
"This is Dax," the Trill's voice said almost at once, and the familiar and beautiful face appeared in the main viewscreen. "What is it, Ganges?"
"We're approaching Gift of Flight's last position," Kira said. "And all I'm finding is rubble."
Bashir winced, as much at her flat tone as at the words, and a new face appeared in the screen.
"Sisko here. Any sign of survivors, Major?"
"No, sir." Kira shook her head for emphasis. "Not so far, anyway."
"And the attacker?"
"Vanished." Kira took a deep breath. "Commander, I want to proceed into the debris cloud, just in case their lifepods were damaged, or they're afraid to make a distress signal. If we scan thoroughly, we may pick up something."
"I doubt that, Major," Sisko said, and Bashir drew breath to protest. "However," Sisko went on, "I agree that you should perform a complete scan of the debris cloud and any surrounding energy shadow, see if you can pick up any traces of the attacker's weapons and offensive styles. But keep an eye out for the attacker. If you see any sign of it, you're to abort the scan and get out of there. Head directly for DS9. Is that understood?"
"Yes, Commander," Kira said.
"Good. Sisko out."
Bashir let out the breath he'd been holding. He hadn't expected Sisko to refuse permission—not Sisko, not with his past—but he hadn't realized how much he'd dreaded the possibility.
Kira said, "Stand by to run a full three-hundred-sixty-degree scan, Doctor. I'm taking the ship to the center of the cloud, and then I'll run a square search until we reach the edge of the debris."
"Standard procedure," Bashir said. That was one thing he did know. Kira scowled at him, and he wondered, not for the first time, why the Bajoran was so short-tempered.
"Let me know when we've reached the center," Kira said.
Bashir nodded, and turned his attention to the boards that controlled the runabout's sensor rig. He fiddled with the controls, invoking an optimization routine, then fine-tuning one section after another until he was sure that the machines would pick up any sign of organic life or organized power. The energy shadow would block some of that, of course, but Ganges' sensors were the best the Federation could offer—A light flared on his panel, and he said, "We're in the center of the cloud, Major. It matches Gift of Flight's last
reported position."
"No, really," Kira snarled. "All right, run a full scan from here."
"Yes, sir," Bashir said, and stopped abruptly as a thought struck him. "Major, if we shut down all unnecessary activities, I can get a better picture of the debris field—particularly any low-level power usage, such as a damaged lifepod."
Kira gave him another of her fulminating looks, but nodded. "All right, Doctor. Let's try it."
Her hands danced across her controls, and the familiar faint vibration that had filled Bashir's bones since he'd come aboard the Ganges faded to an almost subliminal level. It was unnerving, like the absolute silence he had once experienced alone in a cave during his Starfleet training, and he had to force himself to begin the scan. "Mostly duranium and tritanium," he said, his voice sounding very loud in his own ears. "The composition's consistent with a Federation-designed hull. Also a number of composites—also consistent with the internal fittings of a starship. Also—" He swallowed hard, recognizing what the readouts meant, and his memory presented him with a tissue sample he had seen in one of his pathology classes. It had come from a human, a miner, killed in a cave-in in the Miranuri Asteroid Belt; he could see it now, all too clearly, the cellular structure irrevocably exploded, tissues frozen almost as quickly as they'd died, locked in the instant of their destruction. He shut off the image with the skill of long practice—one did not become a doctor without learning to control one's imagination—and blocked out, too, the picture of what those readings meant. "Also organic material."
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