This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. ? POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Visit us on the World Wide Web http://www.SimonSays.com/st http://www.startrek.com Copyright © 1993 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved. ? STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark of Paramount Pictures. ? This book is published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc., under exclusive license from Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 ISBN: 0-7434-1223-0 POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc. To Nina for all those nights of pizza and Trek CHAPTER 1 THE LIGHTS FLICKERED for the sixth time. The turbolift jolted, stopped for a moment, then kept climbing. Commander Benjamin Sisko breathed a quiet sigh of relief. The last place he wanted to get stuck was the turbolift, and with the odd problems that had plagued the station for the last hour, getting stuck was a distinct possibility. The flickering lights had him bothered, although not quite enough to give up his lunch with Jake; Sisko and his son rarely had enough time together. They had planned the lunch for days, fasting in the morning, so that they could overindulge in all Jake’s favorite foods: spaghetti, Norellian twist bread, chilled Ruthvian salad, and chocolate cake à la Jennifer. They had just gotten to the twist bread when the call came in from Ops. Maybe, if Sisko was lucky, this emergency would only take a few minutes and he would be back in time to eat half the cake himself. He would never admit it aloud, but he had a weakness for chocolate. The lift stopped at Ops. Sisko stepped out, glancing briefly, as was his custom, at the Cardassian architecture: the almond-shaped portals on the top tier that revealed stars, Bajor, and the docking bays; the multilevel operations area, and the prefect’s office—now his—straight across from the turbolift. He had never thought he would feel comfortable here, but during the last few months Ops had become the deck of his own personal starship. This afternoon the deck was nearly empty. But he could feel the tension, almost as if it had been etched on the walls. He sighed. He had a hunch the chocolate cake would have to wait. Major Kira Nerys stood behind the operations table, her gaze on the viewing screen. Hands clasped behind her back, feet spread in military precision, she looked all business. Lieutenant Dax sat at the science console, her fingers moving rapidly along its surface. Other than that, Ops was empty. “What’s so important about a Ferengi ship that I had to leave my lunch with Jake?” Sisko asked. He kept his voice low, but neutral. No sense being upset about missing time with his son if there was a true emergency. “The Ferengi ship seems to be suffering from the same power fluctuations that we are,” Dax said. “They requested a docking bay nearly two hours ago, but have made no movement in our direction.” “Power fluctuations?” Sisko said. “You mean, we’re having more serious problems than the lights?” Kira did not look at him. A sign that she probably should have called him earlier, but did not want to disturb him. He wouldn’t mention the lunch again. “The fluctuations go through all of our systems in a random pattern,” she said. “The computer locator is off-line; I have someone searching for O’Brien. The outages aren’t serious yet, but I’m afraid they will be.” Sisko walked down the steps toward the operations table. First things first. The outages were important, but Kira already had that under control. The Ferengi ship was the big question. Sisko glanced at the main viewer where the Ferengi ship hung motionless against the blackness of space. If he didn’t know better, he would have thought that the ship was crippled. “Open a channel,” he said. Dax moved to do so when the station rocked wildly as if it had been hit by a photon torpedo. Sisko lost his balance and fell against the operations table, banging his arm and sending shooting pains through his shoulder. Dax slid under the science console, and Kira cried out behind him. Alarms went off, their blaring cries of warning sending Sisko back to the day his wife had died. For a moment, he lost himself in those flaming corridors, lost himself in the feel of Jennifer’s dead body clasped against his breast. He swallowed the memory, hard, refusing to let it overcome him. He glanced around. Smoke filled Ops. The lights went out. Blackness overwhelmed him. The acrid scent of smoke dug into his throat. The backup generators kicked in, but the low-level lights only made the smoke more opaque. “The Ferengi ship is breaking up.” Lieutenant Dax’s calm, intent voice broke through the pandemonium. She clung to the science console as the station rocked again. The Ferengi ship was the least of Sisko’s worries. All the screens had jumped to life, reporting problems and outages throughout the station. Warning lights blinked all over the operations table. He pulled himself up to it, trying to loosen the pain in his shoulder, wishing he could see better through the smoke haze. The smell of burnt electrical wiring had him worried. “Tractor beam? Can you hold the Ferengi ship together?” He had to shout over the wail of the alarms. “Attempting that,” Dax’s calm voice replied. Kira had pulled herself to her feet. