"Bits of bodies, you mean," Kira said. Her mobile features twisted with revulsion.
"Very small pieces," Bashir said. "None of them can be much larger than, oh, two hundred cubic centimeters." He glanced at Kira, gauging her response—he found his analysis obscurely comforting, but he couldn't be sure how the Bajoran would respond. "They must have died very quickly, Major. The pirate must have destroyed the ship in a single attack—I wonder if they set charges, or if they used a torpedo?"
"I don't suppose it matters very much," Kira said. She looked down at her controls, took a deep breath. "Is the scan complete, Doctor?"
"Yes." Bashir ran his hands over his controls again just to be sure. "Yes, it is. So far, there's no sign of energy output anywhere."
"Then I'm beginning the search pattern," Kira said. "Keep your eyes open for any energy output anywhere—it could be the pirate, as well as a lifepod."
"Yes, Major," Bashir said. "But I don't think there is any."
"Keep looking," Kira said, through clenched teeth.
"Yes, Major," Bashir said again, and felt the tremor as Kira brought Ganges' systems back on line. In the viewscreen, the image shifted slightly, and suddenly he understood what he was seeing. What he had taken for a bright starscape suddenly seemed to move against a background of apparently fixed stars, and he realized that he was looking at the broken bits of the Xawe ship. They seemed to sparkle in the screen, a drift of light against the stars, painfully pretty, like a theatrical effect. And somewhere in that haze of glittering metallic fiber were the bits of organic material—the only remains of Gift of Flight's crew—that were too unreflective, too small to show among the brilliance. It wasn't fair—this was what he had joined Starfleet to prevent—and he swallowed hard, not sure if he was fighting tears or bile.
"Why?" he said abruptly, and half hoped Kira hadn't heard. To his surprise, however, the Bajoran gave him a half-smile that was almost compassionate.
"This is how some people fight," she said. "Like Cardassians. The only thing you can do is fight back. And never forget your dead."
Bashir nodded, not knowing what else to do—he wanted to protest, to insist that there must be, there must have been, something else they could have done, but he knew perfectly well that there had been nothing—and turned his attention to the sensor readouts as though by sheer force of will he could conjure a survivor. He kept his eyes fixed on his readouts as Ganges moved through the complex pattern of their search, making sure that every fractional sliver of the debris field was scanned and accounted for.
When they had finished, Ganges had returned to the center of the still-spreading sphere of wreckage. Bashir opened his mouth to ask if they should repeat the scan, but Kira reached across his panel to open a channel to Deep Space Nine.
"Kira to base."
"Dax here," the Trill answered, almost instantly. "Any—news?"
She had been going to say "survivors," Bashir realized, and felt a chill run down his spine.
"Nothing new," Kira said, her voice tightly controlled. "No sign of any survivors. Permission to repeat the scan."
"Denied." That was Sisko, stepping briskly into the image in the viewscreen. "Unless the first one wasn't adequate—"
"It was," Kira said, involuntarily, and grimaced as she realized what she'd done.
"—then there's no need to repeat it, Major. Return to the station at your best speed."
"But, sir—" Kira began.
In the screen, Sisko shook his head. "There's nothing more you can do, Major. And we need the data you've collected. Return to DS9."
Bashir looked sideways, to see Kira's lips compressed in a thin line. Sisko was right, he knew, but there was a part of him that agreed with Kira, that wanted to make one more futile scan. He was suddenly glad it was Kira's decision, not his.
"Very well, Commander," Kira said. "We're on our way."
* * *
The look on her face was still in Sisko's mind five hours later. He stared at the datapadds littering the operations table without really seeing their bright displays, already too familiar with the bare bones of their contents. Whatever the ship was, it was strong enough and fast enough to have destroyed Gift of Flight with about as much effort as it would take for him to swat a fly. "How long until Ganges returns?" he asked, and Dax looked up from her console.
"Twenty-eight minutes, if they maintain warp four." Sisko nodded. "Good. How is the analysis of those tapes coming?"
