The Mist (6 page)

"Starfleet does not approve of many appropriate things," Sotugh said.

"What did Victor say?" Cap asked.

"Are you and your crew recovering?" Victor asked. "The experience is not harmful, but not pleasant, either."

"We seemed to have survived whatever just happened with only a few lingering side effects," I said.

Now Captain Victor actually let himself chuckle. "The side effects will pass. But now do you understand why we moved out of the way of the Klingon ships?"

I did not answer his question. "I think it's time for that explanation," I said.

Captain Victor's smile grew. "Since I assume you would still like to remain in this area, would you like to join me on my bridge, or may I join you?"

I wasn't about to go to their bridge. "You are welcome to come on board here," I said.

Victor nodded, as if he expected me to say that.

"Mr. Worf," I said, "lower the shields."

The screen went blank. Then, before Worf could voice the objection I was sure he was going to voice, Captain Victor shimmered into form, facing me.

He had beamed through our shields, an event I didn't like in the slightest.

I stood slowly to make sure that my balance had returned. It hadn't completely. The cabin spun, as if the ship were out of control. Only I knew all the spinning was going on inside my own head. "Welcome, Captain," I managed to say.

"Please sit," Victor said, smiling. "I know how you must feel after passing through the Klingon ship."

I did not sit down. It was my ship, and I would be the one who gave the commands. Although I did wish that I had not stood up.

Slowly, the spinning eased.

"You promised answers," I said.

He nodded and walked to the main screen. I noted that all the members of my crew, from the doctor to Dax, watched him closely. If Victor tried anything, I doubted anyone on my crew would hesitate. He would find himself on the floor, stunned by a phaser, in a matter of seconds.

Apparently my crew disliked being dizzy as much as I did. And they seemed to distrust this Captain Victor as much as I did.

He stopped and faced the main screen in such a manner that he could partially face me and partially face the screen.

"I'll make this as quick as I can," he said. "There isn't much time."

I waited.

"The five systems you see in front of you," he said, pointing at the screen, "are the homeworlds of the Mist."

"The Mist?" I asked.

This time it was Dax who nodded. She was still staring at Captain Victor. "Of course," she said. "That's what happened to them."

She spoke as if everything had become clear to her.

It was not yet clear to me. Not in the slightest.

Six

THE DIZZINESS HAD vanished, leaving only a slight ringing in my ears. I barely noticed the change. I was watching Captain Victor. He was watching me, apparently to gauge my reaction.

"Dax," I said. "You know of this?"

"I know of the Mist," she said. "But I'd rather hear what Captain Victor has to say."

"As would I," Worf said. Somehow his curt, clipped tone made those three words sound like a threat. Victor caught the implication too.

"I only know the Mist as a legend," I said. "Like the ancient Greek gods from Earth, or the bottle creatures from the lost worlds of Ythi Four."

"Yeah," O'Brien said. "I rather feel like an Englishman in Ireland, being told the little people are real."

"The Mist are real enough," Victor said.

"So how do real beings become legend and not get discovered?" I asked.

Victor glanced at the screen, a half-smile playing on his face. Then, with a dramatic sweep of his arm, he pointed toward the five star systems behind the Mist ship. "At one time," he said, "those five systems were in normal space. This was over a thousand years before Cochrane invented the first human warp drive."

Victor turned to me to see if I was listening. He seemed to like dramatic pauses. As he spoke, he would gesture broadly. Young Nog said later that it seemed as if Victor expected to be paid in latinum for each listener he convinced.

"About the time our ancestors were fighting through the dark ages," he said, including me, the chief, and Dr. Bashir in that statement, "the Mist were feeling crowded by the expansion of other races around them into space. The Mist of that time were a very private people who had no desire to expand beyond their own systems."

His use of the past tense bothered me, but I let him continue.

"Through a series of circumstances I'm not familiar with," Captain Victor said, "the Mist invented a device that simply shifts the molecular structure of all material slightly out of phase with normal matter. The shift is so slight that it almost can't be measured. The effect was that the shifted matter didn't exist in the normal universe."