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her shadowy shape mount the rickety stairs and hurry to the engineering station. Where the hell was O’Brien? Sparks hissed from loose connections. Sisko crossed to a free console and did a quick run-through of the station’s life-support systems. “A few ships have been knocked off their moorings in docking bays ten and twelve,” Kira said. “Reports of jammed doors. Lights down all over the station. No serious damage to the station, and no casualties.” The constant rise and fall of the alarms served as counterpoint to the three officers’ staccato conversation. The smoke had grown thicker. Sisko held back a cough. “Life support is working,” he said. The system did not register any sustained hit. No telling what caused the entire station to rattle so. The main lights came back on, flooding the smokefilled room with brightness. “I’ve got the Ferengi ship,” Dax said, “if the tractor beam holds.” He scrambled up the short steps to the science console. Dax had returned to her chair, her rounded figure and bright eyes a testimony to the fact that she was no longer the old man he remembered. But just as competent. Maybe even more so. According to the readouts, the Ferengi ship was the largest Sisko had ever seen. It seemed to have sustained damage at the same time as the station. “Kira,” Sisko said. “Shut those alarms down and find out where that smoke is coming from.” “Yes, sir,” she said. Dax glanced up at him, her wide, calm gaze helping him focus. The Ferengi ship. The docking bays. The lights. “The tractor beam seems to be holding,” she said. “I’ll bring them into docking bay. . . .” “Make sure you stay away from ten and twelve,” he said, in case she had missed that bit of information. He twisted to see the main viewer. The Ferengi ship at a glance seemed to be all right, but he knew that only the tractor beam held it together. Sisko punched the console, moving his attention away from the station’s interior functioning. Nothing anywhere near the station except that Ferengi ship. No ship that could have fired a photon torpedo, no record of a cloaked ship appearing at the moment of the shot. Nothing to show that anything had happened, except the damaged Ferengi ship and those damned alarms. Slowly, Dax eased the ship toward the station. The lights blinked again, but stayed on. Then, without warning the tractor beam quit. “What is going on?” Sisko snapped into the smokefilled air. “The ship is breaking up,” Dax said. Sisko reached for the board, but Dax’s hands flew across it, trying everything he could think of just a moment before he could say it. The board did not respond. The tractor beam was simply gone. Thirty seconds stretched into an eternity. “It’s no good, Benjamin,” Dax said. “I’ve done everything possible to reestablish the beam.” The alarms seemed to have grown louder, more insistent, demanding that something be done. The Ferengi ship appeared to bounce in space as if it were a sailing ship in a rough sea. He turned to Kira. She was still at O’Brien’s station, a frown marring her delicate face. “Get a lock on the crew of that ship and be ready to beam them here.” “Do it quickly,” Dax said. Her voice was very low and cold. “The ship won’t last much longer.” “Only three on board,” Kira yelled out just as the alarms stopped. Her voice echoed off the walls, demanding and impertinent. It grated on him almost as much as the alarms had. “Then get them out of there.” Her fingers danced over O’Brien’s board. On the main view screen the Ferengi ship broke up as if it had been hit by a hammer. Sections of the ship flew in all directions. Kira was shaking her head. They must have acted too late. Sisko steeled himself. Then three forms shimmered on the small transporter unit. They were close together and it took a moment for the shapes to separate into two Ferengi and a bald humanoid alien. The center Ferengi was ancient and huddled over. He had huge ears with hair growing out of the centers, and his wizened face looked as if it we...
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