The Mist (15 page)

"You must admit, the difficulties of this mission were increasing by the minute," Sotugh said. "I prefer quick, clean battles, with the sides carefully drawn."

"How Klingon of you," Prrghh said.

I did not like it either, but we had been lucky enough to find a device. We were going to use it.

"Chief," I said, "get busy. We need to get this station back where it belongs."

"Aye, sir," O'Brien said. He contacted Dax, and together they worked on a plan to get the device on board the Defiant while he beamed over.

"Gentlemen," I said to Captains Sotugh and Higginbotham, "I need your crews to work on a solution to the problem of the shields. Captain Victor beamed onto the Defiant. I'm sure we have information about the effect that beam-in had on our equipment. I'll have Dax transfer that to your ships. It will give your people a place to start."

"You still see a coming fight with Captain Victor, don't you?" Higginbotham asked.

I nodded. "Even if we retreat back into normal space, he's going to tell everyone that we destroyed the ships in an aborted invasion into Mist space."

"Why would he do that?" Higginbotham asked. "I have been trying to figure this out and it makes no sense."

"I have been wondering the same thing," I said. I glanced at Jackson. He was working with Kira and not monitoring our conversation. "Greed, perhaps? Control? Some kind of power transfer? I plan to ask Captain Victor the next time I see him."

"Right before you kill him, if I have not done so first," Sotugh said.

Higginbotham opened his mouth, probably to tell Sotugh that that is not the Federation way, when I caught his eye and shook my head. Higginbotham said nothing.

"Which was a good thing," Sotugh said. "The last thing I would have wanted to know was that I was fighting alongside men without honor."

"We have honor," Sisko said. "It's just different from yours."

Sotugh looked at the other patrons. "And now you see why we Klingons debate the nature of human honor. It is as slippery and changeable as a Belopian eel."

Sisko grinned. "I ignored the question of killing Captain Victor, and instead said ..."

"If we don't get him stopped now, the Mist will declare war on the Federation and Empire and that will be the end of both our cultures."

Higginbotham nodded. The full impact of what we were facing was slowly dawning on him. "They can transfer one ship at a time into their space and destroy it."

"Or one person at a time," I said.

"There is no honor in fighting an unseen enemy," Sotugh said.

"Then we fight them now, while we can see them," I said. "We need shields, gentlemen. And we need them quickly. Get your crews working on the solution. Then we will come up with a battle plan."

"The sooner the better," Higginbotham said.

"If we do this right, the battle will be glorious," Sotugh said.

"Maybe," I said. "If that shift device works and we can modify the shields to stop Mist fire."

"Details," Sotugh said, waving his hand and looking more confident than he had since he arrived in Ops. "Those are nothing but petty details."

Fifteen

"PETTY DETAILS?" PRRGHH said, standing up and stretching, arching her back slightly and touching the tip of her small tongue to her upper lip. Her back was impossibly flexible. She straightened and looked at Sotugh. "Trust a Klingon to be overconfident."

"We were not overconfident," Sotugh said. "I knew it was going to be a glorious battle."

"Seems to me it either had to be glorious or you were all dead." The Trill got up and went to the bar. He ordered Canar, which made everyone look at him as if he were crazy.

Everyone except Cap, that is. He turned around, took a bottle of Canar off the shelf, and asked the Trill if he wanted a glass or the entire bottle.

"The entire bottle, of course," the Trill said. "If it's good Canar."

"You drink that Cardassian garbage?" Sotugh asked.

The Trill shrugged. "Just because you disagree with a race's political habits doesn't mean you should ignore the things they do well. I usually go for a good blood wine, but tonight, during this story, I prefer Canar."

Tonight? Sisko frowned. He wondered how long he had been in here. Sometimes it felt like days; sometimes it felt like minutes. He'd been here long enough to ruin a plate of nachos and to have Cap's cook make jambalaya from scratch. Several hours at least.

"I'm a little confused," the wraith said. It moved away from the wall, looking almost like an opaque shadow in motion. "Can I see if I have the facts straight?"

