The Mist (3 page)

I know that Dax shares my feelings, for whenever she and I stand on the bridge together, she gives me a look filled with mischief and awe. In her eyes, I see old Curzon and hear his lusty laugh as we are about to embark on yet another adventure.

There are adventures on Deep Space Nine, often more adventures than I would care for, but there the adventure seems to come to us.

On the Defiant, we head out into territories unknown, seeking the adventures ourselves.

That day, I thought of the old sailing maps and dragons as I sat on the command chair. I should have been thinking more along the line of pirates.

Dax had the helm. Behind me, Chief O'Brien was checking the systems. Commander Worf was checking our route, scanning as per my order, for anything that might seem like a trap. Should anything happen, he would be in charge of our weaponry. Cadet Nog, the first Ferengi to serve in Starfleet, monitored our communications.

Our station's chief medical officer, Julian Bashir, was powering up sickbay. I had a hunch not an entirely pleasant one that we would need his services before the adventure ended. I have found, in my years at Deep Space Nine, that leadership is one-third knowledge, one-third common sense, and one-third a deep-in-your-heart, unprovable moment of absolute certainty, based solely on pure gut instinct. The best leaders learn how to separate that instinct from wishful thinking. It is, I think, the hardest thing of all to do, even harder than preparing a beloved crew for war.

It was Cadet Nog who set the tone for the early part of this mission. I saw many of you frown when you heard me mention that a Ferengi had gone to Starfleet Academy, but he had done so at my recommendation. The very features that make Ferengi the true capitalists of the Alpha Quadrant are the features that will make Nog into one of Starfleet's best officers one day. Not their unmistakable avarice, but their attention to detail, their willingness to learn anything if it will benefit them, and their complete desire to be the best at anything they do.

Nog has never forgotten that it was my recommendation that opened the doors to Starfleet Academy, and he has been trying, in the most earnest manner I have ever seen, to repay me ever since.

For my part, I test him at every opportunity I get. At first, I did so because I did not want this recommendation to haunt me in future years, but later, the tests became my way of setting the bar as high as possible for the young cadet. I see in him officer material if he can shed a few of his Ferengi habits.

We had barely cleared the station when Nog said, "The distress signal continues, Captain." His voice was steady, considering he was only a cadet at the time, and it was his first time on the Defiant.

From my position, I could not see the cadet without turning my head. But I had a clear view of the side of Dax's face. She was grinning at Nog's obvious excitement. Like me, she felt responsible for the boy, and liked to encourage him. So she said, "There's still no sign of a ship, Benjamin. Or even debris."

"I do not like this," Worf said. "I recommend we go into the area with shields up."

"Noted," I said.

Worf had a point. With tensions running as high as they were at that time in the Alpha Quadrant, we could have been heading into something quite unpleasant. We had also had enough experiences this deep in space to show us that nothing was impossible.

Now, please understand another reason for my desire to explore this strange signal. I am rather fond of stories of lost ships. We had found one once, earlier in my tenure at Deep Space Nine, and I had been harboring a secret hope that we were about to find another.

"Old man," I said to Dax. "Are there any records of lost ships in this area from the time of that signal?"

Dax shook her head. "The signal dates from the early days of Earth's expansion out to the stars. They didn't keep the kinds of records we keep now. In those days more ships vanished than reported back."

I knew that, and I knew that the list of possible candidates would be endless. In addition to ships of exploration, many of those early Earth ships were colony ships, leaving Earth never intending to return. Only a few of them had found homes.

The distress signal continued as we approached its coordinates. As we reached the right area I asked Chief O'Brien if he had found the signal's source.

"No, sir," O'Brien said, not taking his eyes off his panel. He had calibrated one of the ship's sensors to search for any signs of a technology that might be hiding a ship or any unusual space anomalies. "In fact, I'm not finding anything at all. Frankly, sir, I don't like this."

Now, I have been on countless missions with the chief, and on many of them, he did not locate the source of the problem we were investigating on his first pass. His comment surprised and intrigued me.

