by Diane Carey
He paced away from them, his mind boiling. Anger pushed at his lungs as they heaved in his chest, still sore from reawakening.
"This man thinks like a demon … he risked all their lives that I wanted to occupy the command center more than I wanted their flesh. And he knows I'm Cardassian and require air and warmth as much as he does, for we looked into each other's eyes once and we understood each other. They're subtle sacrificers, these Starfleet people. They would've died writhing at their posts if he inclined that they should."
"We would do that for you, High Gul!" Fen blurted, a spray of saliva anointing his promise.
"Yes, High Gul!" two or three others echoed.
"But you are the Elite Guard! These people are no such thing!"
As the words shuddered out of him and he felt the rage build, he clamped his lips tight, paced himself, and demanded control of himself. Fooled! Imagine being fooled! He had been defeated before in battles, but only by the finest soldiers and strategists ever known. Not by outpost administrators, and he had never been made a fool.
Abruptly the narrow corridor fell to darkness, taking away the reassuring faces of his Guard. As blackness enclosed, the power within the walls dropped silent. Even their meager utility lights winked to darkness. Within the walls the faint noise of ventilators, generally so ignorable, sputtered and moaned to a halt.
Out of the darkness Elto's voice scratched, "Environmental support is off!"
"Off?" the High Gull swung toward the sound of Elto's voice. "What does this do to us?"
"We only have a few minutes of air, Excellency. With his hands upon the life-support controls, this man can drive us like animals through the outpost in any direction he pleases."
In the blackness the High Gul heard his men's breathing, every breath precious, but every breath filled the bellows of his fury.
No life support. No life. The station leader had turned the tables on them. Fooled!
For decades they had been held in hibernation, without heat, without air, and they had survived. Now, for want of a few more minutes of life support, he might be forced to falter away his advantage.
"Very well. Very well!" The High Gul balled his fists and struck at the walls on either side of him. Thud. Thud. "I should have killed him myself when I had the chance! I should've put my hand in his brain! Why did I hesitate? I place too much value on my own words. I gave them their chance as I promised Garak I would and they spurned it. We are now fully at war. Then very well! If he wants to drive us, then we will let him. We will take advantage of information Garak provided. We will let Sisko drive us, section by section, but he will drive us where we want to go—to the one place he thinks we don't know about. Ren! Fen! You wanted the honor—you have it. We'll entice Sisko to track us, then you will bear away, head him off, and kill him."
"Yes, High Gul!"
"Painfully, High Gul!"
"How do you know it will be Sisko himself tracking us?" Elto asked.
"He's not the type to send others to do his work. And I know how to make him come to us. I know the one thing he will protect even more than this station itself. And we'll need someone familiar to help us with unfamiliar machinery … Telosh, Coln, you go with them and capture one of the command staff from this station. Any one at all—an engineer or something. A pilot or mechanic. It's time to abandon this outpost and launch our offensive into space, my young men. We will kill Sisko, then we will hail his supplicants from the bridge of their sequestered prize … their battleship Defiant!"
"How much does the crew know about where we are going and why?"
"I kept the number of crew to a minimum, sir, barely enough to run the vessel, and then I did tell them the nature of our mission—about the High Gul and the hibernation. It was the only way they would abandon their assigned posts without proper orders. However, I also told them that the High Gul and his Elites had been kidnapped by Starfleet and are being held on Terok Nor. That way, they'll willingly fire on the station."
"A nicely spun tale, Renzo. I commend you for that line of thinking."
"Thank you, but I don't know how much they believed me. I saw doubt and suspicion in many eyes. Some of them know you were the High Gul's student, later his rival. They're sifting their memories for rumors and lessons long forgotten."
Glin Renzo kept his voice low, very low. There were only two others on the bridge, a navigator-helm and a science officer running the Galor-class ship's bridge, and he thought he could trust the two he had posted here, but certainty was a slippery fish in these circumstances. Not until he started choosing crew for this mission, started explaining to them the shaded facts, did he see just how twisted memories had become, how whitewashed the situation of eighty years ago was in their minds.
Their images of the High Gul were opaque and polished, had become history in all its grandeur or its coldness, and their opinions depended upon the loyalties, dreams, or sacrifices of their parents. He couldn't judge from their posture or the stiffening of their expressions whether their knowledge of this would turn sour. Yet, how many times had they both asked, "Is it true?"
And he had been forced to assure them that it was.
"Shall we run the ship silent, sir?" Renzo asked, suddenly eager to drive the fears from his mind.
"Silent?" Fransu leaned sideways in his chair and gazed into the open space on the screen. "No … they know we're coming. They couldn't miss the sectorwide communications block. Certainly they anticipate some action and will be ready. There is no such thing as silent approach to a facility with ears."
"They'll be powered up. They'll fight us with that station's weapons. Starfleet-installed weapons."
"I've fought before."
"Not with Starfleet."
"No, not with them."
"You're not worried?"
"Terribly."
"And the High Gul himself? He's formidable."
"Formidable and probably won't be sweetened when he finds out what I did to him."
"We don't know how much he knows."
