The Mist (8 page)

"What did you see?" the little creature was shaking with fury.

Sisko met Sotugh's gaze. "I'll take it from here," Sisko said softly.

"I think that's best," Sotugh said.

"The station disappeared," Sisko said. "Oh, not right away. First, Dax said ..."

"The asteroid should be passing through the station right about now."

We knew what they were going through. I don't know about the others, but my ears rang in sympathy, my inner ear spun slightly, and a hint of dizziness returned.

It happened too quickly, and Captain Victor knew he had sent us back too late. I could only clench my fists and hope that my first officer, Major Kira, who had fought in more tight situations than the rest of us had seen together with, perhaps, the exception of Dax would find a way out of this one too.

And that was when the station disappeared.

"It's gone, Benjamin," Dax said softly.

The silence on the bridge was intense.

I sat for one moment.

One long moment, feeling more fury than I had felt since my wife died. Captain Victor had played us like we were his favorite violin. He had taken each string, plucking and plucking, until we became the melody he wanted.

The melody, the chords, the over-and undertones. We had been played, and he had known what he was doing.

I could see his smile as he beamed off our ship. Don't be so hasty in your predictions, Captain, he had said, and then he had chuckled.

Chuckled!

Knowing that his people were about to steal my station.

"Captain," Nog said. "The starships around the station are going crazy. There are more hails here than I've ever seen. And the Klingons are demanding to speak to you, sir."

I stood. I would take care of this, and then I would take care of the Mist.

All of them.

"Cadet," I said, "open a channel to all the Federation ships in the area of the station, and send this message directly to Starfleet headquarters. And patch in the Klingons."

"Yes, sir," Nog said after a moment of looking very fearful. I saw Dax bend over her instruments, and move a hand, helping him. Finally, Nog said, "Channel open, sir."

I took a step toward our screen.

"This is Captain Sisko on the Defiant. Deep Space Nine has been taken by a rebel group of the legendary people called the Mist."

I paused for a moment to let that surprising statement sink in to all who were listening. "My information on this takeover is limited, but as soon as I know more, I will send it to you on this channel. Please stand by."

I had Nog cut the broadcast.

"Sir, we are being hailed by everyone," he said.

I ignored that. I knew my statement would provide more questions than answers.

"Old man," I said to Dax. "Move us back to the coordinates where we came out of Mist space."

Dax nodded.

"We are going back over?" Worf said.

"Do you have any other ideas, Commander?"

"No, sir," Worf said. He scowled at his panel, then said, "But it is a trap."

"People," I said, glancing around at my bridge crew, "that band of Mist have just declared war on the Federation, whether they intended to or not. And we need the other band of Mist to help us get our station back."

"I don't believe we can trust them, sir," O'Brien said. "They want us to go back."

"The chief is right, sir," Bashir said. "If they truly wanted to prevent the capture of the station, they would have approached us sooner."

"Captain Victor is not to be trusted," Dax said.

"This is not a debate," I said, and my crew fell silent. But right at that moment I agreed with everything they were saying. I knew it was some sort of trap, I knew Victor couldn't be trusted, yet at that moment I had no choice if we were ever going to see Deep Space Nine in real space again.

"We're in position," Dax said.

As she finished her statement, a rift in space opened up. For the second time in one day, the Mist swallowed us.

Eight

THE FIVE IMPOSSIBLE planetary systems had returned, and with them, the beautiful but deadly-looking Mist ship, with its arching wings and small main section. The shift was as disorienting as coming out of hyperspace for the first time. The mind cannot accept the difference: it knows where it was, and believes it should still be there.

I stood as we crossed through, wondering why we did not feel any real physical effects. Apparently Dr. Bashir wondered the same thing, for he frowned and took an empty console, quickly going to work.

Dax was watching the screen and the helm. The chief was monitoring the shift so that he might repeat it, working to figure out exactly what was happening.