"What exactly don't you like, Chief?" I asked.

He shook his head while continuing to stare at his panel. "Not only is there nothing in the area of that signal, but the entire area of space for almost a light-year in diameter is clear of all debris. Even the dust molecule content is way, way down."

"That cannot be," Worf said.

Now I understood what he was talking about. Even though space seems empty, it never is. There is always some form of matter in forms of asteroids or small dust clouds too thin for the naked eye to see.

"What would wipe an entire area of space clean?" Dax asked.

"I do not see how such a thing is even remotely possible," Worf said.

"I find it curious," I said, "that we would be getting a distress call from an area of space so empty that a dustball would seem conspicuous." I leaned forward. The display on the screen before me showed only darkness.

No one had a response for that, so I said, "Okay, old man, take us in slow and easy. Mr. Worf, go to alert status. Screens up."

"Aye, Captain."

The sound of the relief in Worf's voice made me smile slightly. Dax also smiled in fond amusement without taking her attention from her controls. Recently Dax and Worf married, but at the time of this mission, their relationship had not yet begun. I saw the relationship reflected in tiny gestures like Dax's. It did not interfere with their duties and seemed to make them even more efficient officers.

The chief's mention of discomfort seemed to travel through the crew. I was cautious, but not uncomfortable. I was fascinated by the puzzle, and ready to discover the secrets behind it.

I would discover those secrets sooner than I expected.

"We're almost on top of the signal," Dax said.

"We are less than one thousand meters away," Worf said.

"Chief?" I asked, without turning from the empty space showing on the viewscreen in front of me.

"I'm still not reading anything," he said.

"Have you checked the systems?"

"They're fine, sir. The problem isn't us." He turned and pointed at the blackness on the screen. "It's out there."

"That signal has to be coming from somewhere, people," I said, putting an edge in my voice. I wanted an answer before we got into a situation we could not predict. "It could be a cloaked ship, a time anomaly, anything. And I want to know what."

"We are five hundred meters away, Captain," Dax said, reverting from the familiar to my title, as she usually did in military situations.

"Take us to two hundred meters and hold that position," I said.

It took only a moment for Dax to report, "All stop. We are two hundred meters from the point of the distress call."

I still saw only emptiness on the viewscreen. "Magnify," I said.

"We're already at full magnification, sir," O'Brien said. "At this range, we would be able to see the pattern in the metal on the side of any ship."

I leaned forward, intrigued and mystified. There was a distress call coming from a point so close I could almost reach out and touch it, and yet nothing was there. Not even space dust.

"The message continues to repeat," O'Brien said, "coming from a point one hundred meters directly in front of us. Nothing is there that any of my instruments can see."

"How can that be?" I asked. I was ready for some answers. I was tired of my crew telling me that they found nothing. Something had to be sending that distress call, even if it was a carrier wave bouncing off something in space.

"It's impossible," the chief said, "but that's what's happening."

"Chief, something is causing that signal."

"No, sir," the chief said, sounding more rattled than usual. "Nothing is. I've explored every possibility, and I can't find anything."

"Then, you haven't explored every possibility," I said. "Cadet, what, exactly, is the source of that signal?"

"Ah, sir, I'm not reading a source." Nog sounded almost frightened of me. Which was good. I wanted to scare a bit of efficiency into my normally brilliant crew.

"There must be a source, Cadet."

"Benjamin," Dax said softly, almost protectively, "they're right. There is no source. Only coordinates."

"So," I said, "you're telling me that if we moved the Defiant directly over that point, the message would come from right here on the bridge?"

The chief stood near full attention. He knew I wasn't happy.

Dax sighed.

Worf continued to run scans.

I turned slightly, and saw the cadet look from one senior officer to another, hoping they knew the answer that he did not. In all my years of service with this crew, I had never seen them so completely baffled.

"I would not recommend such an action, sir," Worf said, after a short moment.

