Star Trek Deep Space 9 10 Valhalla

Star Trek - DS9 10 - Valhalla

CHAPTER ONE

THE ALIEN SHIP came in hot and fast, popping out of the wormhole like a champagne cork from a

bottle, the strange, smooth hull as blue as the eerie, swirling discharge of the wormhole itself.

Display screens in the operations area of the station called Deep Space Nine lit with warning sensor

readouts--ship's surface temperature 3500 degrees

Celsius, radiation output well into the lethal range for all known humanoid life-forms, velocity a

respectable fraction of the speed of light.

At the science workstation of the main operations table, Lieutenant Jadzia Dax scanned the messages

quickly, displaying no sign of surprise.

Dax was a Trill--a merged being. Her outward appearance was that of an attractive, dark-haired young

woman, indistinguishable from a humanoid being save for an odd mottling of her skin along the sides of

her head, and the Jadzia half of her was exactly that--but the other half, hidden inside her, was an ancient

creature, a sexless wormlike being three centuries old that had learned to be surprised by very little.

A neutrino surge had provided a warning that something was coming through the wormhole, but until the

alien had actually appeared Dax had as- sumed that the new arrival would simply be a recent

Ferengi trade mission returning ahead of schedule.

Given that that particular Ferengi captain's plans had struck Dax as being hopelessly optimistic, she had

rather expected an early return.

This ship, whatever it was, was not the Ferengi trader she had expected. It was completely unantici-

pated, and totally unfamiliar in design.

Dax looked up from the panel and saw that Com- mander Benjamin Sisko, the station's top authority,

and Major Kira Nerys, his second-in-command, were still closeted in Sisko's office, arguing vehemently

about the latest crisis in relations between the

Bajorans and the Cardassian Empire.

Dax therefore took it upon herself to scan the alien vessel thoroughly without consulting the station's

harried commander. Benjamin didn't need the added headache just now.

The Dax part of the Trill had known Benjamin

Sisko in its previous symbiosis, when it had been not

Jadzia but Curzon Dax, and it knew Sisko to be a good man, a strong and intelligent man--but one who

let his responsibilities weigh heavily on him. She had no desire to add to that burden.

Dax scanned the reports with practiced ease. No life-forms were aboard the intruder, according to her

readings--but that flood of hard radiation was inter- fering enough that she couldn't be sure those

readings were correct. The object was coasting, not moving under power; perhaps it wasn't a ship at all,

despite its appearance and velocity. It wasn't responding to the station's hailwbut then, if there were no

life-forms aboard, that was hardly surprising.

If it was a derelict, some bit of space junk that had fallen into the wormhole by accident, it might be

interesting to take a good close look at it. It might call for a study team when Dax, as Deep Space Nine's

science officer, had the time to spare from her regular duties--as she did not just now, since she was

com- mitted to a conference with the personnel of an

Ashtarian expedition to the Gamma Quadrant, just as soon as her shift in Ops was over. There was some

sort of problem about allowing the Ashtarian ship through the wormhole, one that the station's technical

crew had been unable to resolve.

Dax doubted that the problem, whatever it was, would prove as interesting as studying this mysterious

new arrival, but the Ashtarians were impatient, and there was no need for any great hurry in dealing with

the unknown object.

At least, not if it was going to drift on harmlessly, but she couldn't take that for granted.

Dax touched controls to call up a plot of the new arrival's path, and discovered that if left to itself, and

assuming it was actually powerless and wouldn't change course on its own, the object would cross into

Cardassian space within hours.

That changed things. Given the present rather tense political situation, anything that would involve the

Cardassians, even peripherally, was important enough that Commander Sisko had to hear about it.

Dax had a strong suspicion that Commander Benja- min Sisko did not want to hear anything more about

Cardassians, but really, he had little choice in the matter. She tapped her communicator badge.

Benjamin Sisko glowered down at Major Kira.

Ordinarily he found her pleasant enough to look at, with her reddish hair and almost-human features. Her

ridged nose and clan earring provided an interestingly exotic touch.

Just now, though, all he could see was her damnable

Bajoran stubbornness.

That stubbornness might have helped the Bajorans survive the long Cardassian occupation of their plan-

ets, but it still wasn't any joy to deal with.

"Major," he said for the third time, "I refuse to start a war between the Cardassians and the Federa-

tion."

"I'm not asking for a war!" Kira shouted at him.

She realized how wild she sounded, caught herself, clenched her teeth to regain control, then said, with

rigid calm, "I am only asking that you stop these incursions."