O'Brien said, "I haven't had enough time to go into this in detail, sir, but there are some interesting indications when you analyze the image closely. I think the attacker had already been in a fight, sir."
"Put it on the main viewer," Sisko said.
"Yes, sir." O'Brien touched controls, then stood frowning up at the image. "You see, there, and there, on the starboard wing?" A dot of light appeared, illuminating the sections, which swelled to fill the screen. The grey metal of the hull was streaked with darker lines, like soot from a fire. "There's carbon scoring, and indications of phaser damage—which would have to be from shots that got through their shields, mind you. And then here—" He adjusted the image, rotated it sideways, so that the ragged edge of the port wing filled the screen. At that magnification, the image was a little blurred, and Sisko frowned, unsure what he was seeing. "Right there," O'Brien went on, "it looks to me as though there was some kind of a mounting point—maybe for a weapon, or a sensor cone, it could be either—but whatever was linked there was torn away. If you look very closely, you can see what looks to be conduit hanging from the opening."
Sisko squinted at the image. He could just make out a pair of hair-thin lines, one gently curved, the other twisted like a corkscrew, faintly outlined against the dark background. "Can you get an enhanced image?"
"That is enhanced," O'Brien answered.
"I see." Sisko looked again, but the image obstinately refused to become clearer.
"I've got the computers chasing down that possibility," O'Brien said. "I told them to assume that there are signs of damage, and to give me an interpretation of all markings consistent with that assumption. It might just explain why they had to destroy Gift of Flight like that."
"Oh?"
"Yes, sir," O'Brien said. "If I were commanding a ship in that sector, and I'd sustained any serious damage—and I think, assuming this is damage that we're seeing, there has to be worse inside the hull—well, there aren't many places you can go for repairs. Even regular merchant ships are a long way from help out there; you'd have to go halfway to Aden in the Cardassian sector before you'd find a halfway decently equipped starbase. Not that you'd want to deal with them."
"Unless you were a Cardassian," Sisko said, half to himself. "But if you weren't…" He nodded to O'Brien. "I see your point, Chief."
"The easiest way to get spare parts for repairs is to take them from another ship," O'Brien said, with a twist of the lips that might have been a smile.
"And then destroy the other ship," Sisko said, "so that your enemies can't tell what you took, or how badly you were damaged."
"Except," O'Brien said, with a quick look at Dax, "we may be able to tell."
"If the attacker took anything out of the engineering section," Dax said, "it should affect the energy shadow left after Gift of Flight exploded."
"Assuming, of course, they took major parts," O'Brien added. "But you wouldn't pull an attack like this for anything minor. Not this close to the Federation border."
"That makes sense," Sisko said. "Keep on it, O'Brien. I want to know as soon as your analysis turns up anything new."
"Yes, sir," O'Brien said, and Sisko turned his attention to Dax.
"What about similar attacks? Are there any in records?"
"Yes," Dax answered, "actually, quite a few. I'll put them on the viewer."
Sisko blinked as the screen filled with text. "How many are there?"
"In the past five years," Dax said, "over fifty ships have been attacked in this sector. Now, some of th
ose—" The names disappeared from the list as she spoke. "—are minor, hijackings, rough handling, in-transit harassment, and most of those involve Ferengi ships."
"Normal business practice," Sisko said, and saw O'Brien grin.
Dax's smile was more demure. "I'm afraid so. However, the rest of the incidents on this list—forty-two attacks in all—are almost certainly related."
"Forty-two separate attacks on shipping," Sisko said. "Why hasn't this been reported? Why weren't we warned?"
"I admit, that surprised me too," Dax said. "However, not all the attacks resulted in the loss of a ship—at least a dozen were fired on, but got away—and most of the ships that were attacked were not from the Federation. Primarily the victims have been Cardassians and Ferengi; Starfleet learned about them through secondhand sources."
"That's interesting," Sisko said. "Does that mean this attacker is avoiding the Federation?"
"Very possibly," Dax answered. "Nearly all the attacks took place on the Cardassian side of the border, and this is the first such attack in which Helios did not break off when its victim crossed into Federation space."
