The Long Night (13 page)

Jake lifted the chair and got into position. The only advantage they would have was surprise. He doubted the spy who used this tunnel expected to find anyone in the room. They would attack him and run, yelling as they went and hoping that they found an exit before the spy found them.

The door opened part way, and a body came in, going sideways.

Jake brought the chair down on the movement, his fear giving him strength, just as the intruder said, "Nog? What are you-?"

The rest of the sentence was lost in the crash.

"Hey!" Nog yelled, and another voice joined him.

Jake stood over the chair. The body below it belonged to Quark.

Rom came in, wringing his hands.

"You've killed him," Rom said. "Oh, dear. What are we going to do now?"

"We'll get help," Jake said. He started for the door, stepping over Quark. But as he did, he realized the door was closing.

Quickly.

He reached for it, but it was too late. His fingers brushed the edge as it slammed into the wall.

"What's going on here?" Rom asked.

"We're trapped, Father," Nog said. "And now we'll never get out."

DAX'S KNEES ACHED. She'd been kneeling on them since Julian arrived a half an hour before. Her hands were cold, and her nose even colder. She could see her breath.

But she didn't want to move for fear that she would miss something. She felt it her duty to keep both men in line. They didn't know what was at risk here. Oh, perhaps they did on a superficial level. But not to the degree she did. Not to a level of concern that went deeper than the cold.

She kept the tricorder focused on Julian. He was intent in his work, using all sorts of equipment she didn't even recognize to get the exact condition of the Supreme Ruler's tissue, to read his blood chemistry levels, and even to see if his eyeballs had shrunken into his head.

Some of the tests were inconclusive. And most were showing what his initial scan had: that the Supreme Ruler was technically alive but would never really regain consciousness. Julian would impart this information in a dry terse voice, as if he were speaking into his medical log on the station. After the initial tussle over speaking aloud, he didn't even seem to notice that the others were near him. He was completely absorbed by the task before him.

Dax had seen this level of concentration in Julian before. It both worried and heartened her. She had seen Julian perform miracles-keeping Vedek Bareil alive during Bajor's negotiations with the Cardassians had been one of them-but she also knew that no man could do everything. And this task might just be too big for him.

Not to mention what it would do to his career.

If he succeeded, he would be the man who saved the Jibetians' Supreme Ruler. And if he failed, he would be the man who let the religious leader of eighty worlds die. The protections Dax had set up-the tricorder, the redundant record keeping-would only fuel the debate. They wouldn't change the overall facts of what would happen here.

And only she and Sisko understood the implications.

O'Brien had worked his way around the platform and around the room. Occasionally, he, too, would speak to Dax's tricorder, explaining his actions. Essentially, he was checking the systems to see if there was a way to safely beam the Supreme Leader to the ship.

She could have helped them, she supposed, but she felt as if her presence were needed here, beside Julian, protecting her friends and the Supreme Ruler from a threat she wasn't even sure existed. Something felt wrong on this ship. Very, very wrong. And once Julian was done, she would try to find out what that was.

Finally, Julian sighed and straightened. He put a hand on his back and winced at the obvious stiffness in his muscles. He had been in the same position for a long time and had cramped up in the cold. It wasn't like Julian to ignore his own body's needs. He was fanatical about health-his own, the crew's, and his patients'.

He looked at her. His cheeks were ruddy with the chill. The lines showed beside his mouth. "Here's the official word, Lieutenant," he said. "Make sure your device is working."

Dax glanced at the tricoder. It was working. O'Brien came up to the side of the platform and stopped beside Julian. The tricorder would pick up both of them.

"The coldsleep chamber is keeping this man alive, if that is what you want to call his condition. He has been in this state for eight hundred years. The decay I've found is normal for this kind of machine working at this level of efficiency for this long. I might be able to reverse some of the decay, but I cannot do so here. It would be better for all concerned to wait until we have better facilities before we attempt to revive this man." Julian's eyes looked hollow. Sometimes his enthusiasm and naďveté made Dax forget how truly brilliant he was. He did know the importance of saving the Supreme Ruler and of doing it properly.