I spread my legs slightly, bracing myself. I was tired of the games the Mist were playing. For the second time we had crossed into their space, and for the second time, I felt as if we were lured, even though this time it was my decision to come. The first time had been a rescue signal. The second time was Deep Space Nine.

Bait.

They had my station and I had gone for the bait. Yet they did not know what they had done. By taking the station they had left ships abandoned in space. They left the wormhole vulnerable, Bajor vulnerable. An entire section of space normally policed by the Federation was now open to attack from any and all sides.

We had to resolve this quickly, or there would be great loss of life losses of a type that I couldn't even predict except that they would happen.

I wondered about the station: what was going on inside her. Kira and Odo could handle themselves. But what of Quark's and the other businesses on the Promenade? What was happening in the Bajoran temple and Garak's tailor shop? Had the Mist placed its troops all over the station or just in Ops?

I longed to know. I wanted to be both there and here, in order to fight properly.

"Captain," Dax said. "The station is now visible to us."

"And the Klingons are screaming at us, sir," Nog said. He sounded breathless.

At the moment, I did not care about the Klingons.

"We cared about you," Sotugh said. "You had vanished again. We thought that perhaps you were planning some sort of military maneuver."

The Quilli growled.

Sotugh ignored it, and leaned back, shouting, "Where is my heart of targ?"

"Coming, sir," Arthur said.

Sisko proceeded as if the interruption hadn't happened.

I did not look at the cadet. I had a rudimentary plan, and its key was timing. "Hail Captain Victor," I said.

"Yes, sir," Nog said.

"Chief, what have you learned?" I asked while I waited for Victor to respond.

"There's a lot of information here," O'Brien said, "but I'm not sure it's what I need."

"Figure it out," I said.

"Yes, sir," he said.

Then Nog said, "I'm putting Captain Victor on screen, sir."

Captain Victor's face filled the screen. He was grinning, his teeth impossibly white against his skin. He still had his cap off, and his dark hair was sticking up in tufts. Behind him, I could barely make out Councillor Näna, his strange face staring unblinkingly at me through his huge eyes.

"All right," I said. "We are back. But we are here to retrieve Deep Space Nine. I expect your assistance, and I expect it now."

"Captain," Victor said, spreading his hands. "We have done nothing but assist you."

"You have done nothing but play games with us," I said. "And the games are over. Now. The loss of Deep Space Nine will cause a crisis of unparalleled proportions in the Alpha Quadrant. We must recover the station before word of this gets out."

"Too late," Sotugh said. "Word of it was already getting out. Within a minute of your second disappearance, I was picking up distress beacons from several ships."

Arthur swooped by with a platter heaping with nachos. The shredded beef smelled spicy. Jalapeńos and black olives mixed with several cheeses and tomatoes on top. They were covered with homemade guacamole and real sour cream.

Sisko's mouth watered. He reached for a chip, then pulled back as the grease burned his fingertips. The nachos were too hot to eat.

"The story," the Quilli said, and tilted its chair toward Sisko.

"Oh, relax," the Trill said, putting a foot on the chair's rung, and slamming it to the floor. The Quilli fell backward, its bristles sticking in the nearby tabletop, breaking its fall.

"On Quilla," it said, "you would die for that."

"On Quilla," the Trill said, "I would never do that."

Sisko sighed softly. He would have to wait a moment anyway to eat the nachos. He might as well continue.

"Where is my heart of targ?" Sotugh yelled.

"Coming," Arthur said, and scurried behind the bar.

"Captain Victor did not seem to care about the problems Deep Space Nine's disappearance was causing in the Alpha Quadrant," Sisko said.

"I need to know what information you have about my station," I said to him, "and I need it now."

Victor's grin faded as I spoke to him. Apparently, in that instant, my return had ceased to be a joke to him.

He glanced at Näna, whose head moved up and down in time to his opening and closing mouth. That seemed like a nod to me, but I might have been anthropomorphizing.

"We've intercepted some colonist transmissions," Victor said, smiling. "It seems the colony forces met with more resistance than they had expected and some of the station's equipment has been damaged."