"Actually, Commander," I said, turning to look at Mr. Worf, forcing myself not to smile, "I wasn't considering it. I was merely asking."

"In that case, sir," Worf said, "it would seem that your analysis is correct."

I didn't like that answer at all, but no one else contradicted him. "Do you have a better idea on how to discover what's out there?" I asked.

Worf looked me right in the eye, straightened his back slightly, and said, "I do not, sir."

"Sir!" Nog shouted.

I spun around to face the now far-from-empty viewscreen.

Where a moment before had been nothing but very empty vacuum was now a long slit, as if the fabric of space had just been ripped open. The edges of the split were shimmering as it expanded and opened, sending a faint cloud of mist into the void.

"What is that?" I asked.

"It's as if space just ruptured," Dax said sharply. "We're too close."

"Get us out of here, old man," I said.

"I can't," she said. "Too late."

The tear in space moved over and around us, like a giant mouth of a fish swallowing us whole.

The ship remained completely silent. No rumble, no movement.

Nothing.

Everything remained normal as the cloud passed over us and disappeared, all in just a fraction of a second.

Again the screen in front of me only showed space, but where there had been nothing but emptiness for light-years, there were now suns and planetary systems.

Impossible suns and planetary systems.

Yet they were there. And we were just outside one of the systems.

But they were not the most startling change. That appeared directly in front of us. An alien craft now dominated our viewscreen.

Shiny black, it was shaped like two swept-back wings that met in the middle, with no body in between. It seemed to hover in space instead of float, bringing back memories of hawks diving at mice and eagles soaring. In all my years of seeing alien craft, I had never seen such a beautiful, and deadly-looking, craft.

It was my first sight of a ship of the Mist.

The fire to Sisko's back popped slightly, but otherwise there were no sounds in the entire bar. Everyone was listening to his story. He paused and took a long drink of ale, signaling that others should do the same. Sisko glanced around at his listeners. They did, but reluctantly, as if unwilling to break the story's spell.

Even Sotugh had been interested, although Sisko would not have known that if he had not spent a lot of time observing Worf. Klingons had a unique ability to look distracted when they were concentrating hard.

The Jibetian ale soothed the dryness in Sisko's throat. He took a second sip before satisfying a question of his own.

"So, Sotugh," Sisko asked. "Is this the point you got interested in the distress call?"

Sotugh laughed. "Of course, Captain," he said, leaning forward over his mug of blood wine. "We were monitoring your little rescue mission from the moment you left your station. When your ship disappeared, your mission became more than one of curiosity. Suddenly it became a threat to the Empire."

Sisko nodded, hoping Sotugh would continue.

Sotugh sat back, obviously and surprisingly not going to say another word.

Sisko studied him over the bottle of Jibetian ale. Sotugh was not going to make the telling of this story easy in any fashion.

"Your ship disappeared?" the catlike woman asked, glancing first at Sisko, then back at Sotugh.

"So, Captain," Cap said. "Don't hold us in suspense. What happened next?"

Sisko smiled, settled into a more comfortable position, and told them.

Four

I STOOD. I did not like this new ship, this position, or these new impossible stars and systems.

"Dax," I said, "where are we?"

"According to my sensors, we haven't moved, Captain."

"We are at the same coordinates," Worf said, confirming what Dax had said.

"The distress call is gone," Nog said.

Something was very, very wrong. We had been lured here. My feeling had been right. Here there were dragons; there was one before us, and I was not pleased.

I returned to my chair. "I want to know who that ship belongs to and what it wants with us," I said. I sat forward and studied it.

The ship was beautiful in a way that even now I cannot describe. Its design looked aerodynamic, as if the ship would function well in atmo-sphere, under water, or in space. Upon closer observation, the two wings, which had seemed attached to each other a moment before, had a small bulge between them, as unnoticeable as the body of a monarch butterfly or a Carnuiin round beetle. Both wings tapered back to fine points. No ports or weapons marred the perfect gleaming black surfaces.