And then she corrected herself. He knew, of course, and didn't care. This was Julian Bashir, a man who prided himself on his commitment to life. He would give any patient from his greatest enemy to his closest friend the same kind of treatment.

"Well, Chief," Dax said, "that puts all of this on you."

O'Brien shook his head. "It actually will take all of our resourcefulness," he said. "I've double-checked everything. We could beam the entire room onto a ship if that ship were big enough to hold it, but I doubt we have anything in the Federation that could carry such an unusually sized load."

"We'd have to check," Dax said. "What about beaming the platform onto the Defiant?"

"I've looked at that option as well," O'Brien said. "If we move the platform, we disconnect the coldsleep chamber. If we disconnect the chamber, its own fail-safe system comes on. The reawakening process will start. If it doesn't start, then we'll lose the Supreme Ruler."

"You're certain?" Dax asked.

"Believe me, if there was another way to do this, I would have found it by now." O'Brien ran a hand through his curls. "I'd be happiest if we had an entire fleet of specialists helping me on this project."

"I agree," Julian said.

Dax sighed. "I doubt that we'll ever get that chance." Unless the Jibetians wanted to do it. She could imagine the scenario: a Jibetian team loses the Supreme Ruler because reviving him is simply impossible, and then eighty worlds at the edge of Federation space are involved in a massive civil war. She shook her head. The image was too much. Jadzia Dax wished they had never found the Nibix, no matter how excited Curzon would have been.

"All right, gentlemen," Dax said. "I'm going to leave the tricorder running at all times facing the Supreme Ruler's chamber. I think we should examine the rest of the ship."

She stood and led the way out of the ruler's room. As she passed a pile of supplies, she picked up the nearest box and carried it into the corridor. She couldn't sleep near all those bodies. She doubted the others could either.

"If you're thinking we might find more working chambers, I can guarantee we won't," O'Brien said. He picked up a box as did Julian. "I've looked at the other sleep chambers. None are as elaborate as this one."

"Although there must be a place for the rest of the royal family to lie in state," Julian said. "I'm sure that they would have equally sophisticated systems."

The door closed behind them as they stepped into the corridor.

Dax shook her head. "Everyone in that period of the Jibetian dynasty was considered expendable. The Supreme Rulership was a patriarchal system, and the Jibetians believed that a man could always father children. The only person of any consequence at all was the ruler himself."

"Although it wouldn't hurt to check," O'Brien said.

"If we're here long enough," Dax said.

Bashir set down his box and pulled from it Starfleet's regulation portable heater. An older version of one of these had kept Curzon Dax and Sisko alive for two days in an ice cave. They'd had to evacuate the cave when it became clear that the heater was cracking the ice.

"Let's get that thing running," O'Brien said. "I've been cold long enough." He bent over and started the heater, then warmed his hands over its early heat as if it were a campfire. "The thing I've never been able to understand about cold sleep is how the survivors ever felt warm again. Just knowing that my metabolism had been slowed by the cold for eighty years would give me a permanent chill."

"It wouldn't work that way, Chief," Julian said. "Your system would warm gradually..."

Dax dug in the other two boxes as Julian explained the psychology of cold sleep. She found blankets and pillows. She went back into the main room for the rest of the supplies, moving box after box. Both men offered to help, but she turned them down. She had watched them work. Now they could watch her.

"...rather like a long night's sleep. Some veterans of cold sleep even claimed that they had dreams," Julian said, his voice rising with excitement. Once he started on a topic he loved, there was no stopping him.

Fortunately O'Brien seemed to be interested in it as well. "I'm simply glad for the development of warp technology. Cold sleep had too many hazards, not the least of which this ship met with."

"You mean crashes?" Julian asked. "All ships run that hazard."

"No, they don't." Dax had finished carrying the boxes. She took out a pillow and sat on it. This part of the corridor had warmed up considerably. In another half an hour, she would be able to remove her deepcold jacket. "Most ships have living pilots in addition to their computerized navigational systems. This one didn't."