"Not at all?" Nog asked, and then looked at me, as if I were going to chastise him for speaking. I did not even look at him directly, which, I believe, made him even more uncomfortable.

"Not at all," Victor said.

"Yet it's there," O'Brien said. "Completely invisible to those around it."

"So why can we see the normal universe," Dax asked. "And the shifted worlds can't be seen?"

"I honestly don't know the reason," Captain Victor said, "but I am sure one of our scientists could explain."

"Invisible systems and ships," Worf said.

Captain Victor said, "Not only invisible to those in the normal universe, but nonexistent."

"Thus the Klingon ship could pass through this ship," O'Brien said.

"And the effect we felt?" I asked.

"Simply a side effect of the fact that two bodies of matter are occupying the same basic space," said Victor. "Nothing more. And the Klingons felt nothing."

"We felt something," Sotugh said, bregit lung dripping off his fingers. "We have always felt something in that region of space. It is why we try to avoid it as much as possible."

"I know of the area of which you speak," said the small bristly alien. Until it spoke up, its snout had been resting on the chair's back. It had to lift its head to talk. "There are spacefaring legends of that sector. My people had strange dreams as they flew through that area. The Betazoids avoid it altogether. It makes them ill. Perhaps humans feel nothing, but it is not true of every species."

Around the room, a handful of others nodded. The Trill leaned back in his chair, a half-smile playing on his face. His gaze met Sisko's, and Sisko got the sense that the Trill was noting what he was: that it was becoming a contest among the patrons to see whose species was sensitive enough to "feel" the Mist.

Cap seemed to notice it too. And, like Sisko, he knew which way it was going to go. Add enough intoxicants, and every species reverted to childhood. Pretty soon, the entire thing would degenerate into a "my species is better than your species" brawl.

"So," Cap said loudly, effectively silencing the growing debate. "We know that Victor believed the Klingons felt nothing"

Sotugh started to speak, but Cap continued"even though we know that they did feel something. Then what?"

Sisko heaved a small sigh of relief. He was wondering how he was going to return to DS9 battered from a bar brawl and still convince Dr. Bashir that he'd rested.

"Well," he said, "I glanced up at the Klingon ship Daqchov floating near the Mist ship. Wouldn't they be shocked to know they were so close to another alien ship?"

"Shocked?!?" Sotugh said. "Klingons are not shocked. We are never shocked. We"

"Sotugh," several patrons said at once.

The cat-woman finished the thought. "Would you kindly shut up and let him talk? How would you like it if someone continually interrupted your stupid operas?"

"They are not stupid," Sotugh said.

"Could have fooled me," the cat-woman said.

"Prrghh, Sotugh, please," Cap said. "The others want to listen to the story, not your bickering."

"That's what I was trying to tell him," the catlike woman, Prrghh, said haughtily.

"Then take your own advice, woman." Sotugh leaned back in his chair. "Continue with your lies, Sisko."

Sisko did not take the bait. He took another swig of Jibetian ale, and went back to the story.

Chief O'Brien looked as if the entire discussion was a revelation to him. "So that's why this area of space is so clear," he said.

Captain Victor nodded. "It has to be kept clear to cut down on episodes of the dizziness and dislocation that you felt."

"But the energy to maintain such a shift," Chief O'Brien said, "must be enormous."

Captain Victor shook his head. "Once shifted, the matter remains in that constant state unless purposefully shifted back."

Dax had a slight frown on her face. "When the planets shifted, the Mist would have had to shift everything. Air, food, water. Everything that sustained life, including the suns. I find that hard to believe."

"It happened," Victor said. "And more. The Mist called this the Great Move. Their history makes it clear that the shift was a gigantic undertaking that took years."

While I found all of this fascinating, and just vague enough to be confusing scientifically, I had other concerns. Many parts of this story made no sense, at least not with the things I could see.

"How did you shift into Mist space?" I asked.