They were fighting then. Trust the major to respond to such a command with quick, sure strokes.

"What kind of equipment?" O'Brien said, in a voice that had an edge of fatherly panic.

I raised a hand to silence him.

"My first officer responded quickly to my message," I said. I wanted Victor to know that my people were competent, even on the station. I still did not feel as if I could trust him. I wanted to warn him in as many ways as I could about provoking me.

"It seems to me that he had done a good job so far, and you had done nothing," Sotugh said. He reached for the nachos, pulled out one, and ate it, then spit it out. "Bah. Tastes like plastic field rations. How could you order this, Sisko?"

Sisko took a chip. The cheese formed a string as he pulled and he had to break it with his fingers. He licked them off. These were excellent nachos. He had ordered them because he was picky about his jambalaya. Now that he knew the nachos were a success, he might share them, and then order jambalaya.

"These are the best nachos I have had since I left Earth," he said to Cap.

Cap nodded. "We have a captain who comes in here regularly who loves them."

"Aren't you going to answer the Klingon's point?" the middle-aged man at the bar asked. "I kind of agree with him. I don't think you responded well to the challenge at all."

Sisko smiled. "I'm not a Klingon. I do not respond aggressively to every attack. I like to gather information first."

"It makes you seem weak," Sotugh said, craning his head for Arthur. There was still no sign of the heart of targ. Sisko wondered how long it would take before Sotugh got really upset.

"It makes you seem overly cautious," said the alien who had recently detached himself from the wall.

"It prevents costly mistakes," Sisko said, speaking around another beef-and-cheese-covered chip. He had gotten some guacamole this time, too, and it was fresh and extremely well made.

"I suppose we will have to wait for you to finish eating now before you continue the story," the Quilli said. It had freed itself from the table during the last bit of the story. It was sitting a little farther away from the Trill now.

"It is considered rude among humans to talk with their mouths full," the Trill said.

The Quilli shot him a nasty look. "It is not considered rude among Quilli."

"Well, then," Sisko said, pulling a large chip from the center, "I shall talk and eat. Unless there are other objections?"

"Please continue," someone said.

"Who cares about human customs?" someone else asked.

"It is rude for Klingons not to talk and eat at the same time," Sotugh said.

Sisko smiled and reached for the pile of napkins that Cap had set on his table. "I continued to ask Captain Victor for information," Sisko said, as he tried to pry yet another chip out of the middle of the nacho pile. "It seemed to me that if he were telling the truth, he was in as much trouble as I was."

"How is that?" the woman drinking tea at the bar asked.

"The Mist colonists would be using Deep Space Nine against him and his faction," Sisko said. "Victor had been, in his own way, proposing that we become allies. I was willing to accept that in the information exchange, but I was also listening closely, keeping an eye on him, and trying to make certain that what he told me matched what I saw."

"Your first officer's actions might buy us some time," Captain Victor said to me.

I hoped for more than time. I hoped that Kira would be able to subdue the invaders, and then we would be able to take the station back to our own space.

"What is your defense plan?" I asked.

Victor glanced at Näna. The councillor had moved away, and all I could see of his face was one large unblinking eye, set in his gray lifeless skin. "Our ships are not set up for fighting," Victor said. "We outnumber the colonist ships, but we would stand no chance against that station of yours."

"If you are not set up to fight," Worf said, "then what does it matter if you outnumber the colonists' ships?"

I had been about to ask that question myself, but it sounded better coming from Worf. Victor seemed startled by the question.

"I we can fight. Sort of," he said.

I resisted the urge to shoot a triumphant glance at Worf. "Sort of," I repeated. "What are you leaving out, Captain?"

Victor glanced in Näna's direction, but the councillor had moved completely out of our visual range. I could see only Victor's half of their interaction. He seemed worried.

"Captain," I said, my voice deep and filled with warning.

He turned back to me, his skin darkened by a flush. "The Mist are not a fighting people," he said. "For centuries, they have avoided conflict by simply not taking part in what they observed going on in the normal space around them."