"Coldsleep ships were usually designed so that someone would wake up at the first sign of trouble," Julian said. "I wonder if someone woke up here."

"I doubt it," Dax said. "They'd been traveling a long time when they reached this asteroid belt."

"You're right about that, Lieutenant," O'Brien said. "But Julian's also right. The system should have attempted to revive one, maybe two pilots. And everything should have been working well enough to at least make the attempt. But I see no signs that type of system kicked in at all." He rubbed his chin. "How long do you think we have until the commander returns?"

Dax grabbed a blanket from one of the boxes and spread it around the floor to ease the chill of the metal. She didn't want O'Brien to see her face. While they'd been working on the Supreme Ruler, she had forced all thought of the Cardassians from her mind. But she couldn't ignore that threat forever. The Cardassians hadn't massed on the border at that time for some other undetermined threat. They had arrived because they knew that the Defiant had found the Nibix.

The Cardassians were wily. They would take what advantage they could. With proper use of the Nibix, they could destroy the heart of the Federation.

She hoped that relations between the Federation and the Cardassians had improved beyond that point, but she didn't know. She was afraid they hadn't.

"Lieutenant?" O'Brien asked, his tone showing his curiosity at her inability to answer.

"The Cardassians were just something I didn't expect," she said.

"You don't know how long the commander will be gone, do you?" Julian asked.

She shook her head. His three-day estimate might be long. It might be right. Or, if things went really poorly, he might not return at all.

"Good thing Odo knows where we are," O'Brien said. "I wouldn't want to end up like one of those fellows." He pointed toward one of the coldsleep chambers. Vivid memories of those skeletons rose in Dax's mind. So little left of lives so filled with hope.

"Well, there's nothing we can do about them," Dax said. "And you two believe we're better off not touching the Supreme Ruler. Benjamin thought he might be gone for days. I suppose we should make ourselves comfortable."

Julian grinned. "We could treasure hunt."

Dax did not meet his grin. "If anything's missing from the Nibix when the Jibetians arrive, they'll blame us for the losses."

"I wasn't suggesting we take anything, Jadzia," Julian said. "Just look."

O'Brien shook his head. "I think the lieutenant is right. I think we should hold off looking for treasure. But I would be curious to see the control room. I'd love to know why the emergency revival system broke down while the Supreme Ruler's system didn't."

"We don't know if it broke down," Julian said.

"If the emergency revival system didn't break down, that would be even more interesting, don't you think?" O'Brien asked.

Julian stood and grabbed his cold-weather gear. "Ah," he said. "An age-old conspiracy."

"It might be age-old," Dax said as she stood, too, "but it might be more relevant than you think."

O'Brien shook his head. "I can't believe that an eight-hundred-year-old wreck would cause so much controversy." He stood, dusted off his trousers, and grabbed his cold-weather gear. "Since we'll be here a while, Lieutenant, do you think you could find it in your heart to tell us the true story of the Nibix?"

"All the details?" Julian added.

Dax smiled. "I'll tell you so many details, you'll wish you'd never heard of this ship."

"Too late," Julian said, gazing around the dark corridor. "I already do."

Every muscle in Kira's body was tense. She paced around Ops. The team with her studied their monitors. The air felt hot, even though she knew the environmental controls kept everything at an even temperature.

The Starship Madison had just taken its position around Deep Space Nine. The Idaho wasn't far behind.

"Major," Tappan said, "the Madison is hailing us."

"On screen," Kira said. She stopped in the same position she had been in before. In front of Commander Sisko's office, as if the remnants of his presence gave her more power than she really had.

Captain Higginbotham's lean face filled the screen. "Major," he said. "The Cardassians are only a few minutes away from the station. Our sources believe Gul Dukat is leading the fleet."

"Gul Dukat?" Kira felt herself go cold. Commander Sisko had established a passing relationship with Gul Dukat. Her relationship with him had remained fiery.