"He'll know. He'll conjure it out of the past, Renzo, like a sorcerer conjuring a pot of smoke.
That's the way he is. And the smoke will have my face on it. Say, how do you think I would look as a ball of smoke?"
"Not well, but you could make Gul Ebek cough."
"There! A bright spot in everything."
"Sir, have we considered—"
"Renzo!"
Fransu caught a movement in his periphery and was delivered a signal from his deep training, from the days long past of action in the field. No matter how frosted over by time, the flicker of assault was recognizable, if only resting in his memory like a fossil shape in dust.
He vaulted from his seat with a younger man's leap, shouldered Renzo out of the path of a descending blade, and took the blade himself. Pain erupted through the tip of his shoulder, numbing his entire left arm, but his right was his stronger arm and with that he drove their navigator staggering back against the helm console. His fist pressed upward against the navigator's jaw until the man grimaced, frustrated that his attack had been discovered an instant too early.
The navigator managed to squeeze his knee up between them. Fransu saw the knee push upward, but there was nothing he could do in time. With his enemy's leg pressed against his chest, soon his grip was broken and he was flying backward.
His head struck a hard object—he wasn't sure what—and the wince clamped his eyes shut for a moment. He knew that was a mistake. That moment was crucial. His skin crawled with anticipation.
He forced his eyes open and his right fist upward to be ready for the attack he was sure was coming, but all he saw was Renzo's flexing back.
The incessant spew of a sidearm whined across the cramped bridge. Echoing on the blunt walls, the sound was maddening because he couldn't tell what was happening.
"Renzo!" he shouted—pointless. Dangerous, too, to distract Renzo from what was going on.
So foolish. In his youth he would never have sh
outed so. His instincts were better.
Whose weapon was it? Fransu couldn't remember whether or not Renzo carried one today.
Seconds plodded past. Every movement of Renzo's form before him was gaudy, nightmarish, and when the speed finally returned Renzo stood gasping over the smoldering puff that had moments ago been a supposed loyal crewman.
The air around them bloomed with the stink of dissolved flesh and a pulse of heat from dispelled weapon energy.
Renzo's hands were shaking when he turned to Fransu, his lips parted in surprise, his eyes wide, and the weapon in his hand shuddering. It had been a long time for him, too.
He pointed at Fransu's shoulder and croaked, "Bleeding."
Fransu nodded. He climbed to his feet.
At the science console, their science officer stared in numb shock. Shock—but not lack of understanding. He knew what had just happened.
For that knowledge, Fransu sighed, took the weapon out of Renzo's hand, turned it on the science officer, and fired.
The astonished science officer raised his hands to cover his face and chest, wailed his protest, then sizzled into a puff of energy as his wail died away.
Renzo stared at the empty sacks of smoke that instants ago had been their two bridge attendants, and for a moment fear crashed across his face that Fransu might turn the weapon on him, too.
"Now we know," Fransu said, his throat raw. "Now we know, Renzo. There it is. Someone from my own handpicked crew. Now we can be sure of what will happen if news of this gets out, if it's discovered that the High Gul of the Crescent wasn't dead after all … that I didn't preside over his funeral, but in fact betrayed him and retook the planet he was about to take at a lesser cost … took it at great cost in my own favor, then claimed he died in the glorious battle and took the credit he deserved … that I slaughtered the two thousand of the Elite Guard … aren't these delightful memories, Renzo? Wouldn't you be proud if you were me? No wonder I've spent all my nights banishing the past. Ah, the things we do, Renzo."
The ship bucked over some gust of space wind, possibly from a nearby sun as they passed it, or possibly a belt of asteroid dust. There was no helmsman anymore, and therefore no one to report on the cause of the buck.
Handing the weapon back, Fransu began, "Perhaps we should man that position."
"The helm? Perhaps." Hesitation showed in Renzo's eyes as he settled the weapon in its holster again. His hands were still trembling.
"Call another helmsman and engineering assistant up from the lower decks." Fransu picked at the wound in his shoulder. "Someone you think you can trust."
"I … don't trust any of them now."
"Do your best. Just give the ventilators time to clear that stench from the air."
Renzo nodded, tapped the communications console on the science station, and passed the responsibility to the next in command to choose a helmsman from the engineering deck. When he was finished, he came once again to stand near Fransu, but not so near as before.
"Two more will be here in a few minutes, sir," he said.
"Thank you," Fransu responded, seeming distracted. "Do you remember those old uniforms, Renzo?" He plucked at the stiff shoulder pad of his jacket where the blade had sliced it. "How bright they were, the patches of color? Loose and comfortable, more elastic to the body … not stiff and metallic like these. Do you remember wearing those? You were so young."
Tactfully Renzo said only, "I remember, sir."
Fransu sighed. "Now you and I and this crew, we must all live with my actions from those days. I must destroy the High Gul and everyone who has seen him, which means the entire Terok Nor station. If he gets away and speaks to the Central Command, or if someone else speaks for him or about him, we'll be quite lucky if all they do is execute us."
Stepping near, Renzo pressed an elbow to the back of Gul Fransu's command seat. "How will we explain the destruction of a Federation outpost without orders? Or a war? Or provocation? Or communication?"