"Shoot," Sisko said, picking up his fork. He might be able to finish this jambalaya after all. He took a bite. Wonderfully, the jambalaya was still warm. What kind of bowl did Cap use? Did it have its own heating source?

"Okay." The wraith folded itself on top of a table, looking like a bit of wax that was bending itself into a vaguely human shape. "This is how I understand it. In normal space, you have a possible battle between a Cardassian fleet and a Klingon fleet over control of the wormhole. Correct?"

"And the Federation," Sisko said, around a mouthful of jambalaya. His words were nearly unintelligible.

Sotugh seemed to notice and added, "Three starships would arrive on the scene at the same time as the Klingons."

The wraith stretched a thumb. It extended and thinned like a piece of taffy. Only when the wraith let go of it, it snapped back into position with a loud thwap! "And the only thing that might stop the fight is the return of Deep Space Nine to normal space?"

"That is what we believed," Sisko said, being as cagey as he could. He didn't want to spoil the story, not after he had put this much time into it.

"We thought," Sotugh said, "that with the station and its firepower there, the Cardassians might not try to control the wormhole, or risk a war with the Federation."

"Seems unlikely to me," the Caxtonian said, his fetid breath filling the bar. Sisko's eyes watered, and he had to put his fork down. "But then I've always believed that the Cardassians let that station go too easily."

Sotugh shot him a withering glance. The Caxtonian didn't even seem to notice.

Neither did the wraith. It stretched a forefinger. "Then in Mist space," it said, letting the finger thwap! into place. Sisko suddenly realized this must be its equivalent of the human gesture of raising fingers to count. "The Defiant, Sotugh's three battle cruisers, and the Starship Madison are facing a fleet of Mist ships. And you don't have shields that are effective against them."

"Exactly," Sisko said.

The wraith took its middle finger. As it started to extend it, the Trill at the bar took a step over and grabbed the wraith's hand. The Trill looked a little green.

"You're putting me off my Canar," the Trill said softly.

"Oh!" The wraith glanced at him. "Sorry." It reached for its finger again, then literally balled up its hand and let it absorb into its waxlike body.

"If you were to keep the station," it said, "you would stand a chance against the Mist fleet, but you must send the station back to keep it from getting stuck in Mist space."

"And stop the fight between the Cardassians and Klingons," Prrghh said. "It's really not that complicated a story. You're making it harder than it is."

"I just want to be clear," the wraith said.

"Don't you find this to be another impossible situation?" the middle-aged woman at the bar asked the Quilli.

"No," it said. "I find it fascinating, and I would like to hear more. But I have decided to have patience. I believe that these interruptions must be a human way of storytelling."

"It's the way stories are told in bars," the middle-aged man said.

Cap grinned at him. "You sound like an authority."

The man shrugged, then put an arm around the middle-aged woman. The casualness of the gesture told Sisko that either these two had been together a long time, or they were married or both. "After seventeen years of bartending," the man said, "you get to be an expert on just about anything that happens in a bar."

"A Quilli telling a story in a bar would never allow this many interruptions," the Quilli said.

"A Quilli telling a story in this bar wouldn't have a choice," the Trill said. He took his bottle of Canar and returned to his table. "So, our finger-snapping buddy over here is pretty clear on the concept and since no one else is asking questions, I assume everyone else is. You could probably continue."

"Good," Arthur said from behind the bar. "Because I've been wondering what plan you and Captain Sotugh and Captain Higginbotham come up with to solve this and keep the Mist from attacking normal space."

"If you'd let him finish his story," the Caxtonian said, "we'd all know."

Sisko reluctantly pushed the jambalaya away. "Well," he said, settling back into the story....

It took us less than five minutes to work out a plan of attack

"Ah, geez, you aren't going to tell us the plan, are you?" Arthur said.

"Shh," the Quilli said. "It's a storytelling ploy, and a good one for building suspense. Go on, Captain."

Captains Sotugh and Higginbotham had beamed back to their ships. I went to help Major Kira while Odo, my chief of security, made certain that all of Jackson's personnel and equipment were on board the Defiant.