"Helios?" O'Brien asked.
"There are unconfirmed reports that that's what the attacking ship calls itself," Dax said. "And the name is consistent with the hull markings we saw."
"So why," Sisko murmured, "why has Helios chosen to come into the Federation this time?"
"If it's damaged," O'Brien began, and one of the Bajoran technicians interrupted him.
"Excuse me, Commander Sisko. Ganges has just docked."
"Excellent," Sisko said. "Tell Major Kira to begin downloading all data from the debris field, and then she and Dr. Bashir are to report to Ops at once."
"Yes, Commander," the Bajoran said, and a moment later Sisko heard her soft voice relaying his commands.
Sisko looked back at O'Brien. "You were saying, Chief?"
"If Helios is damaged," O'Brien said, "someone must have damaged it. Do you think the Cardassians are after them?"
"There's some question as to whether or not Helios is a Cardassian ship," Dax interjected. "Starfleet Intelligence indicates that, though the Cardassians are believed to have lost ships to Helios's attacks, there are rumors that suggest Helios is being backed by the Cardassian government."
Sisko considered the possibilities, staring up at the list of names that filled the viewer's screen. They would need to add one more after today. "See if you can get Starfleet to clarify that," he said, and Dax nodded. The turbolift hissed then, and its cab rose into sight, carrying Kira and Bashir.
"This was a disaster," Kira said, and flung herself out of the cab. "Commander, we have to do something about this. Get a Federation patrol craft out there, a cruiser, something like that."
Sisko suppressed a grin—Kira was never anything less than wholehearted in her reactions—and said, "That had occurred to me, Major. I've already requested that Starfleet send a ship to investigate."
"Good," Kira said. "But we should warn other traffic in the area, tell shipping to stay clear of this sector until we can track down this ship and destroy it."
"This isn't the first attack in this area," Sisko said, with as much patience as he could muster. "Helios has apparently taken out at least forty-two ships in the past five years." Kira started to say something else, and he went on talking, raising his voice a little to carry over whatever she might have said. "Lieutenant Dax has a report on all those attacks, and Starfleet's response and analysis, when you want it, Major."
Kira closed her mouth, took a quick breath. "I'd like that."
Dax handed her the datapadd without a word, but her smile was distinctly amused. Sisko suppressed his own grin, and said, "Now. I want everything you can tell me about Gift of Flight's destruction."
Kira looked suddenly very tired, the ready anger draining away. "I don't know what we can tell you that won't be in the computer."
"Even so," Sisko said, and gestured for them to take their places at the table.
Kira sighed, looked at Bashir, and seated herself beside O'Brien. Bashir followed suit, moving with uncharacteristic clumsiness. Sisko glanced warily at him—this was the longest he'd ever heard the doctor keep silent—and Bashir managed a wincing smile, but still said nothing.
"After the pirate—Helios, you called it?—took out Gift of Flight's engineering section, we kept them on the screen for about another two hours," Kira went on. "Direct transmission stopped long before that, of course; we estimate that the attacker was in transporter range fifty-one minutes after we lost that image, and Gift of Flight disappeared from our screens thirty-eight minutes after that. We reached her last portion thirty-one minutes later, and there was nothing left but pieces, fragments. That whole volume was full of them, like an asteroid field in miniature." Her voice trailed off, as though she'd just realized what she had said.
Sisko said, "Go on, Major."
"There's nothing more to say," Kira snapped. "The ship was blown to pieces, the whole crew was dead. And I'd like to get my hands on the bastards who did it."
"So would we all," Sisko said.
"I think," Bashir said slowly, "I mean, from what we saw, the readings we got, the ship was destroyed in a single explosion, an explosion big enough to break the hull into very small pieces."
"And the crew?" Sisko asked, though he suspected that he already knew the answer.
"I think they were on board when the explosion happened," Bashir said. "Or their bodies were. It's possible they were killed first, and just left there."
"I can't say I find that very comforting," O'Brien muttered, just audibly enough. Bashir glanced at him, perplexed and a little hurt, and Kira scowled.