Fransu gazed at the enormous screen showing open space before them. How black it was.
"I don't know," he said. "Everything is an unknown. I have no plan other than to kill him as I should have before. Kill, kill, it's all I do well."
"Nonsense," Renzo said flatly, then grinned. "You're a wild master at rotation minutie."
Fransu pressed back against the chair and bellowed in laughter. "What would I do without you?"
"Flounder."
"Ah, I wish I had a hundred like you. I wish I had ten. Even two."
"I could move around faster."
"You move fast enough." Fransu chuckled again, but there was remorse in his manner. "I hope we have luck today. This episode with the navigator—it shows the crack in this attempt. I had no chance to construct a plan, to build a web of confidences or a scaffolding of support. I have no one who will help me explain this or tell lies for me in the depths of the Central Command. Who besides you, Renzo, could I ever dare to trust?"
"There's something else we must consider," Renzo said evenly, without even attempting comfort for that other question.
Fransu looked at him. "Which is?"
"That perhaps the High Gul isn't on this station where we hid him at all."
"How do you think that?"
"Only because this tiny signal we received is indeed only a tiny signal, not really confirmation of reawakening. There could be a malfunction, there could be a mistake. The High Gul's body may have long ago decayed or been moved, and something may have still triggered the signal device in the warming palette."
"But we saw his body eighteen years ago when the station was built, when we hid him there. All was functioning then."
"Yes, then. But even eighteen years is long, and the chamber where we put him was unheated. I don't know if the suspension palettes would continue to operate in space-zero temperatures. He may not be alive, may not be on that station at all. We may be attacking Starfleet without a reason."
"There's a chilling thought."
"Yes."
"But we have no choice. We can't go in and ask, 'Pardon, are you keeping our living Gul, or is our Gul dust?'"
"No, we can't do that."
"So we have to find some other way to justify the shattering of a Federation outpost, don't we?"
Fransu looked at him. "Yes."
In silence Renzo thought and nodded to himself, thought longer, then nodded again and went to sit at the helm, the seat still warm from the dissolution of the navigator's body. He spread his hands across the unfamiliar control panel and picked out the keys he needed.
"So … we discovered a distress call from a Cardassian vessel in this area. Here—I'm logging it now. When we arrived, it turned out to be a trap. We don't know if it was Starfleet or who, but they took over the station, lured us in, and attacked us. What could we do but defend ourselves? A lucky shot hit a reactor and completely demolished the station. We regret this tragedy. There."
He looked around, to see his longtime commander smiling at him.
"Most clever, my friend," Fransu said sincerely, chuckling as blood trickled down his arm on the inside of his jacket sleeve. "Lovely and simple. But don't worry— I know he is there. He's alive, he's there, and we shall dust the station. It's always easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. I'll apologize later."
"Only one ship? What kind of invasion strategy is one ship? Dax, confirm that."
"Scanning … confirmed. I'm only picking up the one Galor-class vessel, and that's all. There's no fleet behind it, not even any minor support vessels. It's coming in hot, not acting as if it's waiting for anyone else to join it."
"One ship … what can that possibly mean? Whatever it is, it's not a full-scale invasion. That changes everything."
As Captain Sisko prowled Ops, Kira watched him and tried to avoid asking questions every time he said something, but she decided she'd rather be embarrassed by ignorance now than foul up because of it later.
"Sir," she began, "what does it change? What w
as our strategy?"
"I deliberately didn't launch the Defiant until I knew what this was all about. I wanted to keep it inside the station's deflector envelope as long as possible, assuming an invasion force was on its way. If six or ten ships were coming in, what good would it do to get the Defiant cut apart? I was waiting for Starfleet to show up, then launch and join up with them. You have to understand, Major—if there's a war coming, a heavily armed ship like the Defiant could be more valuable to the Federation than this whole station." He held an open questioning hand toward Dax's board. "Now I've got one ship coming in. What's that supposed to mean?"
"Benjamin, they're moving," Jadzia Dax interrupted, fixing on another monitor than the one displaying the incoming vessel.
Sisko turned to her. "Who's moving? Mr. Crescent and his men?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure it's them you're picking up?"
"I've got partial internal sensors back on-line. O'Brien must be working pretty hard down there. I've got a faint biological reading on a cluster of what could be Cardassians moving inside the access conduits."
"It's cat and mouse," Kira said as the three of them huddled over the one screen, and she looked at Sisko. "Except now you're the cat."
"The computer thinks the station is flooded with radiation," Sisko murmured thoughtfully, "and that's reduced the number of places he can hide. Now all we have to do is further limit the funnel he can run through."
Dax played the keys of her panel. "They tapped deeply into the computer systems at the database level. That's how they faked the reactor rupture. I've just learned to trust the computer and believed what I heard and saw."
"It's not your fault, Jadzia," Julian Bashir uttered quietly from behind Kira.
It was the third time in five minutes that Dax had tried to explain what had happened. Since they'd so nearly been fooled, she'd become forbearant. She seemed even embarrassed that she'd accepted what she had seen in front of her and had nearly been driven from her post.