"And do you really think that I can do that without starting a war?" Sisko demanded.

"Yes!" Kira shouted. "Maybe," she added, before

Sisko could reply.

"Major," Sisko said, "I would like to oblige you, and I agree that the Cardassians have no legitimate

business making these sorties into Bajoran space, but so far their ships have done no harm. They have

not fired a shot. They have not landed on Bajoran terri- tory."

"Done no harm!"

"Not deliberately," Sisko amended.

"But they've intruded on Bajoran space!"

"'Where, under the terms of the agreement they made with both the Federation and the Bajoran

provisional government," Sisko reminded her, "they have the right of passage so long as they obey

interstel- lar law."

"That agreement was designed to give them access to the wormhole and Gamma Quadrant, Command-

er; it wasn't to allow them to terrorize Bajor. And with the Defiant off at--"

"Nonetheless," Sisko interrupted, "they have re- mained within the letter of that agreement, and while they

have undoubtedly violated Bajoran statutes, they have so far obeyed interstellar law."

"And is it obeying the law to cruise over our cities at rooftop level, running high-intensity sensor scans of

every building and vehicle?" Kira demanded. "Be- cause that's exactly what they've been doing!"

Sisko frowned, and Kira pressed her momentary advantage. "Commander, they've shorted out pre-

cious equipment with their sensors, they've terrified innocent people.... I don't think you appreciate what

it's like for us to see Cardassian ships overhead."

"Perhaps..." Sisko began, but Kira cut him off.

She wasn't finished speaking.

"We all lived under the Cardassian occupation," she said. "Some of us grew up in their relocation camps,

or worked for them as slaves. Some of us saw our families tortured or killed there. Some of us remember

all too well when those ships were collect- ing prisoners instead of information, and using phasers instead

of sensors. Seeing those ships in the sky brings back all those memories, Commanderin it's not as if these

were Federation ships, or some other civilization's; they're Cardassian, and that means something very

definite, and very terrible, to every Bajoram So far there hasn't been any wholesale panic or rioting, but

it's only a matter of time. And the

Cardassians have no right there!"

"It's a violation of Bajoran airspace, yes..." Sisko began, trying to calm his first officer.

"It's not a mere violation, Commander! It's a calcu- lated attack, a campaign of terror!"

Sisko's expression, which he had tried to keep carefully noncommittal up to that point, hardened into

something harsher. What Major Kira said was largely true, and it was quite clear that the Car- dassians

were being deliberately provocative, but he could not allow Bajoran patriotic fervor to drag the

Federation into an unnecessary conflict.

This improvised situation he had been thrust into, where a Federation commander ran a Cardassian- built

station now owned by Bajor, was a constant invitation to trouble, and Sisko wondered, not for the first

time, how the Federation Council could ever have thought it was a good idea.

Of course, if not for the Federation presence, some trigger-happy Bajoran terrorist would probably have

started a war of revenge by now, and in retaliation the

Cardassians would have wiped out the Bajorans once and for all.

Major Kira was not particularly trigger-happy, and was no longer a terrorist, but at the moment she

seemed determined to start a war anyway.

That might well be exactly what the Cardassians

,wanted. Maybe they thought that if they could pro- voke a Bajoran attack on them, the Federation

would not defend Bajor from the inevitable counterattack.

Or maybe, far more frighteningly, the Cardassians thought they were ready to take on the Federation.

"Major, it is not an attack," Sisko said. "Not from the Cardassians' point of view, nor from the Federa-

tion's. It is a violation of agreements, yes, and it will be dealt withinbut through the proper diplomatic

channels, with a demand for an apology and a further demand for reparations for any damages. Using this

station or Federation ships to shoot down the intrud- ers, or to launch a counter-raid into Cardassian

space, as you suggest, is out of the question."

"This station is Bajoran..." Kira began.

Sisko's communicator chirped, and he held up a hand as Dax's voice said, "Dax to Sisko."

"Sisko here," he said, as he tapped the badge.

"My apologies for interrupting, Commander,"

Dax's voice said, "but we have an intruder..."

"Another Cardassian?" Kira asked quickly.

"No, from the wormhole," Dax replied. "The de- sign is unfamiliar. It emerged approximately three

minutes ago, and is headed for Cardassian space."

Sisko glanced quickly at Major Kira; for an instant he had an irrational suspicion that this was her doing,

that somehow she had arranged for this ship to pop out of the wormhole as part of a scheme to retaliate

against the Cardassians.