Despite what Kira had said earlier, she and Chief O'Brien had done a great deal of work on the weapons. It only took the two of us two and a half minutes to get the weapons on-line. It took another two and a half minutes to get them powered to eighty percent. It took us another two minutes to get the screens back on-line. That left exactly fourteen minutes to shift the station or have it forever trapped in Mist space.

I used the station's communications to contact the Defiant. "Chief," I said without preamble. "We're running out of time."

"This is one strange machine," O'Brien said. "I haven't had much time to study it, but I think we've got it working." He paused for a moment, then added. "Dax tells me she's found another intact shifter in the debris."

"Good," I said. "Tell her to get it on board. If she finds any more, have her beam them on as well. Let's take as many precautions as we can while remembering our time constraints."

"Will do," O'Brien said.

"After she beams that on, stand by," I said.

"Aye, sir."

I closed the communication with the Defiant and immediately contacted the Madison. Higginbotham appeared on our screens. He was doing hands-on work. I could tell from the smudge of grease along his left cheek.

"Well, Paul?" I asked. "How are the shield modifications coming?"

"To be honest, Ben," Higginbotham said, "I have no idea if what we've done will work. My engineer and my science officer have differing opinions. My engineer is uncertain, but Dr. Jones is adamant. She says it will work."

I'd met Jones. She was one of the sharper minds in Starfleet. "Let's hope that Dr. Jones is correct," I said, "because we are out of time and options. I'm going to shift the station, the Madison, and the Klingon ships back to real space in exactly four minutes."

"Got it," Higginbotham said. "Good luck."

His image disappeared from our screen.

I turned to Major Kira. "Get those shield modifications from the Madison in case I have to bring you back to Mist space. When we shift the station back over to normal space, it will be up to you to deal with the Cardassians."

She smiled. Her teeth were very white against her filthy, battle-worn skin. "Oh, that will be my pleasure," she said.

"Major," I said, both enjoying and worrying about her enthusiasm, "deal with them peacefully, if possible."

"You take all the fun out of it," she said, her grin widening. I knew that she would do her best, and that she would stay within the parameters set by Starfleet. I also knew that this situation could get out of hand, quickly.

"As soon as I reach the Defiant," I said, heading to the transporter pad, "be prepared to shift to our home space. But remember, we may need your help here if things start going sour. So be ready."

"Understood," she said. "Good luck."

That was the second time someone had wished me good luck in the space of five minutes. Such a wish usually meant that the speaker had no faith in the procedure ahead. I knew that we were operating on a by-gosh and by-golly basis. Our chances for success depended on a series of happy coincidences and on the ability of our engineers mine and Captain Higginbotham's to analyze and compensate for unfamiliar equipment, and then make it work the first time.

I had faith in Chief O'Brien and I knew that Higginbotham's new engineer, Braun Ginn, was one of the best in the fleet. But sometimes we asked too much of these talented people.

Apparently Higginbotham and Kira both thought this was one of those times.

"You mean," said a man at the bar who hadn't spoken until now, "that you've gone through situations before where a plan like this would work?"

He sounded completely skeptical. Sisko had been watching him during the story. The man was large, with a full white head of hair and matching beard. He smoked a meerschaum pipe that made him look as if he belonged in the nineteenth century instead of the twenty-fourth. Even his clothing had that old-fashioned sense.

Sisko smiled. "The history of Starfleet is filled with engineers who have made things work on a whim and a prayer," he said. "Beginning with Zefram Cochrane."

"You could make the argument," said the middle-aged man at the bar, "that the history of human spaceflight is filled with engineers like that. Think of the Mir space station in the twentieth century. That thing was up there for at least a decade longer than it should have been and I swear by the time they retired it, it was held together by spit and glue."

"Humans have always been that way," the woman beside him said. "Think of the Wright brothers."

"Columbus," the Trill said.

"I've always thought of him as an incompetent," the white-bearded man said. "Imagine sailing one way and believing you were sailing another."

"Robinson," Cap said, "we'll have time for your opinions later."