Captain Victor laughed. "My ancestors ran into some problems near this area of space with their ship. The Mist saved the ship, as they have done with many other ships over the centuries. Many of my ancestors decided to remain on the Mist worlds. Like many other races, we have been accepted in their culture. I am now a tenth-generation member of the Mist community."

I made a small, noncommittal sound in the back of my throat. Dr. Bashir looked at me. He knew that sound was my way of continuing a conversation, but of letting my skepticism out.

"So," I said, "you claim the Mist have been completely out of touch with any other race, except for those members of those races that it has 'rescued.' "

I put quite an emphasis on the word rescued. I wondered if we had been "rescued" as well.

"Why would we be in touch with any other race? We opted to leave this part of space, to live in our own universe, so to speak," Victor said. "The affairs, the wars, of the normal universe do not affect us."

"Well," I said softly, "something must have affected you, Captain. You knew enough about our universe to lure us here."

"True," he said.

"And I suspect you would not have done so if your problem was restricted to your own space."

He smiled at me, but there was no laughter in the smile. And with that look I distrusted him even more.

"The Mist have no desire to expand," he said, "but we do have need of room for growth beyond our five systems."

"Oh," I said, not liking where this was heading.

Victor held up his hand for me to wait. "Two hundred years ago," he said, "we found another three systems that were uninhabited, in an area just beyond the Bajoran system. Since they were uninhabited, and no race seemed to be claiming them, they wouldn't be missed."

"You shifted them," Dax said.

"Exactly," Victor said. "We shifted the systems and began colonization."

"And you have had trouble with the colonies," Worf said. He sounded as coolly skeptical as I felt. Luring us away from Deep Space Nine, shifting us into their space, and then not giving us proper warning about the effect of the Klingon ship hadn't warmed any of us to Captain Victor.

Captain Victor glanced at Worf as if his question were rude. Worf glowered back, as only a Klingon can.

"We do not glower," Sotugh said.

Several patrons shushed him. Sisko suppressed a smile.

"It is a moody word," Sotugh said. "Klingons are not moody."

They shushed him again.

"Well," Sotugh muttered into his blood wine. "We are not."

Sisko forced himself to continue before he laughed. "It seemed that Victor did not like what he saw in Worf's face."

"Better," Sotugh said. "No human should like what he sees in a Klingon face."

"So," Sisko said, "Victor ..."

... looked directly at me. "There were no troubles," he said, and then he sighed. It seemed as if some of the energy left him. "Until this last generation of colonists. Over half of the colonies' populations were made up of the descendants of ships like my ancestors. There are humans, Cardassians, Jibetians, Bajorans, and a dozen other races on those three colony systems."

"All living under the Mist system," Dax said, "but growing tired of the Mist rules."

Captain Victor nodded. "It would seem that way. Under the leadership of a human named John David Phelps Jackson, the colonies have been demanding more and more."

I crossed my arms. "You brought us to help your side?"

Captain Victor shook his head. "Not really. We lured you here to get you, your fine crew, and your ship away from Deep Space Nine."

I had not liked this conversation from the beginning, but now I hated it. I felt O'Brien stir behind me. Worf leaned forward on his console. Dax clenched her teeth, making her jaw seem quite firm.

Dr. Bashir took a step forward and asked the question we all were thinking. "And why would that be?"

"Because," Captain Victor said, "Jackson and the Mist colonists are about to shift Deep Space Nine into our reality and take it over."

"What?" I came up out of my chair. "They have no right to our station. You have no right to our station."

Victor stood calmly before the screen, as if he had expected my reaction.

"Of course we don't," he said.

I turned to Dax. "Is the station still there?"

"Yes," she said. "It's still in normal space, and still acting like we've gone missing. But ..."

She bit her lower lip and looked up at Victor. The look she leveled at him should have caused him to quake in his boots.

"But?" Bashir asked. He, too, seemed unnaturally calm, something he had learned in his days on Deep Space Nine. He had learned to mask the strong emotions his anger behind a veneer of calm.

"But," she said, "now I count twenty Mist ships taking up positions surrounding it."