The idea was absurd on the face of it--but she had been a part of the Bajoran resistance; she might still

have contacts within the remaining underground groups, the terrorists who hadn't dared surface when the

Cardassians had left and the provisional govern- ment was formed.

But an alien ship appearing from the wormhole-- surely that was beyond anything the Khon-ma or others

of their ilk could arrange! It had to be a coincidence.

It was a damnably annoying one, though.

"Is it a Tosk vessel, by any chance?" he asked. That, at least, would be a known quantity; the station's

first visitor from Gamma Quadrant had been trouble- some, mostly through ignorance, but in the end no

serious harm to the station or Bajor had come of it.

Other arrivals from the wormhole had presented no great difficulties as yet.

"No, sir--totally unfamiliar. Sensors indicate no life-forms aboard." "A derelict?"

"Or a missile," Kira suggested.

Sisko threw her an angry glance. "I'll be right there," he announced; he headed for the door of his office.

The door opened directly into the Operations

Center--the Cardassians who built the station had considered that a basic element of efficient design.

Sometimes Sisko wished they hadn't been quite so efficient; having a few steps to gather his thoughts,

without being in full view of the Ops crew, would have been welcome.

The Cardassian designers had also been irrationally fond of steps. While putting the prefect's office--now

the station commander's office--on a higher level, to symbolically emphasize his authority, might be an

interesting concept, Sisko did get tired of climbing up and down the short flight every time he wanted to

go anywhere.

And the steps to the transporter pad and the turbolifts seemed downright silly. He supposed they were

intended to keep people from accidentally step- ping into the lift or the transporter while the devices were

operating, but still...

Well, no one had ever said the Cardassians thought like humans. Anyone who looked at the way they

had laid out the station's interiors, at the odd curves and peculiar angles and dull colors, would know the

Cardassian sense of aesthetics was different from anything human.

The station's design worked adequately, though.

And putting Ops at the top of the station's central core was good sense, as was arranging Ops around a

central operations table where all the essential services worked side by side.

Dax looked up at him from the operations table, and stepped aside so he could see the readouts for

himself.

Major Kira watched the station commander march down the steps into Ops, but took a moment to

compose herself before following.

Bajor's lost religious leader, Kai Opaka, had told her that she had to move beyond her violent past, and

she was trying to do that. She wanted to appear calm and reasonable. She wanted to appear as logical

as a

Vulcan.

For one thing, emotional pleas didn't seem very effective on the big, dark-skinned Earthman.

It was hard not to give in to emotion, though. Even the Kai would have seen that here. This was a return

of the bad old days, and Kira had to fight to resist the bad old ways.

She was trying hard, but didn't seem to be able to make Sisko understand--her people were under at-

tack. Her people, the rightful owners of this station, were being harassed by their old enemies, their

former self-appointed masters, the people who had blithely killed any Bajoran who inconvenienced them.

This time the Cardassians weren't shooting anyone, they weren't landing, or taking slaves, or killing--yet.

But they were Cardassians. And they were back in

Bajoran space. That was enough; that was intolerable.

Maybe the Federation thought a formal protest was enough of a response, but Kira's entire upbringing

told her otherwise. If the Cardassians weren't stopped now, it would take a full-scale war to stop them,

she was sure of it. Just sitting back and letting them do as they pleased would only encourage them; only

a show of force, strong enough that they would respect it without being intimidating enough to frighten

them or destructive enough to anger them, would stop them.

The Bajoran provisional government wasn't doing a damn thing about ih of course; they just debated

endlessly, going nowhere. Half of them were terrified that any action would bring the Cardassians back,

and the other half didn't dare do anything without Federa- tion support.

And meanwhile people were being hurt, both physi- cally and spiritually.

She had to make Sisko see that. He was an Earth- man, not a Bajoran, but there had to be some way to

force him to understand how important this was. She had to convince him to bring in Federation

starships.

This thing from the wormhole was just a distrac- tion; the Cardassians were what mattered. The sooner

the intruder was dealt with, the better.

Her expression artificially calm, she walked down the steps into Ops, a few paces behind Sisko.

CHAPTER TWO

"TRACTOR BEAMS," Sisko ordered, as he watched the alien ship on the main viewer. "Bring it in."

"Sir, it's highly radioactive," Dax pointed out. She was back at her own station at the operations table.

"It should be safe enough at the end of upper docking pylon two," Sisko said. "Or would you rather we

let it continue on into Cardassian space?"