"Comforting or not, it is evidence. And it shows how these pirates fight."
Well, well, Sisko thought. I never expected to see that in my lifetime, not Kira defending Bashir. He kept his expression neutral, and said, "I think that's all for now, gentlemen. Major, Dr. Bashir, I suggest you get some rest. You've done well."
Kira just nodded, but Bashir said, "Thank you, Commander, I—"
Kira laid a hand on his shoulder. "Julian," she said firmly. "There's something I learned long ago that I think it's time you discovered. You need a drink."
Bashir blinked at her for a moment, and then nodded, his face transformed by his sudden, engaging smile. "Oh. Yes. Thank you, Major. I appreciate—"
"Come on, then," Kira said, and propelled him firmly into the turbolift.
As they disappeared from sight, Sisko allowed himself a grin, but it faded quickly. "I'll be in my office," he said, to the compartment at large, and turned away.
"Benjamin." Dax's soft voice stopped him at the foot of the stairs. "This isn't over, is it?"
Sisko looked at her for a long moment. "No, Lieutenant," he said at last. "I doubt it is." If Helios really was damaged, if it had attacked Gift of Flight to steal parts for repairs, if it was moving into the Federation for the first time…If, if, if: the uncertainties mocked him. But he, and all the station, had to be prepared for the worst. Dax nodded silently, her beautiful face very grave, as though she'd read his thoughts. Sisko straightened his shoulders with an effort. Hard to believe that, only a few hours ago, he had been looking at an empty schedule. He snorted to himself, acknowledging the realities of Starfleet service, and went on up the stairs and into his office.
CHAPTER 3
IT WAS MORNING by DS9's arbitrary schedule of day and night, early morning by most people's standards, but Odo was already busy in the security office, reviewing the report Sisko had given him the night before. His mouth tightened as he read, and remembered the assignment Sisko had added. Check the ships in dock, the commander had said, see if anyone has had any untoward adventures getting here. See if they've seen anything at all that might have a bearing on this pirate. Odo snorted, looking at the image displayed on the datapadd's tiny screen. If any of the traders currently docked at DS9 had seen anything like that on their way in, they would have run screami
ng straight to Sisko's office to demand that the Federation protect them from the monster ship. Still, it was an order, and Odo was scrupulous about obeying direct orders. Then his rather thin lips curved into a slow, and not entirely pleasant, smile. It would at least give him a good excuse for taking another look at the Ferengi trader—the ship's name translated to something like "Sticky-Fingers"—that had arrived two days before, ostensibly with a shipment of holotapes for Quark. Odo did not in the least believe that story—holotapes were cheap, and easily manufactured even on DS9, certainly not worth the expense of importing them from outside the Bajor system—and he would be delighted to take another look at the Ferengi ship, and its cargo.
He called up a list of the other ships in the docking ring, noting four others that had skirted Cardassian space on their way to the station, and then checked the ships scheduled to arrive during the current twenty-four-hour period. Three were due, two Bajorans and a Azhaeri tramp, the Shannar, that came and went on a rough six-week schedule. It passed through the possible sector, and Odo made a note to speak to its captain as well. And it was due to dock in forty minutes, if it kept to its flight plan. If it does, Odo thought, it will be the first time since I became security officer here. Still, the latest display screen claimed that Shannar would dock as scheduled, and a quick scan of the dock monitors showed a technical crew busy in the docking port, preparing for her arrival. Odo snorted again, comprehensive disdain, and started for the docking ring.
The ship called Sticky-Fingers was mated to docking port eight, and Odo took the long way around, emerging into the cargo bays on level twenty-two to the consternation of a trio of Ferengi crewmen who were lounging outside the main hatch. A cargo sled stood at the foot of the ramp, piled high with transport cylinders, and Odo allowed himself a moment of deep satisfaction. This time, Quark had made a definite mistake. The largest of the three Ferengi sprang into action as the constable approached, leaping forward to block Odo's path, while the one closest to the ship edged back up the ramp.
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