Dax didn't answer; instead she tapped at the tractor-beam controls. Chief Miles O'Brien, alert but calm,

and Dr. Julian Bashir, excited and nervous, had arrived in Ops a moment earlier; now both men watched

over the Trill's shoulder, studying the readouts on the alien ship.

"Locked on," Dax reported. "Bringing it in. Still no signs of life or power aboard."

"This might be a trick," Kira said as she came up behind Sisko. "A trap of some kind." "Oh?" Sisko said,

turning.

"It might be a Cardassian construct," Kira insisted.

"Some sort of weapon or booby trap. And we're bringing it right here to the station. There could be

something aboard--a tailored virus, even a simple bomb big enough to wreck the station, and if any- one

protests that, the Cardassians will just shrug and say it's a part of the dangers out here. And meanwhile

the wormhole and the entire Bajoran system will be sitting here unguarded, waiting for them to move in."

"And how would the Cardassians have managed this?" Sisko asked. "Dax saw that ship emerge from the

wormhole; I doubt the Cardassians are operating munitions factories in Gamma Quadrant."

"But how do we know that they aren't?"

"Because we've watched every ship that's passed through, Major," Sisko replied wearily. "You know

that as well as I do. And there certainly hasn't been time for any Cardassian ship to have reached the

Gamma Quadrant without passing through the worm- hole."

Since the Gamma Quadrant was at the far side of the galaxy, seventy years away in normal space for

even the fastest starship, that was inarguable, but

Major Kira did not look convinced, and Sisko sup- pressed a sigh.

She was obsessed with the Cardassians. That was hardly surprising, given her background, and usually

she kept it under control, but during this latest crisis...

It would be helpful, Sisko thought, if they actually knew just what was going on in the Cardassian

Empire that had prompted the raids into Bajoran space. The Cardassians had behaved themselves for

months, after all, and now there were these sudden intrusionswnot attacks, Major Kira's opinion not-

withstanding, but what appeared to be searches of some kind. Something must have happened to cause

them.

Rumors had reached Deep Space Nine, in the form of bits of talk over the subspace communication

bands, or impressions picked up from passing travel- ers. There were the rumors, and a few fragmentary

reports, but so far, despite requests for information from Starfleet, nothing more than that.

The reports and rumors were consistent, though.

Some sort of political crisis was going on on

Cardassia, and that was somehow responsible for the intrusions.

To Sisko it didn't seem to make much sense, but it all seemed to have started with the death of a rising

young politician named Kag Duzek. Within hours of the first reports of his death there had been

Cardassian ships cruising through Bajoran space, and before long they were approaching the Bajoran

worlds in a series of ever-bolder incursions.

Starfleet had been informed immediately, and had promptly relayed what information they had in their

computers that hadn't been classified as secret--but

Sisko, after looking those transmissions over, was fairly certain no human being had bothered to look at

them before they were sent, as they were so vague and incomplete as to be useless.

And beyond sending the data, Starfleet had as yet done nothing about the intrusionsmand Major Kira

blamed him, Commander Benjamin Sisko, Starfleet's local representative, for that inaction. She wanted

him to stop the raids now.

Although just how he could do that, what she expected him to do...

His thoughts were interrupted by Dax.

"Docking complete, Commander. I've raised the emergency blast shields around the airlock; the ship

appears stable, but the radiation levels are very high."

"Good work, old man."

Sisko noticed Dax smiling slightly at that, and knew that it was because no one else on Deep Space Nine

thought of her as anything but a young woman; only he had known her during her previous symbiosis.

"Commander, I'd like permission to board the alien vessel and take a look around," the Trill added.

Sisko glanced at her, startled.

"This is a great opportunity, sir," Dax explained.

"That ship is our first contact with a new culture."

Sisko thought, but did not say, that at this particular station that was not especially unusual. This unique

access to the Gamma Quadrant that the wormhole provided had already brought about several first con-

tacts.

"It's also deadly, isn't it?" he said.

"Obviously, I will take all necessary precautions," she said.

Sisko supposed that Dax couldn't have lived for three centuries without learning some elementary

caution. If any of them would be safe aboard the alien vessel, she would.

"Sir," O'Brien said, "I'd like to accompany Lieu- tenant Dax, if I may. The engineering on that ship..."

Sisko interrupted him, before he could complete the sentence, to ask, "Do we know for certain whether

there's anything aboard, other than the radiation, that might be dangerous?"

"The sensors show no life-forms," Dax said, "but the radiation may be blocking our readings."

"And of course we have no way of knowing about any purely mechanical devices there might be,"

O'Brien added. "But all the same, sir..."

"There may be injured beings aboard," Dr. Bashir interrupted.

That decided it. "You will all wear Full protective gear and carry phasers," Sisko said. "Stay together at

all times; assume the ship is hostile."

"Yes, sir/" Dr. Bashit answered, smiling.

Sisko watched the three of them hurry to the transporter platform, Dax moving with calm grace,

O'Brien with brisk efficiency, and Bashir with reckless speed, and he sighed. He glanced at Major Kira,

but she was reading a display at the science station and showed no sign of resuming the argument this

new arrival had interrupted.

That was just as well; it gave him a chance to do a little more research. He really needed to know what

was going on on Cardassia, and his only solid clue was a single name that had cropped up twice in the

Starfleet reports. Until now he had been too busy to check on it, but perhaps it was time to give it a

higher priority.

He stepped to his own workstation at the operations table. There, with practiced ease, he brought up

everything the station's computer had on file about

Kag Duzek.

CHAPTER THREE

THE SHIP'S DESIGN was completely unfamiliar, but

Miles O'Brien thought he knew an emergency manual release when he saw it, and that was what he

found just to the left of the airlock's outer door.

The airlock was built into a sort of niche in the ship's side in such a way that the outer hatch faced directly

forward, oriented so that what appeared to be the top was pointed toward the ship's long axis, while the

bottom was toward the ship's outer circumfer- ence. That, combined with the general shape and

appearance of the vessel and the results of the scans he had run on it, had convinced O'Brien that the

aliens did not have artificial gravity aboard, but instead had rotated the ship, so that centrifugal force

would serve as an adequate substitute for gravity.

That was a fairly primitive solution to the problem, and in general the ship did not appear terribly ad-

vanced.

That was something of a disappointment; the possi- bility of discovering some major improvement on

Federation technology was one of the lures of any first-contact work.

The door itself was low and wide, slanted forward, the sides sloping in to form a trapezoid; O'Brien had

never quite figured out why so many starfaring races used trapezoidal doorways, but he had long ago

become accustomed to it.

This particular doorway, though, was only a little over a meter high, and almost three meters wide at the

bottom, which would obviously not suit humans at all; O'Brien therefore suspected that this vessel's

builders had not been even remotely humanoid.

And whether they were humanoid or not in their general build, the grip on the emergency release certainly

wasn't designed for human hands; a tentacle would have fit it better than the armored gauntlet of

O'Brien's radiation suit.

He almost sprained his wrist discovering that the release ratcheted back and forth along a ninety-degree

arc, rather than turning steadily, but after a moment he got the hang of cranking it. With each tug the door

slid down, centimeter by centimeter, into its slot in the ship's blue ceramic outer hull.

When the seat first broke and the ship's atmosphere spilled into the station airlock, the temperature read-

out at the top of O'Brien's faceplate almost immedi- ately registered the rush of hot gas from the ship's

own airlock, and alarm lights indicated toxic elements. His suit's climate control prevented him from

feeling or smelling a thing, though; he had to rely on the gauges.

On the other hand, O'Brien thought he could al- most feel Dr. Bashir's impatient breath on his back as he

worked the lever. He knew that was impossible through their bulky protective suits, but the doctor's

eagerness was so obvious that it was painful to see.

Someday, O'Brien thought, that lad is going to get himself killed if he doesn't learn to rein in his

enthusiasm. He was like a cocker pup tripping over his own ears.

O'Brien paused to adjust his grip on the uncomfort- able handle, and Dr. Bashir proceeded to duck

down and squeeze head and shoulders through the narrow opening.

"Hey!" O'Brien protested.

Bashir paid him no attention whatsoever, and with a suppressed sigh O'Brien resumed cranking.

A moment later the three of them crouched in the airlock, unable to stand upright in the confined space;

the chamber was unlit, and their own bodies blocked the light from the station's docking airlock, making

it impossible to see the controls until O'Brien turned on the lamp on his helmet.

When he did, something whirred, and pinkish light sprang up. O'Brien glanced quickly at Dax. She

seemed unperturbed.

Dr. Bashir, however, started at the sudden illumina- tion and stared about wildly.

"It seems that she's not totally dead," O'Brien remarked calmly.

"The sensors reported at least partial function in several systems," Dax replied.

Star Trek Deep Space 9 10 Valhalla

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